Privacy

How the hell this particular school failed not to understand the implications of what they were doing is completely incomprehensible to me...read on:

School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home

A class action filing has been made on behalf of 1800 children and their families. It is already known that some teachers and possibly other staff already have images of the children at home in their possession. I wonder how many of those could (and will) be classed as child pornography? Who else saw these photographs? How many photographs were taken and of what? The invasion of privacy is utterly without precidence here.

Here are the list of complaints:

• Electronic Communications Privacy Act - interception of communications
• Computer Fraud and Abuse Act - exceeding authorized access
• Stored Communication Act - more unauthorized access
• Civil Rights Act - Invasion of Privacy
• 4th Amendment - Invasion of Privacy
• Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act - wiretapping
• Pennsylvania common law (1) - Invasion of Privacy

(1) footnote reads: "Should discovery disclose that the Defendants are in possession of images constituting child pornography [...] Plaintiffs will amend this Complaint to assert a cause of action thereunder."

Slashdot - as ever - has an interesting discussion.