Is your computer anywhere near your grow?

[alaskan]

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/84715297.html?cmpid=15585797

Lower Merion School District officials brag that they give every one of their 1,800 high-schoolers laptop computers to "ensure that all students have 24/7 access to school-based resources."

Instead, they ensured they got a 24/7 sneak peek into students’ private lives by secretly monitoring webcams embedded in the laptops to spy on teens and their families at home, according to a federal, class-action lawsuit filed this week in Philadelphia.

...

The family first learned of the embedded webcams on Nov. 11, when Harriton High's Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko reprimanded Blake Robbins for "improper behavior in his home," according to the lawsuit. Matsko cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam on the boy's school-issued laptop.
The lawsuit does not specify why the photograph was objectionable.


Because the webcam can capture anything happening in the room where the laptop is, district personnel could illicitly observe plenty more than a student's online activity, the lawsuit alleges.


"Many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various stages of dress or undress," the lawsuit charges.
The Robbins' attorney, Mark Haltzman, couldn't be reached this morning. McGinley and District Spokesman Doug Young did not immediately return telephone calls for comment today.

Who wants to bet the kid was smoking a bong in front of the computer? Or maybe he was "abusing himself..."

The scary part is... This is just one case caught on to and made public. If a school can do this, what kind of things do you think everyone's favorite government/spy agencies are up to?


http://www.prisonplanet.com/how-you-could-also-be-a-victim-of-the-laptop-spying-scandal.html

In 2006, Google announced that they would use in-built microphones to listen in on user’s background noise, be it television, music or radio – and then direct advertising at them based on their preferences.​

“The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that’s adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject,” reported the Register.​

Hundreds of millions of Internet-active Americans will all be potential targets for secret surveillance and the subsequent sell-off of all their information to unscrupulous data mining corporations and government agencies.

​

The report cites the inevitability that the use and abuse of this technology will eventually be taken over by the state.​

“Pretty soon the security industry is going to find a way to hijack the Google feed and use it for full on espionage,” states the article.

​

Google’s recent announcement that it will work with America’s most well-known spy agency, the NSA, which was embroiled in the warrantless surveillance scandal during the Bush administration, only heightens concerns that big brother will have a virtual wiretap in every home that has a computer.​

...

According to the filing, the actions of the school district were exposed when one of the school’s vice principals disciplined Mr Robbins’ son for “improper behavior in his home,” and used a photo taken from the computer camera as evidence.


“Michael Robbins thereafter verified, through Ms. Matsko, (an assistant principal) that the school district in fact has the ability to remotely activate the webcam contained in a student’s personal laptop computer issued by the school district at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam, all without the knowledge, permission or authorization of any persons then and there using the laptop computer.” the complaint states.

“Additionally, by virtue of the fact that the webcam can be remotely activated at any time by the school district, the webcam will capture anything happening in the room in which the laptop computer is located, regardless of whether the student is sitting at the computer and using it.”

Sounds pretty awesome...

Mods, if this is in the wrong forum, please move it instead of just deleting it.

 

[stink.whistler]

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/84715297.html?cmpid=15585797
Who wants to bet the kid was smoking a bong in front of the computer? Or maybe he was "abusing himself..."

...

I read that they saw some candy that looked like pills, so they thought he was a pill head.

 

[ArcticBlast]

more bullshit

ArcticBlast

 

[cork144]

this is what happens when you let goverment pass legislation that makes "spying on terrorists ok"

the law wasnt made for "terrorists"


it was made for you,


terrorism is meerly the pretext they have to use to fool us into being spy'd on.

 

[MoldyFrogToe]

this is what happens when you let goverment pass legislation that makes "spying on terrorists ok"

the law wasnt made for "terrorists"


it was made for you,


terrorism is meerly the pretext they have to use to fool us into being spy'd on.

What legislation do you feel is responsible for this?

It sounds like the actions the school took were illegal to begin with...

 

[alaskan]

For starters...
Senate Approves Telecom Amnesty, Expands Domestic Spying Powers
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/07/senate-approv-1/

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to grant retroactive amnesty to the telecoms that aided the President Bush’s five-year secret, warrantless wiretapping of Americans, and to expand the government’s authority to sift through U.S. communications...

 

[MoldyFrogToe]

Yeah,but this isn't telecom and really doesn't have much to do with 'domestic spying' in the context of that article...

Seems like all we have is a school...being stupid...doing illegal, unwarranted things...making a mistake, now getting pointed out for it...
Rather than some legal terrorist gov't spy act being put to use that was approved by congress...

Im surprised they dont do this in Europe on a daily basis yet with all those freakin cameras allover the place =P

 

[mugenbao]

What legislation do you feel is responsible for this?

It sounds like the actions the school took were illegal to begin with...

Do you live in the US? It seems amazing to me that you wouldn't know about the US government spying on it's own citizens, it was pretty big news for a few news cycles during the Bush years before the media moved on to more 'tantalizing' stuff like celebrity drama, etc.

Ostensibly, they were only supposed to be listening in on telephone conversations where one of the people involved was already under suspicion or known to be involved with terrorist activities, but in reality they were intercepting phone calls and internet communications indiscriminately.

 

[Dr.Dank]

big brother is watching everyone fuck I don't even know how i we all got the balls to go on her and post our grow... sometimes I think I should delete everything.

 

[secondtry]

Just download and use TorBrowserBundle: https://torproject.org for surfing. For Winblows Os's use Truecypt ( www.truecrypt.org ) for data encryption or WDE (Whole Disk Encryption), or even WDE with a honey-pot false OS for the ultra-paranoid. That said, get the hell off of Winblows and Mac if you want real computer (HDD/OS) security, I'm not referring to data security in transit over the 'net (use Tor for that), but security of the HDD and OS then use "Ubuntu" if your new to *nix Os's.

Read up on proper usage of Tor first, but TBB solves concerns of online anonymity and data security (i.e., encryption) in an out-of-the-box fashion. Tor is the best option in the world besides BotNets but they are hard to setup (or can be purchased from Russian cracker/black hat groups) and illegal.

Tor is the way to go! I use Tor for ICmag and ALL cannabis sites; there is no way I will let my IP address get logged into ICmag server files.

 

[MoldyFrogToe]

Do you live in the US? It seems amazing to me that you wouldn't know about the US government spying on it's own citizens, it was pretty big news for a few news cycles during the Bush years before the media moved on to more 'tantalizing' stuff like celebrity drama, etc.

Ostensibly, they were only supposed to be listening in on telephone conversations where one of the people involved was already under suspicion or known to be involved with terrorist activities, but in reality they were intercepting phone calls and internet communications indiscriminately.

Believe me, I'm aware..all I was asking, was, what specific legislation is being put to use here, in this specific case involving this school...someone inferred that this was some gov't spy act.
The US leaning towards more creepy spy tactics is one thing, a school being stupid and breaching privacy in hopes to find their computer is completely different.

So far all I see is tinfoilism.
Where's the 'spy legislation' passed by congress that this school used in this instance?
Not seein it.

 

[alaskan]

Yeah,but this isn't telecom and really doesn't have much to do with 'domestic spying' in the context of that article...

Seems like all we have is a school...being stupid...doing illegal, unwarranted things...making a mistake, now getting pointed out for it...

It just shows the government can do pretty much whatever they want, and have a way out if backed into a corner the way this school has been.

 

[MoldyFrogToe]

The gov't....or some old guy @ a school not thinking....

Where's the way out for the school?

So far, the school has a lawsuit against them for illegal activities.
The case hasn't been decided upon
And, we don't even hear the school referencing any legislation used in their decision

All signs point to human error at a small scale, with the school @ fault...not some gov't conspiracy....

TINFOIL!

 

[alaskan]

Grow a brain man, the school case isn't the subject of this thread, it's that anyone is capable of turning on your computer and looking through the camera...

The US leaning towards more creepy spy tactics is one thing, a school being stupid and breaching privacy in hopes to find their computer is completely different.

The fact that they're even capable of remotely turning on a laptop, and getting a video feed shows a bit more than just a "school being stupid."

So far all I see is tinfoilism.
Where's the 'spy legislation' passed by congress that this school used in this instance?
Not seein it.

The point is that they're not using legislation, they're just doing it, and you'd have to be pretty dense to think this school is the only institution doing it.

 

[secondtry]

@ Dr. Dank,

If you are non-anonymous now then you would need to close your account here, wait a while and start a new account using Tor and anon-email. Then you need to change your posting style so it doesn't link your current non-anonymous nic with your new anonymous nic. Then just tell people whom you trust what your new nic is.

HTH

 

[alaskan]

Think of the school case as just an example, and get off of it.

 

[MoldyFrogToe]

The fact that they're even capable of remotely turning on a laptop, and getting a video feed shows a bit more than just a "school being stupid."

The point is that they're not using legislation, they're just doing it, and you'd have to be pretty dense to think this school is the only institution doing it.

My point was that we had someone here inferring that the school's actions were being used in conjunction with legislation that had already been passed for some kind of terror act or something.

They dont seem to be using legislation, which is what makes this illegal. Like I said this isnt some vast govt conspiracy to spy on us, this is some school making a stupid mistake with publicly available technology..

 

[exploziv]

tinfoil got me covered!

 

[secondtry]

@ Alaskan:

What do you mean by "get off of it"?


@ ALL:

I would install a virtual machine which runs Tor (pre-installed) onto the school computer. I can offer links if anyone is interested. Then just start the Virtual Machine and OS (which is linux) so that OS is what you use to surf, not the Winblows OS which is also running as the "host OS"; the linux OS runs inside of the Winblows OS. That way the data is fully encrypted in transit and no data (i.e., evidence) is left on the HDD. This means the school has no idea what you are doing with their computer and you leave NO evidence on the HDD Nice an super easy to do!

Then just cover the camera and speakers and your good to go...

There are always method to beat the mouse trap

GL

 

[Hold Your Fire]

I'm not saying anything about the school incident, but no matter what, the Patriot act and anything like it must DIE. We as US citizens will have NO constitutional rights if shit keeps going in this direction. Most folks think it's ok because the press says it's being done to protect us from terrorist, BULLSHIT! The real terrorists are our own fucking government.