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I found this being presented as a ‘watch out, Big Brother’ type of example. It involves a program by Apple called One-to-One/Student-to-laptop where they provide laptops for educational use in certain schools. The case surrounded a situation where administrators could visually remotely monitor what was going on kid’s laptops as a way to ensure they remained focused on school work. They typically used Apple Remote Desktop to do this – a program I use to more easily administrate multiple machines, run bulk updates, installs and which I also use for remote support.
This is not totally Orwellian, but it’s getting close. However, it does get worse. Unbeknownst to the kids and without their permission, these same administrators installed covert webcam activation software which could also monitor their machines when they took them home too! Administrators claimed it was done in case there was a theft of a laptop. Parents claim:
(the School) spied on students and families by “indiscriminate use of and ability to remotely activate the Webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students by the School District.
A student was actually confronted by a school official concerning ‘improper behaviour in his home’ culled from the spy software – yikes!
The school is being sued by the Parents of the students and the school has rejigged their security policies in response:
As a result of our preliminary review of security procedures today, I directed the following actions:
· Immediate disabling of the security-tracking program.
· A thorough review of the existing policies for student laptop use.
· A review of security procedures to help safeguard the protection of privacy; including a review of the instances in which the security software was activated. We want to ensure that any affected students and families are made aware of the outcome of laptop recovery investigations.
· A review of any other technology areas in which the intersection of privacy and security may come into play.
It’s all a bit creepy, but the program’s root aspirations and results in general are inspiring – a few stray administrators can really ruin a good thing.
More info on the story can be found here as well as here. What do you think? Please comment!
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One Response to “Embracing Change…But No Creepiness Please!”
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Sounds pretty creepy to me. As Michel Foucault would have put it, we’re under the panopticon view of the Internet anytime we turn on a computer these days. Almost nothing is private. That the school administrator wanted to safeguard the use of his systems is understandable. That he didn’t inform the users of what they had in mind, is inexcusable.