So... Someone is going to jail for that, right?
Right?
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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Settled for $610,000...so no. I feel like, given that minors were involved, the settlement should have been on top of criminal charges.
Usually when you hear about a settlement (and not a plea deal) that means this was a civil case and not a criminal one. A civil case doesn't weigh in on whether or not criminal charges will be brought.
If enough people push the Attorney General of that state to pursue charges they still could (Edit: it's been 14 years and the Statute of Limitations is 5 years for wiretapping which I think is the highest possible charge). But there is a higher standard for evidence in criminal trials. Not to mention the defense's argument would likely be that schools have the right to wiretap students' issued laptops, so the AG probably doesn't want this to go to court and end up enshrining such a right when it currently holds civil liability due to the civil case succeeding.
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It's worth reading the entire article, it just gets worse and worse.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Attorney's Office, and Montgomery County District Attorney all initiated criminal investigations of the matter, which they combined and then closed because they did not find evidence "that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that anyone involved had criminal intent".
That's not even close to the worst thing in the article, but GG justice system. I'll remember this one day when I'm in court. "Well I didn't have criminal intent."
That's a defense now?? One that removes the need to even have a trial at all??
The article actually goes easy on them. The first plaintiff sued because the student was brought into the principal’s office and told they were being suspended for drug use, and as evidence showed a photo of them eating something in their room. It turned out to be Mike and Ike’s candy. The family was so upset they were spying on the child in their bedroom that it escalated to an investigation and then the scandal unfolded.
The school tried to backpedal and claim that the app takes photos on a timer and they had no idea, and this was proven to be a lie in court when they showed the IT training video explaining how proud they were of the webcam snooping feature.
It gets even worse: During the investigation, it was discovered that at least one person had copied videos and photos onto an external hard drive and taken them. The investigation never discovered who it was, or how many people had made copies; They just knew that files had been copied to at least one external storage drive.
The implication being that all of the teenage girls had their laptops open in their bedrooms, and at least one random employee had copies of their photos and videos.
The implication being that all of the teenage girls had their laptops open in their bedrooms, and at least one random employee had copies of their photos and videos.
Sure but they couldn't prove criminal intent so it's ok.
/s
Its been a defence for several hundred years, in fact! Showing intent is one of the three things you need to establish in every criminal case for it to be considered valid. Fuck the cops for dropping this case though, how in hell was there no intent to commit a crime here wtf.
Weird, I've literally always heard "ignorance of the law is no excuse to break the law", which seems to imply criminal intent doesn't matter. Only that the action that was take was illegal.
There are strict liability crimes. Like if you admit to shooting someone but maintain it was an accident. You won't get a murder charge, (or murder 1 depending on state) but you are going to get time in prison.
It's not intent to break the law, it's intent to do what you did. If I walk out of a store with a can of tuna I didn't pay for, that's shoplifting, right? Well, not necessarily.
If I walk into a store, pick it up off the shelf, hide it in my jacket, and dart for the exit, probably.
If my toddler slipped it into my jacket pocket, and I didn't notice, probably not.
If I put it in my jacket pocket because my toddler started to run away, I forgot about it, and paid for a cart of groceries... Maybe? But unlikely to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that it wasn't an accident.
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Intent to perform an action.
If they legitimately didn't know there was spying software on the computers and it was discovered later then they didn't intend to do it. But they did intend to spy on the students, and it doesn't matter if they thought it was legal.
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Its always been intent. If you pay with counterfeit bills but didn't realize because you got them from the shop that gave you change, you didn't intend to do fraud.
Intent matters, always has.
But they did mean to take pictures of minors in the privacy of their bedrooms in the name of stopping petty theft which I'm doubtful would have occurred on any meaningful scale in the first place. Whether they meant it "criminally" seems immaterial here. I think they got off exceptionally light, and it's a travesty of justice. You won't convince me otherwise.
I feel very sure we have prisons full of people who didn't mean to do whatever they did to be there.
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Ahh i remember the days of the school shitbook pros. That kids is why when 2020 rolled around and all my classes went to online and they wanted me to use there laptops provided. I made a disk image of the ssd and ran it all in a VM with usb passthrough. Cant acess my webcam if there is none!
You know, a piece of black tape would've been a lot easier.
Or if computer manufacturers just put in a hardware disconnect for the camera and mic. Like Lenovo used to do with the wifi switch.
The worst part about this IMO is the school system teaching digital dependency on proprietary software vendors.
Big tech salivates at the thought of being a child's "first"... much like other kinds of child groomers.
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I am absolutely not terribly invested here. But I wanted to kick something around (I opened the wiki and just decided I don't care that much to invest time into this but it is a thought kicking around my brain so I figured I'll express it here) - I am wondering if the school that did this is relatively wealthy. As Macbooks aren't cheap, and I think most schools were tossing around chromebooks instead right? So perhaps the reason why nobody ultimately got in the appropriate amount of trouble for this crime is because they themselves were people of a certain status. Or knew how to grease the right palms.
It's a suburb just outside Philadelphia and has some very wealthy parts. Kobe Bryant grew up there.
Yeah, see. I've seen some schools in my travels that make me want to slap someone. Because I am astonished at how far the haves and the have nots are apart. But also, I'd say in general whenever the sentence never seems to align with the punishment you can bet there's some classist mechanisms in the works.
The program began in the 2009 school year. The first Cr-48 was released in December 2010.
That sounds unlikely to me. If the school is wealthy, then so are their students' families.
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Chrome book my kid had was sending regular traffic out to some address that belonged to a scholastic vendor. Even when the device was idle. I blocked that site at the router. Thanks pfBlockerng. A few days later he had another chrome book needing our WiFI password. That is when the chrome book got its own VLAN and SSID. The SSID name was compromised. I also tightened the screws on google workspace. They tried one more time with a another chrome book before they gave up on whatever they were after. I have no doubt they wasted some time trying to overcome it. I still treated it like a wiretap. None of my precautions stopped me from putting tape over the mic and camera.
I was a little disappointed they never inquired about it. The fact they didn't pretty much guarantees what ever they were doing wasn't required.
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I remember when the news came out on the radio. The school reported to parents what their kids have been up to.
Tsk tsk. Rule number one of espionage (and hacking), never show your hand. Anything that tips off the mark and makes them suspicious that they are being watched will ruin everything.
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"I like Apple devices because they respect my privacy"
Except for the part where all that’s been preempted by organizational settings.
Out of the box, Apple does fairly well.
Gotta respect a company that tells the US government to pound sand with regularity (when they want a phone cracked)
"Apple gave data to law enforcement 90% of the time"
Apple's apparent privacy stance is just marketing
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Gotta respect a company
No you don't
Fair point! Fuck 'em. Theres always more reasons to NOT respect a corporation than there are to respect them.
It’s worth noting that in recent MacBooks the camera can’t turn on if the led is off. It’s an electrical thing, not a software thing.
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I hate Apple so god damned much. When I got started in 2003 with the cohort I was in for my elementary education degree, the university required us to get an Apple MacBook G4. We weren't allowed to choose any other laptop, just that one, and we had to get it from the campus computer store (so of course the school was getting a kickback 🖕).
The power cord on those had a weird round dongle on the end that plugged into the computer. In the center of the dongle was a very thin pin. So, of course, I accidentally tripped on it, and the pin snapped off inside the computer. Easy enough to remove, but it meant I had to buy a brand new adapter to do my coursework.
$80.
Eighty fucking dollars. And there were no third-party adapters at the time (at least when I looked). Oh, and that replacement adapter? CAUGHT ON FUCKING FIRE.
I have not spend a dime on anything Apple touches since then. I've been issued iPads by school districts for which I've worked in the past, but those pretty much stay locked up in my cabinet. Nope...no Apple Music, no Apple TV, not even a covered-by-the-district $1.99 app for my school iPad.
Luckily, as teacher, I've either been issued a Dell or at the very least a MacBook Air with Windows 10 bootcamped every year since. Unfortunately, I am in a new district in Oregon this year (had been in Texas), and my device this year is a non-bootcampable MacBook Air. 🤬
If it helps, you can at least use any USBC charger you want now. I love my M1 air, but have some similar ranty feelings about the older models from 10-15 years ago. I hope you at least give it a chance. I don't think I could ever go back to Windows. It is Mac or Linux for me.
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Am I the only person that immediately covers their webcam with Scotch's Magic Tape? It frosts the image so that it doesn't look like it has been covered but rather that it is extremely smudged and thus only silhouettes can be somewhat discerned.
Thankfully most laptops I see now come with a built in physical cover for the webcam.
And in context of this post…Mac laptops do not. So the scotch tape (or black tape) idea is sound.
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As a cybersecurity specialist even using my phone kind of give me the creeps. Anyone anytime can access your camera easily, BUT if the item was issued by a third party always assume they are spying. I've seen this happend in huge corporations that you would not believe do that. Also a 20 something IT support guy have access to it for sure.
Be safe, if you cant format or disable the driver for microphone and camera just turn it off when naked please
Turning it off is zero guarantee. Get a physical cover for the camera. If you can't get a physical cover, then put electrical tape over it.
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Not gonna lie... You had me there at the beginning!
Dell and other Windows based OEM laptop manufactures have built in camera covers now-a-days. Just saying.
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