So… Someone is going to jail for that, right?
Right?
Settled for $610,000…so no. I feel like, given that minors were involved, the settlement should have been on top of criminal charges.
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.
This is such a bad take. You’re seriously comparing the purchase of a tool brand for students to child grooming? Jesus dude. A computer is simply a tool, and Apple made one for an education market and price that was complete and convenient for that purpose. This is just as “bad” as them relying on all Pearson branded materials. Are there problems there? Yes, obviously. Pearson has market-based motives to keep schools on their materials and so they have tests that lean in on their text books and it’s all kinda gross. But it’s not like the answer is “let’s all just read Wikipedia in class” or “let’s compare all the different source books and find the real truth” as great as that would be, it’s just not realistic and the one reference isn’t particularly bad, it’s just not the best possible. I guess all that to say chill he fuck out, the solution to everything isn’t open source.
No. It is not a bad take. Just look at candy cigarettes.
Oh it’s just advertising? Advertising is brainwashing, and nothing more. It should be outright banned. Especially campaigns targeting children.
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.
That wont help with recording the audio from the mic
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??
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.
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.
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.
