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.
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
Hardware manufactures could (and should) put separate mic and cam LEDs wired directly in line with (wire in parallel to)the power circuits for the mic and camera. They won’t, but they should. Best they ever do is a digitally controlled LED that is sketchy as fuck, for the camera only.
Framework does. Switches for the mic and camera both electrically disconnect the devices: https://community.frame.work/t/the-1080p-webcam/157
It’s a bit more expensive, because a pure electrical switch wouldn’t age well and you’d get bad connections sometimes. They implemented an optical switch that does the same job. That’s probably whole pennies per unit more expensive, and ain’t HP got time for that.
That’s actually really cool. Framework will likely be my next laptop.
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.
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.
What’s the point of espionage if you can’t even gossip
You joke but it’s a real thing. When the allies (chief among them, Alan Turing) cracked Enigma, they had to decide not to act on certain bits of information, lest they reveal that they can crack it.
Same reason the Brits said they’re so good at detecting German planes at night was because they eat lots of carrots. It was actually RADAR.
“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
Dell and other Windows based OEM laptop manufactures have built in camera covers now-a-days. Just saying.
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.
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.
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.
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
