Saturdays In The Dark

This piece has very little if anything to do with roundball. What it has to do with is privacy, computers, and the ability to pierce the former with the latter.

Short form: A student at a high school in Lower Merion (Harriton HS to be exact) got suspended for “improper behavior at home”. The behavior has been rumored to be many things; let’s just say it was something the student could have been suspended for at school, but he did it at home.

How, do you ask, did the school find out that he did whatever he did?

He wasn’t tattled on by a classmate. A teacher didn’t tell on him. His parents didn’t narc him out.

No. The student was nailed by a picture taken by the webcam on his computer.

The scary implication is as follows. The school can, and has, activate the webcam on the computer in order to see what/who is going on in front of it. Now, as a “technology professional”, I can tell you that this is a cool piece of tech…when the laptop is stolen, and you have a court order/warrant to turn the damn thing on so you can see who’s using it.

Someone out there needs to tell me how the school district can do this without parental consent. Someone, additionally, needs to tell me what kind of behavior would merit this kind of response. Someone invariably invokes “in loco parentis”. Got news for you, folks…that sort of stuff evaporates the moment you walk out of school. In bloody fucking valid. If your mom and dad want to do that to you…well, fuckshits, your mom and dad might have you dead to rights. But I see nothing in the constitution OR any legal opinion that makes it okay.

You do know what this reminds me of, though. Right kids?

Yep. About twenty six years late, but it’s 1984. Big brother is watching you. I’d understand somewhat if this was about nuclear bombs or industrial secrets or people looking at lolcats too much at work…but these are teenagers, guys. What the hell could this kid have been doing at home to merit being watched, AND THEN SUSPENDED FROM SCHOOL? For doing something AT HOME. Really, Harriton High School?

Really.

Again, I don’t have all the data. I don’t pretend to know exactly what happened here, but what I do know is this: Blake Robbins was at home, in his room, doing something. His school activated the webcam on his computer without his knowledge and snapped a photo of him. They used this photo to suspend him from school. Whatever he did, it was not at school, it was at home.