Does your child have a school-issued laptop?

[DonaCatalina]

Or do you have a work issued laptop?
You might have spyware installed. Harrington High is being investigated by the FBI because their IT admin used school laptop spyware to take pictures of students in their homes. Apparently he bragged about it and the district officials have admitted to using the remote access software 42 times.
Story here

[Francisco Paula]

Yes the said program isn't suppose to be used unless the laptop is reported lost or stolen but they were using it when they shouldn't have.

[Rapier Half-Wit]

This is what LowJack is for. And if it's a Dell and you report it stolen to Dell, the next time the laptop connects to the internet, Dell will disable the network card.

[dfloyd888]

LoJack for Laptops is interesting.  On Dells, you can permanently enable it in the BIOS, or permanently disable it.  Same with some HP machines.  If you go for Lojack's enterprise level features, you can actually trigger a laptop to remotely wipe all data it contains to ensure anything confidential is gone.

The Pennsylvania case is looking more serious than previously indicated.  Here is the Slashdot article:  http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/02/22/1814248


As for laptop theft, if you run Windows, and are planning to get a laptop, I'd recommend making sure the laptop has a feature called a TPM, or Trusted Platform Module.  Then you can enable BitLocker on the laptop, save the recovery key to a USB flash drive, toss the thumbdrive in a safe spot, and then all data on your laptop will be encrypted.  If your laptop doesn't have a TPM chip, the utility TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org) provides top notch disk encryption, and is licensed at no charge.  PGP Whole Disk encryption is also good.  However, because BitLocker is the easiest to use, I recommend that if possible.

[Rapier Half-Wit]

LoJack for Laptops is interesting.  On Dells, you can permanently enable it in the BIOS, or permanently disable it.  Same with some HP machines.  If you go for Lojack's enterprise level features, you can actually trigger a laptop to remotely wipe all data it contains to ensure anything confidential is gone.

The Pennsylvania case is looking more serious than previously indicated.  Here is the Slashdot article:  http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/02/22/1814248


As for laptop theft, if you run Windows, and are planning to get a laptop, I'd recommend making sure the laptop has a feature called a TPM, or Trusted Platform Module.  Then you can enable BitLocker on the laptop, save the recovery key to a USB flash drive, toss the thumbdrive in a safe spot, and then all data on your laptop will be encrypted.  If your laptop doesn't have a TPM chip, the utility TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org) provides top notch disk encryption, and is licensed at no charge.  PGP Whole Disk encryption is also good.  However, because BitLocker is the easiest to use, I recommend that if possible.

Very good information. I'm a big fan of PGP.

[DonaCatalina]

Yes the said program isn't suppose to be used unless the laptop is reported lost or stolen but they were using it when they shouldn't have.

Yes, and some people think the reason the district is being so slow to turn over the photos to the FBI is that there are some images of half-dressed or undressed children among them.

[LordEustace]

stupid school.

[dfloyd888]

Looks like a Federal judge stepped in and put a stop to this:

http://tinyurl.com/ydzhoqz

The slashdot article and comments are above.

[Lady Neysa]

I can't adequately describe to you how angry this story made me.  I hope there is a HUGE lawsuit against that district.  I know there would be if it happened in my kid's schools. 

[Don_Juan_deCordoba]

This is going to get ugly.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20100222_Laptop_camera_snapped_away_in_one_classroom.html

"More than a year ago, two Harriton High School student council members privately confronted the principal when they learned that the school could covertly photograph students using the laptop's cameras.

When Kline said it was true, the students told the principal they were worried about privacy rights, and asked questions about other kinds of monitoring. Could, for example, the school system read saved files on their computers? At a minimum, the student leaders told the principal, the student body should be formal warned about any surveillance."

"Since the suit was filed, federal prosecutors have issued a subpoena and Montgomery County authorities have opened their own probe. Meanwhile, the district has already apologized for not telling parents, and it has hired the law firm of Ballard Spahr to conduct an internal investigation and to recommend policy changes."

[Grov]

School property should stay at school.