It is the "school" that is responsible since the school is going to be held accountable for this. If an organization puts into place policies that encourage or require actions that are unethical, then the organization is responsible. If the organization puts into place policies that discourage or ban such actions, then the person is responsible (legally in terms of a civil suit).
Of course, I am not a lawyer, but as a business owner this has been my impression of how the law works. --- Puryear IT, LLC - Baton Rouge, LA - http://www.puryear-it.com/ Active Directory Integration : Web & Enterprise Single Sign-On Identity and Access Management : Linux/UNIX technologies Download our free ebook "Best Practices for Linux and UNIX Servers" http://www.puryear-it.com/pubs/linux-unix-best-practices/ -----Original Message----- From: discuss-boun...@lopsa.org [mailto:discuss-boun...@lopsa.org] On Behalf Of Edward Ned Harvey Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 7:46 PM To: 'Benjamin Krueger'; discuss@lopsa.org Subject: Re: [lopsa-discuss] School spies on children at home with webcams > This story came out yesterday. A public school utilized webcams in > laptops to spy on children and their families both at school and at > home. The practice came to light after the Principal reprimanded a > student for behavior at home, using a picture from a webcam as > evidence. Here is my one point of skepticism: How can "a school" spy on you? A school is made of brick and stuff. Whenever somebody does something unethical in a school, or Microsoft, or Apple, or Google, or the government, people quickly say "Microsoft stole software" or "The government abused so-and-so." But in reality, it was some person, or some people, who did those things. Google has the slogan "don't be evil." But how is that enforced? Do you need to take an oath on your soul, swear to all that you hold sacred, in order to work there? Look at the priesthood. Even if you did take such an oath, it couldn't prevent evil things from sometimes happening. Nevermind gray areas where evil is not well defined. I don't find it in the least bit surprising, that some person, or some people, did something unethical. I don't find it surprising that they got jobs in a school. 90% of the population works somewhere. And I don't find it surprising they did it using whatever resources they had at their disposal. The thing I would find surprising is if such actions were approved by more than a half dozen close-knit individuals. And if those few individuals somehow escape public humiliation and consequence. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/ _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
