Spying costs

Remember the school district that engaged in surveillance using the district laptops to spy on students at home, previously posted here and here? The school board just approved a $610,000 settlement.

Laptop surveillance

We previously posted about the school in Pennsylvania that surreptitiously activated laptop cameras to record activity while students were at home. While schools and employers arguably could impose a duty to consent to such monitoring in return for use of the school or company computer, the school had not amended its computer use policy to take that into account. Here's an extended post following up on the controversy. It gives more background about the controversy, including the cost of the software ($156,357) and the fact that the software company's new owner is discontinuing the video surveillance option.