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.

Grades, jobs and all that

The New York Times reports at least ten law schools, including Tulane have adjusted their grading systems upward - retroactively! Largely viewed as a way to rescue recent grads floundering in a tough job market, it seems band-aid weird to me. Teaching students how to provide value to employers and clients rather than grading reform would be a more substantive fix.

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.

Register-Guard 2007 NLRB e-mail decision reversed by D.C. Circuit

Updated September 14, 2009: One of the "Bush" Board's most criticized decisions is Register-Guard. A three member majority held employees have no Section 7 right to use an employer's e-mail system. The majority also found that an employer's prohibition against e-mails containing union solicitations could be enforced despite the employer permitting employees to send non-job-related e-mails. This case is both an excellent teaching tool for analyzing accessibility/employer's property rights as well as a road map for immediate employer action. More on both after the jump