Who needs privacy? 56,000 photos taken in Philly school district kerfuffle
This MacBook-spying story could be the creepiest story in quite some time. We already know the allegations: that the school district provided MacBooks to its students, but then took photos of the students without their knowledge or consent. Now we’re getting numbers. One student claims he was photographed more than 400 times, and now it has emerged that, over a period of two years, school district officials took some 56,000 photos in total, with many of those including students in the frame. FIFTY-SIX THOUSAND! You know, you send your kids to school expecting them to learn a little bit of math, maybe about evolution and the Big Bang, but you do not expect them to have their privacy violated as if we’re living in East Germany.
Now, let’s be clear: this isn’t 56,000 photos of Little Timmy sleeping, taken without his knowledge. Many times, the school district activated the MacBook’s camera in order to locate it—kids would come in and say, “Um, I lost my laptop, sorry.” So the school tuns the camera on, takes a few photos and asks the kid, “OK, well, does this area look familiar to you?” Then the kid would say, “Oh, that’s the inside of my closet, thanks!”
If the system were perfect, the district would have turned the camera off then and there, but that didn’t always happen, with the camera sometimes being left on for as long as a week before anyone realized, “Um, this thing is still on, and it’s still snapping photos.” That’s when you get situations where the laptops were still on, taking photos all willy nilly.
It seems like one or two extra security measures should have been put in place, but I’m not the one charged with figuring out how to protect many thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment spread across an entire school district.
Where do we go from here? The school district’s attorney says that none of the photos contained “”salacious or inappropriate” images, but I seriously doubt that will allay the fears of freaked-out parents.
Wild.
See the original post here:
Who needs privacy? 56,000 photos taken in Philly school district kerfuffle
Maybe used game sales are actually good for the industry?
What is it with publishers fascination with second-hand sales? Yes, for every used video game you buy on eBay, the publisher sees zero dollars and zero cents, but are they operating at such razor-thin margins that teens auctioning off their old PSP games is worth their attention? You don’t see Ford or GM or Toyota or Honda or anything complaining about used cars sales, do you? (Actually, do you? I know next to nothing about cars.) Electronic Arts’ “Project Ten Dollar” was concocted to battle against the scourge of second-hand video game sales, forcing gamers to pay upward of $10 for DLC that usually comes for free alongside the purchase of a new video game. Turns out, not only does it hurt consumers and retailers, but it hurts publishers in the long run!
Anyhow, the deal is that retailers that specialize in second-hand sales have explained that, the reason why so many people sell their old games is to fund the purchase of new video games. Little Timmy sells Madden NFL 09 for $10 so he can afford Madden NFL 10. Of course, publishers like EA are far too myopic to see this—all they see is the “lost” Madden NFL 09 sale (assuming the game is sold at some point) and not the enabled Madden NFL 10 sale.
It’s but a part of the same ethic that I complained about, quite shrilly, might I add, the other: exclusive DLC is a menace. Why do I have to buy the game from four different stores to get, say, all of the available weapons and armor in the game? To me, rather than being a “value add” (“bonus armor when you buy from us!”), it’s a removal of functionality. “Oh, so if I pre-order the game from Store A, I won’t get the weapons and armor from Stores B, C, and D? Well that stinks. Way to sell me an incomplete game.”
Not that I buy used video games much—I think I bought a used Castlevania for the GameBoy Advance like five years ago.
Read more:
Maybe used game sales are actually good for the industry?