world tidbits - 1 bad, 1 good
Pennsylvania School Accused of Cyberspying on Students
The Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, PA issued laptops to all its students - 2300 MacBooks, with a security-tracking program installed. One feature of this monitoring software is the ability to activate the webcam remotely. They captured evidence of a student's "improper behavior at home" and confronted the student with photographs. There is now a class-action lawsuit against the school district over privacy concerns. The stories don't say whether the laptop had been reported missing, but the photos were of the student assigned to the laptop, in his own home. District parents had not been told about the remote-control feature beforehand.
I'm left to wonder what a student can be doing in his own home that is any business of the school district. Even if it is criminal behavior, we have an expectation of privacy in our own homes. The lawsuit raises the point that the camera might observe the activity of anyone in the household, not just the student thief.Cat food latest weapon against Australia's cane toads
Placing cat food near ponds with baby cane toads can attract carnivorous ants that are immune to the toads' poisons, and the ants will attack and eat the baby toads.The toads, introduced from Hawaii in 1935 in a bid to control native cane beetles, have led to dramatic declines in populations of native snakes, goanna lizards and quolls, a cat-sized marsupial. The study was aimed at boosting the numbers of ants around the breeding areas of cane toads, and not upsetting the ecological balance by introducing the insects to an area that they wouldn't normally be in. "All we're doing is encouraging the ants to flourish somewhere where they already flourish, letting them know there's particularly good food around so we get more of them down there on a very short-term basis."
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/321996.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]
The Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, PA issued laptops to all its students - 2300 MacBooks, with a security-tracking program installed. One feature of this monitoring software is the ability to activate the webcam remotely. They captured evidence of a student's "improper behavior at home" and confronted the student with photographs. There is now a class-action lawsuit against the school district over privacy concerns. The stories don't say whether the laptop had been reported missing, but the photos were of the student assigned to the laptop, in his own home. District parents had not been told about the remote-control feature beforehand.
I'm left to wonder what a student can be doing in his own home that is any business of the school district. Even if it is criminal behavior, we have an expectation of privacy in our own homes. The lawsuit raises the point that the camera might observe the activity of anyone in the household, not just the student thief.Cat food latest weapon against Australia's cane toads
Placing cat food near ponds with baby cane toads can attract carnivorous ants that are immune to the toads' poisons, and the ants will attack and eat the baby toads.The toads, introduced from Hawaii in 1935 in a bid to control native cane beetles, have led to dramatic declines in populations of native snakes, goanna lizards and quolls, a cat-sized marsupial. The study was aimed at boosting the numbers of ants around the breeding areas of cane toads, and not upsetting the ecological balance by introducing the insects to an area that they wouldn't normally be in. "All we're doing is encouraging the ants to flourish somewhere where they already flourish, letting them know there's particularly good food around so we get more of them down there on a very short-term basis."
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/321996.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]