isn't this a little something called PRIVACY ? seriously, i'm almost sure there must be something illegal about this, seriously, it's basically the e-stalking equivelent, what if your laptop was on in your room while you're getting dressed, then the idiots would go "OMFG HE R MAKING CHIELD PR0N!" That's just wrong, they have an entire department looking for people who use webcams to spy on people.

~B

^that or if you were fapping to porn or checkin yourself out naked but didnt have a mirror? lol

I saw something similar to this on Channel 1 news (School news thing). It was about a boy that got spied on by a teacher and she accused him of selling drugs, which wasn't true. The mom of the kid ended up filing a lawsuit on invading privacy. (The use of the web-cam spy feature was to find out if someone stole the computer.)

It's so wrong and can be easily misinterpreted. ^

I have a laptop from my school, they have a webcam on it, but you can turn it on and off.

but what if they can turn it on or off as well?

is it a built in web-cam or no?

So students didn't know? That's wrong.
Sure you could tape it, but not if you don't know that they were spying. I'm pretty sure that somewhere down the line, a teacher would be dirty enough to use that to produce child pornography, which woulda caused a huge shitstorm.
I'll be taking off any webcam I see on the notebooks that I get from college next year.

Illegal... Just like putting cameras in bathrooms.

It's built-in

Jess, I'd guess that they didnt turn on the activation light while spying -_- you may think it's off but who is REALLY watching? I'd be watching all the girls computers

I can hardly believe someone would do this! It'll be interesting to learn all the facts.

The school says the camera-activation software was put in to be activated in case of theft, and that it was only activated in such cases. Not that that excuses everything, but if this was a case where the laptop was stolen, the software activated, a thief's photo was taken, and the thief turned out to be a student who was then reprimanded and made the news... then, the story seems more believable and understandable.

The school needs to figure out some way to track down laptops that does not involve cameras. They also need to remove their ability to take screen-shots from these laptops.