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Laptop spying judgement

Laptop Perhaps – perhaps – the final word on the final word on the story about the US School which spied on students and their families in their homes via their school-owned laptops: unsurprisingly, the school district has been permanently banned from doing it again. Furthermore,

The order also requires school officials to arrange for the nearly 40
high school students who were unknowingly photographed by their laptops
to see the images, as well as their parents.

Quite right too, and terrible that they haven't been able to do that before. They must have been very concerned about what might have been recorded and now they can at least, finally, see what elements of their lives were snooped on.

So this chapter draws to a close. But the technological capacity remains… how are we to know whether it is in use in the future? And I'm not scaremongering, I'm after practical advice – just how, without descending into massive complicated IT speak, can this be avoided in the future?

By Alex
Deane

Related elsewhere: a radio transcript and associated material from an expert on the dangers of such spying, particularly for networked computers

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Alex Deane Posted in Privacy
  • http://ampers.wordpress.com Andrew Ampers Taylor

    Well, if I buy a second-hand laptop, the first thing I will do will be to format the hard drive!
    And if you are a pretty blond reading this and your neighbour gives you a laptop, I suggest you do the same :-)

  • Bucko

    ….and if you borrow a laptop from school or wherever, stick a bit of electrical tape over the webcam lens…

  • guy herbert

    “… as well as their parents.”? – Does that mean they are being granted some privacy from their school, but having it taken away in relation to their parents?

  • http://profile.typepad.com/alexdeane Alex Deane

    Ha! Guy, I think it meant, that their parents had been captured in the footage…

  • Redacted

    Laptop camera disabling, yep, tape is the way to go:
    http://valhenson.livejournal.com/29588.html
    Re: Secondhand hard drives, it certainly is good policy to wipe everything on receipt, you have no idea what the previous owner had on there, and forensic investigation can easily recover files that were only deleted. If you want to be really paranoid, formatting is not enough. You need something like DBAN to securely wipe.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBAN
    This is also good to get rid of all your stuff when you are selling a computer. Wipes everything securely, including the OS.

  • Purlieu

    Yes, black tape, does the trick perfectly in a no-tech way.
    And do not buy nor sell used hard drives, that way lies trouble.

  • Blastproof

    It’s about time hard drives were set as default not to record.