According to Van Helsing at moonbattery.com:
Remember the Telescreens in Nineteen Eighty-Four? They were like TV sets, except they worked both ways: the government could see you through them, right in your own home, to make sure you weren't engaging in any political incorrectness. Once again, Orwell has served not at as a warning, but as an inspiration to the folks in charge — except in suburban Philadelphia, they use laptops:
Lower Merion School District officials used school-issued laptop computers to illegally spy on students, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.
The suit, filed Tuesday, says unnamed school officials at Harriton High School in Rosemont remotely activated the webcam on a student's computer last year because the district believed he "was engaged in improper behavior in his home."
An assistant principal at Harriton confronted the student for "improper behavior" on Nov. 11 and cited a photograph taken by the webcam as evidence. …
The district has issued school-owned laptops to 2,290 high school students, starting last school year at Harriton, in an effort to promote more "engaged and active learning and enhanced student achievement," superintendent Christopher W. McGinley said in a message on the district website.
The lesson is driven home once again: don't take candy from strangers or free goodies from Big Government.
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Beside the issue of the school spying on these students at home. . . .I want to know why the heck this school gave students laptops in the first place. What happened to going to the library or writing your paper. If they paid only $500.00 per laptop the cost of this program was over a million dollars. $1,145,000 at the taxpayers expense. Is this really a necessity in these tough economic times?
