Over Caffeinated, Under Communicated

I got my water bill today and read through the propaganda from the village. I thought about writing a few notes for the readers of Winfield411.com but there was really nothing new to talk about. Just before the Winfield Word hit the circular file I saw a spot on the back called, “Citizen Feedback”.

It says, “The purpose of this section is to provide a way for you to communicate with the village board. We hope you will take the time to jot down any questions, comments, suggestions or opinions regarding the village. Your comments are appreciated. Just find yourself a section of papyrus, use a quill from a turkey feather and write in a mixture of carbon black and Indian gum. Then strap your message to a carrier pigeon or, if you would prefer, find your local pony express and point them in the general direction of the town hall. From whence your communique arrives we will make sure that we have Bob Cratchit give it the once over before we use it as kindling for the Ben Franklin stove that is keeping us warm in the winter.”

Seriously.

No, Seriously.

Ok, I am kidding… but Ca’mon! Paper? Pen? Post Office? Aren’t all those things dead, or possibly endangered? Someone over at the Village Hall needs to hear about the wonder invention of the 1990’s. It’s called the “inter-webs” and was invented by Al Gore, presidential contender and patron saint of global warmers and massage parlors. It’s an amazing invention where a series of ones and zeroes combine to make tens and impossibly small fractions that somehow recombine on the other side of the inter-webs and become either emails or Internet porn depending on your predilections. I prefer email but hey, to each his own, I don’t judge.

Winfield's Communication Core Awaits Their Next Assignment

While I am at it, you would think our village board could find a way to make that WIFI switch they put in 2 years ago public. It seems every coffee shop in America can provide this little smidgen of convenience and customer service but our village cannot. How cool would it be if when the planning and zoning commission went to talk about a particular piece of land, the commissioners could pull up an aerial view in Google Earth? I asked them once and they had a very sophisticated answer that involved “security” and “hackers”. Makes me wonder how Starbucks does it without crashing their global network of hegemony. Maybe the buyers of the Half-Caf-Decaf-Carmel-Cafe-Macciato-Misto-Venti-Dolci-Latte-Cappuccino… mocha… are too caffeinated to hack the intergalactic headquarters of Starbucks. Clearly Winfield is ripe for the pickings of disaffected ex-KGB types that can’t wait to spread the details of the Birutis administration’s executive sessions. Yow.

My point is, if communication is truly important to our village government then they should get with the times and make a concerted effort to use the technology of the day. This includes email and the Internet to expedite their work and make their staff as productive as they can be.

Alright. I’m done now. Barista, pour me another one…

Big Brother Wants to Track Cell Phones

School Board Accused of Snooping On Students Via Webcams

Well, folks, I was wrong. When I said there was nothing to fear from Orwellian statists using technology to monitor our behavior. There’s no risk of that, the real risk is people being so fast and loose with their own personal information online that they become their own Little Brother, rather than the Big Brother George Orwell made infamous.

On the other hand…

A lawsuit filed against a Philadelphia-area school board has made extremely alarming accusations. According to the lawsuit — which has yet to be heard and is thus, of course, unproven — high school student Blake Robbins was hauled into the principal’s office, where he was allegedly accused of selling drugs. The proof? Apparently, the school had photographic evidence of Robbins with pills. The problem is, the “evidence” was obtained when the school remotely activated the web-camera in Robbins’ computer, while he was at home. Needless to say, this was done without his knowledge or consent.

For years people have pointed to the novel 1984 as the ultimate surveillance society model: While you’re watching government propaganda on your television, government agents are watching you back, monitoring your every twitch and mumbled word. The allusions have often been somewhat abstract, with people warning that e-mail monitoring at work or a police camera on a busy street corner are a step towards that bleak fiction. And yet, if students were indeed being monitored, this isn’t like 1984, this practically is 1984.

The school board, which runs two high schools in an affluent neighborhood, has 2,300 Apple laptop computers that it issues to students. These computers have webcams built into them. The school has conceded that it had the ability to remotely activate the cameras in case the computers were ever stolen or missing, in the hopes of recovering them, and claims that 42 such activations have resulted in the recovery of 18 computers. They haven’t commented specifically on the allegations made by the Robbins family, but have said that as a result of the furor, they have deactivated the remote activation feature in all the computers. (Ironically, they probably did that remotely, but I digress.)

If these allegations hold up, this is horrifying. Over the last few years I have chuckled at stories of people, whose iPhones or laptops were stolen, fighting back by using various remote activated features to identify, harass and humiliate the thief. But if the claims made by Robbins are accurate, the school was literally spying upon students in their own homes, and upon seeing something inappropriate, decided to take action.

In this case, it seems as though the school official felt she was acting to help a student who was going astray. (The family claims what she thought were illicit pills was in fact candy.) The school board’s own statements haven’t much helped their cause: “We believe that the administrator at Harriton has been unfairly portrayed and unjustly attacked in connection with her attempts to be supportive of a student and his family. The district never did and never would use such tactics as a basis for disciplinary action.”

Umm, pardon me, but I don’t think people are objecting to how you used the spy footage, but the fact that you were spying on your students in the first place. If you don’t get that, well, you need a whole new legal team, maybe with some PR experts thrown in for good measure.

Because it doesn’t take much of an intuitive leap to see how any such surveillance could have been even more intrusive. Imagine if it was discovered that the prettiest girls in the school were having their photos taken while changing in their bedrooms. Suddenly, it’s not about a school official letting good intentions get ahead of common sense, but something very different indeed. It might not have happened, but the instant the school monitored student behavior at home and chose to get involved, they opened themselves up to such suggestions.

The FBI is now looking into the situation, and the courts are moving to preserve any evidence. The technology to do this has existed for a while, but much as with nuclear weapons, having the ability to use something doesn’t mean you should.

Tape over your web-cameras, folks, and keep your tinfoil hats pointy. You truly have no idea who’s watching.