A Flurry of Spycam News

New allegations abound regarding high school teachers spying on students. A drama teacher has now been arrested for hiding a camera in order to catch students undressing. His name was Larry Dibble, and it happened in Ohio, not Pennsylvania. Unfortunately I didn't find out from the news; instead, I found out from my alumni newsletter. As I follow this story I can't help wishing I'd had a chance to help; I think I had an above average shot at digging up the 1995 court case against Dibble in Minnesota. It's important to start out talking about Dibble, though, because I believe that when apologists speak about giving school officials unaccountable surveillance powers, they forget that people like Dibble exist. When we talk about trusting schools with the responsibility to choose when to activate spycams, it's important to understand that people like Dibble will be drawn to those positions of power. It's something I wish Henrico County was thinking about as they continue to deploy jailed laptops equipped with remote observation against their students.

The press is having a field day with the amazing allegations being made by the lawyer behind the PA lawsuit: thousands of pictures, pictures of students in partial states of undress, pictures of students sleeping, email exchanges between school administrators reveling in their powers of observation. What's important to remember about these allegations is that they're still allegations. Perhaps the lawyer is sharing part of the discovery process, or, perhaps the lawyer is trying to keep his case alive in the press. It's hard to say. But I believe it is extremely telling that the judge has issued an order against releasing the spycam photos following the publication at Philly.com of photos of Robbins sleeping, and the first school administrator to be questioned has pleaded the Fifth and refused to answer any questions. Meanwhile the school has apparently redacted its claim that the webcams were only activated 42 times, revising the estimate from 42 to "substantial" (presumably a number more than 42), and are individually notifying the families of children who appeared in laptop webcam photographs.

Maybe the allegations are true, maybe they're not. I will say that right now, the school's defense doesn't pass the smell test. If I was forced to bet, I'd bet that everything in the revised complaint is true. And truth be told, this shouldn't come as a surprise. This is the only logical outcome of distributing jailed devices equipped with surveillance hardware and legal barriers against owner observation.

If you can't see the parallels between this case and 1984 being digitally wiped from millions of jailed ebook readers, if you can't see the connection to criminally enforced consumer lockout using the DMCA, then you're not paying attention. There's a reason Apple is filing legal briefs alleging that jailbreaking is terrorism. Anything that keeps the consumer out of their own devices helps to remove pesky questions like the ones being asked right now in Pennsylvania. Blind, restricted consumers are good for business; free citizens create problems. Many read these arguments and believe that because people are still openly jailbreaking, it doesn't matter if it's illegal. Of course, it's only a problem of scale. The Department of Homeland Security is busy arresting people for breaking into devices they own. The only reason iPhone jailbreakers aren't going to federal prison is that there are more of them than the prison system can handle, a situation we shouldn't expect to last. Don't be fooled; this war is only getting started.

-stryde.hax