Spy School: Shaun Hautly

This is a great place for a contract. When a student attains possession of a school computer, they should sign out the device and note it's number, etc. Then, in that contract, shove all the news about the computers, their security, tracking features, and voyeuristic capabilities into the small print. Then they have it. As it stands, I side with the family, a little heads up would have been nice. To help the school avoid this in the future, I offer the following advice.

Use your security-tracking features for just that. Monitoring suspicious behavior is too time-consuming for a school to be engaged in perpetually. If they were going to hide the fact that they can monitor, that's fine, but they better monitor only for the sake of their equipment, not for general crime-fighting reasons. Besides, checking the web cams of high-school students seems dangerous. If you snap a shot of a boy selling drugs, you have a lawsuit. Snap one of a 16 year old girl changing clothes, and you've got a whole new set of problems.

If you ARE going to use them for security, they should only be activated if a student reports it missing. If you entrust these devices to your students, you shouldn't waste time tracking them until you're notified. Handy technology, but seeing as there's enough gray area for a lawsuit, next time you should just leave a paper trail.

Email Shaun
Follow Shaun on Twitter!