MaryClaire Dale of The Associated Press reports that Lower Merion School District will pay $610,000 to settle two lawsuits stemming over webcam surveillance on district-issued laptops. District officials say they voted Monday night to pay Robbins $175,000 and his lawyer, Mark Haltzman, $425,000 for his work on the case. A second student will get $10,000.
Category: Youth & Schools
Using RFID tags to track students: peering into the crystal ball
Jennifer Radcliffe of the Houston Chronicle reports that RFID tags for tracking students is in use the Spring and Santa Fe school districts. Spring has been steadily expanding the system since December 2008. Currently, about 13,500 of the district’s 36,000 students have the upgraded badges, which are just slightly thicker than the average ID tag…
Restoring American Privacy
Wendy Kaminer writes: A recent string of gay teen suicides, brought to light by Tyler Clementi’s leap off the George Washington bridge, is creating a “teachable moment” for gay rights activists, today’s Washington Post declares. I hope they’re right, and the tragic deaths of Clementi and others will help de-legitimize discrimination based on sexual orientation or…
Teens Want More Privacy Online Too
Austin Carr writes: Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg suggested that privacy was no longer a social norm. “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people,” the Facebook CEO said at the Crunchie awards in January. However, a new Zogby poll shows that younger Internet…