Privacy Compliance & Data Security : Data Security Lawyer & Attorney : Fox Rothschild Law Firm : Privacy Rights, Security Breach Responses

 A complaint (PDF link) seeking class action status on behalf of all high school students at Harriton High School and Lower Merion High School (the “High Schools”) in the Lower Merion School District (the “School District”) in suburban Philadelphia was filed on February 16th.

Apparently, the School District maintains a program whereby all high school students at the High Schools are provided with a laptop in connection with their educational endeavors. Like most modern laptops, apparently these laptops include a webcam embedded in the laptop bezel.

The Complaint alleges that students and parents were never told that the School District (and its agents) have the ability (or would) to remotely activate the webcam. The Plaintiffs cite all documentation provided with the laptop and on the School District’s online resources as further support that they were never told of this remote activation/capture ability. Once activated, the School District can apparently then view and capture whatever is happening within the view of the webcam. Plaintiffs point out that this activity occurs regardless of whether anyone is sitting in front of the webcam, and captures the entire viewing area of the webcam.

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Ars Technica reported yesterday about a graduate student at Indiana University's School of Informatics and Computing that has compiled documents and recordings obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests that support that Sprint/Nextel has provided GPS location data about Sprint’s wireless customers to law enforcement over eight (8) million times in just over one year.

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A young woman in Coalinga, California, following a visit home from college, penned to her MySpace page “An ode to Coalinga” (the “Ode”).  The Ode opens with “the older I get, the more I realize how much I despise Coalinga” and then proceeds to make a number of extremely negative comments about Coalinga and its residents.  She removed the Ode from her MySpace page within six days of posting it.

However, during the six days that the Ode was posted on MySpace, the principal of Coalinga high school discovered the Ode and sent it to his friend, the editor of the local paper, the Coalinga Record.

The editor of the Coalinga Record republished the Ode as a “Letter to the Editor,” adding the author’s last name (which was not present on the MySpace page).  The author and her family received death threats, and a shot was fired at the family home, forcing the family to move out of Coalinga.  Due to severe losses, her father closed the 20-year-old family business.

The California Court of Appeal, in Moreno et al. v. Hanford Sentinel, Inc., et al., F054138, slip op. (Cal. Ct. App. April 2, 2009) (PDF link) ruled that the principal did not invade the author’s privacy when he handed it over to the Coalinga Record.  The court further held that the editor of the Coalinga Record did not violate the author’s rights when it published her full name.

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