Tech Chumpery

For those who haven't been following the story of the Merion County PA school with the bright idea to install a program on laptops loaned to students that allowed the school to remotely activate the webcams read here.

As this winds its way through court let's not loose sight of the key fact: Virginia DeMadio and Michael Perbix are both idiots and should never have a position of responsibility again.

It's not uncommon for developers (in any profession) to get absorbed into the cool-factor of what they are working on. But both these people were paid to implement a strategy for tracking stolen laptops and chose a tool that really serves no value in tracking down computers* but does allow uncontrolled invasion of students lives. And if the rumors are true, and I suspect they are, that some of the snapshots are of students in their underwear I hope both are charged as sex predators.

*note that the stories Perbix gave touting the success of the picture snapping boiled down to racking the PCs down by IP address.