Collapse replies (4) Reply View in chronology Abusing their position as law-enforcement personnel to further their moral agenda well outside of the law. Where things got out of hand was the officers having the printout and saying the shit they did while arresting her. It IS the job of the police to do that, though. Or Absolute could have done the same, but it’s not really their job to do so. The police could have kept the original on file and printed out an edited one. Sounds perfectly reasonable, and it should still preserve her privacy as much as is warranted. So they sent the evidence unmodified to the police. If Absolute Software had blacked out the nudity, they may have been accused of tampering with evidence in the defense. There needs to be a way to tie a specific person to the use of the computer, because we all know from various Bittorrent lawsuits and such that an IP address isn’t identification by itself. I don’t think that the accessing of the pictures should be illegal. ![]() I don’t know if Absolute Software needs to take the fall, but the police definitely do. Collapse replies (67) Reply View in chronology It’s one thing to make and market software that helps locate stolen laptops it’s another to be peddling spyware that enables invading the privacy of innocent third parties. Hypothetical: what would have happened if - instead of a teacher buying this laptop and using it as described - the purchaser had been a student? An underage student, to be more precise.Ībsolute Software fully deserves to be hammered for this, and hopefully shut down. This is absolutely no need for the arresting officers to have anything other than the (a) who is to be arrested (b) where they are and (c) what they’re to be charged with.Īnd let’s back up one more step: why were these images turned over to the PD in the first place? What, EXACTLY, was the reasoning for that? And why - having received them - didn’t the detective who did so file charges against Magnus for having using wiretapping to collect them? Was clearly an attempt to intimidate and threaten this woman. When the police showed up at the plaintiff?s apartment to collect the laptop, they were brandishing the explicit images Magnus had sent them. But, at the very least, this should be a warning sign for anyone considering stripping naked in front of a used computer… If the laptop really did belong to the school district, do they have the right to use software like that? Perhaps, but there are certainly privacy questions here as well, combined with the fact that there were other, significantly less intrusive methods that probably would have revealed who had the computer. The judge in the case has refused Absolute’s motion for summary judgment, meaning that the case will now move to a full trial (assuming no settlement). But, of course, the response is that she had no idea it was stolen, and certainly had no expectation that any such software was on the computer. The company claimed that there is no privacy issue because there’s no privacy when it comes to stolen goods. ![]() Yikes! Susan Clements-Jeffrey and her boyfriend are now suing Absolute for violating her privacy. The charges, however, were dismissed about a week later. They then arrested and charged her for receiving stolen property. Magnus subsequently sent the pictures and recorded communications, along with Clements-Jeffrey?s name and contact information, to a police detective. In one picture, her legs were spread apart. At one point, while snooping on Clements-Jeffrey?s webcam communications with her boyfriend, Magnus also captured three screenshots from her laptop monitor, which showed Clements-Jeffrey naked in the webcam images. ![]() And apparently that included some sex chatting:Īccording to court documents, in June 2008 Magnus began recording Clements-Jeffrey?s keystrokes and monitoring her web surfing. Rather than just using tools to locate it, Absolute used the spying features that allowed it to see what was on the screen. ![]() Somewhere along the line, the school district asked Absolute to track down its stolen laptop. It was that teacher - a widow - who used the computer to rekindle an old romance. The latter situation has resulted in a lawsuit against Absolute Software, which makes Lojack for computers.Īpparently a student at a school in Ohio had stolen a laptop, sold it to another student for $40, who then sold it to a regular substitute teacher at the school for $60. Some of the stories are about how useful that kind of software can be, while other stories show how that kind of technology can be abused to potentially violate someone’s privacy. We’ve had a few stories recently about tracking software used to find stolen laptops.
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