this is so stupid it's awesome

Would putting a piece of tape over the camera be a violation of school policy and grounds for suspension?

I've been following this one closely since we loan out laptops here as well... sans this spyware crap.

Some key points to mention
- Why the fuck is the school policing what the kids are doing at home? Seriously, if you "caught" a kid on a camera at home doing something bad, how does this equate to school disciplinary action?
- There are companies that handle tracking stolen laptops from within the systems BIOS/firmware so regardless of if you wipe the hard drive, it can still be recovered. This comes as an option on Dell laptops as well as others I can imagine. Using the webcam or tracking software from the OS is a moot point and silly. (Again, we don't even bother enabling this on the ones we loan out)
- Both of the sides in this case are pulling a he-said she-said pointing fingers at each other, either way I think neither side has been completely truthful about what has been going on.

The way we have dealt with it is they sign a form that says your grade will be withheld (as its assumed you are using it to help with coursework) if the laptop does not return. So far this has worked well for us, and in the case of say a high school like this with that many laptops perhaps they consider insurance to cover a few lost laptops rather than this.

Personally this really irritates me given that the schools using doublespeak claiming they have not been using the technology outside of stolen equipment, when a few articles I've read several students would say the light for the webcam would often come on randomly.

We have security cameras here for keeping track of equipment growing wings or incidents but that's exactly that. Nobody sits there watching everything all day waiting for something to happen. We have more important things to worry about.

Jesus Christ, when are they going to retire that stock footage of somebody typing on a early 90's keyboard? Enough is enough...