![]() The judge’s 49-page judgment also suggests that Absolute may need to rethink its laptop recovery business model. “A reasonable jury could also find that such conduct would cause a person of ordinary sensibilities to suffer shame and humiliation.” The case raises interesting questions about how intrusive a laptop tracking system should be and whether the software company had gone too far with its techniques.Īccording to the Federal judge hearing the case, “Although the Absolute defendants may have had a noble purpose, to assist the school district in recovering its stolen laptop, a reasonable jury could find that they crossed an impermissible boundary when they intercepted Plaintiffs’ instant messages and webcam communications,” wrote the judge. The charges against Clements-Jeffrey were eventually dropped, but she sued the police department and Absolute Software for invasion of privacy, constitutional violations (on the part of the police department) and violating computer crime laws. They also showed her the photos and “told her she should have known better than to do that kind of stuff on the webcam.” One of the detectives even told Clements-Jeffery the photos were “disgusting.” She was shocked and told the officers she did not was not aware that the laptop was stolen.Īccording to a judicial opinion in the case, the officers “told her that she was stupid and that she was under arrest” for receiving stolen property. Shortly after, the police arrived at Clements-Jeffrey’s house with a warrant to seize the laptop. The tracking system company, Absolute Software, then sent all of the data to local police including the teacher’s sexually explicit images and location data. Once the tracking system was activated, it reported the laptop’s IP address, and granted Absolute remote access over the computer – giving Absolute the ability to intercept emails, capture screenshots, and log key strokes.Ībsolute captured screenshots of the couple while exchanging naked photos and other sexually explicit behavior. The laptop tracking system was called “LoJack for Laptops” and was provided by Absolute Software.Īfter the school district realized the laptop had been stolen, they asked Absolute Software to retrieve information from the laptop in order to recover it. Clements-Jeffrey and her boyfriend, the laptop had a computer tracking system installed on it. Because of the time and distance between the couple, their correspondence was at times quite sexually explicit, including steamy emails, instant messages, and the exchange of naked photos. She got the laptop to work properly and then began using it to communicate with her long-distance boyfriend. Clements-Jeffrey did not realize the laptop was stolen. The laptop actually had been reported stolen by a student who had checked it out from another school district while using it at a public library. But she decided to proceed because the student told her that the laptop was not working properly and that his parents had given him a new one. The low price probably should have made her think twice about purchasing the computer. ![]() While working as a substitute teacher at an “alternative high school” in Ohio in 2008, a woman, Clements-Jeffrey, 52, bought a laptop from one of her students for $60. Laptop Tracking System and Privacy Lawsuit – How far can someone go when tracking stolen goods?Ī federal judge has decided to allow a lawsuit to proceed between a couple and a laptop tracking system called LoJack for Laptops for intercepting and sharing a couple’s private, sexually explicit communications with police, according to Wired Magazine. Posted September 12th, 2011 by Jackson Parker Also understand that the software is designed to be hard to detect as its primary usage is tracking, recovery and remote wipe of stolen laptops, hence it being very similar to a rootkit.Teacher Sues Computer Tracker For Sharing Nude Photos In other words, if you want to point a finger here, point it at Toshiba that failed to disclose the placement of ComputTrace on their laptops. As I said they are not some random hacks, and they fully understand the importance of being open and transparent. create an open standard through RFC process with disk/OS vendors and what not. ![]() From what I remember they have went to great pains to standardize the placement of the tracing software on bootable disks, i.e. With regards to the CompuTrace - it is their primary product and it has been in the development for quite a while. Younglings may not know what this is, but it was one of the most impressive and useful bits of software to ever hit MS-DOS. Their CTO is a guy who wrote QEMM back in 80-90s. In a defense of Absolute software - I met with them few years ago and they are a fairly large and very technical company, not a bunch of hacks.
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