52-year-old substitute teacher and widower Susan Clements-Jeffrey had no reason to expect anything but complete privacy as she sat naked in front of her computer back in 2008 chatting and exchanging images with her former high school sweetheart who was in Boston. Well, she’d have to trust that from her spot in Ohio, the man would be trustworthy with what she was sending him, and he was.
The problem came from a third party, a tracking company that had been watching her online action remotely, including the nude moments. Not only had they seen them, they had captured images.
It all started when Clements-Jeffrey bought the laptop. Not from Best Buy or Apple but from one of her student in the Clark County School District. He had told her he’d gotten a new computer and didn’t need it anymore. In reality, he had bought it off another student who had bought it at a bus station for $40, and if you trace the laptop’s history back further, it had belonged to that same Clark County School District. It was stolen. Clements-Jeffrey says she did not know that.
Clark County contracts with Absolute Software, which installs software on your computer to track the device if it is stolen. You’d imagine this includes tracking locations and IP addresses in an attempt to recover the property. What you probably didn’t guess is that Absolute Software grabbed the sexually explicit private images and passed them onto police along with the location data.
This, shockingly, did not sit well with Clements-Jeffrey and her boyfriend, who tried to take Absolute Software to court for violating their privacy. Wired reports that Absolute countered, but last week U.S. District Judge Walter Rice ruled against the company, meaning they’ll have to explain why capturing the naked images was integral to recovery the stolen property when Clements-Jeffrey sues. They’ll probably have a hard time doing so.
This article appears in Aug 31 – Sep 6, 2011.
Even if the company was doing something illegal, it wasn’t very bright of the school teacher to send something “private” across the internet that would cause embarassment. She needs a remedial class in the potential dangers of recorded evidence AND the internet.
Imagine what might happen if in a year or two she breaks up with the current boyfriend and he had taped those “intimate” internet chat moments? A few hollywood stars in the past had taped their private moments only to find those recordings online. NEVER, NEVER PROVIDE DAMAGING EVIDENCE!!! Dumb is as dumb does.
kenrmer, she has a reasonable expectation of privacy both from the tracking company as well as from her boyfriend. She is an innocent victim in this case and should sue the pants off those scumbags as well as her boyfriend should he release those pictures without her permission. Stop blaming the victim.
Lugman, stop being naive. Don’t put yourself in those types of situations. On the internet, there are no guaranteed privacy expectations. Self awareness of the risks is the price of internet freedom. Quit assuming EVERYBODY and EVERYTHING is safe on the internet. Use good judgement. She didn’t.
What if she or her boyfriend used a wireless modem and somebody on the other side of her/his walls accessed it? You don’t think that happens? How many of you have your wireless systems encrypted? Probably very few. Even businesses have been caught using wireless and not engaging full security measures. Plus, any good hacker can work around the encryption.
If the victim used good sense then fine, she’d be an “innocent victim”. In this case she and he didn’t. Notice how the article said she was the one in the buff, not the boyfriend. Maybe he’s the smarter one? You want to be in the buff? Then be where its not capable of being recorded.