Violated HDD privacy?!?! What to do?

[skroo]

Sounds like they are a bunch of snoops then. I'd put stuff on the HDD just to give them something to do. I bet they search your underwear drawer when you are in class!

Speaking as another ex-boarding school pupil (Ireland, not SA)... Yeah, they would literally do that.

I sympathise with furion's position: I've been in it myself, but given the technology of the time (late '80s, early '90s), it was with different media. Books (Hunter S. Thompson, P.J. O'Rourke) and music (Sex Pistols, Therapy?).

He ultimately got the best possible deal going given the situation: the recovery of his hardware. SA at least has a Constitution, and while he's quite legitimately pissed-off, he's still a minor. That majorly limits his rights, and pretty much gives the school outright power to do what it sees fit.

No, that doesn't make it right. No, they should not have confiscated his HDD. But it's an occupational hazard of living in a controlled environment. It sucks and I have nothing but sympathy for his position, but unless you've been in it it's impossible to know how it works.

One of the best quotes I ever heard about the public (reverse of the American sense of the term) school system was that it prepares you for life in prison, or the army, or both. This is a damned fine example of that - expectations of privacy are out the door. Not that it makes it better, but it is a valid fact.

[astcell]

Maybe when he gets out of the school he will find a renewed love of his privacy, and from that learn to respect the privacy of others. I guess if all virus writers got viruses before they started writing viruses, maybe they'd reconsider.