UPDATED: Schools + Student Issued Laptops + Webcams = Spying At School and At Home
UPDATE 02/20/10:
This isn’t looking good for the school district.
District spokesman Doug Young acknowledged yesterday that officials had remotely activated computer webcams 42 times, but only in an attempt to recover missing or stolen laptops, and never to spy on students. He said families had not been notified about the possibility that the cameras on the 2,300 laptops could be activated in their homes without their permission.
So… they did it and they didn’t let families know it could be done. And the “only in an attempt to recover missing or stolen laptops, and never to spy on students” excuse stinks to high heaven since the reason this was uncovered was due to their disciplining a student for “improper behavior.”
Looks like somebody’s in big trouble.
[Previous post below]
If these charges are true, somebody better end up in jail.
(Major h/t to MJ. Thanks!)
According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.
Improper behavior in his home? His home? And the Vice Principal produced evidence? Bet that evidence ends up being used against the Vice Principal.
If true, these allegations are about as creepy as they come. I don’t know about you, but I often have the laptop in the room while I’m getting dressed, having private discussions with my family, and so on.
So do I, and so do my children. Again, if true, does this school district now have child pornography on their files? We already know that certain districts are okay with strip searching, so maybe this isn’t that big of leap. These allegations make my blood run cold.
Tags: Education
Cold Pandora? I’m iced. The thought of a school district overarching, let alone invading my home w/ their “nannycam” leaves me…….
If a district has that much money to piss away on controversial technology in a student’s hand, than by darn they have enough money to handle the settlement that’s a coming. FOOLS.
IF the Vice Principle activated the webcam remotely and recorded the feed… He is going to jail.
BUT
IF the “picture” is actually an image the boy sent using school equipment, that got caught in a filter or complained about… Then I hope his parents have to pay the schools legal bills.
“no Dad! I didn’t send pictures! I don’t know how the webcam got turned on, I as just wiping off the underwear lint.”
Wonder how much they’re getting in RTTT?
According to the court filings (a PDF in the original cited link above) a district administrator admitted to the family the built in ability of the computer to be monitored regardless of if or not a student was in front of the device. Reading that court document is much more frightening than the news stories.
If there is any small fragment of truth to this entire mess that school district will not have enough money to restore their integrity. Such an invasion of privacy is beyond any measure of reason even in our world of eroding privacy.
SSSHHHHH!!!! Ixnay on the awsuitlay.
Just get a geek to fix it so they can’t spy on you at home, but you can spy on them at school.
That is horrifying. Has anyone heard this before? Does some employee at Mac know what color underpants I picked out this morning?
Also a better question is what on EARTH was the VP doing spying on students after school hours for “evidence” of improper behavior in their homes? After dinner at night does she pour herself a glass of red wine, get in front of the computer and see what her favorite students are doing? ugh.
If I find a school administrator connecting to my home computer, why would I ever let on? That might be fun. Maybe point the camera at a picture of his wife’s head PhotoShopped on a naked body… a closeup should look pretty lifelike.
According to the court filings (a PDF in the original cited link above) THE PLANTIFFS CLAIM that a district administrator admitted to the family the built in ability of the computer to be monitored regardless of if or not a student was in front of the device.
which is not the same as saying it can be remotely turned on.
I would like to read the district’s reply before I hit the panic button.
Well this certainly substantiates school administrators saying they work a long day:) But it’s gotta beat grading papers.
I’m curious what the “improper behavior in his home” means? Was it misconduct involving a violation of the terms of usage of the computer? If not, I’ve got a major problem with the school imposing any discipline whatsoever.
And that doesn’t even get into the Big Brother aspects of this story.
There are a lot of questions – which is why I was careful to use the word if.
Still… if the school had issued computers with “webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators” then everyone should have been made aware of and signed off on this before a single computer was issued.
P,
I look forward to the next installment in this story.
Went to the Colm Connolly course offered awhile back on Internet Safety and Your Child. His opening and closing remarks were essentially if you only take one thing away from this course please let it be..”DO NOT let your children have a webcam on their personal computer, and parents should guard it like crazy on a community/family one”. That was enough for me to nix any future purchase. To think a district underwrote this equipment blows my mind.
So do I, Romeo.
really, joanne? what’s the big deal about a webcam? i mean, in ordinary situations – not like this mess. seems to me it can be used for good things, such as skyping with your grandma in florida, just as easily as it can be used for sex chats with some perv. the key would be blocking the sites.
I guess it was the manipulation of vulnerable children, that evolved to kiddie porn that he had prosecuted for the generalization. Additionally, the eternity of pictorial documentation isn’t real endearing either for children growing up. This suggestion I can live with–sorry Mommmom.
Grandma in Fla. can be viewed on your family/community site and doesn’t need to have a personal webcam.
“till… if the school had issued computers with “webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators” ”
Pandora, generally administrators (computer admins I mean) would have Remote Desktop Software to remote into the machine installed on most work desktops. If the school district in question put this software on the laptops, then it’s just a case of remoting into the laptop, turning on the web cam, and away we go. Generally, (and in my case specifically) most computer admins would never give a non computer admin (no matter what their position is) access to do this to a machine.
“To think a district underwrote this equipment blows my mind”
Joanne, a lot of laptops come with Webcams installed by default. When ordering, you’d have to specifically exclude them from the configuration. Most of the schools would probably order already configured laptops (on the education contract with HP they’re cheaper that way ).
Don’t look now, but cell phones have this feature too. Law enforcement can have your cell phone provider silently upload software to your cell phone so it records audio and video while it remains dark and silent and appears to be off. Not to mention the location tracking, which the FBI now wants to get in bulk without a warrant. The only defense is to remove the battery.
Maybe the families agreed to this when they brought the laptop home.
And let’s not forget about “On Star”–hey stop my car..my husband took it to the game, and I need it back to haul this auction find……
from todays Phila Inqr
Victoria Zuzelo, a senior at Harriton, said she and other students had been told about the security feature, and knew the district had the right to search computer hard drives at school.
Some students had taken to covering webcams in school with paper because they thought they might be watched, she said. “But . . . they would never think the school would be watching them at home. I’m not sure who to believe, but I’m hoping it is not true because if it was, it would really be outrageous.”
also this:
DiMedio said the district did not widely publicize the feature “for obvious reasons. It involved computer security, and that is all it was being used for.”
She added: “People ask you all the time, ‘Can you do this? Can you do this?’ . . . But you have to be conscious of students’ rights. I would not have walked into that swamp. . . . You want kids to use the technology. You want them to feel safe, to feel trusted.”
The laptop initiative, she said, is “a wonderful program. There were kids in some of the poorer areas that had none of the resources that the other students had. That was what the initiative was for – to give kids a chance.”
In a published policy statement, the district warns that laptop users “should not expect that files stored on district resources will be private,” and says the network administrator “may review files and communication to . . . ensure that students are using the system responsibly.”
from Philly.com
(MontCo) District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said this afternoon that her office learned of the surveillance allegation from news reports yesterday, two days after the student and his parents sued in federal court, claiming their privacy had been invaded. Ferman stopped short of saying an investigation had begun. “We’re going to be looking into the situation to see if a criminal investigation is warranted,” she said in a telephone interview
I’d really like to understand the meaning behind this. I think this is a bit overboard, I’m sure there are other security measures the school can take in trying to protect it’s property from being stolen. Plus, if the laptop wasn’t stolen or reported stolen, why would they need to turn the feature on anyways…
for those who are not on top of the geek world, there is spying going on you every day.
they are called cookies.. they are a necessary evil in the computer world. The answer is not having them removed from your computer. In todays world getting rid of them junks up your internal processes… sort of like using cash does in that credit card commercial…
The way you handle it, is to use the tool of excessive lawsuit judgments to control behavior…. As soon as judgments of $300 million start getting handed out by concerned juries, the practice of spying will be internally controlled… Yes, it can still go on, but…. if it is ever used…. K A B A M M……
In the early 80’s, sexual harassment was a huge joke… “Yeah, your telling me I can’t tweak my employee’s nipples? Your fuckin’ crazy… ha, ha… ” No one is laughing now.
officials had remotely activated computer webcams 42 times, but only in an attempt to recover missing or stolen laptops
If they can’t come up with 42 reports of stolen laptops signed by 42 parents, then off to jail with them. I hope the administrator’s computer has been seized and forensically locked down.
What crime was committed? I’m also not convinced that there wasn’t some sort of blanket waiver the school made them sign that says “this equipment and all software installed on it is the sole property of the school district and we can do whatever the hell we want with it.”
He said families had not been notified about the possibility that the cameras on the 2,300 laptops could be activated in their homes without their permission.
That seems like a big omission. Don’t you think parents/students had a right to know? Then they could make an informed decision. You are so Big Brother, anon. Guess you also think that police shouldn’t need a warrant either… since you have nothing to hide.
You guess wrong. I’ve only said that I would be VERY surprised if such a waiver wasn’t involved. It’s like at your job, they tell you that all email, web histories, everything, belongs to them and they’ll look at whatever they want. I’m pretty sure that if a school district is sending laptops home with children, then the parents had to sign some sort of similar agreement. I probably did not say “hey this computer has a webcam and we can turn it on remotely,” but it probably DOES say, “this equipment, and all software is at all times the property and providence of the school district and the school district amy do with it as they wish.”
“What crime was committed?”
You’re kidding, right? If these cameras were activated for any reason other than trying to recover a lost or stolen computer, I’d start with illegal surveillance. The kid who was confronted by his principal was accused of “improper behavior,” which apparently was eating Mike & Ike candy.
The district needs to come clean, release the disputed image and any others it has in its possession, settle with the family and try to repair the damage that has been done to its reputation.
By the way, the peeping tom days are probably over for Lower Merion. Most of the kids are now covering the cameras with electrical tape or other items, rendering them useless.
This was Harriton High School, in Lower Merion School District. It’s in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia-the “Main Line”.
I grew up in that district and went to Harriton for a few years. My mother, some of my aunts and uncles, and cousins went there too. One of my husband’s relatives goes there now. It has always been a great school, although they couldn’t seem to educate Andy Reid’s boys…
It will be interesting to see how this whole situation unfolds. There is a ton of money over there.
Laptop family is no stranger to legal disputes
By Larry King and Bonnie L. Cook
Inquirer Staff Writers
The vice chairman of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission could scarcely contain his scorn.
Before the commission was yet another appeal from a Philadelphia-area family, again seeking a break on unpaid electric and gas bills that by last year were closing in on $30,000.
This family lived in a $986,000 house on the Main Line. The breadwinner, until recently, had earned well more than $100,000 per year. Yet he and his wife were in hock to creditors, ranging from Uncle Sam to their former synagogue – and had regularly been stiffing Peco Energy for five years, breaking payment plan after payment plan.
“Our procedures,” the commission’s Tyrone J. Christy wrote in a Dec. 17 motion, “were not meant to allow customers living in $986,000 houses, with incomes in excess of $100,000 per year, to run up arrearages approaching $30,000.”
The debtors in question were insurance broker Michael Robbins and his wife, Holly, who now find themselves in the national spotlight after suing the Lower Merion School District, saying it allegedly spied on their child at home via a Web cam on a school-issued laptop……
Contradictions in L. Merion Web-cam case
By Derrick Nunnally and Larry King
Inquirer Staff Writers
The computer-snooping controversy in Lower Merion schools took a new twist last night as a lawyer claimed that a school official told his 15-year-old client that his school laptop contained evidence – both pictures and words – that he might be dealing drugs.
“She called him into the office and told him, basically, ‘I’ve been watching what was on the Web cam and saw what was in your hands,’ ” lawyer Mark S. Haltzman said in an interview. ” ‘I’ve been reading what you’ve been typing, and I’m afraid you are involved in drugs and trying to sell pills.’ ”
Haltzman, who represents 15-year-old Blake Robbins and his parents in their controversial invasion-of-privacy suit against the Lower Merion School District, alleged that Lindy Matsko, assistant vice principal at Harrington High School, first contacted Michael and Holly Robbins in November and then called their son in.
The parents told school officials that they were mistaken, Haltzman said, and Blake was not disciplined. The lawyer said the family decided to sue only after a counselor told them that an account of the incident had been placed in Blake’s school file…..
… (the vice principal) Matsko trembled with anger yesterday morning as she stood in her lawyers’ Center City office and said “many falsehoods and misperceptions” had been aired regarding her role.
She said she had two teenage sons and would be as furious if laptops were used to look in on them. “If I believed anyone was spying on either of my children in my home,” Matsko said, “I, too, would be outraged.”
Hours later, the response was delivered by a jacketless 15-year-old Blake Robbins, reading a lawyer’s script in the shivering cold, yards from his parents’ snow-piled Penn Valley driveway.
Matsko, who is in her 25th year working for the school district, took no questions after reading her six-minute statement.
“At no time have I ever monitored a student via a laptop Web cam,” said Matsko, her voice occasionally swelling and quavering, “nor have I ever authorized the monitoring of a student via a laptop Web cam, either at school or in the home. And I never would.”
Does anyone know if Di Medio, the IT chief is related to a teacher at Harriton named Di Medio?
Love the RTTT crack JC, rock on!