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FBI Probing PA School Webcam Spy Case
On Thursday we discussed news that a Pennsylvania high school was spying on students through the webcams in laptops that were issued to the students. The FBI is now taking an interest in the case, investigating whether federal wiretap and computer-intrusion laws were violated in the process. "The FBI opened its investigation after news of the suit broke on Thursday, the law-enforcement official said. Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman may also investigate, she said Friday." Ferman said her office is "looking to see whether there are potential violations of Pennsylvania criminal laws."
...of common sense.
Seriously though, as was said on the previous /. thread on this topic: who could seriously have thought that the ability to spy on kids in their bedrooms was (a) a good idea and (b) something to brag about.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Apologies and remorse are too late. Coulda-woulda-shouda. You guys fucked up big time and you are going to have your asses handed to you. Deservedly so.
I also don't see why the school makes such a big issue out of stolen or lost devices - they can just bill whoever let their device get stolen or lost, problem solved.
In a perfect world these assholes would fair serious jail time. The laws the allegedly broke are no small matter.
Unless your the government and you break wiretapping laws all the time anyway. Oh wait the school is part of the district, guess they will get away with it then.
Slap 'em down.
Make an example of these self important fools.
Who owns your data?
I don't see the need for all this. There's insurance against theft and using proper full disk encryption, there's no risk of data loss for companies.
Before we all get carried away decrying this school district, we must bear in mind that almost all the information we have comes from allegations in a lawsuit. The school district are innocent until proven guilty as far as I'm concerned. I have no reason to trust the family's lawyer over the school district's superintendent. The only concrete fact that the two parties agree on is that the laptops have tracking software. The district says they've only used on stolen laptops, while the lawsuit says that it was used in a disciplinary matter. Time will tell which is most accurate.
VERY interesting.
Did the district remotely access any laptops which were not lost, missing or stolen?
No.
Aha! So why was the laptop reported lost/missing/stolen if the student had it? It seems like the administration had a legitimate reason for turning on the security software! If this is true, it complicates things. I do not fault the school system for putting security software on the system. Especially since they claim that 42 were reported lost/missing/stolen and they recovered 18 of them.
The details about this will be very interesting...
They claim its used to locate stolen computers and list that 20+ computers (out of 50ish) have been stolen. Unless the laptop is "reported" to the police, as stolen, what does a webcam have to do with locating laptops? IP Addresses, in general, would be sufficient or an embedded GPS device. All visually non-invasive. Webcams could be used as a last resort to identify a thief using a computer. In this case, it looks like this laptop was issued to the kid and the "improper behavior" was obtained from viewing webcam images. What' that have to do with stolen? All of this is easy to think out, especially the privacy issues, so putting the webcams in place was deliberate and bound to be misused. Now they are going to cover up and claim its all about stolen computers.. maybe they are the ones popping pills..
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
You guys know that Orwell didn't want 1984 to be true... right? Orwell would be quite disappointed in us.
I am not a lawyer, but I've investigated Supreme Court decisions on rights of students several times. They always start "The student doesn't shed his or her constitutional rights at the schoolhouse doors, but...." and then go on to describe rights of administrators that describe a situation where the students have no rights.
All the lawyers have to do is describe a reasonable case that the admins were trying to "keep order" in the schoolhouse and this goes nowhere. The Supreme Court has often went out of its way to make school administrators despots in their own little fiefdoms. Anyone that has attended a public school since 1970 knows this.
"Disabled" might mean "removed" Disabled means not working, removing it would stop it from working. Yes I know that's not normally how the word is used, but non-tech people might use it as such.
So, is it a case of a person using the wrong word and accidentally being misunderstood, or a person using the right word and hoping his audience misunderstands him?
I agree. Don't get too excited everyone. Just like the cops, teachers and school administrators will circle the wagons and make this one disappear. You watch.
Nothing will change. Look who has all your money. Yup, you'll be paying to defend these assholes.
A.C.
And I'll add that catching anyone masturbating this way is just a matter of a few days, considering the laptop was probably their only computer. This is simple common sense, and the only rationale I get from this story is that some pervert wanted to record all the kids in their private moments (with all these lame excuses to somehow validate the camera use).
It's pretty disgusting if you actually think about it through from the begining in a logical manner. Anyone with half a wit would realize installing a (hidden) camera on the boob tube is going to record the individual in VERY private moments.
Don't forget to charge the kid too. It's the American way.
This is /. you insensitive clod. I don't have a girlfriend...
More to the point, they could NOT be sure they wouldn't see the student naked when they turned the camera on.
If peeing on a dumpster at 2AM can get someone branded as a sex offender because a school (clearly unoccupied at 2AM) happened to be next door then surely any school official that activated a webcam in the absence of a theft report would deserve at least as much.
If authorities believe that's a bit much, they should also be protesting the branding of non-government employees for much lesser offenses. Especially since school officials should have been much more aware of and sensitive to the potential issues surrounding any dealing with minors.
Orwell already understood it to be true. 1984=1948
To be honest, this story sounds like they did almost exactly that.
Obviously an investigation is needed, but doesnt this situation seem most likely:
Student reports his school laptop stolen so he can keep it for himself
School activates anti-theft software (which includes webcam)
School recieves image of said student, proving he lied to steal the laptop
School sends letter to student's parents telling them what their child has done.
Now I don't know if that's true, but frankly it sounds more believable than some evil school big brother conspiracy. I guess the the FBI investigation will find out in the end though.
That's the spirit. That is what the law that protect children is for: labeling people as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.
Now for me as long as there is no proof of actual intention of a sexual intention, that is not what should happen even if some images of nude kids were taken in the process. This is, in my opinion, an invasion of privacy and should be handled as such.
From the way I see people write about it, is that they want to punish these as bad as possible and the fact that breaking privacy won't do that enough says more about how important people value their privacy more then anything else.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
>> Don't forget to charge the kid too. It's the American way. ... but it's uncomfortably close to the truth. We're not handling many of these cases very well, it seems
>
>As an American, I suppose I should be irritated by that remark
When you consider that the majority of 'offenders' prosecuted in this country under child pornography laws are 15-year-olds, I'd say that "not handling well" is somewhat of an understatement.
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
Let them take away the right to say "Fuck" and you've given up the ability to say "Fuck the Government."
That's not the problem. As Orwell points out in the appendix to "1984", where he discusses "Newspeak", one could say "Big Brother is doubleplus ungood" in Newspeak. But the language for saying why wasn't available. So no one could make a convincing argument against Big Brother. "In Newspeak it was seldom possible to follow a heretical thought further than the perception that it was heretical: beyond that point the necessary words were nonexistent."
Watch for this phenomenon. It's real. Especially on talk radio.
Of what possible use would a 'camera' be in locating a stolen laptop? Would they be able to identify anything other than a room with 1 or two walls in the background? If they saw a face, would that bring them realistically any closer to an arrest?
Doesn't it make more sense to triangulate the laptop's position via WiFi, or even via a GPS tracker installed in the hardware?
The article states that the laptops cost about $1000 each, and that they have had 42 reported stolen, and have recovered 18. It does not state that the security feature was beneficial in that recovery. Given that they've lost $24,000 dollars worth of hardware even with the security software, and that the resulting lawsuits will probably easily be in the 10's or 100's of times that actual loss value, is this even worth the potential litigation risk?
On page 6 of the class action doc, it specifically says that Lindy Matsko, assistant principal at Harriton High School informed the minor Blake J. Robbins, that he was engaged in improper behavior and she produced a photo of said conduct that was captured from the laptop's cam. The laptop was not reported as stolen, even though the school claims that feature is only activated in the event that a laptop is reported stolen. The parents were not informed of this capability until this incident (rather hard to hide when they produced the picture from the web cam).
The claim in the class action doc directly refutes the claims by the school.
The laptops should have never been placed with a student without notifying them of the security software, it's capabilities, or the potential privacy violations. Had they been notified at that time, I doubt the program would have been allowed to continue with said software installed as it appears to violate a number of statutes, listed beginning on page 6 of the class action PDF.
http://craphound.com/robbins17.pdf
The justification is in the lack of action against it when it happens. Of the parents who see a problem with this, few make it past the "threaten to sue" stage.
It's more like "No one picks on my little sister but me." .... --Big Brother
Except the students had seen the cameras come on often enough that they knew how to recognize the symptoms and cover the things with a post it note.
Kids are nowhere near as stupid as the average adult -- including the average school administrator -- thinks. DOUBLY so with technology.
There's a reason the FBI is involved at this point. We need to know just who had access to this system, when it was in use, what policies where in places for access, and how often these policies were ignored.
Yes, we have the school administration's word. Unfortunately, we cannot take them at their word, cause we now know for a fact that they are not trustworthy.
as a taxpayer without children, I am not welcome at PTA or other school meetings where I would be permitted to voice my opinions as to the misguided actions of educators and administrators
Well, sure, because as someone without children you might be inclined to ask where the hell all of your money is going, and the "but, it's for the children" argument most likely won't work on you. Me either ... I don't have kids but 56% (fifty six percent) of my real-estate taxes go to "education." Think about that: education overshadows all other civil services in my area: police, fire, social and medical services, everything. That just seems entirely out of proportion, somehow.
And even if you aren't welcome at such meetings, if you're not an attorney you might want to consult one. Find out if the school has any legal right to exclude you: parent or not, the taxes you pay go to support that organization, and if there's any justice at all, you should be entitled to some say in how it is run.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Visible from school grounds. (Also, it makes a huge difference whether this was a public or private school. I don't know which it is.)
during a school field trip (presuming this is the bong hits for Jesus incident)
Both of these scenarios are fundamentally different in kind than school officials secretly observing students in places (such as their own bedrooms) where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.
But I think that accountability automatically scales down as power goes up. When powerful people do bad things, usually there are many other people around them who are complicit in some way, or who should've known better, or who should have spoken up, or who just went along because everyone else did so. Eventually you get to a point where people will give you a pass just because the alternative--admitting that everyone around you facilitated what you were doing--is just too unpalatable. When admitting your guilt involves admitting their own guilt, most people around you will insist on your innocence, to a degree they never would have if they weren't tangentially complicit.
That's why committees and "consensus" are so popular. If one decision can be tracked to one person, they might actually have to deal with personal responsibility. Very few people want that for themselves, and for that they'll collude to muddy the waters for everyone else, too.
Talk radio is more analogous to the Two Minutes Hate, although instead of 2 minutes it's more like a 3 or 4 hour hate.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Let them take away the right to say "Fuck" and you've given up the ability to say "Fuck the Government."
That's not the problem. As Orwell points out in the appendix to "1984", where he discusses "Newspeak", one could say "Big Brother is doubleplus ungood" in Newspeak. But the language for saying why wasn't available. So no one could make a convincing argument against Big Brother. "In Newspeak it was seldom possible to follow a heretical thought further than the perception that it was heretical: beyond that point the necessary words were nonexistent."
Watch for this phenomenon. It's real. Especially on talk radio.
Now that's just a conspiracy theory. Clearly, you are a nut, for only nuts react with anything for disdain and mockery when presented with a conspiracy theory.
You can't take the sky from me...
Visible from school grounds. (Also, it makes a huge difference whether this was a public or private school. I don't know which it is.)
Actually, I don't see why it would matter if it was visible from school grounds - it's after hours, and it's *not* on school grounds. The student is not under the authority of the school at that point.
I suppose the question to the parent is, what did you do about it?
I should also note that a perfectly good system cannot be blamed for abusive sys-admins.
After some more reading I've come to the conclusion that there's nothing wrong with the security system itself. it's really quite sensible. Any and all problems are the possibly abusive actions of the people with admin.
Not all kids were aware they were being spied upon until the story broke. I saw an interview on FOX News* just yesterday where a mom said, "My daughter is worried. She said, 'Mom I have that laptop open all the time. Even when I'm changing. What is they saw me in my underwear or naked?' She is scared of what her teachers might have seen."
No student, not even one, should have to feel like that.
* ;-)
* Please don't reject my story just because it came from FOX.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
With parents like you, who needs Big Brother?
No, the security measure is not forgivable. Don't even bother with hypothetical situations ("But if we could save someone's life ... "). Student privacy is more important than a lost laptop. Grok that concept.
Once you've got that down the gullet, there are no hypothetical situations in which this behavior becomes permissible. If we can't take the photos by remote control, then there's no point discussing situations in which such a photo might be justified.
Others have pointed out that this is about the most worthless way possible of recovering a stolen laptop. True. (Yes, there are one or two anecdotal examples. Don't forget to figure these as a percentage of total stolen laptops.) But even this point is a footnote to the point above.