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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."
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...
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.
Pedophiles?
You guys know that Orwell didn't want 1984 to be true... right? Orwell would be quite disappointed in us.
One thing I've learned in my life, given the chance, many will choose to do the wrong thing. I used to be cynical so many to me used to be most, but I'm pretty sure most will choose to do the right thing, but many won't. However I also know power corrupts, if only for the reason those who seek power generally suffer from narcissism, so for those with power, perhaps the bell curve is skewed more towards most.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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...