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Lower Merion School's Report Says IT Dept. Did It, But Didn't Inhale

Posted by timothy on from the so-what's-a-few-snapshots-anyhow dept.

PSandusky writes "A report issued by the Lower Merion School District's chosen law firm blames the district's IT department for the laptop webcam spying scandal. In particular, the report mentions lax IT policies and record-keeping as major problems that enabled the spying. Despite thousands of e-mails and images to the contrary, the report also maintains that no proof exists that anyone in IT viewed images captured by the webcams."

16 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Wow... by Em+Emalb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I sure hope those "IT Dept" folks have emails archived indicating the request to do this.

    Otherwise...wow. I feel bad for them.

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    1. Re:Wow... by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I sure hope those "IT Dept" folks have emails archived indicating the request to do this.

      Otherwise...wow. I feel bad for them.

      I don't feel bad for them at all. It is so clearly obvious to anyone with minimal common sense that this whole thing could go wrong in a variety of ways. If they didn't think there was anything wrong with what they were doing then they get what they deserve. If they didn't keep a paper trail to cover there asses then they've put themselves in a really bad position. Either way they should have seen some of this coming from day one.

    2. Re:Wow... by eln · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unless the IT department personnel have copies of email threads which include them vehemently opposing this policy, I have little sympathy for them. This sort of spying is highly unethical, and an IT department should, ideally, refuse to honor the request. Realistically, I can see people who depend on that job doing it, but I would expect them to do whatever they could to dissuade the school district from doing it first, and maybe anonymously whistleblowing to the local newspaper second. If all they can show is that they were "just following orders", that's not enough to absolve them.

    3. Re:Wow... by Enderandrew · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Didn't the principal suspend a kid for supposedly taking "drugs" at home, that turned out to be Mike N' Ikes?

      The principal was at the very least aware of images taken of students in their homes and had no problems with them at the time the suspension was issued.

      I don't claim to know the facts of the matter, but it sure looks like lies compounding on lies. I really hope the people in charge get nailed for this. If I was a parent with a student at that school, I'd be filing a lawsuit.

      --
      http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
    4. Re:Wow... by Jeng · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How often does IT get to make moral decisions?

      School Administration "Hey, activate the anti-theft program on XXXXX due to non-payment."

      School IT "I'm sorry, I don't believe I'll do that because I don't trust your decision making abilities."

      School Administration "Bye Bye"

      --
      Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
    5. Re:Wow... by poetmatt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      it's kinda hard to say a kid might have done drugs and then later state you couldn't have possibly looked at the photos. It's contradictory for the defense. I'm guessing that Lower Marion doesn't want to accept that they are totally screwed.

    6. Re:Wow... by kenj0418 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      At some places, you do your job and keep your mouth shut, or find somewhere else to work.

      If "do your job" involves surreptitiously photographing under-18 kids without their or their parents knowledge, then "find somewhere else to work" is the correct option.

    7. Re:Wow... by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Didn't the principal suspend a kid for supposedly taking "drugs" at home, that turned out to be Mike N' Ikes?

      It dosen't matter even if the student was smoking a joint or snorting a line of coke. It's still none of the school's damn business what students do outside of school, unless it was a school-sponsored function or they were scooped up by the cops or campus security for being truant, period.

      ...And the mods always string me up by my balls for saying this: Students don't need cell phones and laptops at high school. The computer labs and libraries are more than good enough.

    8. Re:Wow... by Platinumrat · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Paper trail or not, they're screwed. Problem is that the IT folk are still required to follow the laws of the land. In this case the law is no kiddie porn. I'm not in IT myself, but am an engineer and if management tells me to do something that is illegal, I am duty bound to to them so. Sometime management, hasn't thought it through and they realise the error, othertimes, well let's just say a quiet word to the legal dept, often sets them right. As professionals, the Law requires us to know what laws are applicable in the application of our daily jobs. Ignorance is not an excuse.

    9. Re:Wow... by arekusu_ou · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not to mention IT puts you in a position to hear and see alot of confidential things that your pay grade shouldn't. The field requires a certain level of professionalism that you keep things to yourself unless there's a good reason not to. It also helps to understand how upper management feels about rules, are the rules strict and they will follow through zero tolerance, or is it something they just say but don't want to know about breakages.

      In the end, just got to use best judgment and like others say, make sure YOU'RE not breaking any laws and papertrails are good.

  2. ...Seriously? by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok, really "Lax IT policies" and "record keeping"? How is that even an excuse? Yeah, if perhaps like 30 pictures were taken it could be blamed on that. But seriously? 58,000 pictures? There is more than lax IT policies. Yeah, perhaps someone might do it once to get a laugh, but no (sane) person is going to do it 58,000 times.

    How hard is it not to activate software unless the laptop has been stolen? It it isn't like its too hard to determine if it has been stolen or not...

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    1. Re:...Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The definition of chutzpah is saying this:

      Ballard Spahr admits that there is no way to determine how often the images were viewed, but says it found no evidence that the IT staff had viewed any of the images.

      when you got by acting on what you thought you saw in one of those images. Wow. Do they cut out that little part of the brain with the "do not lie" label when you become a lawyer?

  3. So how did they see the kid eating candy? by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Really how did they see the kid eating Mike and Ike's candy?
    And isn't a crime to spy even if you don't look at the data?

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  4. Re:"No proof exists" and other weasel words by Chris+Burke · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It just makes me think of Bart Simpson:

    "I didn't do it.
    Nobody saw me do it.
    You can't prove anything."

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  5. It doesn't even make sense by Posting=!Working · · Score: 4, Insightful

    An assistant principal looked at images of a student in their home and punished the student for what they saw.

    I'll buy their excuse once the can explain how the I.T. department did the above. Explain how the assistant principal didn't know of the capability while punishing the student for a picture taken in the students home using this very capability.

    The capability was known and the invasion of privacy was just fine with the administration until the moment they got sued. If it weren't, the situation causing the lawsuit could never have happened in the first place.

    --
    This sentence no verb.
  6. cost? by belmolis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The monitoring software is a commercial product, isn't it? Anyone know how much it costs? If the cost is non-trivial, it seems likely that someone reasonably high up in the school administration had to approve the purchase and therefore knew what it was for.