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School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home

Melensdad

Melensdad

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This is SO WRONG that it is not funny. People need to lose their jobs over this :hammer:
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/17/school-used-student.html


School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home

By Cory Doctorow at 11:49 PM February 17, 2010

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.

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. The idea that a school district would not only spy on its students' clickstreams and emails (bad enough), but also use these machines as AV bugs is purely horrifying.

Schools are in an absolute panic about kids divulging too much online, worried about pedos and marketers and embarrassing photos that will haunt you when you run for office or apply for a job in 10 years. They tell kids to treat their personal details as though they were precious.

But when schools take that personal information, indiscriminately invading privacy (and, of course, punishing students who use proxies and other privacy tools to avoid official surveillance), they send a much more powerful message: your privacy is worthless and you shouldn't try to protect it.​
 
joec

joec

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The school board should get prepared to have some employees going to jail on invasion of privacy charges.
 
muleman

muleman

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Wrong in so many ways!:hammer: Why is the school issuing laptops to students? Why do they have webcams on them? What damn fool would use one without disabling the webcam? I would have the guy who spied on my kid by the nuts and he would never want to even think about doing it again.
 
jimbo

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The frightening thing about this is that it had to be deliberately set up. I have a web cam on my computer, and only I can activate it. The fact that the vice principle was so secure that he used the photo to support his position says a lot. There is a school law about behavior in the home? The school employees who should be going to jail is the school board, and everyone who had knowledge of this.

I hope this one is not true, but I wouldn't bet on it.
 
Jim_S

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From the Philadelphia Daily News:

Suit: Pa. school spied on students via laptops

MARYCLAIRE DALE
The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA - A suburban Philadelphia school district used school-issued laptop webcams to spy on students at home, potentially catching them and their families in compromising situations, a family claims in a federal lawsuit.

Lower Merion School District officials can activate the webcams without students' knowledge or permission, the suit said. Plaintiffs Michael and Holly Robbins suspect the cameras captured students and family members as they undressed and in other embarrassing situations, according to the suit.

Tom Halperin, a 15-year-old sophomore from Wynnewood, said students are "pretty disgusted" and have started putting masking tape over their computer webcams and microphones. He noted that his class recently read "1984," the George Orwell classic that coined the term "Big Brother."

"This is just bogus," Halperin said. "I just think it's really despicable that they have the ability to just watch me all the time."

The accusations amount to potentially illegal electronic wiretapping, said Witold J. Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which is not involved in the case.

"School officials cannot, any more than police, enter into the home either electronically or physically without an invitation or a warrant," Walczak said.

The school district could not immediately confirm whether it has the ability to activate the webcams remotely, a spokesman said.

"We can categorically state that we are and have always been committed to protecting the privacy of our students," said the spokesman, Doug Young.

The affluent district prides itself on its technology initiatives, which include giving laptops to each of the approximately 2,300 students at its two high schools.

"It is no accident that we arrived ahead of the curve; in Lower Merion, our responsibility is to lead," Superintendent Christopher W. McGinley wrote on the district Web site. McGinley did not immediately return a message left Thursday by The Associated Press.

The Robbinses said they learned of the alleged webcam images when Lindy Matsko, an assistant principal at Harriton High School, told their son that school officials thought he had engaged in improper behavior at home. The behavior was not specified in the suit.

"(Matsko) cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor plaintiff's personal laptop issued by the school district," the suit states.

Matsko later confirmed to Michael Robbins that the school had the ability to activate the webcams remotely, according to the suit, which was filed Tuesday and which seeks class-action status.

Neither the Robbinses nor their lawyer, Mark S. Haltzman, returned messages left Thursday by The Associated Press.
In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the privacy of the home in a case that said police could not permeate a home with infrared lights to see if a suspect was using heat lamps to grow marijuana. Technology or no, Supreme Court precedents "draw a firm line at the entrance to the house," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.

"This isn't just them spying on the kids, this is them intruding on the parents' home. Who knows what they are seeing?" Walczak said. "The courts for 80 years have said there's no greater sanctuary than a person's own home."

Halperin said, "School ends at the end of the school property, so they shouldn't really be in our business at home."
,,,
Associated Press writer Patrick Walters in Bryn Mawr contributed to this report.
 
muleman

muleman

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Here is a pdf of the court filing. Interesting read.
 

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  • robbins17.pdf
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muleman

muleman

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Slow and insidious invasion of privacy and rights. Then they wonder why folks snap out and do crazy shit.:hammer:
 
grizzer

grizzer

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The agreement signed by the students (parents) probably allowed this breech as it is school property.
 
pirate_girl

pirate_girl

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tsaw said:
That video on that link is disgusting.
Just as bad as the original story.
There is going to be some serious trouble over this
invasion of privacy.
Click to expand...
Absolutely.
Kids..teenagers, ALL teenagers take part in acts of self-exploration.. to put it mildly.
Would you want your son or daughter being watched during something like that?
:neutral:
.. and that's just the beginning.
So many other negative things to be said about this.
 
Jim_S

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UPDATE: Re: School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home

more troubles for the Merion School District.
Spying on L. Merion students sparks probes by FBI, Montco detectives

By WILLIAM BENDER
Philadelphia Daily News
benderw@phillynews.com 215-854-5255


A federal invasion-of-privacy lawsuit may be the least of the Lower Merion School District's problems.


Allegations that the affluent suburban district used webcams on school-issued laptops to "spy" on students in their homes has now caught the attention of Montgomery County detectives and the FBI, both of which are looking into whether the practice violated wiretap and privacy laws.
The district is also fighting off a coast-to-coast onslaught of negative publicity that appeared to be growing more intense yesterday.


Some creeped-out students have placed tape over the cameras, and parody T-shirts are already being sold on the Internet – including one that features the ominous red camera eye of HAL 9000 from the sci-fi film "2001: A Space Odyssey" inside the district's circular logo.


"Upon arriving in the office this morning, we were inundated with calls from members of the community asking about this," Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said yesterday. "It became clear to me that we needed to look at this further to see if a criminal investigation is warranted."


The lawsuit, filed Tuesday on behalf of Harriton High School student Blake Robbins, claims that an assistant principal reprimanded the 15-year-old for "improper behavior in his home" that was captured by the embedded camera on Robbins' school-issued Apple MacBook.


Robbins told reporters outside his house last night that the improper behavior he was cited for was eating Mike & Ike candies, which he said the school mistook for illegal pills.


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.


Yesterday, the Robbinses attorney, Mark Haltzman, filed an emergency motion in federal court demanding that the district halt the use of "peeping-tom technology," preserve all electronic files related to the webcams, and not attempt to confiscate the laptops.


"They think they're like the police," Haltzman said last night. "Lower Merion is not the police, they're not there to enforce anything other than what goes on in school, not what happens in people's homes. That's what parents are for."


Haltzman also questioned why officials would place the incident on Robbins' school record if the webcams were activated only to recover missing laptops.


"It's getting pretty intense," said Tom Halpern, 15, a Harriton High sophomore from Wynnewood whose "LMSD Is Watching You" Facebook page was already nearing 800 members by last night.


"The first time I heard it, I just couldn't believe it," he said. "It's just so beyond anything I would have imagined happening so close to home."
Lower Merion School District Superintendent Christopher McGinley said in a letter to parents that the "security feature," which enabled the webcams to take still photos if they were reported stolen, has been disabled in the wake of the lawsuit and subsequent uproar from parents and students.
"Privacy is a basic right in our society and a matter we take very seriously," McGinley wrote. "We believe that a good job can always be done better."


David Kairys, a Temple University law professor who specializes in civil rights and constitutional law, described the policy as Orwellian. He said it appears to be a "very clear civil-rights violation."


"It's pretty outrageous," Kairys said. "It's sort of beyond belief that they wouldn't say, 'This is going too far.' "


The Associated Press contributed to this report.
 
RobsanX

RobsanX

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Public school issues laptops, then uses them to invade kids privacy!

I've been following this story since it broke a couple months ago. More details are being released about how this school used the laptops they issued to take pictures of kids in their bedrooms, and monitor private communications.

Now e-mails are being released showing that administrators were enjoying the "soap opera." Thankfully these administrators were exposed, and are getting their pants sued off. Unfortunately, yet again, it will be the tax-payers that will bear the financial burden of any settlement caused by this abuse of power...

Lawyer: Laptops took thousands of images

By John P. Martin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The system that Lower Merion school officials used to track lost and stolen laptops wound up secretly capturing thousands of images, including photographs of students in their homes, Web sites they visited, and excerpts of their online chats, says a new motion filed in a suit against the district.


More than once, the motion asserts, the camera on Robbins' school-issued laptop took photos of Robbins as he slept in his bed. Each time, it fired the images off to network servers at the school district.
Back at district offices, the Robbins motion says, employees with access to the images marveled at the tracking software. It was like a window into "a little LMSD soap opera," a staffer is quoted as saying in an e-mail to Carol Cafiero, the administrator running the program.


"I know, I love it," she is quoted as having replied.


Those details, disclosed in the motion filed late Thursday in federal court by Robbins' attorney, offer a wider glimpse into the now-disabled program that spawned Robbins' lawsuit and has shined an international spotlight on the district.
Click to expand...
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20100415_Lawyer__Laptops_took_thousands_of_photos.html
 
Melensdad

Melensdad

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Re: Public school issues laptops, then uses them to invade kids privacy!

I believe we may have had a thread on this when it first happened?

Seems to me they originally got into trouble for disciplining a student for his conduct AT HOME that was viewed over the camera?!?

Nice to see an update. It would be great to see an update when these school administrators get sentenced to prison.
 
jimbo

jimbo

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This is the latest, from CNN. The part that amazes me is that to date, no one in the school system seems to think that they did any wrong, nor has anyone been fired. I'm guessing that if I planted a camera in my neighbor's bedroom, and than watched, and took photos, the police would be standing on my door. The original issue came to light because a student was disciplined by the school, and they deny that students were being watched.

Motion: Schools shot thousands of webcam images of students
From Nicole Bliman, CNN
April 16, 2010 10:16 p.m. EDT

story.robbins.webcam.jpg

A webcam image provided by attorney Mark Haltzman shows high school student Blake Robbins sleeping.


STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • Attorney who filed motion accuses Pennsylvania district of "spying"
  • Among webcam images: Students sleeping, texting, according to new court papers
  • School policy did not outline use of webcams, says plaintiffs' lawyer
  • Board president writes that district is "committed to disclosing fully what happened"


Internet

(CNN) -- School administrators at a suburban Philadelphia school district wrongly captured thousands of images of students using school-issued laptop computer cameras, according to a motion filed in a lawsuit involving one of those students.
But school officials in the Lower Merion School District of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, deny their actions were illegal or inappropriate, although they have admitted that they failed to provide proper notification of their policy to parents and that there were "a substantial number" of photos recovered during their investigation.
All students at the two high schools in the Lower Merion district have access to a laptop computer, which they are allowed to take home upon payment of an insurance fee in case the device is lost or damaged. The school district installed the LANrev webcam security system for use if the laptop is reported lost, missing or stolen.
But Michael and Holly Robbins say the computer their son brought home was not lost or stolen, and their son was photographed more than 400 times, captured in the act of sleeping, text-messaging with friends and -- on one occasion in November -- handling some candies that a school administrator mistook for pills.
An assistant principle called Blake Robbins into her office to confront him about the "pills" -- actually a fruit-flavored chewy candy with a capsule-like shape -- alerting the Robbinses to the webcam use on their son's laptop. They filed suit in February against the school district, its board of directors and the school superintendent.
Attorney Mark Haltzman filed the new court papers Friday after sifting through thousands of documents provided by the school district as part of the case, accusing the district of "spying" on students.
Henry Hockeimer, an attorney for the school district, referred CNN to a letter from board president David Ebby posted on the district's Web site for comment about Haltzman's motion. In the letter, to district parents and guardians, Ebby denied that any "spying" had taken place.
"While we deeply regret the mistakes and misguided actions that have led us to this situation, at this late stage of the investigation, we are not aware of any evidence that District employees used any LANrev webcam photographs or screenshots for such inappropriate purposes," he wrote.
Ebby further said that the school district was "committed to disclosing fully what happened, correcting our mistakes, and making sure that they do not happen again." An investigation conducted by an outside counsel and a computer security expert should be complete "in the next few weeks" and the results would be released.
He also said that parents of all students whose photographs were take by the webcams would have a chance to see the images and that "the privacy of all students will be protected."
Haltzman, however, told CNN that he believes students were photographed in violation of the school district's policy that access to the webcams would only be granted if the computer were reported to be lost, stolen or missing. School officials knew, he said, where Blake Robbins' laptop was.
Haltzman said the documents he received detail other times the webcams were used when computers were not reported lost, stolen or missing. But Charles Mandracchia, an attorney representing an administrator involved in the case, said cams were used to locate laptops that had not been returned on time at the end of the year or that should not have been taken home, for example, if the insurance fee was not paid.
Blake Robbins, Mandracchia said, had an unpaid insurance fee, although Haltzman said the Robbinses had arranged a payment plan at the time the photos were taken.
The case has caught Congressional attention. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pennsylvania, introduced legislation Thursday that would close what he sees as a loophole in federal wiretap laws.
"Many of us expect to be subject to certain kinds of video surveillance when we leave our homes and go out each day -- at the ATM, at traffic lights, or in stores, for example," Specter said. "What we do not expect is to be under visual surveillance in our homes, in our bedrooms and, most especially, we do not expect it for our children in our homes."

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loboloco

loboloco

Well-known member
Monitoring the use of school owned computers during school hours is one thing.
Monitoring them after hours is stepping into a totally different realm. I believe the School here crossed over into spying rather than maintaining control of location.
There is now a program that will automatically report itself to police if the computer is stolen and report its location so the webcam monitoring can only be for the gits and shiggles of the people monitoring.
 
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