Philladelphia School District Used Laptops With Video Cameras To Spy On Students?

[JollyRoger]

I'd like to back away from that comment. Upon reflection It's just a wee tad extreme and I'd likely prosecute in such a situation.

Too late. You are already incarcerated and probably have spouted off a confession before some soft-on-terror law enforcement officer had a chance to read you your Miranda rights.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

There is a disturbing lack of pics in this thread.

 

[Lord Gay]

Roger, didn't SCOTUS declare that Miranda was no longer valid, that cops could arrest without saying it? I seem to recall reading that...

EDIT: You find the lack of pics... disturbing?

 

[Bill3000]

I'd like to back away from that comment. Upon reflection It's just a wee tad extreme and I'd likely prosecute in such a situation.

It's generally a bad idea to condone murder, yes.

Roger, didn't SCOTUS declare that Miranda was no longer valid, that cops could arrest without saying it? I seem to recall reading that...

Miranda rights just have to be read before interrogation; if police are arresting but not interrogating then they don't have to be read, or they can be read at the police station before interrogation after an arrest, et cetera. They just have to be read to individuals who you intend to interrogate, before an interrogation. They don't have to be read at the moment of arrest; that's just pop culture.

 

[MobBoss]

There are less intrusive ways of tracking down a computer than activating the webcam. Once the webcam was turned on and the kid was identified though, mission accomplished, you know where the computer is, no need to continue with the peepshow.

And since I dont know the specifics regarding the length of time the webcam was used, I am not sure this was or was not the case.

Point being if the underlying cause of the webcams activation was to track it down legitimately as opposed to unlawful spying on the kids, then the school was justified in doing this. But its their argument to make in defense of their acts and convince the authorities of that....or face the consequences.

 

[JollyRoger]

So i take it you're defending this school and their invasion of privacy and possible pedophilia charges

Try reading the part where I said it was an invasion of privacy. That might give you a clue. But if thats not enough read the spoiler:

No. I am not defending the school. At all.

Point being if the underlying cause of the webcams activation was to track it down legitimately as opposed to unlawful spying on the kids, then the school was justified in doing this.

I figured it would just be a matter of time before your propensity to side with authority started to show a bit.

 

[MobBoss]

I figured it would just be a matter of time before your propensity to side with authority started to show a bit.

Well, depends on the scenario.

If this was the schools IT department simply spying on school kids for their own fun, yeah, its an absolute invasion of privacy.

If this were a legitimate use of the webcams by the school in order to recover their property that was taken off campus improperly, then I have less of a problem with it.

However, the story is still developing and more facts and data will come out accordingly. Lets wait and see what the investigators say.

 

[JollyRoger]

Yeah, let's wait. There's still a chance to vindicate the authorities' use of a webcam. I'm disappointed they didn't have a taser attached to the computer they could have remotely used on the kid. It's the only way to really assure his safety.

 

[El_Machinae]

Moderator Action: Discuss the topic, not each other

 

[Zelig]

Nope, and we didn't have to. The physical school where I teach doesn't tell the students where all the video cameras are either. All we said was "don't look at pornography or install any software. If we want to, we can look up every website you've visited, and everything you've done on this machine. Don't do anything that violates your terms of service. If you have any questions about what that means, ask your teacher or call this phone number."

Students have no expectation of privacy when using school property on a physical campus (outside of a bathroom or locker room). They don't have one when using a digital campus either.

If the student wanted to use his own computer, then there was nothing we could do. If he wanted to use a computer that didn't belong to him, then he needs to play by those rules.

Digital Classrooms have legal obligations to check keystrokes anyway, as per the requirements of truancy officers (we have to be able to verify that they are actually IN school for X hours a day).

I agree with this with the caveat that the exact same privacy expectations exist for any employee at any job.

One of my teachers once said not to go onto any banking websites on the school computers. Another sad thing too is because they installed this addon there's no way to clear any private data or cookies. If you click on either "Clear Private Data" or "Options" it will ask for a password. They also seem to have disabled the private browsing. This makes me very uncomfortable because I use Google Documents at school.

FWIW, the public school system, post-secondary institutions and government here is not allowed to use Google Docs, because of the server locations and privacy concerns raised by the Patriot Act.

No student should bring anything to a school campus, [...] digitally, that they wouldn't want anybody else seeing.

Well, students who know what they're doing with security can set up any information they want in a way which makes it essentially impossible for anyone other than themselves to access.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Actually, I use Google Docs just so I can get the assignments at home and the fact that the only word processor on the school computers is MS Word which runs sluggish. (I haven't found a decent portable word processor yet. )

Other odd things about the public school system here is that last semester I was doing a project in Multimedia and I was looking for a tutorial on how to do a certain effect. And all the sites were blocked. However, other students could access stuff that they really shouldn't been looking at in a public location. (The tech says the schoolboard gets this list from a company and it's only updated like once a year.)

 

[downtown]

For what its worth, www.thisweekineducation.com, one of the industry leaders in Education Reporting, is blasting the AP for getting critical parts of the story wrong. Apparently, the well-regarded district used the webcams to help recover stolen laptops (it had picked up over 50% of their missing inventory this way)

More info for those wanting to know what happened can be found here:

http://scholasticadministrator.type...ks-the-fbi-is-now-involved-theres-some-d.html

 

[Integral]

For what its worth, www.thisweekineducation.com, one of the industry leaders in Education Reporting, is blasting the AP for getting critical parts of the story wrong. Apparently, the well-regarded district used the webcams to help recover stolen laptops (it had picked up over 50% of their missing inventory this way)

More info for those wanting to know what happened can be found here:

http://scholasticadministrator.type...ks-the-fbi-is-now-involved-theres-some-d.html

I"m left wondering why the school remotely activated the webcam in this particular instance though - the laptop wasn't reported lost.

I think I'm with the ACLU on this one.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief in support of the student Monday, arguing that the photo amounts to an illegal search.

"That school officials' warrantless, non-consensual use of a camera, embedded in students' laptops, inside the home is a search cannot be doubted," the ACLU wrote in a brief filed Monday morning.

 

[illram]

The school's anti-theft policy doesn't really do away with the little problem that they activated the webcam on a laptop that wasn't reported as lost or stolen... and then used it to discipline a student on an unrelated charge.

 

[Lord Gay]

It's odd that they claim that the cams helped them recover stolen laptops. Just as kids can tape over the cam, don't thieves think of that as well? I would think that the remote tracking device would be far more useful, not to mention far more difficult to identify and remove/disable, so would be really all you'd need to recover the item.

 

[innonimatu]

What I want to know is what idiot at the school OKed this plan and thought "could we end up being sued over this? no, probably not. I'll give it the go ahead".

Some people are just incredibly stupid.

Here's a photo of one of the people behind the whole idea. And some damning analysis about what he had been doing.

The claims by those people that they were doing only recovery of stolen laptops already look as false as they can get.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I bet so is the statistic that they have "recovered" half of them. Something tells me almost all of those are ones that some student "borrowed" without paying the $50 deposit and getting the parents signature for the deductable in case of loss or damage, not to mention the ones he "found" were still at the school.

There is something terribly wrong with giving people like this carte blanche access to software which can so easily be misused, especially if they can't even discern that the laptops are currently connected to their own school network. That is just basic incompetence.

 

[EzInKy]

Update:

Federal judge orders Pa. schools to stop laptop spying

A federal judge yesterday ordered the Pennsylvania school district accused of spying on its students to stop activating the cameras in school-issued MacBook laptops.
...

The consent order, which was agreed to by lawyers of both parties, also prevents Lower Merion officials from communicating with students and parents regarding the lawsuit; if the district wants to update parents on the case, it must submit the text of the announcement to the Robbins' attorneys at least six hours before sending out the information.

In their Friday filing, the Robbins accused school district employees, including the superintendent, Christopher McGinley, with making "loud speaker announcements to all students allegedly commenting on the litigation, making false and untrue accusations [and] disparaging the Plaintiffs."

...

Also yesterday, the Philadelphia office of the FBI confirmed that it, along with other agencies, is investigating the charges raised by the Robbins. "We intend to work as a team with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, Montgomery County detectives, and the Lower Merion Police Department to determine if any crimes were committed," said U.S. Attorney Michael Levy and FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Janice Fedarcyk

Looks like somebody might be facing prison time over this.

 

[bhsup]

Looks like somebody might be facing prison time over this.

Well at least since they are obviously okay with spying on others, they should have no problem fitting in with open commodes and whatnot in their prison cell.

 

[JollyRoger]

Some updates:

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, a laptop camera took photos of Harriton High School sophomore Blake Robbins as he slept in his bed.

The motion, filed in federal court late Thursday by his lawyers, says that each time the camera took Robbins' picture, it fired the image 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.

In the filing, the Penn Valley family says the district's records show that the controversial tracking system captured more than 400 photos and screen images from 15-year-old Robbins' school-issued laptop during two weeks in the fall, and that "thousands of webcam pictures and screen shots have been taken of numerous other students in their homes."

Robbins and his parents, Michael and Holly, contend that e-mails turned over to them by the district suggest Cafiero "may be a voyeur" who might have viewed some of the photos on her home computer.

Since the Robbinses sued in February, district officials have acknowledged that they activated the theft-tracking software on school-issued laptops 42 times since September, and a number of times in the previous school year - all in order to retrieve lost or stolen computers.

But they have stopped short of specifying how many students may have been photographed and monitored, or how often - information that could shed light on whether Robbins' experience was unique or common.

According to the latest filing by the Robbinses, officials first activated the tracking software on a school-issued Apple MacBook that Robbins took home on Oct. 20.

Hundreds of times in the next two weeks, the filing says, the program did its job each time it was turned on: A tiny camera atop the laptop snapped a photo, software inside copied the laptop screen image, and a locating device recorded the Internet address - something that could help district technicians pinpoint where the machine was.

The system was designed to take a picture every 15 minutes until it was turned off.

Robbins and his parents say they learned of the technology Nov. 11 when a Harriton assistant principal confronted the teen with an image collected by the tracking software.

Robbins has said one image showed him with a handful of Mike and Ike candies - which the administrator thought were illegal pills.

The family's lawyers have argued that neither Blake nor many of the other students whose laptop cameras were activated had reported those laptops missing or stolen. According to the motion, an unspecified number of laptops were being tracked because students had failed to return computers or pay a required insurance fee.

The district has said it turned on the camera in Robbins' computer because his family had not paid the $55 insurance fee and he was not authorized to take the laptop home.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20100416_1_000s_of_Web_cam_images__suit_says.html

The Lower Merion School District today acknowledged that investigators reviewing its controversial laptop tracking program have recovered "a substantial number of webcam photos" and that they expect to soon start notifying parents whose children were photographed.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20100416_The_Lower_Merion_School_District_today_acknowledged_that_NO_HEAD_SPECIFIED.html