Pennsylvania School District Used Student-Issued Laptops to Take Thousands of Photos
[Guest post by DRJ]
Last February I posted on a Pennsylvania school district that acknowledged remotely activating school-issued laptops to locate those reported missing or stolen. It turns out the district surreptitiously took thousands of photos:
“Lower Merion School District employees activated the web cameras and tracking software on laptops they gave to high school students about 80 times in the past two school years, snapping nearly 56,000 images that included photos of students, pictures inside their homes and copies of the programs or files running on their screens, district investigators have concluded.
In most of the cases, technicians turned on the system after a student or staffer reported a laptop missing and turned it off when the machine was found, the investigators determined.
But in at least five instances, school employees let the Web cams keep clicking for days or weeks after students found their missing laptops, according to the review. Those computers – programmed to snap a photo and capture a screen shot every 15 minutes when the machine was on – fired nearly 13,000 images back to the school district servers.”
In one case, an attorney alleged the school district took 400 photos of one student who reportedly had not paid his $55 laptop insurance fee, “including shots of him when he was shirtless and while he slept in his bed.” However, preliminary reports indicate the bulk of the photos related to efforts to track down lost or stolen laptops:
“About 38,500 images – or almost two-thirds of the total number retrieved so far – came from six laptops that were reported missing from the Harriton High School gymnasium in September 2008. The tracking system continued to store images from those computers for nearly six months, until police recovered them and charged a suspect with theft in March 2009.
The next biggest chunk of images stem from the five or so laptops where employees failed or forgot to turn off the tracking software even after the student recovered the computer.
In a few other cases, [the school district’s attorney, Henry] Hockeimer said, the team has been unable to recover images or photos stored by the tracking system.
And in about 15 activations, investigators have been unable to identify exactly why a student’s laptop was being monitored.”
One student filed a civil rights lawsuit because his photos were used for more than retrieving lost laptops:
“About 10 employees at the district and its two high schools had the authority to request the computer administrators to activate the tracking system on a student’s laptop, Hockeimer said.
Only two employees – information systems coordinator Carol Cafiero and network technician Mike Perbix – have the ability to actually turn on and off the tracking. Hockeimer said the district investigators have no evidence to suggest either Perbix or Cafiero activated the system without being asked.
But the requests were loose and disorganized, he said, sometimes amounting to just an brief e-mail.
“The whole situation was riddled with the problem of not having any written policies and procedures in place,” Hockeimer said. “And that impacted so much of what happened here.”
[Sophomore Blake] Robbins has claimed that an assistant principal confronted him in November with a Web cam photo of him in his bedroom. Robbins said the photo shows him with a handful of Mike & Ike candies, but that the assistant principal thought they were drugs.
His attorney, Haltzman, greeted the release of the numbers skeptically.
“I wish the school district would have come clean earlier, as soon as they had this information and not waiting until something was filed in court revealing the extent of the spying,” he said.”
Technology presents novel problems.
— DRJ
What is this school district crazy giving out free lap tops to kids. Forget about the pictures, that’s the story. They stopped giving homework because the student would lose their books if they took them home.
Alta Bob (e8af2b) — 4/19/2010 @ 7:56 pmI bought a new laptop with a built in webcam. I did not want a webcam but it came with the dinner and the computer was a good deal. The webcam has a little piece of plastic over it to protect it in shipping. I took a magic marker and painted the piece of plastic black because I’m not sure when the webcam is on or off.
You guys can’t see me, can you? š
nk (db4a41) — 4/19/2010 @ 8:22 pmnk,
I didn’t know you were left handed! (The marker is not opaque enough, first put white-out over it, then use the marker. What, no white out? Use some tape then, masking, not Scotch transparent!!)
MD in Philly (59a3ad) — 4/19/2010 @ 8:25 pmJust remember, many of those laptops are Lenovos built in…China.
MD in Philly (59a3ad) — 4/19/2010 @ 8:26 pmThis is indeed a case of technology enabling and magnifying amazing stupidity.
Beldar (6dc52f) — 4/19/2010 @ 8:31 pmThis level of stupidity rivals the idiots who provided laptops – minus any firewalls – to high school students at a Long Island school district and then were shocked to discover that students were spending hours a day looking at porn.
Dana (1e5ad4) — 4/19/2010 @ 8:36 pmI mean this very seriously …
All schoolrooms should have TV cameras with audio and parents should be able to monitor their child’s schoolroom through community access cable.
nk (db4a41) — 4/19/2010 @ 8:36 pmQuestion for ya’ll,
IF, it was shown that requests had been made only to locate computers that were reportedly stolen, and IF there was no evidence of any mistakes in doing the investigations, would there be a problem with the school’s behavior??
At first the headlines made it sound as if a school was routinely spying on students. Now it sounds as if somebody made one stupid mistake, and instead of it being worked out between responsible adults the idea of litigation and paying for college came into play. And then again, who knows what we know?
MD in Philly (59a3ad) — 4/19/2010 @ 8:41 pm@ nk, I agree. I also think cameras w/audio should be on every school bus, too.
Dana (1e5ad4) — 4/19/2010 @ 8:53 pm#5 Beldar:
That pretty much sums it up.
#8 MD in Philly:
Oh, I think so. Since when did the school (an office of the local government) assume police powers? And when did they get a warrant to enter someone’s home (electronically, in these cases).
OTOH, I have no problem with nk’s suggestion, tongue in cheek or not: as a public meeting space, I can’t see why there should be any reason not to allow public monitoring of the classrooms.
EW1(SG) (edc268) — 4/19/2010 @ 9:16 pm“including shots of him when he was shirtless and while he slept in his bed.ā
So, then what if this had been a girl that was shirtless and while she slept in her bed? These are minors. And adult are viewing the photos. This is not only tremendously stupid but I can understand a lawsuit coming from this angle.
Dana (1e5ad4) — 4/19/2010 @ 9:24 pmEW1(SG)-
Thank you for your wonderful point. The school has the power and responsibility to ask about a missing computer, but when it becomes looking for stolen property not sure where the line would be.
Dana- well, if it was a girl then clearly a standard of decency has been violated- one doesn’t see teenage girls in public without shirts,but it wasn’t a girl, it was a teenage boy and a teenage boy is another thing.
MD in Philly (59a3ad) — 4/19/2010 @ 9:47 pmMD in Philly,
The teenage boy was asleep in his bed. In his bedroom. Blake Robbins had the photo of him taken in his bedroom eating Mike & Ikes. The point being, the “what ifs” should have been soundly looked at beforehand. This could have been so very much worse than it is. Again, the unintended consequences of what could have happened is mind boggling.
Dana (1e5ad4) — 4/19/2010 @ 9:59 pmobviously you two were never in the service….
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 4/19/2010 @ 10:01 pmthis level of dumb is, at best, garden variety.
appalling, mind you, but both eminently predictable and preventable.
I don’t know about cable, but I think it would be great for parents to be able to log in and see what’s going on in class. And sadly, it would protect the teachers. I had one pretty terrible teacher in 5th grade who made a point of covering the window in the door to her classroom because she was paranoid that a parent would see her freaking out.
—
Red, what’s this got to do with the service? It’s not clear what you’re saying. I was in the army and this still seems remarkable to me and worse than garden variety. You obviously never drove a Ford Topaz.
I think most webcams have a forced light built in when current goes through the camera, so it’s hard to record people without a light coming on. Just a thought, but that should be part of the design standards for webcams.
Dustin (b54cdc) — 4/19/2010 @ 10:26 pmActually, I think all webcams should have a sliding door you can slide over the lens. My cell phone has one, and it’s strange that most cell phone cameras don’t.
If these laptops were used with good teaching and to replace 90 pounds of textbooks, then they are still potentially a great idea. Something tells me they only added more bloat to a bloated education that barely teaches our kids things they need while flailing to teach them all kinds of crap they don’t need.
Dustin (b54cdc) — 4/19/2010 @ 11:03 pmThere do seem to be some serious legal issues here; ones that will not be resolved in a Parent-Teacher conference.
AD - RtR/OS! (2f7dee) — 4/19/2010 @ 11:34 pmAD – RtR/OS! – ahhh, but *now* it can be a Parent-Teacher Video-Conference !
Alasdair (205079) — 4/19/2010 @ 11:40 pmyou must have been in a different part of the service, because i saw some amazingly stupid stuff occur in my twenty years of fun travel and adventure…. š
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 4/19/2010 @ 11:46 pm“you must have been in a different part of the service, because i saw some amazingly stupid stuff occur in my twenty years of fun travel and adventureā¦. š
Comment by redc1c4”
Just one of those times where I didn’t track the meaning well enough. Thanks for such a long run.
Dustin (b54cdc) — 4/20/2010 @ 12:15 am“All schoolrooms should have TV cameras with audio and parents should be able to monitor their childās schoolroom through community access cable.”
Can anyone monitor other people’s kids?
imdw (842182) — 4/20/2010 @ 4:28 am#12 MD in Philly:
Unfortunately, it isn’t. Or it shouldn’t be. A child’s gender shouldn’t become a shield for a pervert to hide behind.
#14 redc1c4:
When I saw this level of stupidity, I followed up on it to make sure it was prosecuted.
EW1(SG) (edc268) — 4/20/2010 @ 5:34 amEW1(SG) and Dana-
My point isn’t about defending or minimizing the foolishness of what the school officials did or the possibility of what might have happened, it’s more about what might be taking a stupid situation and sensationalizing it into something it’s not.
It is certainly possible that the specific images of the specific boy were viewed by a specific person with evil intent. I’m a doctor who has taken care of a lot of folk with HIV infection, some of them were infected against their will, males as well as females, I’m aware of the wickedness out there, I’m just saying that a teenage boy on a basketball court without a shirt is commonplace, a girl, no, and so in one sense there is a difference.
Now, as far as the pictures in the bedroom. Was this done with intent to spy on someone in their bedroom? If so, detestable and criminal. Were these pictures taken inadvertantly because of stupid mistakes and then someone stupidly looked at them? As far as I can figure out, what brought the issue into public light was that a vice-principal addressed a concern about possible drug use from images that had been recorded.
I am NOT trying to defend what was done in any sense, I’m just rethinking the context. As the case was originally portrayed, it was the purposeful “spying” on high school kids through the use of their webcams without their knowing it. That certainly sounds like a big thing and grabs national headlines. I think it is quite different from attempts to locate lost/stolen computers that was inappropriate and in some cases lead to very stupid and ill advised, though perhaps even well-intentioned, actions based on things that were inadvertantly recorded.
Again, my point isn’t about defending or minimizing the foolishness of what the school officials did or the possibility of what might have happened, it’s more about what might be taking a stupid situation and sensationalizing it into something it’s not.
MD in Philly (59a3ad) — 4/20/2010 @ 7:06 amJust remember, many of those laptops are Lenovos built inā¦China.
Comment by MD in Philly ā 4/19/2010 @ 8:26 pm
Toshiba, made in China. š Great little machine (except for the wimpy sound card). My daughter actually picked it out. It’s like the Macs they have at her school. She uses it a lot and I do worry about the webcam and Skype (they are Skyping at her school) and all that stuff a little.
nk (db4a41) — 4/20/2010 @ 7:38 amWe bought Toshiba convertible Tablets for our sons when they graduated from high school, our 9 yo daughter is already using my “old” IBM laptap for school.
There are good monitoring programs out there (I forget the name of the one we used in the past) that will take snapshots of the screen at intervals you set as well as record emails, etc. if you ever decide that is something you want to use as a tool. It doesn’t have to be because one doesn’t trust their own child, but because one respects the dangers out there.
MD in Philly (59a3ad) — 4/20/2010 @ 8:48 am“Just remember, many of those laptops are Lenovos built inā¦China.”
Why would we need reminding of this?
imdw (72206b) — 4/20/2010 @ 9:02 amimdw-
It was intended as dry humor. In the context of a discussion on unsuspected monitoring by a distant party, i.e. “spying”, I thought the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that all computers built in China were secretly doing this to spy on the US would be seen, at least by some…a few…maybe one other than me, as mildly entertaining in the midst of so much that is not.
Perhaps I don’t have a sense of humor after all, or you don’t, or you know something about the Chinese and computers that I don’t, hence you find it to be not a joking matter. (BTW, the last comment was meant as more humor. No need to post elsewhere that wackos at patterico’s claim the Chinese are spying on us through our webcams.)
Besides, I feed a stream of old “Monkees” episodes to my webcame, so I’m not worried anyway.
MD in Philly (59a3ad) — 4/20/2010 @ 9:25 amMade in China
Anyone remember the story a couple of years back about Chinese made hard drives coming preloaded with a Trojan horse that stole passwords and sent them to the creator of the malware?
Might not be a bad idea to zero out new drives. Just sayin’.
Peter B (aeaf9c) — 4/20/2010 @ 10:41 amimdw is “like that”, MD in Philly. Best to just ignore him.
nk (db4a41) — 4/20/2010 @ 10:48 amNot good. Especially not good if any tampering was done after the lawsuit was filed.
SarahW (9e4aaa) — 4/20/2010 @ 12:32 pmToshiba….
AD - RtR/OS! (2a6962) — 4/20/2010 @ 12:32 pmJust remember that this firm was one of the principals involved in transferring “silent prop” technology used by the USNavy to the Soviets to quiet its’ sub fleet – a very, very, classified technology.
Sorry, won’t buy anything with a Toshiba name on it (or connection) – guess I’m like some of those Greatest Generation members who disdain anything Daimler or Mitsubishi.
Not good. Especially not good if any tampering was done after the lawsuit was filed.
SarahW (9e4aaa) — 4/20/2010 @ 12:32 pmToshiba, Nokia, GE… sadly it’s a pretty long list of companies that have let me down but make good products.
I’m a big Thinkpad fan. They make better stuff. It sucks that they aren’t American anymore. Everyone else data mining my ass, so I guess concern about Lenovo doing it is a little silly, but the US Government shares that concern and stopped using new Thinkpads for sensitive data.
But even Macs are made in China. Everything is. IF you try to make a good product with sane finances in the States SEIU will burn your house down and eat your dog.
Dustin (b54cdc) — 4/20/2010 @ 1:30 pmThank you all for the interesting comments. I didn’t know about Toshiba and the soviet technology leak, nor that the US govt. actually doesn’t use new thinkpads, nor the Maxtor HD’s with Trojan software.
Are there computers made for other markets that are not made in China, eg S. Korea or Japan or India make their own?
I knew someone who had lost family in the concentration camps, she refused to buy anything made in Germany.
Yeah, I know imdw is like that, he has definitely confirmed it elsewhere today. I did it partly out of politeness and partly just to encourage him to slow down a minute, not everything has to be hostile.
MD in Philly (59a3ad) — 4/20/2010 @ 2:20 pm#23 MD in Philly:
I understand your point, and mine is simply that the incident and the actors involved need be treated as if the motive were malicious instead of just writing it off as stupidity.
These folks were way out of line…so far out of line that they don’t have a clue how bad they f*cked up, and they need to get their fannies swatted pretty damn hard to make the point.
EW1(SG) (edc268) — 4/21/2010 @ 6:22 amEW1(SG)-
Thank you for clarifying your point. Yes, at times the potential for damage demands a serious response. Just what that may be is a matter of judgement that people of good faith may differ on.
I guess I would not like to see their lives ruined if indeed they had no malicious intent, but criminal conviction with parole and put on some kind of probationary status on the job. I know I’ve done a few really stupid things that were not illegal but could have had serious consequences that didn’t happen, that I only realized in retrospect.
My point was less about the incident itself than the reporting of it. Making everything a crisis and conspiracy muddles up appreciating the real crises and conspiracies, which are more than enough, I think we would agree.
MD in Philly (59a3ad) — 4/21/2010 @ 7:00 am#36 MD in Philly:
Indeed.
EW1(SG) (edc268) — 4/21/2010 @ 7:59 am