Lower Merion report: Web cams snapped 56,000 images

[Newsjock]

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

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.

The data, given to The Inquirer on Monday by a school district lawyer, represents the most detailed account yet of how and when Lower Merion used the remote tracking system, a practice that has sparked a civil rights lawsuit, an FBI investigation and new federal legislation.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20100419_Lower_Merion_details_Web_cam_scope.html

[Truth2Tell]

1. Can't we just wait for all the facts to come in

before we go suggesting anything wrong was done here?

:shrug:

[MilesColtrane]

2. I got my front row seat for this.

:popcorn:

[woo me with science]

8. +1

Everyone knows a good soap opera doesn't stop after just a few episodes.

[MilesColtrane]

26. Looks like the main actor ain't showing up.

What a surprise.

[Occulus]

29. At this point, I'm almost positive she's somehow connected to the case

in spite of all her protestations to the contrary.

Nobody is that defensive and apologetic of the inexcusable without a reason for it.

[Psephos]

9. We already know that something "wrong was done here."

The questions now concern how wrong and how much.

[TommyO]

18. I would venture a guess that it's worse than many people can imagine.

Far, far worse than the sycophantic school administration defenders can handle.

[TommyO]

10. Read the article, this came from a school district attorney

[Truth2Tell]

12. I kid.

Just preempting the inevitable.

[TommyO]

17. gotcha!

:toast:

[TorchTheWitch]

22. these are facts

And they're facts coming from the attorney for the school district.

It's already long been obvious that wrong was done here in a big way.

[Truth2Tell]

25. I left off the sarcasm thingy.

I should know better. :)

[TorchTheWitch]

27. oh gotcha

no harm done. :)

[truthisfreedom]

3. There's no way 56000 pictures taken of kids in front of computers

won't contain something improper. I can GUARANTEE this will end badly.

[MilesColtrane]

5. Could it be that somebody went through and erased any images that would have...

meant hard federal time?

"In a few other cases...the team has been unable to recover images or photos stored by the tracking system."

Right

The dog ate them, I guess.

[msanthrope]

6. "unable to recover images"???

And that will be where the feds come in. It may not be the crime, but it will be the cover-up.

[pokerfan]

15. They better hope they're smarter than FBI forensics (nt)

[TorchTheWitch]

23. nothing is ever really permanently erased

Experts have already been brought in to dig for what someone thought was permanently erased. It may be found, it may not be. Doubtful all of it will be, but they don't need all of it. One single photo of a naked kid or a kid in any... er... uncompromising position and that's all that's needed. Considering how long some of these kids were spied on where a spycam photo was taken every 15 minutes it's virtually guaranteed that there will be some photos of kids undressed and/or doing "highly personal" things in their own homes.

And let's not forget the school has said that all the spycam photos were automatically sent to the police department (although apparently the police department had no idea they were getting them).

[boppers]

24. There aren't 56,000 pictures taken of kids.

A desktop snapshot is not a photograph. Assuming both are taken at the same time, and both are always taken, that's 28,000 photographs, and 28,000 screen captures.

Also, considering how often laptop theft is done by children, vs. adults, some percentage of that is going to be pictures of adult thieves, not innocent kids.

80 incidents.... that's 350 photographic images per incident, on average. Since the images are every 15 minutes, that's 96 a day (assuming 24 hour operation), or three and a half days of imaging per stolen/missing/whatever per laptop before recovery, or the drive is wiped by clueful thieves.

All that being said, I'm pretty sure people *are* crawling through every image, looking for a payday.

[Downwinder]

4. All in the name of security. Don't you feel more secure now?

Big Brother is watching.

[bemildred]

7. Gives a whole new meaning to "save the tatas". nt

[TommyO]

11. Someone's bell is going to crack after this latest admission from the district.

[pokerfan]

16. 'Move along, nothing to see here...'

'You're just taking the word of the DA/FBI/Plaintiff!'

'It really isn't that many pictures. 56K/4/24 amounts to only 583 days of surveillance!'

'IT Professionals are busy people and don't have the time to sift through that many pictures!'

[MilesColtrane]

30. Too busy planning a big May day party to reply?

[Prometheus Bound]

13. A VP accused Robbins of doing drugs after showing him a photo of Robins in his bedroom with candies

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.

That AP is insane!

[Downwinder]

14. The Police State gets that way.

[Bucky]

19. Don't be naive

Everyone knows "Mike & Ike candies" are the gateway candy before kids start hitting the hard stuff--Snickers, Milky Ways--before you know it this kid's gonna be lying in a ditch some place begging passing strangers for a Toblarone. Where will the madness end?

[TommyO]

20. And eventually we go over to the dark side, Reeses Dark Peanut Butter Cups

[pokerfan]

21. You know you've hit rock bottom

when you start mainlining Bosco.

[mbperrin]

31. No one here thinks this young man thought it would be funny to act

like he was doing some sort of drugs to get officials' goats? After all, they and their parent signed notifications that those cameras would be turned on when the laptops were reported missing. Report it missing and get ready for fun!

I've taught this age kid for three decades now, and this is just the kind of thing they'd think was funny, being too immature to foresee really serious consequences.

Kind of like when one kid here dared another to drink an unlabeled liquid in chemistry class. Kid drank it and nearly died - sulfuric acid, permanent damage.

Or when another kid thought it would be funny to choke another one just until he passed out - crushed his trachea, required surgery.

And so it goes....

[Prometheus Bound]

32. Actually, my point in calling him insane was that he actually used the program to spy...

...on the kid in his bedroom, and then was crazy enough to admit it to the kid when confronting him about the candies/drugs. What a filthy peeping-tom.

That goes way beyond locating a lost laptop or whatever.

[mbperrin]

33. You still didn't understand my point.

I teach 180 different adolescents each semester in person and another 120 online. That's 300 per year, well over 9000 in my career, so I have a ton of experience with this age group, which is funny, energetic, immature, unthinking, unaware, and mischievous.

Ask yourself this: when your laptop webcam is on, do you have some indicator of that on your screen? (Yes)

And in order for the laptop webcam to take a picture of anything, wouldn't it have to be in view of the screen? (Yes)

Now ask yourself what are the odds that someone would not know the camera was on, would not know that they were in view of it, and would be performing some acts that could be construed as one thing, but in reality was something else if they were not doing it deliberately.(Gosh, slim odds)

These children will be astonished and dismayed when the people they were joking with lose their jobs, but it's out of their hands - the adults and lawyers are at it now.

[Eurobabe]

28. Oh boy. Big brother much?

This is sick. What an invasion of privacy. Caveat emptor when your SCHOOL supplies you with a laptop eh? Good grief.