Note: I'll be out most of the day at the Michigan Democratic Party Endorsement Convention, so I won't be able to make updates/comments until this afternoon/evening. Thanks for the Recs; it's a hell of an update to a hell of a story!
Many of you may recall a little incident out of the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania from back in February, which some have taken to calling (of course) "WebCamGate", although I personally prefer "iSpy".
To quickly summarize, a well-off public school district has been running a "one-to-one" laptop program for the high school students district-wide for the past few years. Every student is issued an Apple MacBook, and the laptops are integrated into pretty much every aspect of the curriculum. Personally, while I recognize the numerous pitfalls of these programs, I also believe that if properly thought through and managed, they can be hugely successful.
Apparently the administration of Lower Merion agreed, because the program has been renewed for several years in a row, and has won high praise from around the nation. In fact, just about every aspect of the program appears to have been thought through very carefully...with one small exception.
I'm speaking, of course, of their security and loss/theft prevention/recovery program, for which they came up with the brilliant idea of secretly installing remote webcam spying software on every laptop, then failing to tell either the students or their parents about it, and then modifying the software so that they could activate the laptop webcams at any time that it was online--even when the laptop was outside of the schools' internal network. Oh, and for good measure, they also messed with the little light that pops up to alert the student that the webcam is recording them.
All of the above has been alleged by a class action lawsuit by one of the students and his family.
If you don't remember this case--or want a refresher--go re-read my original diary. Take your time; it's a doozy.
Anyway, it caused just a wee bit of a splash nationwide for a week or so. At the time, while few were defending the schools actions, there was some legitimate concern that the student and his family may have been exaggerating their claims, or that the school really did "only" activate the cameras a handful of times under very specific circumstances (lost/stolen laptop, etc)--not that this would justify them illegally spying on underage children in their bedrooms, but at least it might somewhat mitigate the outrage if they could claim the best of intentions, etc.
So, for a week it was national news, but then, as the judge overseeing the case formally ordered pretty much everyone involved to shut their pieholes about it while they sorted the whole thing out, it sort of faded from the national consciousness as such stories tend to do.
That is, until this week, when the family's lawyer claimed that the school had taken...
1,000s of WebCam Images
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.
...
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."
Now, as disturbing as these claims are, you may still be wondering whether it's a bunch of bull--is the lawyer and the family ginning up their claims to win over the court of public opinion, or to use as bargaining chips for a settlement? And hey, that one photo released to the public of the kid sleeping sure looks suspiciously perfect, doesn't it?
Well, I might agree, except for two other stories that are also running about the case this week:
First, the news that Carol Cafiero--the Technology Coordinator of the school district mentioned in the article above--took the fifth in her deposition. While this is certainly her right to do, it's never a good sign.
But, hey, that could just be a legal maneuver; perhaps she's not guilty of anything. The school district, which had changed it's story several times already earlier in this saga, has for the most part maintained that the webcams were "only" activated "42 times", and that each instance was specifically for a reported lost/stolen laptop.
Then again...
Lower Merion schools: Number of webcam photos “substantial”
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.
Holy fuck.
Can anyone say "child pornography charges"?
Word of advice to school officials: At no time do you ever want the phrases "hidden cameras", "children" and "bedroom" to be in the same time zone, much less the same sentence.
Wow. Just...wow.
Update: OK, I'm able to squeeze in one update before I take off for the convention: Philly.com (aka the Philadelphia Inquirer/Daily News), which has done an excellent job of keeping up with this story, has also done a great job of piecing together the backstory of how the webcam surveillance program got to this point in the first place. Well worth a read, but the following quote is particularly telling:
Joseph Daly, who retired in 2009 as Lower Merion police superintendent, said he never knew that his department was being furnished with pictures snapped from students' laptops.
"God, no, I don't remember that," he said when told about it. "That's illegal as hell."
Update x2: Wow! OK, I just got back from the Michigan Democratic Party Endorsement* Convention, where we decided on our candidates for Secretary of State and Attorney General.
I'm pleased to announce that Wayne State University law professor and election legal specialist Jocelyn Benson won in a landslide for the Democratic SoS nomination! Benson absolutely kicks ass, and is both a fantastic candidate and an absolutely stellar Secretary of State for Michigan!
I can also announce that Gennessee County Prosecutor David Leyton will be the Democratic nominee for Michigan Attorney General. I actually voted for his opponent, Richard Bernstein, but it was a tough call; either one would do a great job, so I'm just as happy with Mr. Leyton as our nominee.
*(Technically the official nomination for these candidates won't take place until the "official" convention in August, but this year the MDP smartened up and held an "endorsement" convention much earlier so that the SoS and Atty Gen candidates can actually start campaigning for the general election, since there is no actual primary race for either of them).
Anyway, I see that the diary has been on the Rec list pretty much all day, but appears to be about to drop off, so my plan is to read through all 400+ comments and post a follow-up diary tomorrow (Sunday) if I have any further thoughts or insight into the Lower Merion webcam case (or your comments about the diary).
Thanks!