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.
The district's attorney, Henry Hockeimer, declined to describe in detail any of the recovered Web cam photos, or identify the people in them or their surroundings. He said none appeared to show "salacious or inappropriate" images but said that in no way justified the use of the program.
"The taking of these pictures without student consent in their homes was obviously wrong," Hockeimer said.
A federal magistrate judge is expected this week to begin the process of arranging for parents whose children were photographed to privately view the photos.
Hockeimer said the district's internal investigation is ongoing and that the numbers could change. He said the board authorized him to release the information in response to a new court motion filed last week by Harriton High School sophomore Blake Robbins, whose lawsuit contends the program invaded his privacy.
In the motion, Robbins' attorney, Mark Haltzman, argued that the now-disabled system had surreptitiously collected more than 400 photos of his client - including shots of him when he was shirtless and while he slept in his bed last fall - as well as thousands of images from other students' computers.
The numbers disclosed by the district Monday confirmed that assertion and added more clarity. The district's full report is due within the next two weeks.
Lower Merion began using the system after deciding to give each of its nearly 2,300 high school students their own laptop computer. The program started in 2008 at Harriton High School and expanded this school year to Lower Merion High.
In addition to the photos and screen shots, the technology also used the laptop's Internet address to pinpoint its location. The system was designed to automatically purge all the images after the tracking was deactivated.
Hockeimer said that attorneys from his firm, Ballard Spahr, and specialists from L3, a computer forensics firm, have used e-mails, voice mails and network data to piece together how often, when and why school officials used the technology.
The "vast majority" of instances, he said, represent cases in which the technology appeared to be used for the reasons the district first implemented it in 2008: to find a lost or stolen laptop or, in a few cases, whether a student took the computer without paying a required insurance fee.
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, 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.
Hockeimer said that the investigation found that administrators activated the tracking system for just one student this year who failed to pay the $55 insurance fee.
Robbins claims he is that student; Hockeimer declined to confirm or deny that.
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."
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.
29 comments:
Wow...this is ridiculous. I mean really? Principals can take secret pictures of students in their bedrooms?? Kinda Sketchy. Isn't there a better and more legal way to track these laptops; without infringing on people's privacy rights? Way Big Brotherish.
I think that everyone involved in the spying should be fired and imprisoned. I also think that the school district should be sued by the students parents and severly fined. I do not think that school administrators should have access to any of a students personal files and certainly not to the students webcams.
The Lower Merion School District needs to get their policies and tracking software organized so they can stop invading the privacy of their students like they've been doing.
The Merion School District wanted to keep their property secure and thus installed an "anti-theft" camera into the laptop. However, in doing so, they violated the rights of the students who were unaware on the omnipresent camera. This case boils down to who told who what, and when. The lack of transparency and legal procedures by the school district inevitably led to this convoluted scandal.
I don't understand how the district thought they could get away with puting cameras in student's laptops without their consent. Either they were unaware of how unconstitutional and irresponsible this was, or they did this with some kind of malicious intent. I'm really just confused by this, and I wonder what the district was truly trying to accomplish by doing this.
I think that school districts "spying" through their laptops has some merit if the laptop is lost or on similar grounds. But i do believe these mistakes of unaccountable pictures of students due to forgetfulness and poor policy are inexcusable. Implementors of this program should have planned and decided on a more regid system on spying through the laptops. If the use of the tracking devices were more carefully implemented they wouldn't be having this current problem of intruding on their student's privacy.
It's a bit creepy that the school has the ability to take pictures of students while they are in their house. I understand the point of having the cameras in case the laptop is stolen; however the camera should be used for that purpose only. The school should be more cautious of when the camera is on, because it infringes upon students' right to privacy.
This was the most lazy example of bureaucracy, teachers spying on students and to lazy to perform the necessary procedures to turn off the cameras.
With the increasing popularity of technology, implementing the latest developments into the school system is only inevitable. Education systems, however, must establish precedents and policies concerning these new experiences. Clearly, the Lower Merion District did not handle this issue well, and is now facing legal charges against themselves. Other schools must take heed of this lesson to be learned regarding the standards of technology programs in the school.
This is absoultely horrible. They should be ashame of themselves. No one has the right to take pictures of the students in their homes through a webcam in a laptop. That is invading the students privacy big time. You don't know what they are doing at the moment that the webcam is taking pictures of them and their homes. This is morally wrong, if they do not trust the students to be responsible with the laptops then don't give the laptops to the students instead of invading their privacy.
I can't even imagine how it would feel to be watched like that. Especially because we spend most of our time in school as it is, and then to find that the school has been watching you in the privacy of your own home is a very uncomfortable thought.
I will never touch Lubbock High's laptops again.
This is absolutely insane and creepy. There's nothing more I can say besides that...
Dang. That's really messed up. The employees should have been more responsible and turned off the tracking devices. It would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.
First, I have to say those must be some pretty nice laptops if they have such a problem with people stealing them. Do LHS laptops even get a second look?
This is still a major violation of privacy as it was the last time we heard about this case. The administrators should, at the very very least, notify students beforehand about this system.
This is dumb they are just inviting themselves into our homes without us knowing like this. They knew from the long run that this was going to happen. What they need to do is just erase all the photos and forget this ever happened, don't drag this out in court the schools will just loose money from their district in the end. The problem take away the laptops from the students and know one will get mad. If a child needs a computer that bad their parents or someone will let them use one but in the mean time don't just hand one over because you know what will happen.
Its a big invasion of the students privacy!
Basically this whole thing could have been avoided. Whatever good motives they had through this whole webcam ordeal, they obviously didn't think through the potential consequences. Their doing it isn't even worth it to me for my having to keep reading about it. Maybe this will keep other school districts or companies or something from making an even bigger mess. Beyond that, I really have no opinion.
I understand why that tracking system was created but its rather creepy. People could use that for many different reasons beyond trying to find their laptop. If I was a student I would be majorly paranoid of being spied on. Why can't people just use lost and found to find their laptops?
This is one of the cases where creepy borders convience. It's convienient for them to be able to find the laptops through the webcam but creepy thAt they can activate it at any time. It also shows the power of technology and how it can be misused.
This is really a shame on the school district. They should have had a more developed security system to go along with this personal computers issued to all students plan. There are ways to track computers with out going creeper and watching the students through security cameras. If they had thought of this earlier they could have avoided all the legal trouble they are now in.
This is wrong for this school board to be doing that,really nosey people.the case with Robbins is dumb,because he got in trouble for having something that looked like drugs,right there you know for a fact the people that were looking at these images were spying because they paid close attention to each and every pictures.I'm sure there are planty of other ways to track the laptops when they went missing.they need to give the parents of the student permission/access/a choice to have this tracking system activated or just turned off.
I think this is just a straight up invasion of privacy. The only time these cameras or tracking devices should EVER be activated is in the event of a loss or theft. Otherwise, the school district needs to stop begging for a lawsuit.
Tracking devices like this are just asking for trouble. I'm sure the district meant well, but I don't think they thought through the possible consequences of putting such software on their students' computers very well. In the article it says that an insurance fee has to paid anyway, so couldn't that money be used to replace the lost/stolen computers instead of retrieving them with tracking devices? Now the district is probably paying more for lawyers and court costs for violating students' privacy than replacing computers would ever have costed.
I think it's absolutely rediculous why the school district has done. I don't even understand how they were able to het permission to use the camera program.
This is a scary example of the current anti- privacy trend Which is growing in our society today. 1984 anyone???
Oh gosh... back to this School spying on Kids thing again? Thats so mest up I still don't even know what to think about it. Fight the power and cover the camera babay!!! Darn spying pervs!
This whole issue doesn't get me fired up about civil rights and all angry at the school. I don't think it was right for them to continue to take snapshots of the students. Its creepy since we don't know the intentions or reason for why these students were being obsererved.
Although I understand where the administrators are coming from, I still do not like the cameras that were put in th computers. It could have been such an invasion of privacy and the fact that it takes a picture every 15 minutes is really unneccessary. Maybe every hour or so, but 15 minutes is a bit ridiculous.
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