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| School district Web cams snapped 56,000 images |
| 2010-04-20 |
| 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 taking of these pictures without student consent in their homes was obviously wrong," Hockeimer said. 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. 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. 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. That may have been the reason for turning it on... what was the reason for *not* turing it off? 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." As designed. Question is: Who is the Legal Genius at the District approved doing this? |
| Posted by:CrazyFool |
| #1 If nobody was paying attention, then how did that one principal get his hands on an image that he thought indicated drug use when it was really candy? Somebody should have noticed the problem by then and sent out a memo at least. If not, it suggests tacit approval. |
| Posted by: gorb 2010-04-20 14:26 |