RFID, GPS Technology and Electronic Surveillance

School District Halts Webcam Surveillance

February 19, 2010

Wired - A suburban Philadelphia school district is deactivating a webcam, theft-tracking program secretly lodged on 2,300 student laptops following allegations the device was used by administrators to spy on a boy at home.

“I think given the concerns of parents and community members, I think we have a responsibility to at least take a pause and review the policy,” Lower Merion School District spokesman Doug Young said in a telephone interview Thursday evening.

The move came a day after the 6,900-pupil district, which provides students from its two high schools free Macbooks, was sued in federal court on allegations it was undertaking a dragnet surveillance program targeting its students — an allegation the district denied. Young said the computer-tracking program was activated a “handful” of times solely to track a missing laptop.

The suit was based on a student’s claim, acknowledged by the district, that the webcam was used by school officials to chronicle “improper behavior” based on a photo the computer secretly took of the boy at home (.pdf) in November.

The assistant principal at Harriton High informed the student that:

“The school district was of the belief that minor plaintiff was engaged in improper behavior in his home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor plaintiff’s personal laptop issued by the school district,” according to the lawsuit.

“Young declined to directly say whether the program was activated in this instance to locate a missing laptop. He said the district only activates it when there is a reported missing laptop, and urged Threat Level to draw its own “inferences.”

“The only situation where the feature would have been activated is in the case of a stolen, missing or lost laptop,” Young said. “There’s never been any scenario used for any purpose other than that.”

Lawyers for the student did not return phone calls and e-mails for comment. The Associated Press reported late Friday the FBI was probing the allegations.

The lawsuit seeks class-action status to represent all the district’s 2,300 high school students.

“Unbeknownst to plaintiffs and members of the class, and without their authorization, defendants have been spying on the activities of plaintiffs and class members by defendants’ indiscriminate use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students by the school district,” according to the complaint.

When the district began issuing laptops to all its students two years ago, it never informed them of the tracking feature, said Young, the district spokesman.

He conceded that district officials went too far. The program was not intended to bring to light the private behaviors of adolescent boys, he conceded.

“It did not seek specifically to do that,” Young said.

The name and maker of the program, Young said, was not immediately available. He described the program as one that “basically enables the district to capture an image of the desktop and whatever is in front of the screen for law enforcement to help track down a missing computer.”

Webcams in School-Issued Laptops Used to Spy on Students at Home

A suburban Philadelphia school district used the webcams in school-issued laptops to spy on students at home, potentially catching them and their families in compromising situations, a family claims in a federal lawsuit.

February 19, 2010

Daily Mail - A U.S. school district used laptop webcams to spy on students at home, potentially catching them and their families in compromising situations.

Officials in Philadelphia can activate webcams on the computers without students’ knowledge or permission, a lawsuit alleges.

Plaintiffs Michael and Holly Robbins suspect the cameras captured students from Harriton High School and family members as they undressed and in other embarrassing situations, it has been alleged.

Lower Merion School District officials said the laptops ‘contain a security feature intended to track lost, stolen and missing laptops,’ and that the feature was deactivated yesterday.

‘We can categorically state that we are and have always been committed to protecting the privacy of our students,’ he said.

Tom Halpern, a 15-year-old from Wynnewood, said students are ‘pretty disgusted’ and have started putting masking tape over their computer webcams and microphones.

‘This is just bogus,’ Halpern said. ‘I just think it’s really despicable that they have the ability to just watch me all the time.’

The accusations amount to potentially illegal electronic wiretapping, said Witold J. Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which is not involved in the case.

‘School officials cannot, any more than police, enter into the home either electronically or physically without an invitation or a warrant,’ Walczak said.

A school district statement released late yesterday said the tracking feature would not be reactivated ‘without express written notification to all students and families.’

The affluent district prides itself on its technology initiatives, which include giving laptops to each of the approximately 2,300 students at its two high schools.

Superintendent Christopher W. McGinley did not immediately return a message left yesterday.

The Robbinses said they learned of the alleged webcam images when Lindy Matsko, an assistant high school principal, told their son that school officials thought he had engaged in improper behavior at home.

The behaviour was not specified in the suit.

Matsko ‘cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor plaintiff’s personal laptop issued by the school district,’ the lawsuit states.

Matsko later confirmed to Michael Robbins that the school had the ability to activate the webcams remotely, according to the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday and which seeks class-action status.

The Robbinses declined to speak with an Associated Press reporter at their home Thursday. Their lawyer, Mark S. Haltzman, did not return messages.

The U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the privacy of the home when it ruled in 2001 that police could not, without a warrant, use thermal imaging equipment outside a home to see if heat lamps were being used inside to grow marijuana.

Technology or no, Supreme Court precedents draw ‘a firm line at the entrance to the house,’ Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, quoting an earlier case.