According to the Complaint in Robbins v. Lower Merion School District (filed a week ago),
2. Unbeknownst to [high school students and their parents], and without their authorization, [high school officials] have been spying on the activities of [the students] by Defendants’ indiscrimina[te] use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students by the School District….23…. Plaintiffs were for the first time informed of [this] capability and practice by the School District when … an Assistant Principal at Harriton High School[] informed minor Plaintiff 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….
24. [The minor Plaintiff's father] thereafter verified, through [the Assistant Principal], that the School District in fact has the ability to remotely activate the webcam contained in a students’ personal laptop computer issued by the School District at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam, all without the knowledge, permission or authorization of any persons then and there using the laptop computer.
If this was indeed done, and if it was done without adequately notifying the students and their parents, this was clearly tortious, likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment, and possibly a statutory violation as well (though I haven’t looked closely at the statutory details). It is also appalling — school officials spying on children in their parents’ homes without the children’s and parents’ permission. Who thinks up such things?
I should note that such spying would indeed be legal (unless there are some statutory or local law twists I’m missing) if the cameras were planted using a warrant based on probable cause to believe that there was evidence of a crime in the home. But that seems quite unlikely under the circumstances, at least as alleged in the Complaint.
I’d love to hear more facts on this, as well as the school district’s side of the story.
Thanks to Prof. Joe Olson and Cory Doctorow (boingboing) for the pointer.
UPDATE: From the Philadelphia Inquirer:
“This is the first we have heard of this lawsuit being filed and the plaintiff’s allegations,” [Doug Young, spokesman for the Lower Merion School District,] said today. “However, we can categorically state that we are — and have always been — committed to protecting the privacy of our students.” …“We have referred this matter to our attorneys for appropriate legal action and plan to communicate with parents and students with more information as it becomes available.”
Thanks to commenter VR for the pointer.
FURTHER UPDATE: The district has this response (emphasis added), which seems to deny the allegations:
The laptops do contain a security feature intended to track lost, stolen and missing laptops. This feature has been deactivated effective today….Laptops are a frequent target for theft in schools and off school property. The security feature was installed to help locate a laptop in the event it was reported lost, missing or stolen so that the laptop could be returned to the student….
Upon a report of a suspected lost, stolen or missing laptop, the feature was activated by the District’s security and technology departments. The tracking-security feature was limited to taking a still image of the operator and the operator’s screen. This feature has only been used for the limited purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop. The District has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever.…
Malvolio says:
Given an appropriate warrant, such spying would be legal for law enforcement, not for the assistant principal.
I’m curious what “improper behavior” would be. If it’s something unlawful (smoking marijuana), isn’t he going to have some difficulty in the civil case?
February 18, 2010, 3:04 pmgab says:
I guess the district figured if they could use dogs to sniff students’ belongings without probable cause or search their lockers whenever they felt like it, also w/o probable cause, this was a short step.
February 18, 2010, 3:04 pmBill Altreuter says:
What kind of notification would take this out of the realm of tortious conduct? We have a pretty atrophied concept of privacy in the US, but this seems like a good example of conduct that crosses every line I can think of.
February 18, 2010, 3:08 pmInsignificant Dallasite says:
If any of the kids were ever naked in front of one of the laptops, would the district be trafficking in child porn?
February 18, 2010, 3:12 pmEugene Volokh says:
gab: But surely this was a very long step, no? It’s one thing to search someone at school, quite another to eavesdrop on them at home.
Bill Altreuter: Consent is usually a defense to most torts, and accepting someone else’s property into your home with notice of what it’s going to do probably qualifies as consent. Say someone comes to you on the street carrying a visibly operating videocamera, and says, “I’m from a WebTV show, and I’ll come in to your house and help you do your homework.” You (an adult) let him in and help you do your homework, while being aware that the camera is running. You can’t then turn around and sue for intrusion upon seclusion (the most relevant invasion-of-privacy tort), because you knew about the videorecording and by your conduct implicitly consented to it.
There are of course some exceptions to the consent doctrine, but I don’t think they’d apply here, at least if both the parents and the child were aware of the videorecording capability and the school’s willingness to use it (and probably even if just the parents were aware).
February 18, 2010, 3:17 pmAnon Y. Mous says:
What if it was a private employer doing it with company issued laptops to their adult employees? But, said monitoring still occurring in the employee’s homes. No constitutional issues.
February 18, 2010, 3:18 pmChris Travers says:
Cool, so it might be criminal as well as tortuous.
February 18, 2010, 3:18 pmVR says:
The only further information I could find is here (website of the Philadelphia Inquirer).
The School District is acknowledging that they gave out the laptops, claiming to respect privacy, and otherwise clamming up. The quoted comments do not acknowledge that the school could turn the cameras on remotely–the district spokesman was obviously told by the lawyers to shut the f___ up about this, and is doing so.
We may not find out more until responsive pleadings are filed.
February 18, 2010, 3:18 pmDennis N says:
The school is not your friend. I guess it’s time for another lesson in OPSEC for my grandkids.
Teacher: “Good Morning Johnny.”
Johnny: “I’ll have my attorney respond to that.” (Only exaggerating a little)
The individual conducting the spying should be terminated, their job position eliminated, and the school district budget reduced by the cost of maintaining that employee. Obviously, they have too many staff with not enough to do.
(I’ll undoubtedly get around to calling for hangings, later.)
“This computer contains electronic surveillance equipment capable of recording sound and visual information at any time, whether the computer is turned on or off. The Sneaky School District reserves the right to monitor you and your surroundings at any time and place. By accepting this computer, you consent to being monitored, to having your image captured, clothed or unclothed, and to have your words and sounds recorded.
Your arse is ours, kid.”
February 18, 2010, 3:20 pmSoronel Haetir says:
Just a guess but without notice I would think this is far over the line. The cases like Quon turn on whether even in the face of notice practice can be so lax as to negate that notice.
February 18, 2010, 3:22 pmDave N. says:
Perhaps not, but still one heck of a civil lawsuit for invasion of privacy.
February 18, 2010, 3:23 pmGuest101 says:
Eugene– what difference, if any, would it make to the consent issue if the laptops were expressly or implicitly required for school work? It doesn’t seem like true consent for the school to say “you can either take this free computer and accept 24-hour monitoring by the administration, or shell out a thousand bucks or more for a machine that we require for your coursework.”
February 18, 2010, 3:31 pmAlast says:
PA is a dual-party state:
It is a felony of the third degree to intentionally intercept, endeavor to intercept, or get any other person to intercept any wire, electronic, or oral communication without the consent of all the parties. 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5703(1).
Anyone whose communication has been unlawfully intercepted can recover actual damages in the amount of $100 per day of violation or $1,000, whichever is greater, and also can recover punitive damages litigation costs, and attorney fees. 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5725.
February 18, 2010, 3:37 pmPatHMV says:
If the school district activated the microphone, they would definitely be guilty of wiretapping under Pennsylvania law. If it’s video only, then it might not be a crime (which would illustrate the severely limited use of many states’ video voyeurism laws. According to 18 Pa. Con. Stat. Ann. § 7507.1:
Absolutely reprehensible for the school to do that. What were the idiots thinking? Did any of the administrators who knew about this program have kids who had been issued those laptops? Did they get special treatment, so they didn’t get monitored like everybody else?
February 18, 2010, 3:39 pmDilan Esper says:
Lower merion. Famous for producing kobe bryant.
February 18, 2010, 3:39 pmSlow says:
So we have cameras in the bedrooms of children, and people using those cameras to spy on them and take screen shots.
Sounds like a recipe for some federal child porn charges if you start looking at the computers monitoring the children’s computers.
February 18, 2010, 3:44 pmBruce Hayden says:
Mostly agreed.
But what about the case of the school activating the video when a girl is either in the process of changing, or maybe in her pajamas, if not overly modest? Possibility of kiddie porn? There should be some way to get a sex crime out of this. Maybe the government could use something like the copyright fixation in DRAM fiction to argue that the girl changing clothes was recorded, even if the video wasn’t being captured to disk (which it probably was).
February 18, 2010, 3:47 pmDJR says:
Supposing for the moment that the story is true, let’s pause for a moment to consider the utter mindblowing stupidity of the Assistant Principal. Setting aside the moral hurdles of spying on teenagers while they are at home, once you have that ability and see something inappropriate (about all I can think of is drugs, drinking, smoking, or sex), what kind of idiot tells the kid about the spying and confirms it with the parent?
What the hell did he think could possibly happen other than that the parents would complain and someone would file a lawsuit?
February 18, 2010, 3:47 pmgasman says:
Too bad that the school officials have not been found in possession of child pornography. A thorough review of all their files must inevitably turn up a picture of a kid in some state of undress, whether intentional or unintentional (most people would not hesitate to undress in their room with a laptop on and open to a perfectly wholesome web page even).
February 18, 2010, 3:49 pmThen again, a lawsuit or criminal investigation just might find such a picture that didn’t get wiped completely from the school’s hard drive. The snoopers from the school deserve such punishment.
Railroad Gin says:
Since when can schools discipline students for behavior that occurs off-campus? (School activities excepted). Its unclear what the “improper behavior” was, but shouldn’t the school have notified the parents or law enforcement? The overreach here is astonishing.
There is simply no plausible justification for the school to spy on parents or anyone else who was in the house.
Presumably the computers were issued for mandated coursework. I don’t think a waiver of privacy would mean much in that type of situation — Waive your privacy or we’ll flunk you!
This one really takes the cake. What were these people thinking? I can’t wait to learn what the school district’s defense is going to be.
February 18, 2010, 3:49 pmPatHMV says:
If the charges are in fact not true, then the response by the school district’s attorney is ridiculously bad. “We have always been committed to the privacy of our students” is a long, long way from “we cannot and do not remotely activate the laptop web cams of any computer issued to any student.”
February 18, 2010, 3:51 pmtroll_dc2 says:
“Lower merion. Famous for producing kobe bryant.”
It is the richest school district in the area. (Think Bala Cynwid, Wynnewood, Gladwyne, etc.) There is an interesting pending civil rights case concerning the redrawing school boundaries so that some kids (mostly black) were shifted to Harriton High School from the allegedly better (or at least allegedly more prestigeous) Lower Merion High School.
February 18, 2010, 3:51 pmPatHMV says:
Perhaps Orin could weigh in on whether this would count as “unauthorized access” of the computer, and whether that might depend on who exactly owns the computers and the fine print of the agreement with the students to provide them with the laptops.
February 18, 2010, 3:52 pmChris Travers says:
Certainly no Constitutional issues I can think of.
Common law tort issues, statutory tort issues, possible issues of criminal law, etc. otoh…. yeah….
February 18, 2010, 3:59 pmalkali says:
The legal issues here are interesting to think about, but I suspect that there isn’t really a “remote activation capability.” Put another way, as between (1) a school district secretly implementing a spying capability in student laptops without anyone noticing up until now, and (2) a misunderstanding, I’d bet on (2).
(To be sure, I agree that such a thing is certainly technologically possible, but we’re talking about a school district here — you’d have to write a little bit of custom code, install it on the machines, etc. Plus, what’s the point, i.e., what could you do with the information you obtained without disclosing the capability? This plaintiff asserts that an assistant principal just admitted it to him, which is bizarre. Occam’s Razor points to a misunderstanding here.)
February 18, 2010, 4:01 pmtroll_dc2 says:
This is the sort of case that a public-interest attorney, even one with a libertarian orientation (see Prof. Kerr’s thread), should salivate over. See 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988(b). (“In any action or proceeding to enforce a provision of sections 1981, 1981a, 1982, 1983, 1985, and 1986 of this title, title IX of Public Law 92–318 [20 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.], the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 [42 U.S.C. 2000bb et seq.], the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 [42 U.S.C. 2000cc et seq.], title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [42 U.S.C. 2000d et seq.], or section 13981 of this title, the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the costs, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity such officer shall not be held liable for any costs, including attorney’s fees, unless such action was clearly in excess of such officer’s jurisdiction.”)
February 18, 2010, 4:01 pmCato The Elder says:
That’s it! I was thinking to myself, this school district is famous for something…thanks for refreshing my memory.
February 18, 2010, 4:05 pmCato The Elder says:
What’s the name of the case, if you would?
February 18, 2010, 4:08 pmEvilDave says:
They told me that if I voted for John McCain that the state would use unConsitutional surveillance powers on innocent American citizens, even children, … and they were right!
February 18, 2010, 4:08 pmrequired says:
No 4th amendment issues since it is not government action but constitutional implications through the acknowledged (created?) constitutional right to privacy. This means a constitutional claim against the employer might be possible under 42 USC 1985 (3), depending upon the circumstances. Mind you, I cannot think of any court outside of the 9th Circuit which would buy a 42 USC 1985(3) argument, but that not the same as their being no constitutional issues, merely that it is too far outside current case law for a court to accept.
—–dang typos, I was supposed to be looking up 1983 caselaw and instead I ended up reading Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic. oh well, at least I got some use out of it.
February 18, 2010, 4:10 pmTomHynes says:
I am calling bullshit. When the dust settles, it will be shown that the district did not do this.
Assistant principal could have gotten this image a lot of ways. E.G. screen cap from another student and e-mailed. Student saved video to his laptop, brought laptop back to school. Reasonable expectation of privacy in that video?
February 18, 2010, 4:15 pmToby says:
Difficult?
Not even very hard, and off the shelf downloadable software easilty available. Start thinking about difficulty by googling
“remote activation webcam”
and you wil find a host of products, from “employee productivity management” on…
The least offensive explanation I can see, from the first page of results, is VNC (to offer homework assistance) and turning on the webcam to assist homework w/ remote control of screen, and leaving it on…
Not saying I believe the least offensive, but putting it out there…
February 18, 2010, 4:16 pmJeff Hall says:
What a lame thing to say! If the accusation is false, then why not say that the accusation is false? And if you don’t know that it’s false, how can you say “categorically” that you are committed to protecting your students’ privacy?
For that matter, who ever heard of a school district with a “spokesman”? Is this town so rolling money that they can hire an administrator whose only job is spin control?
February 18, 2010, 4:20 pmrhinoman says:
If you read the complaint, they have zero evidence of wrongdoing by the school district.
The student was issued a computer by the school, which has a built-in webcam. The school found a picture taken with the webcam on the student’s hard drive showing him engaging in illegal activity. They school then reported this to the parent – they probably had no choice. They probably also informed the parent that they can activate the webcam on school grounds whenever they like (you may not like this, but it’s not crazy). So, the parent goes and files a class action suit.
The complaint has zero evidence that the school activated the webcam of any computer off school grounds. The complaint has zero evidence that the school even has the capability of activating the webcam outside of school grounds.
I’m with TomHynes above. I call bullshit.
February 18, 2010, 4:29 pmBill Altreuter says:
I’m not so sure that a parent could consent to the secret webcasting of his or her child’s activities. Notwithstanding the fact that we are talking about minors here there is a reasonable expectation of privacy on the part of the child. If it’s not okay to search a kid’s underwear on school property I don’t think it’s going to be cool to set up a webcam in the kid’s bedroom, even if the child’s parents sign off on it.
February 18, 2010, 4:30 pmPeter says:
This case reminds of what happens in Illinois when public employees do really stupid stuff that injures citizens.
The suit is filed, huge damages either awarded or there is a large settlement.
Public employees are reprimanded or, at worst, put on paid leave.
Taxpayers foot the bill.
Repeat.
February 18, 2010, 4:32 pmgab says:
EV – I was being facetious, but only a little. Assuming the worst case here, it seems possible that the school district luged their way down the ol’ slippery slope, from checking lockers to sniffing belongings to snooping on kids at home.
I guess when you start removing constitutional protections, it’s hard to know when you’ve crossed the line…
February 18, 2010, 4:34 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
Could be the start of a ‘rogue employee acting contary to policy’ defense, which might be tropistic rather than deliberate. But I think I’ll go along with those counseling restraint until more information is available.
February 18, 2010, 4:47 pmreadery says:
If the underlying offense is a felony and the conduct was intentional, it could quite possibly be burglary of the trojan horse variety — by fraudulently and serruptitiously using parents’ childeren to place physical spy devices in their homes, the school officials gained physical entry into homes by fraudulent and serruptitious means with intent to commit a felony.
February 18, 2010, 4:48 pmFran A says:
I don’t even want to think about the times I’ve sat down in front of my computer half-dressed or undressed to check the progress of something during the showering/dressing part of my day.
February 18, 2010, 4:51 pmCB says:
Oh my gawd! Unbelievable! And yes, I suspect the school district would be capable of doing this because I accidently clicked on some function while I was chatting with my dad online recently and I was able to watch him in real-time and he had no idea until I told him that I was watching him….in amazement!
I don’t understand why law enforcement would be allowed to do this in your home either. I can understand monitoring by wiretaps, but by seeing people doing things when they think they’re in privacy? Unbelievable! Actually outrageous!
February 18, 2010, 4:53 pmTatil says:
I assume media might call anybody who is authorized to speak on behalf the school district a spokesperson, whether he actually holds other titles or duties, especially if that title is some esoteric one, not a chief “something.”
February 18, 2010, 4:56 pmJohnny Mac says:
Much to the chagrin of overzealous DAs everywhere, simple nudity does not rise to the level of child pornography. Photographers Sally Mann and Jock Sturges made their careers photographing nude children.
On the other hand, if the school officials managed to record a teenage boy masturbating in his bedroom, they’d better packs bags fast and head to Mexico.
This suggests an interesting (to me) legal question: say someone places a video camera in a public park to record whatever comes into view. A pair of teenagers–under 18 but above the age of consent in their State–have sex in view of the camera. Has a crime been committed, and who has committed it? Does culpability change if the teenagers were aware of the camera? Does it change as the camera is placed in successively more private places?
It seems to me that if the camera is in a public place and the participants were aware of its presence, then it is they who have produced child pornography. If it was in one of their bedrooms, and they were not aware–as in this current case–then the person who placed the camera is culpable. The in betweens seem very messy…
February 18, 2010, 5:09 pmEdward Lunny says:
Hmm, so the school district has unauthorised access into the homes of 2,290 students. Access available at their leisure and without the knowledge of those home owners or occupants. Of course those school administrators would never do anything untoward or dishonest when no one was watching would they ? I think it somewhat unsettling that the parents weren’t informed of the ability of the school to access imagery when the computers were initially distributed. But,that was just an oversight by the administration wasn’t it, an honest mistake? I’m not that trusting of any government official or entity, and think it foolish or naive to be so. This smells,bad.
February 18, 2010, 5:18 pmDennis N says:
As Toby commented, there are benign uses for this technology.
“If you’re having trouble with an assignment, click the HELP icon, and you’ll be on a two way webcam link with a tutor. We didn’t notify the kids because the feature has not been implemented – we don’t have the tutors.”
Now you have a beneficial capability with plenty of potentially nefarious side effects.
I’ll be curious to see whether any actual evidence emerges, but would bet lunch the capability is in place on those laptops.
February 18, 2010, 5:18 pmVlad Konings says:
I guess I’m going to have to agree with those who find this fact pattern so incredible that there has to be something missing.
Will indeed be interested to see the pleadings.
February 18, 2010, 5:20 pmPenguins Fan says:
@Jeff Hall: the Pittsburgh City Schools have a spokeswoman; she’s quoted in the local dead tree rags so often that I can recall her name after about 30 seconds of thought, despite not being a student or parent of a student. And I am fairly confident that the district is not rolling in money.
Considering how frequently the media are likely to want quotes in larger districts, employing a spokesperson probably means less “wasted” time for actual administrators spent dealing with the media.
February 18, 2010, 5:30 pmGD says:
GD,
I’m going to say that the story ends up as BS:
23. could just mean that the school looked at the photos on the school laptop (i.e., the kid snapped a shot of himself smoking a j/drinking a beer and the school found it looking through the files on the computer). I’m sure the laptop is school property and they’ve reserved the right to search it, etc. as any employer would. What’s the problem with that?
24. The source for 24 is the kid’s father. I’m going to guess that dad (or the assistant principal) misunderstands the technology or the actual practices in place. I doubt there has been any actual remote activation of a webcam.
February 18, 2010, 5:32 pmEH says:
That update sure doesn’t say that they aren’t doing this, just that they “protect the privacy” of the children. I’m sure the (e.g.) janitors who we have heard about getting prosecuted for surreptitiously installing shower cameras were not given any consideration for how widely disseminated the images were.
I maintain that they will attempt to assume the authority required to get away with this. Whether it works or not remains to be seen, but the fact that their spokesperson did not deny its occurrence tells me that they will be justifying it in short order. It could be a case of reaping what we sow, since educators have been forced into being the agents of “what about the CHILDREN?” in society, they will be able to argue that they are the experts in deciding that this is the right thing to do. They’ll be able to “do it for the children” right back at any critics of theirs.
If the plaintiffs are smart, they’ll do discovery on the protection and access-control mechanisms for images.
February 18, 2010, 5:34 pmCato The Elder says:
I briefly skimmed the complaint. I agree with some of the others that it seems pretty thin gruel. The plaintiffs never give any evidence that the school board remotely activated the webcam, only that they had the ability to — according to confirmation from a likely technically-illiterate assistant principal — and did not properly disclose that capability. But there are plenty other ways they could have received the picture — most obviously from the student simply transferring the damning evidence to the school’s possession. Do we go with the clearly illegal narrative or rather chalk it up to stupidity on the part of a minor? The choice is obvious, IMO.
February 18, 2010, 5:38 pmSuperSkeptic says:
If true, I hope they bust the lower merion school district into poverty. Lower merion kids don’t need school provided laptops anyway; their parents can surely afford them a couple of laptops each. Only on the main line…
(Unfortunately, their varsity basketball team is stellar even without Kobe.)
February 18, 2010, 5:45 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Want to bet those brilliant school administrators are even now trying to scrub hard drives?
Fry them All.
February 18, 2010, 5:50 pmKent says:
The difference is all of the above happens on school grounds…a web cam in someone’s bedroom is not even close to the same situation.
Also, off the top of my head, I would think that dogs sniffing would not/should not even be a privacy issue…who’s privacy are the invading?
February 18, 2010, 6:00 pmCatoRenasci says:
I don’t know about Jock Sturges, but from what I’ve heard from kids who knew Sally Mann’s kids pretty well, at least some of her kids were quite clear that as teens they really were uncomfortable with the way they’d been photographed….
February 18, 2010, 6:05 pmLower Merion School District Official says:
We can provide you with a log including dates and times. We’ll just pop by to drop it off because we can see you’re at home right now. Also, you may want to talk to a dermatologist about that mole.
February 18, 2010, 6:07 pmKent Allard says:
What does “indiscriminant” mean? Time for plaintiff to get a new lawyer?
February 18, 2010, 6:26 pmBig Teacher Is Watching You? | Liberal Whoppers says:
[...] more: Big Teacher Is Watching You? [...]
February 18, 2010, 6:46 pmravenshrike says:
Bzzt, wrong. They’d just need to turn on Windows remote access and then tap the camera. There are several free programs that would allow them to do such a thing.
February 18, 2010, 6:51 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Oh, and don’t forget 20., which quotes the school district’s website explaining that:
“… Thanks in part to State and Federal grants secured by our technology staff during the past few years, every high school student will have their own personal laptop-enabling an authentic 21st Century learning environment. … in Lower Merion, our responsibility is to lead.” (emphasis added).
So, apparently, the money for these laptops didn’t even come from wholly within the (affluent) district. Awesome. I’m sure the parents of the kids in Philadelphia would be glad to know this.
February 18, 2010, 6:55 pmrhinoman says:
There’s an interesting response from the school district on their Web page here.
I wonder what else will be revealed before this is all over.
February 18, 2010, 7:13 pmalkali says:
@rhinoman: Well, shut my mouth.
February 18, 2010, 7:17 pmJH says:
I REALLY wonder what the kid was disciplined for. My hunch is that it was for underage drinking or smoking. I also wonder why the complaint doesn’t say what the discipline was for.
February 18, 2010, 7:22 pmKen says:
Interesting.
Someone is lying. The complaint says it was the kid’s own computer, and that the vice-principal said that a picture taken from the computer reveals “misconduct.” The district’s update suggests that the remote control of the webcams are only used when a computer is reported lost or stolen by its owner. One of those stories is not true. Either someone exceeded the appropriate use of the remote access (perhaps an overzealous vice-principal), or the kid was photographed because he had someone else’s computer, reported missing by the other kid.
February 18, 2010, 7:25 pmCB says:
It would be interesting if the security feature worked exactly as planned and the kid was photographed using some other student’s missing laptop, as Ken suggests. Perhaps the parents are responding with “the best defense is a good offense”. Or the schools might have thought he was into illegal drug use and they caught him smoking a joint. Either way, it will be interesting to follow along as it plays out. I am still appalled either way.
February 18, 2010, 7:40 pmPatHMV says:
Althouse has a link to a BoingBoing story which has more details. Apparently, the remote activation feature exists to help find stolen laptops; you activate the webcam remotely, and it takes a picture of the thief and a screenshot of the pages he visits. So the capability is entirely plausible, and makes it more likely that it was misused by some idiot school employee.
February 18, 2010, 7:49 pmArthur Kirkland says:
The issue I see isn’t whether the claims are “thin gruel” but instead whether the civil claims are to be complemented by criminal charges.
The value of criminal convictions to the civil claimants probably increases the likelihood of criminal charges.
February 18, 2010, 8:16 pmLarryA says:
Like the kid who was expelled for having a shotgun in his pickup, while it was parked off-campus? You don’t think children belong to their parents, do you?
Not really. The school district would go to a supplier and say, “We want 3,000 computers with the following capabilities: Remote activation of cameras, …”
Is keeping the capability secret the intent? After all, they didn’t. Given professional educator philosophy, I suspect the VP expected the parent to respond to the warning with, “O thank you benevolent observer for watching over our children.”
My wife is a local newspaper reporter.
Actually it’s fairly common for school districts to have someone who is at least part-time public relations. Schools do a lot of newsworthy activities that deserve local media exposure, and having someone to submit press releases facilitates that. Also, as here, people screw up. It’s good for a school to have someone with journalism training available to handle the press. It’s also good to have a single point of contact when a reporter needs access to information, like for a local angle on a national school budget story.
My wife and the reporters for our other local media keep the local school district’s media person pretty busy. If she wasn’t there they’d keep the principals and district superintendant busy. I’ve seen school districts eliminate this “unnecessary” position in budget cuts. It doesn’t usually last long.
February 18, 2010, 8:30 pmErnestThing says:
1. I say one of the kids poses nude in front of the webcam, then claim he/she heard the computer take a picture.
February 18, 2010, 8:34 pm2. Child porn charges
3. End of remote webcam activation!
A. Zarkov says:
I go with the people calling “bullshit.” Even teachers and school administrators are not this stupid. There must be important details left out that will present this whole matter in a different light.
I don’t agree with giving K-8 students laptops or even hand calculators. In my opinion this is poor educational technique and hurts, not helps students. For K-8 using an abacus is a much better teaching technique than a hand calculator. The calculator is a crutch, while the abacus facilitates mental arithmetic. In the 9th grade, teach the slide rule. It’s important to understand how to estimate and do approximate calculations. Most of the time you need nothing but your brain to make calculations of an approximate nature. I have seen people come up with horrendously stupid answers using calculators and computers because they push keys like monkeys with no understanding of what they are trying to calculate. Later when the mind is trained you can bring in the high tech stuff.
February 18, 2010, 9:00 pmJohnny Mac says:
Sturges’ work is even more provocative than Sally Mann’s, though I think his subjects are older. And it’s not as if the FBI hasn’t tried to convict him of a crime, raiding his studio and confiscating his equipment on more than one occasion. And, each time, a judge says “Give it back.”
I can see why a child might be uncomfortable having been photographed nude. Presumably their parent–in Sally Mann’s case, the photographer herself–is supposed to be acting in their best interest, and perhaps made this decision incorrectly.
On the other hand, we do grant parents some leeway in making these sorts of decisions. Allowing it to rise to the level of criminality would jeopardize every parent who’s taken a photo of their infant in the tub, which as I understand it–I have no kids of my own–is pretty much everyone.
In any event, my understanding is that the issue of nude photographs has been settled. The photographs must be explicitly sexual to rise to the level of child pornography.
Still creepy. Remember, kids: always practice safe surfing by placing gaffer’s tape over the camera lens.
February 18, 2010, 9:13 pmJeff Walden says:
I skimmed comments to attempt to find any mention, but: why weren’t the laptops equipped with camera-active lights that would have pointed out the problem much sooner? I don’t understand why a school would buy laptops, with cameras, without such lights, at least as a preventative measure. The webcam built into both of my past two laptops (before then built-in cameras weren’t common) has a green indicator light that clearly indicates when the camera’s active. I’m almost surprised cameras without indicator lights are even available these days.
February 18, 2010, 9:30 pmMike G in Corvallis says:
Perhaps the kid stole another student’s laptop but didn’t tell his parents what he had done, someone at the school took a photograph using the stolen laptop, and the parents filed the complaint under the assumption that the photo had been taken on their son’s personal laptop?
Sounds like an idiot plot for a sitcom to me …
February 18, 2010, 9:31 pmFub says:
How the heck can anyone prove what is actually being smoked, drunk or eaten just by looking at a picture? Even a motion picture?
One stupid childhood trick I still recall was filling an empty whiskey bottle with weak tea, then ceremoniously taking a slug from it in the presence of certain easily panicked adults.
February 18, 2010, 9:31 pmKen Mitchell says:
Almost ANY software designed to recover a stolen laptop has the ability to remotely activate the webcam, grab screen captures, and send traceroute reports whenever the computer is connected to the Internet. For example, check out the open-source Prey Project software, which is designed to “phone home” whenever the computer has been reported as missing. Which can be done by the owner/administrator of the PC, remotely.
In the case in discussion, “an Assistant Principal at Harriton High School[] informed minor Plaintiff 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….; this covers a LOT of ground. “Improper behavior” could include the student viewing porn on his laptop, or visiting video chat rooms. (The webcam captures its own image, and the screen capture software shows the other side…)
February 18, 2010, 9:36 pmKen Mitchell says:
I disagree; I’ve seen MANY stupid people who should have known better do stupid things. And let’s face it; school teachers are some of the dumbest people ever to graduate from college. Not that there aren’t a lot of smart, dedicated honorable teachers – but there are more than enough stupid, venal, conniving teachers to fill an entire school district with morons.
February 18, 2010, 9:43 pmA. Zarkov says:
I wish I could rebut you but I can’t. You win. Good thing my kid is out of school.
February 18, 2010, 9:47 pmValentino Rossi says:
I was once told, “School superintendents can do anything.” Whether or not that is true, we now know that they will try doing most anything.
February 18, 2010, 9:54 pmRainerK says:
Lots of comments, so If I missed one making the same point, ignore me.
Possible scenario anybody who ever was a teenager could understand: Teenager does something really stupid to impress his friends like taking his own picture while doing something totally cool, but against rules. School finds out about it, notifies parents, parents question teenager who can do no wrong, teenager lies himself blue in the face protesting he never done it, no way, parents figure the explanation must be school has been spying on their little lamb, get outraged and call their lawyer ….
February 18, 2010, 10:12 pmBut then, of course, how exactly DID the school find out? There are clueless school personnel, clueless parents and even more clueless teenagers.
Roger the Shrubber says:
Although my experience is mostly with medium to larger sized metropolitan areas, I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with a school system that did NOT have a full time “flak officer.”
February 18, 2010, 10:13 pmSkeptic says:
Now the district web statement says “This feature has only been used for the limited purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop. The District has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever.” (emphasis added)
February 18, 2010, 10:16 pmThis certainly indicates that it has been used.
required says:
Perhaps the term willy-nilly is clearer for you? I know English is an evolving language but the word was certainly not obscure or unclear 10 years ago. You might be familiar with the variant spelling “indiscriminate” which seems to be popular in the US these days. It means chosen without care or promiscuous.
CAVEAT:
If you are one of them prescriptivists who insist that there is only one
‘correct’ way to spell words or one ‘correct’ meaning of a word, I warn you that we don’t take kindly to those types in these parts. We tend to take our English as we find it around here, and focus on clarity and understanding instead of fitting our linguistic expressions into some conformist straitjacket concocted by Ivory tower types who wouldn’t recognize a workingman’s English if it bit them on the posterior (too mixed a metaphor?). Not that I am saying you are a prescriptivist, just letting you know, in a friendly manner, that if you are one, you should keep it quiet.
More seriously, see previous “articles” (ht to EV’s earlier blog post on what to call blog posts) on the issue. It pays to keep an open mind about spelling in English, it’s origin in multiple languages and English’s tendency to ‘acquire’ foreign words which happen to be not solidly enough nailed down and the periodic attempts to ‘regularize’ the language’s spelling and the great vowel shift and so on, make English orthography a mess (see GHOTI). Indiscrimant is a variant of indiscriminate and is neither rare nor obscure, I even have an English usage guide (grammar) which decries the “indiscriminant use of subordinate clauses” (something I am guilty of).
February 18, 2010, 11:24 pmChris Travers says:
ISTR cases which the Supreme Court ruled (in opinions authored by Scalia) that searches of students’ articles on school was subject to reasonable suspicion standards. I suppose it would depend on what the dogs were sniffing would be. Sniffing the lockers, maybe (after all the lockers belong to the school, but I am not quite sure). Making everyone put their backpacks down to be sniffed by drug dogs would seem off-limits.
February 18, 2010, 11:43 pmValentino Rossi says:
Sorry if this was already posted, but can you imagine the school district administration’s take on this if it were a teacher who had given students a laptop with remote activation capability for its webcam?
February 18, 2010, 11:46 pmyankee says:
I wouldn’t go that far. In my experience there are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and idiot school administrators.
February 18, 2010, 11:55 pmEugene Volokh says:
Required: I’m no prescriptivist, but it’s pretty clear that “indiscriminate” is the normal usage and “indiscriminant” is a comparatively very rare form — Google, for instance, reports 3.5 million hits for “indiscriminate,” and 44,000 for “indiscriminant.” A search through the Lexis NEWS;US database reports over 1750 hits since the start of 2009 for “indiscriminate,” and 35 for “indiscriminant.” None of the dictionaries searched by Onelook (a healthy set) include “indiscriminant”; neither does the Oxford English Dictionary. Even to a descriptivist like me, this suggests that “indiscriminant” is not standard usage.
February 19, 2010, 1:03 amA. Zarkov says:
Agreed. Someone else said the same thing and I retracted the original statement. Forgive me, I lost control for a second there. Some of the stupidest and nutty people I have ever known were school teachers.
February 19, 2010, 1:08 amwox20 says:
Thank you for being the one of the few people to mention the aspect of off-campus monitoring. I was wondering the same thing. If said illegal activities were performed OUTSIDE of school property and INSIDE the sanctity of someone’s home, since when is it okay to punish the accused? Sure, many are arguing that the laptop itself is technically school property, which is true. But random activations of a webcam inside someone’s home do not justify the fact that these are school-issued laptops. I understand that searching a student’s web history is entirely legal, especially if they suspect the student to be up to something. If the student is say, emailing fellow students of an imminent attack on the school or threatening a teacher, then yes, by all means take action. But randomly checking out what a student is up to in their own HOME without any reasonable suspicion is outrageous. A police officer can’t just walk into your house because he was bored or curious, he needs REASONABLE SUSPICION. I hope 1) this story is true and we’re not all up in arms over something exaggerated and 2) if it is true, that it gets to national news.
February 19, 2010, 1:34 amMike G in Corvallis says:
There’s a long thread on BoingBoing about this … but one particular comment caught my attention:
Interesting, if true.
Whoever wrote this seems to have assumed the kid was caught via remote monitoring in real time. I’ll be surprised if that turns out to be the case — what are the chances that someone with authorization would happen to be monitoring this kid during off hours? It seems far more plausible to me that the school authorities would have heard gossip at school about an incident that took place in the kid’s home, confiscated his laptop, searched the hard drive, and found a photo that he had taken of himself.
I wonder whether either of the kid’s parents is an attorney or a paralegal. Odd that this would be a class-action lawsuit …
February 19, 2010, 2:45 amkentuckyliz says:
Remote activation only has to happen once and become known before it becomes totally ineffective.
On the news, another kid was holding up his laptop showing off his genius hack – a piece of electrical tape over the webcam. LOL
February 19, 2010, 7:27 amAultimer says:
Except that the actual rich kids are mostly in private schools.
The local radio reported this morning that the school-issued laptops are Macs. Same feature?
February 19, 2010, 10:08 amKen Mitchell says:
The open-source program Prey Project is a free program available for Windows, Mac or Linux, designed to make it possible to track or recover a stolen or missing laptop. Among other features, the administrator can grab a screen capture, take a photo (if the laptop has a webcam), view recently modified files, find the IP address and TRACEROUTE information, and can even display a warning message on the screen or set off a loud audible alarm. All for free.
The idea is that the owner of the PC can install this software (or other more capable, and more costly programs) and the thief has no right to privacy. Good points – but this breaks down with company-issued or school issued machines. A spot of electrician’s tape fixes the webcam issue, but the user would have to uninstall the program to eliminate the other features.
February 19, 2010, 10:30 amAaron says:
Johnny Mac: in that scenario it doesn’t matter too much who counts as the producer — mere possession will get you locked up for a long time.
February 19, 2010, 11:47 amVasco says:
A school district is not a law enforcement agency, and even if they were one and had probable cause, they certainly didn’t have a warrant.
February 19, 2010, 11:50 amMark Buehner says:
Couple things at work- one, in education people fall upwards like crazy, so your most mediocre people often get bumped up to administration. Secondly, mediocre people with a little power are the most dangerous people on earth.
February 19, 2010, 12:07 pmMark Buehner says:
If its a question of who’s stupid enough to either: use a computer to spy on your students at home, or take pictures of yourself doing illegal crap with a school computer and then turn it back in… that’s a toughy. Kids can be pretty stupid, but they do usually have some measure of self-preservation. Dopey school admins on the other hand…
February 19, 2010, 12:10 pmBobVB says:
If it was a Mac laptop, the built in camera can NOT be activated without the little green LED next to it being lit. (Hackers have tried but it is a hardware feature that they can’t turn off).
So if it was some usage of the Prey Project or something similar it is now even more incredibly stupid on the part of the school administrators. Hopefully it will turn out to be just a picture taken with the webcam that they got from a unit that had physically been returned to the school for whatever reason.
February 19, 2010, 12:37 pmDan says:
There was a case similar to this in Nebraska recently, albeit with a slightly different twist. A number of people had broken into a school and stolen several computers. The police, with the assistance of the school, were able to remotely activate the cameras and snap pictures of the people who were using the computers. With these pictures, the police were ultimately able to track down the suspects and arrest them.
February 19, 2010, 1:42 pmSeaDrive says:
If it’s an easy win, then it was probably a clear-cut violation.
I don’t follow the logic. If the knowledge causes the student to make sure he stays on the straight and narrow in the presence of the computer, I don’t see that as ineffective. If you mean that once the student knows about remote activation, the computer can’t be used for spying on the student, well, I rather think that’s a good thing.
February 19, 2010, 2:05 pmOwen H. says:
BobVB- local reporting has some kids at the school saying the school had “warned” them of a real software bug that sometimes causes the little light to go on without the camera being activated, and not to worry about it.
February 19, 2010, 3:54 pmBobVB says:
Ah. Well then that’s a problem isn’t there? If you go to the prey project site you see that you can set it up to take pictures, location data, etc at set intervals to store in a hidden data cache so it can be sent later if the laptop is discovered stolen.
Figuring that they didn’t write their own program AND they were using Prey or something compiled from its open source code, AND someone actually told students that, then there are obvious issues.
I can see where the school might not want to broadcast that they are ‘trackable’, but including the picture taking aspect in a piece of equipment given to students that many sit in front of in ‘less than fully dressed’ attire – someone wasn’t thinking.
February 19, 2010, 5:18 pmrequired says:
Eugene, now you made think which some who know me claim is a dangerous thing.
I originally thought my familiarity and the lack of reference might mean it was a regional or other group variant but there doesn’t seem to be any unifying element of users of the -ant variant. Even more puzzling is that -ant variant is slightly more common in academic usage than non-academic usage, something not unknown for spelling ‘errors’ but usually confined to one discipline.
I went an investigated some of the usages of the -ant variant and discovered something bothersome, many of the users of the -ant variant also use the -ate variant in the same work. This should mean that there is a difference in meaning of the two variants, the writer used “indiscriminate” to mean one thing and “indiscrimiant” to mean something else but I cannot figure out what the difference is. Some sources like this book (should link to page 154, if not the reader should go to page 154 to see this example) appear to mingle the two spellings indiscriminately even in parallel sentence structure (this was the example I happened to have on my computer when I posted this, it is by no means the only instance of mingling I found).
This leaves me with two conflicting explanations, neither of which makes sense:
1) there is a difference between “indiscriminant” and “indiscriminate” which I have missed. Not at all unlikely, my rule of thumb is any day which I don’t give myself at least 3 reasons to doubt my intelligence is a day wasted. Still, the return rates for “indiscriminant” are quite low for a developing word and the age of the usages doesn’t seem to be becoming more common as one would expect for a word coming into existence.
2) this is a spelling ‘error’. But this doesn’t work because of the way the spellings are used sequentially by the same author. This is an intermittent spelling error which isn’t picked up by editors or proofreaders? Most puzzling.
February 19, 2010, 5:55 pmKevin C. says:
Here in Anchorage, if two (or more) students get into a fight off-campus, outside of school hours, and the school learns about it, the students are punished just as if the fight had happened at school. This is actually official policy of the Anchorage School District. I’d also remind you of Morse V. Fredricks (also out of Alaska).
February 19, 2010, 6:55 pmSo, schools do in fact punish students for actions done off-campus.
Mike G in Corvallis says:
Have a warrant to do what? When I wrote “confiscated his laptop, searched the hard drive, and found a photo that he had taken of himself” perhaps I should have put quotes around the word “his” for the benefit of people who have not been following this brouhaha. The laptop was “his” in the sense that it had been isssued to him. Apparently the laptops are supplied by the school, owned by the school, and subject to school rules in how they are supposed to be used both on and off campus.
Note also that the school very likely would not need to physically confiscate the kid’s laptop to search the hard drive. School officials probably have the capability to search the disk remotely, and neither privacy nor Fourth Amendment considerations would seem to prevent them from doing so — it’s the school’s own property. The laptop most likely would be on campus even if they conducted a remote search, since it would make sense for them to do the search during school business hours.
February 19, 2010, 9:28 pmEd Darrell says:
Where can I find a set of slide rules?
February 20, 2010, 7:06 amAlast says:
Seems the feds are now involved.
http://www.pottstownmercury.com/articles/2010/02/20/news/srv0000007652029.txt
February 20, 2010, 2:38 pmSuperSkeptic says:
FURTHERER UPDATE: From the Superintendent on the District website 2/19/10.
http://www.lmsd.org/sections/news/default.php?t=today&p=lmsd_anno&id=1143
“While we understand the concerns, in every one of the fewer than 50 instances in which the tracking software was used this school year, its sole purpose was to try to track down and locate a student’s computer.”
February 21, 2010, 3:32 pmStormy Dragon says:
Lower Merion Township contains the country’s largest shopping mall by retail space, the headquaters for SE Pennsylvania’s biggest hospital system, the headquarters for one of the biggest supermarket chains in Pennyslvania and New Jersey as well as large facilities for a number of other major corporations.
So yes, they are so rolling in money.
February 22, 2010, 2:25 amDavid Schwartz says:
“While we understand the concerns, in every one of the fewer than 50 instances in which the tracking software was used this school year, its sole purpose was to try to track down and locate a student’s computer.”
Notice that he doesn’t say the computer was reported lost or stolen by the student in each case. The accusation is that the school district was tracking the laptops and his defense is that he was only tracking the laptops?!
Of course each time the tracking software was used *its* sole purpose was to try to track down and locate a computer, that *is* the software’s sole purpose. The question is, why were they tracking down so many laptops? Was it because they were reported missing or stolen? Or were they tracking them for less acceptable purposes. He doesn’t say.
Were they activating the tracking in laptops just because they wanted to know where they were? Or were they activating the tracking because they couldn’t find the laptops? Or were they only activating the tracking when they had confirmed that the person the laptop was last issued to did not know where it was?
His statement does not address the actual issue and appears quite calculated to appear to do so.
Does “reported lost” mean the district couldn’t find them? Or does it mean the person they were last issued to couldn’t? There’s a *huge* difference. If you lend me your car and then can’t find it, it’s not “lost, missing, or stolen”. You have to ask me where it is and fail to get an answer before it’s missing.
February 22, 2010, 5:30 pmNik B. says:
David Schwartz wrote:
That was a poorly thought out response, or perhaps an attempt to not have someone say something without making blatantly false statements. But there’s another bit of interesting information on there. Assuming a mid-September start to “this school year” 50 activations of the software basically work out to one every 3.6 days. That’s two tracks per week! That’s a staggering amount of activations. They’d have to be losing laptops faster than a “Biggest Loser” contestant loses weight!
Which got me thinking. Could they be activating this feature if little Billy isn’t in class, as a counter-truancy measure?
February 22, 2010, 8:34 pmelectronic display says:
Setting aside the moral hurdles of spying on teenagers while they are at home
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