Federal judge orders school district to stop spying on students

[kpete]

Source: The Hill


Federal judge orders school district to stop spying on students
By Tony Romm - 02/24/10 10:44 AM ET

A Pennsylvania school district has been ordered to disable equipment allowing officials to watch students with cameras on laptop computers.

The order by a federal judge will prevent school officials from turning on cameras on their students' laptops remotely.

The order arrives at the request of a Lower Merion family, which claimed school officials were wrong to activate the camera, snap a photo of their son and confront him about its contents.

The school district told reporters on Wednesday it would comply with that order.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/83383-federal-judge-orders-school-to-stop-spying-on-students

[mikelgb]

1. so this judge is taking the word of a mere child?

:sarcasm:

[uncle ray]

6. don't forget too, teachers are just too darn busy to take time out to spy on students.

[Occulus]

9. Why, that IT guy must have been working 24/7.

And, after all, it's only the word of the student that there was a picture taken of him in his own home. We don't know that his Mike & Ike candy story is true. And it's only the student saying he was disciplined as a result of a photo we don't know exists.

Would anyone else like to play? :D

[Tempest]

11. He's not taking the word of a child

The school principal admitted to turning on the camera and taking the picture because he thought he saw the kid with drugs.

He called the kid into his office and confronted him with the picture.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/22/harriton-high-school-admi_n_471321.html?show_comment_id=40745303#comment_40745303

[bananas]

18. So he's taking the word of a school principle.

[dipsydoodle]

2. I remain bemused by the fact

that when I first reported this issue in LBN Friday of last week it was hurriedly shoved off to the Pennsylvania Forum as though of no particular importance outside of that State.

[bananas]

19. Wow!

[Vidar]

24. Yet another victim of the dreaded Dungeon Rush.

[pleah]

3. K&R

[salguine]

4. ordering it stopped isn't enough. Someone needs to go to jail for this outrage.

[buckrogers1965]

5. Jail time

It amazes me that pedophiles like that managed to get cameras into every kids home in an entire school district.

[Wizard777]

7. Score one for the good guys! We'll call them Mike & Ike.

:rofl:

[Spazito]

8. This tidbit was interesting to read...

"Technicians said they have activated the technology 42 times this year to take photos of suspects believed to be damaging laptops or otherwise committing wrongdoing — precisely the reason they turned it on the case of the 15-year-old Harriton High School student now pressing charges."

Seems the district's position is shifting quite a bit, if what is stated in the article was said, from 'only activating the technology when laptops have been reported stolen to "take photos of suspects believed to be damaging laptops or otherwise committing wrongdoing". Interesting, to say the least.

[woo me with science]

10. damaging laptops, not just stealing them? hmmmmm.

or otherwise committing wrongdoing...

Their story IS shifting.

[moonbatmax]

12. I wonder... what about UNdamaging them?

Like replacing the obligatory Windows installation with Linux? :evilgrin:

Oh, wait, that'd be BSD...

Can we get a penguin smiley?

[Iowa]

14. As a Linux user myself, I thought the same thing...

Actually, I think these were macs. Anyone interested in the technology angle of this fiasco might find this interesting:

http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-high.html

From that article:

* Possession of a monitored Macbook was required for classes
* Possession of an unmonitored personal computer was forbidden and would be confiscated
* Disabling the camera was impossible
* Jailbreaking a school laptop in order to secure it or monitor it against intrusion was an offense which merited expulsion

In other words, using your own PC was forbidden, and disabling the spy-ware was an expelling offense.

This was a fuck-up of epic proportions. Jobs need to be lost over this.

[bananas]

21. Wow - they forced these on the kids.

[pokerfan]

22. A look at one of Lower Merion School District's evil spying laptops

Looks like the school IT guys really covered their bases by password protecting the firmware.

http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/node/4212

My final attempt was to try and boot the machine from a DVD so I could mount the filesystem and the hard disk and view the logs that way. Unfortunately, it looks like LMSD was using Extensible Firmware Interface or a similar product had an Open Firmware Password in place, as any attempt to bring up the boot device selection menu by holding down the option key at startup asked for a password:



In conclusion, there is no way to turn off the webcam, nor any way to be certain that the microphone is not recording. This is a serious privacy risk and I cannot recommend the use of the laptops at this time.

For a future article, if I can get my hands on an LMSD laptop for several hours or more, I intend to fire up a packet sniffer and see just what hosts the laptop talks to, and create some nullroutes for those hosts that can be set up on any Linksys or Cisco router. Stay tuned!

Doug works as a software engineer for hire by day, and does system administration for a hobby, including that of the SAC website. Visit him on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/dmuth.

[bananas]

20. "or otherwise committing wrongdoing" - that could include sex, smoking, drinking

[Hassin Bin Sober]

25. Or taunting the IT guy buy prancing around half nekkid.

[winyanstaz]

13. Umm shouldnt someone be going to jail?

Spying on kids in their bedrooms is a felony.

[pokerfan]

15. The FBI and the local DA are both investigating

And from the ACLU's amicus brief:

ARGUMENT
The right to privacy inside one’s home “is sacrosanct.” The “‘right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion’ stands ‘at the very core’ of the Fourth Amendment.” Indeed, “unreasonable government intrusion into the home is “the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.” Accordingly, it is a “‘basic principle of Fourth Amendment law’ that searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable.”

That school officials’ warrantless, non-consensual use of a camera, embedded in students’ laptops, inside the home is a search cannot be doubted. The use of “sense-enhancing technology” to obtain “information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical ‘intrusion into a constitutionally protected area,’” constitutes a search. Electronic video surveillance is sense-enhancing technology that triggers the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. Courts have held that the requirements of Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1969 (“Title III”) support both the legitimacy of the expectation of non-surveillance within the home and supply the benchmark requirements for issuance of a video-surveillance warrant. Surreptitious video surveillance inside the home is far more intrusive and revealing than the infrared, thermal detection unit at issue in Kyllo. And, in fact, the “extraordinarily serious intrusions into personal privacy” caused by video surveillance has prompted some courts to require the government to justify such searches “by an extraordinary showing of need.” At least one Court has termed such surveillance “Orwellian.”

Importantly, school district officials cannot claim greater authority than can law-enforcement officers to engage in searches of students under the relaxed “reasonable suspicion” standard that typically applies to in-school searches under cases like New Jersey v. T.L.O. and Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 of Pottawatomie Co. v. Earls.13 Those cases are predicated on the recognition that “the school setting requires some easing of the restrictions to which searches by public authorities are ordinarily subject.”14 Since the school district’s search in this case occurred outside of the “school setting,” the school search cases are inapplicable.

CONCLUSION
In sum, plaintiffs are likely to prevail on their claim that the school district’s non-consensual, warrantless surveillance of young Mr. Robbins, inside the privacy of their home, violated the Fourth Amendment. In light of the potentially egregious invasion of privacy attending surreptitious video surveillance inside the home, and the irreparable harm caused thereby, the ACLU-PA wholeheartedly endorses the plaintiffs’ request for an immediate order enjoining the defendants, and others who may be acting in concert with them, from using any electronic surveillance on students outside of the school grounds unless they comply with Title III and the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Robbinsfinal.pdf

[BR_Parkway]

16. Where are all the "well, if you don't have anything to hide" folks from when Shrub

was listening in on all the phone calls and such?

Haven't heard much from that sector - but isn't it really the same invasion of privacy by the government? Will they get all concerned now that their kids may have been photographed in their underwear or less?

I'm still amazed that folks discussed and agreed to install this, apparently not thinking for once how it could be misused. That's the thought process that is teaching our next generation?

[hayu_lol]

17. Prison for those who began this program...

needs to be at the end of a very long public trial.

The kids were forbidden to have their own PCs? Wow.

All of those puters should be scrapped.

[christx30]

23. I came up with something one time

I can imagine myself having the conversation... They say "if you have done nothing wrong, what do you have to hide?"
I pull out some rubber gloves (I have some for cleaning the apartment), and say "Would you submit to a body cavity search? I'm concerned that you have drugs. If you don't have any, what do you have to hide?"
I'd love to see their faces at that point.