Rich Fiscus
23 Feb 2010 11:29
After the lawsuit over Harriton High School's alleged webcam surveillance triggered an FBI investigation, you would hope school officials would come clean about what they characterize as completely legitimate security activities. Yet Lower Merion School District's response to parents seems to raise more questions than it answers.
In a statement on the district's website, Superintendent Dr. Christopher W. McGinley seems to imply it was against school policy for students to take the laptops home. He wrote "this feature was limited to taking a still image of the computer user and an image of the desktop in order to help locate the reported missing, lost, or stolen computer (this includes tracking down a loaner computer that, against regulations, might be taken off campus)."
A FAQ on the district's website clearly states that laptops may be taken off campus as long as the student has paid for the optional insurance offered by the district.
Superintendent McGinley acknowledges this later in his statement, which says there is "no reason to be concerned about the use of the laptop on campus or at home." So why bring it up if it's not relevant to the allegations?
He also indicated that the district never accessed laptops remotely "which were not lost, missing or stolen," but once again this isn't as clear as it seems on the surface. How exactly did the district know a laptop was missing?
You might assume it would have to be reported by the student whose computer was missing, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
A testimonial by Lower Merion School District Network Tech Mike Perbix was used to market LANRev, the product used to remotely access the webcams. In it he describes tracking a computer he thought was missing, but which further investigation (using the webcam) determined was actually being used in a classroom.
There may be good reasons for believing a laptop was missing without a student reporting it, but why not explain the criteria if it would clear district employees?
Reports from other students also cast doubt over the superintendent's claim. At least two different students have reported that the lights on their webcams would occasionally light up for no apparent reason.
One was reportedly told this was "just a glitch." Another supposedly claimed to have asked "an IT guy" about it, who explained it was the result of logging out while an application was using the camera.
A discussion which Mike Perbix took part in on a system administration mailing list suggests an alternate explanation. He described how to disable the webcam for standard (user) applications while leaving it available for LANRev.
This would make perfect sense if the intention was to convince students the webcams weren't working properly when in fact they were being used covertly.