School IT Techs In Webcam Spying Case On
Leave
March 8. 2010
Blake Robbins
The two school IT techs in the Blake Robbins v.
Lower Merion School District have been placed on leave, in the fall out
from the horrible invasion of privacy case, that saw a 15-year-old boy,
photographed unaware in his own bedroom, by a webcam on a
Harriton High School
issued laptop.
Michael Perbix and
Carol Cafiero have been placed on administrative leave and are stating
the school ordered them to turn the cameras on each time. On March 6,
2010, they admitted the webcams are programmed to snap photographs of
laptop users anywhere they are located "every 15 minutes."
The school IT Techs confessions on March 6, 2010 confirms what the
Judiciary Report previously stated on
February 22. 2010 in
the article titled
School’s
Illegal Defense For Spying On Kids In Their Homes With Webcams,
in that webcams with spyware attached to them, will
trigger at timed intervals, as they currently cannot know when someone
is seated in front of the unit doing drugs, as the school alleged
regarding 15-year-old Blake Robbins, which turned out to be candy, not
illegal pills.
Mike Perbix, computer administrator at Harriton High School
This means, as the site previously surmised, there is
more than one photo of Blake and other students, who were caught
unaware, when the school triggered the webcams to start snapping photos
of them in different situations, without their permission or that of
their parents.
That's called voyeurism and it is illegal in America. It
also constitutes illegal wiretapping, as webcams come standard with
sound and video. The intent to violate the law is clearly there, as
meetings were taken before this spying program was implemented.
Oh and in more bad news,
Lower Merion School District is not the only learning institution in the
nation with such surreptitious spying capabilities installed on laptops.
Police get Webcam pictures in school spy case
March 6, 2010 1:12 PM PST - Two IT employees at Pennsylvania's Lower
Merion School District have been put on administrative leave, and
pictures taken from Webcams on school-issued computers have been turned
over to the local police department, according to the attorney of one of
the employees now on leave.
Attorney Charles Mandracchia, who represents school district information
coordinator Carol Cafiero, told Philadelphia TV station Fox 29 that that
"they had a private Web site for some of these pictures for the Lower
Marion Police Department to view and they were the only ones who could
view it."
In February, the family of Blake Robbins, a 15-year-old student at
Harriton High School filed a civil complaint in federal court against
the district for allegedly using the Webcam on his school-issued laptop
to take a photo of the student while he was at home. The district
contends that cameras were only activated if a laptop had been reported
lost or stolen. The district has since stopped using the tracking
software to activate Webcams.
Speaking about his client and Michael Perbix, the other suspended IT
staff member, Mandracchia said, "It was their duty to turn on the
camera, but they would only do that if they received a request from the
two high schools." He also said the pictures were "taken by the computer
itself...every 15 minutes once the computer was open, but it was only
supposed to be done if the computer was lost or stolen."...
http://news.cnet.com
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