For homecoming queen, that is. An assistant principal used her login to hack into other students’ accounts and elect her daughter homecoming queen. She and her daughter have both been arrested. The mother was suspended from her job and her daughter expelled.
Interesting. But the article seems to be missing something. From what it says, it’s not clear to me why they assume the mother was in on it, and it wasn’t just the daughter stealing her mom’s login info on her own or using her mom’s computer and phone.
The arrogance involved in how poorly it was done could be from a woman who doesn’t know how computers work, sure. But it could also be the clearly arrogant teen who practically confessed by saying she accesses her mom’s account all the time.
124 votes came from Mom’s phone. A different article I read said that Mom’s password changed every 45 days, so it was highly unlikely that the daughter hacked Mom’s phone.
Stranger is that Emily the daughter was elected homecoming Queen on October 30, but was expelled in November (no reason given for the expulsion). The investigation took 5 months. Dates don’t quite add up, but we’re not talking great journalism in the article.
I take it that the crime for which they were arrested was the computer hacking or unauthorized accessing of computers, and not for stealing the election. I don’t know if fraudulently rigging a homecoming queen election is actually a crime.
Sad that homecoming queen is such a vaunted status.
Here’s the story from CNN.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/16/us/mother-daughter-homecoming-votes-trnd/index.html
A changing password wouldn’t mean much if mom logs in and saves the changed password in her phone.
I’m not saying that mom didn’t help out. I’m just wondering what evidence they have that she did. Even the CNN article only talks about the daughter admitting to defrauding the votes.
I’m a cybersecurity guy, and I agree that what they did was stupid and wrong, and there needs to be some consequences for it. But jail time seems just a bit excessive.
Yes. Accessing personal data is certainly a serious matter. However, there doesn’t seem to have been any actual damage done to anyone. However, the charges were brought by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. I don’t know how much influence the school might have had.
I have relatives who teach school in FL.
The state (and therefore the districts) are absolutely apeshit about student privacy, fear of unauthorized records access leading to stalking or worse, etc. They might or might not be any good at technical cybersecurity, but boy do they have the paranoia level way up on staff access to and use of student data.
I hope that where the articles say the mother was “suspended” from her job, they mean she was fired. But who knows?
They might have to go through due process before actually firing her.
My favorite legal blogger’s take on this and another case of wacko Moms and “election” fraud:
She was an assistant principal, which seems like a desirable, fairly well-paying job, and one leading to a comfortable retirement with a decent pension. So why end your career for something seemingly so trivial?
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“No-one will ever know.”
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“Even if someone finds out, no-one will care.”
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“Opal says it’s okay.”
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I’m a self-centered narcissistic demi-psycho.
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I didn’t quite make the cheerleading squad / Homecoming Queen in High School and was soooo disappointed.
- And besides, those crooked commie socialistic Democrats do it too, right?