One piece of monitoring software that I have (reluctantly) installed on a child’s computer for an overly snoopy parent was SpectorPro. There is a version available for Macintosh. It has all the features needscoffee mentioned. It does not directly access the webcam, but if the automatic screenshot feature is enabled, it will capture whatever webcam image is showing locally on the screen. The Windows version doesn’t show up as “spyware” on any of the major anti-spyware packages.
As I said, I was never comfortable installing this software, and would warn the parents that they could never reveal how they obtained the information about their child’s activity - and they were running a risk of utterly destroying any trust their child had in them if the child ever found out.
Sometimes the parents found out things that they really would rather have never learned. Like one woman’s 13 year old son masturbating to “MILF” porn, seeking women who looked like herself.
Update: I have to say - how lame are these kids that they didn’t, first thing, download a Linux boot CD?
Or even, as seems to be implied at this point, he took home a loaner computer that was not supposed to be taken off campus? If I were the school, I’d find somebody connected to the district who could leak that, be publicly slapped on the hands for “having made an unauthorized statement in a matter related to a pending lawsuit”, and then privately thanked and rewarded for being the stalking horse for the district. Right?
Well it’s exactly what I would do - if I wasn’t in the wrong, if it’s indisputable that I am right I would be fighting the family’s fire with fire of my own - law be damned.
I do think though that a “loaner taken home” is a bit dubious - as the first stop to any logical person would be to call the last person to be holding the computer, not to be turning on the camera. Though turning on the camera may perhaps be legal in that situation, the common sense and moral justification are a bit different.
Good point. But we have three categories of person involved here: owner, authorized user, and thief. The WHite Plains woman had not authorized Shahikian and Frias to do anything – they’d stolen property from her. As the legitimate owner of the stolen laptop, she had every right to make use of its functionality to catch the thieves – and their Fourth Amendment rights, which did exist, would not protect them, because she was using her own property. A cop could not, without probable cause and/or warrant, search their home along with every other suspected thief’s on the theory that one of them is likely to have the stolen merchandise. Cops are government; she is not.
On the other hand, presume young Blake to be using his own laptop. Owner is the School District, but he is an authorized user – just as the principal of his school is the authorized user of the principal’s office, or the driver’s ed teacher is of the District’s cars equipped for teaching student drivers, or any kid in any school of the textbooks he’s issued at the beginning of the year. And the school district is a government body. They have no right to invade students’ “persons, houses, papers, and effects” except on a warrant issued on probable cause or in restricted circumstances justifying warrantless searches. (Which I’ll leave it to lawyers to explain.) Monitoring him in his bedroom, if it happened (and there’s probable cause to believe it did) is a violation of his privacy. It gets a little touchier if he walked off campus with a loaner computer he was not supposed to take home.
Interestingly, nobody’s denied the existence of that photo, or what it’s purported to show. Therefore: McGinley is on record that (a) the school district did not authorize it (unless the loaner hypothesis proves out), (b) Detsko did not and could not have taken it, (c) the only two people who can activate webcams remotely are the two men in their IT department. Draw your own conclusions.
Or the boy took it himself and it was found during some sort of maintenance; nothing we’ve heard so far rules out this possibility. And again, there are two issues here: 1) who took this particular picture of this boy, and 2) is it proper for this capability to be on these machines even if it has not been misused to date?
I’d be curious to know this: When the school activates the remote webcam feature, where is the picture saved? Presumably the default is to save the picture to the server, not the laptop, since the laptop has possibly been stolen. Perhaps that can be overridden, but if you’re spying on a student, why would you save the picture you took to that student’s own laptop, as the plaintiff here alleges?
I don’t think this is a fair characterization. The school has only made general statements about its policies. It hasn’t made any statements at all about the alleged photo of Blake. The school received the complaint on Thursday, apparently with no prior warning, so presumably the school is still conducting its own investigation to determine what happened. Lack of response doesn’t indicate much at this point.
I totally believe the family and kid, just my gut, but it seems like the school put the spying software on the computer, probaby with very goood intentions, i.e. recovery of stolen computers. But then it only took one douchebag Asst. Principal (and/or an IT guyaccomplice) to use it improperly. This doesn’t have to be some huge cosnpiracy within the school, it just takes one asshole to make it happen. There are plenty of cases of school administrators acting idiotically.
I was fairly careful in what I did and didn’t say in that post. Yes, it’s possible the computer’s a loaner, it’s possible Blake himself reported it missing, it’s possible that he took the picture himself. And it’s possible that the blame for all this can be laid at the feet of Bigfoot and Elvis’s love child, who is the evil mastermind behind the invasion of privacy in America. But IMO that’s not the way to bet. The family’s behavior is completely in character for a privileged upper middle class family reacting to the news that their son’s been spied on in his own bedroom without his or their consent and knowledge. And the school administration is reacting just as I’d expect from someone exceeding their bounds. But all that is inferential.
What I actually said was that nobody has denied the existence of that picture. If there is anything in error in the Robbins’ allegations of fact, the school can defuse the situation by denying those errors. That is not contrary to proper behavior in reacting to a lawsuit; it’s attempting to turn public opinion back to their side by stating fact that will come out in discovery anyway. I also paraphrased three things McGinley did say, and invited readers of my post to draw their own conclusions.
Here’s what I’m getting, FWIW: the picture was taken, and not by Blake Robbins. Why, is another story. Possible the kid has a loaner laptop for some reason – the school’s leaning over backwards to stress the fact they exist, for some reason – and the IT guys therefore were using a tool at their disposal to find out where it is. They took an ‘incriminating’ photo of him “taking illegal drugs” (eating lozenge-shaped candy) and turned it over to Matsko, who provoked a shitstorm by confronting him with it. Or, Matsko or another administrator asked them to monitor kids’ behavior, and they’ve been doing it – ultra leges from what district policy permits. Dr. McGinley has been stressing the fact that only the two IT guys can “activate that security feature.”
And, as noted, all this is speculation. I recited facts (and in one case, the absence of a denial of an allegation, that absence being itself a fact) for the purpose of trying to cut past speculation and see what we can know from what’s been said, inviting readers to draw their own conclusions from it.
Yeah, the inferences from my facts point at the IT guys. I intended that. But I did not accuse them per se, just noted what has been said and not said, in a manner that exhibits how I came to that speculative conclusion.
Ms. Matsko is alleged to have confronted Blake with said picture, and it’s a reasonable inference from what was said that it was of him popping red lozenges into his mouth in his room – if nonexistent or if of something else, like him smoking pot (a rumor going around the school, according to some of the comments) or masturbating to porn, that would have come out by now. McGinley has defended her from criticism, and stated explicitly that she did not take, and in fact was incaple of taking, that picture. He’s the one who has insisted that only his two IT guys can activate the webcams remotely. If she did not in fact have said picture, then this is truly a tempest in a teapot – which has gone to an extreme already that I’m sure no one is thrilled about. So therefore the picture exists, or that would have been publicly denied alrready. And I cannot imagine the Robbinses, with a high-powered lawyer retained, making false public statements about its contents after the suit had been filed. So: reasonable inference is that Matsko confronted Blake Robbins with picture of him popping red lozenges into his mouth. Candy, not drugs, as it turns out. How she got the picture has not yet come out, but only the IT guys, according to McGinley, had the capability of activating the webcam. Why they did, presuming they did, has not yet come out – and it is in fact possible Blake improperly took home a loaner laptop, not the one issued to him, and they were simply using a “non-invasive” tool at their disposal to figure out where said laptop is (does the kid still have it? is it sitting in our office and not checked back in? activate the webcam and find out).
Anyway, separating fact from inference from speculation and putting the pieces together from what has and has not been said is an interesting exercise. And I think it’s incumbent on us not to jump in one one side or the other, but also not to let preconceptions sway us. Personally I’m inclined to distrust the school district, but that’s emotional reaction to authoritarian bureaucrats I have known – and McGinley and Matsko may be cut from quite different cloth. So I’m trying to discount my own emotional reactions, and assume what’s being said as fact is in fact true – and what’s being not said provides interesting pointers to the truths that haven’t yet come out.
Police create a “sting” laptop with an internal GPS and security software similar to what’s being discussed here. They then leave it readily available for theft – say, setting it up at the local coffee shop and then rushing quickly to the restroom as if an intestinal emergency struck.
They then track the laptop and activate its webcam to provide evidence that the possessors know they had stolen it. They capture video of two people in their home, discussing whether or not they can get away with selling the stolen laptop on eBay. The GPS provides the location, and using the video as evidence, police obtain a conviction.
Would it? Let’s vary the picture a bit: one of Blake Robbins’ classmates leaves his computer unattended at an Internet café while he uses the restroom, and the same thieves take it. The police ask the Lower Merion district if there are any means to track the stolen laptop, and are informed of the by-now-notorious security software and webcam capabilities – which the IT guys (I’m sorry, but I’m getting a chuckle out of the fact one of them is named Pervix) use in conjunction with the cops. Is that a violation of Fourth Amendment rights?
Not that it really matters, but do we know that the school’s IT people are guys? (There is a guy in that webinar that was linked earlier, but that was not made this year.)
Well, in your new scenario, entrapment goes out the window, because law enforcement officers had no part in creating the conditions under which the thief was induced to steal.
No, it would not. The undercover police officer seemingly leaving themselves vulnerable to your decision to commit a crime is not entrapment. If a second undercover officer was hanging around trying to talk you into taking the laptop, then it would be entrapment.
As someone who has dealt with the technology departments of hundreds school districts for the last ten years, you’re right, it might not be a guy. It’s only about 95% likely.
Tao’s Revenge - The school claims that the security tracking “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).”
Your scenario doesn’t include the computer being reported missing, lost, or stolen.
