It appears that the 56,000 photos were recovered by a data recovery service. Does that imply the school deleted them to avoid detection, or could it be routine?
Although I’m glad to have withheld judgment, damn. I really was hoping nobody in such a position could possibly have been this stupid. And it’s not just one person, it seems. Wow.
If we’re talking “routine”, and if it was a typical surveillance application (where you wouldn’t be able to whip out a number like that), it’s FIFO. So, if 56,000 were gone, 56,000 new ones would be there.
I’m sure the program has been “cancelled” in a way totally not relating to the public knowledge of the program.
-Joe
One would think that if payment or insurance was lacking, the solution would be to call up the parents and ask for the funds, rather than to take sneak pics of their child.
Different strokes, man.
Forget the careers - people should go to jail over this. Big time. There are going to be a lot of emotionally damaged kids over this. Anyone who had a school laptop now has to believe that people were watching him/her during very private moments. And they’ll never know exactly which moments were recorded, and whether pictures of those activities are extant. This is about the worst kind of invasion of privacy you can imagine. It’s worse than pervs putting cameras in locker rooms, because at least that’s a semi-public space. But to be recording everything you do in your own home… That’s about as bad as it can get.
Word.
Man, if this had been done to me, they’d have hours of me jerkin’ it on video. Poor kids.
But maybe that would have covered up the lens.
There might well be local copies of the most recent pictures on the laptops. They It’d make sense to create a temporary file to be uploaded. A skilled forensics person could even find some of the ones deleted.
It doesn’t happen often, but you took the words right out of my mouth on this one, Sam.
It would really depend on the timing. Deleted within a week or so of collection would be routine. Deleted when parents and lawyers started making noise is a smoking gun.
80 missing laptops, 56000 pictures. That’s going to be 700 images per computer. With a 15 minute sample rate they’re looking at 175 hours total run time. A bit over 7 days if all at once.
Someone is boned. Likely several someones.
And probably on camera.
So what’s the over/under on the police seizing some of these administrators personal laptops and finding underage teen nudity?
That what the pictures said!
The number of instances of the tracking software being activated is up from 42 (original claim) to 80 (claimed a couple days ago) and is now at 146. Some of the laptops were taking pics for six months straight. Apparently there was no set of procedures or safeguards in place to regulate when a laptop would be set off and equally no safeguard to make sure the surveillance was turned off once a laptop was recovered. Whoever thought this whole scheme was a good idea probably needs a sound beating.
Taking a further leap into speculation: At least one of the people involved in this will be found to have hardcore child porn on his computer.
What is also unfortunate is that this incredible stupidity will surely cost the school tremendously.
Including, possibly, having to bear the entire cost of this mess without insurance (warning - PDF): the school’s insurer, Graphic Arts Mutual, has filed a declaratory judgment suit seeking to be relieved of the duty to defend Lower Merion or pay any judgment resulting from the spying.
No. What’s unfortunate is that it’s going to cost the taxpayers in the school district tremendously. What’s unfortunate is the effect on the student’s education as the school’s budget in the future is likely to be severely stressed by the need to pay out a well-deserved punitive settlement.
What’s appalling is that I believe that some of the people actually involved in making this decision may not even be civilly accountable for their actions, let alone criminally accountable. I’m sure as shit not holding my breath to see them having to make any substantive sacrifices.
While not the same thing - you might want to take a look at the idiocy involved with the Phoebe Prince suicide case. The prosecutor is perfectly willing to bring criminal charges against the kids involved in the harassment, including that lovely catch-all “denying civil rights.” But while she asserts that the administration and faculty were appalling ineffective, and that their lack of action was greatly disturbing, not one person in actual authority is going to be facing so much as an official slap on the wrist.
Oh, yeah, in that suicide case? Massachusetts has a law that makes it impossible to sue the administrators for civil damages, either.
Some lessons are expensive, and that’s a good thing. School districts are in charge of educating young people, and part of that education is teaching kids how to project into the future the likely consequences of present actions. It’s patently obvious that this school district didn’t do even the tiniest fraction of the legwork necessary to administer this program and now they have their balls in a cleft stick–well boo-hoo and too bad. Kids who do numb shit often end up in juvie hall or adult jail with their lives ruined, why should adults who’re in charge of teaching kids to know better get a cushier deal? Seriously, all this nonsense to prevent a few overpriced laptops from getting stolen, how retarded is this? If they’d bought generic PCs instead of Macs in the first place they’d have spent MAYBE $500/laptop and that kind of investment just doesn’t require elaborate theft prevention measures. Maybe a passive tattletale or remote access permanently enabled so a REAL PERSON can access the laptop in REAL TIME to see where it is and who’s using it–but installing an active surveillance system that takes webcam pictures given to teenagers to use at home? Gosh, who could POSSIBLY have foreseen that going wrong? :rolleyes: