iSpy

WebCamGate is now a full-blown clusterf*ck
by Brainwrap
Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 09:00:04 PM PST

Mike Perbix. Write that name down, because it's sounding more and more like he might have to legally change his name after this mess, no matter what the outcome.

Four days after the story first broke, all hell has broken loose.

County prosecutors are investigating wiretap/privacy laws. Federal prosecutors are issuing subpoenas and the FBI is involved. The school district, meanwhile, has now admitted using the remote webcam spying system 42 times to locate lost or stolen laptops, has suspended the program and has retained outside counsel.

Oh, yeah, and the story now apparently involves Mike & Ike candy.

All of this you probably already knew if you've been following the story so far. However, there's more, so much more...

This guy is a computer security consultant who's done an excellent, in-depth investigation of his own into the technical side of just what exactly the IT people at Lower Merion actually did.

I'm not technically savvy enough to follow everything in this post, but I grok most of it, and holy shit is the administration of that school district in deep, deep trouble.

A few choice bits:

The Spy at Harriton High

The primary piece of evidence, already being reported on by a Fox affiliate, is this amazing promotional webcast for a remote monitoring product named LANRev. In it, Mike Perbix identifies himself as a high school network tech, and then speaks at length about using the track-and-monitor features of LanRev to take surreptitious remote pictures through a high school laptop webcam. A note of particular pride is evident in his voice when he talks about finding a way outside of LANRev to enable "curtain mode", a special remote administration mode that makes remote control of a laptop invisible to the victim.

...

Perbix discusses methods for remotely resetting the firmware lockout used to prevent jailbreaking of student laptops. A jailbreak would have allowed students to monitor their own webcam to determine if administrators were truly taking pictures or if, as the school administration claimed, the blinking webcams were just "a glitch."

...

his script allows for the camera to appear shut down to user applications such as Photo Booth but still function via remote administration: "what this does is prevent internal use of the iSight, but some utilities might still work (for instance an external application using it for Theft tracking"

What's the purpose of shutting down a camera for the user of the laptop but still making it available to network administrators? Ask yourself: if you wanted to convince someone that a webcam blinking was a glitch, would disabling the cameras help make your case?...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/2/23/839729/-WebCamGate-is-now-a-full-blown-clusterfuck

this dude is so boned.

Students of this school are being spied upon by teachers, including Assistant Principal Dan Ackerman. In another case Lower Merion School District spied on students even when they were at home. This is the risk every user of proprietary software has to accept. Switch to free software which doesn't have spying capabilities.

"They don't even realize we're watching"

"According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools' administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins's child was disciplined for "improper behavior in his home" and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines. " - Boing Boing

The video is from the PBS documentary Digital Nation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vza_bMuy42M

deplorable. I still say there could be prison time for someone. Nobody is this stupid. I suspect sick group-think.

Talk about showing their true fucking colors.

here's a link to the Stryde Hax blog post

the information we find out about this case, the more damning it becomes.

dmuth's blog - this person got access to one of the school computers and discusses the ways the computers were set up.

in the link above, to the blog kos quotes, the guy notes (and quotes) students - who were told they were not allowed to use their own computers. they were forced to use the school computer.

and THIS IS STRANGE

there was an ongoing case with a "student doe" in the school district and this person wonders if the reason the cameras came on randomly at so many different student's houses was b/c the school district was trying to find out who was suing them.

links here

which involves a few streets at this time.

it would be easy enough to see if "security" logs reveal activity for those particular residences.

it would be sort of bizarre if a school district used their tech to try to gain advantage in a trial and it turned into a national conservation on the invasion of privacy for individuals and families and employees too, for that matter.

what happened to the idea that people have a right to privacy?

because this happened in a relatively wealthy school district, it's like a "girl down the well" story, if you know what I mean.