Staff Blog
So, um, did the kid make it up?
I didn't make Harriton High assistant principal Lindy Matkso's press conference/statement reading this morning, on account of the endless, degenerating hours of meetings that consume my Wednesdays, but from the Inky's account, it seems Matsko — who, according to the lawsuit filed by Blake Robbins last week, allegedly obtained a picture of Robbins supposedly involved in some sort of illicit act (later, we heard it was pill-popping, or maybe candy-eating) from the Webcam of the laptop the district issues students — simply, and vehemently, denied any wrongdoing, adding that she would never spy on students or punish them for stuff they did off school grounds. She took no questions.
In a voice that swelled and quavered with apparent anger, Harriton High School Assistant Vice Principal Lindy Matsko this morning decried the "many falsehoods and misperceptions" about her role in the Lower Merion school's webcam tumult sparked by a student's lawsuit.
"At no time have I ever monitored a student via a laptop webcam," said Matsko, who is in her 25th year working for Lower Merion School District, "nor have I ever authorized the monitoring of a student via a laptop webcam, either at school or in the home. And I never would."
Matsko, who was speaking for the first time since the suit was filed last week, did not take questions after the six-minute statement she delivered in the Center City office of her attorney, Dennis Abramson.
She said she has been the recipient of "numerous" mean and threatening emails.
Reading from a sheet of paper that shook in her hands, Matsko said allegations she participated in monitoring Harriton sophomore Blake Robbins in his home via the camera of his school-issued MacBook were "offensive, abhorrent and outrageous," her volume rising after every word.
OK, I understand that she can't answer questions. There is, indeed, a federal lawsuit. But her statement, like the one the school district itself issued Feb. 18, the day the lawsuit went public, raises more questions than it answers: Clearly, the school district had a system that allowed it to remotely activate a Webcam and snap a picture. The district has said it used such a device 42 times in 14 months, to catch laptop thieves. The district has also said that it made a mistake by not alerting parents about their ability to do so.
And at some point, Blake Robbins found out about this. He says it was when Matsko tried to punish him for allegedly popping pills at home, which he says were candies. According to the district, the only way it would have used its remote activated doohickey was if Blake's computer was reported stolen. That leaves, to my mind, three possibilities: 1.) Robbins' computer was reported stolen by someone, although the lawsuit says the computer in question was his, and the district has never alleged otherwise. 2.) There is no picture of Robbins, he made the whole thing up, and he and his family and their lawyers uncovered this Webcam thing through some other means, though one would presume that school district would have mentioned something about this in the last week. 3.) Robbins' computer wasn't reported stolen, the district took his picture anyway, and everything alleged in the lawsuit is basically true.
Am I missing something? I mean, I think the district needs to answer one question (among a great many, but for starters): Did it, in fact, have a picture of Blake engaged in some sort of wrongdoing, no matter how that image was obtained?
Matsko may well be scapegoated here; I don't mean to imply that she did something shady, because I really have no idea what's going on. I mean, seriously: No school official could be cavalier or dumb enough to think they could spy on kids and no one would ever be the wiser, right? I doubt it. But these stories aren't adding up. If the school district can come out and say that Blake Robbins is lying, why hasn't it done so? In lawsuits, people categorically deny charges all the time; it's not unusual or improper.
That leads me to believe there's an element of truth in what he's saying.
Anybody seeing this tale spin a different way? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
She says she didn’t do anything wrong. There are a lot of others who quite possible could have.
Read this for some intersting theories of what might have happened:
http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-high.html
“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. Listen at 35:47, when he says:
“you’re controlling someone’s machine, you don’t want them to know what you’re doing” -Mike Perbix
It isn’t until 37 minutes into the video till Perbix begins talking about the Theft Tracking feature, which causes the laptop to go into a mode where it beacons its location and silent webcam screenshots out to an Internet server controlled by the school.”
If the someone at the school thought the kid was doing something wrong (selling drugs) I have no doubt they would have used any means they though necessary to protect their student body no matter how wrong it might have been. They took a chance and got burned.
I’m curious whether the laptops “stolen” from school were never reported to police.
Yes, I can think of some other spins.
How about the kid’s own Facebook page, which I saw, that showed him smoking weed and drinking beer? Maybe someone saw that. You didn’t need ’spy” software.
How about the enormous debt this family–who lives in a $900 thousand+ house–owes to PECO, their snyagogue, dentist, the state, the feds, and the very township they are suing? They don’t pay their bills. They owed 30K to PECO alone. How come their power wasn’t turned off? By the way, their legal issues are all documented in an Inquirer story today.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20100225_Laptop_family_is_no_stranger_to_legal_disputes.html
How come this lawyer–who once represented another party in a suit against the Robbinses–is representing them now?
If the family was so concerned about this privacy issue, why didn’t they go to the police? FBI? Warn any other families?
And how come NOT ONE OTHER FAMILY has come forward to say their kid was spied on too?
If I’m not mistaken, it has been reported that his parents did not pay the $55.00 Insurance fee required to take the laptop off school grounds. If he did have it at home, it was against school policy and could certainly been considered at least “missing”
GetReal,
I haven’t seen that, but it’s entirely possible I just missed it. That would make sense, in at least justifying why they took the picture. I’ll poke around and see if I can find it.
Pleashttp://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20100225_Laptop_family_is_no_stranger_to_legal_disputes.htmle look at the Inquirer story on this family at
[...] Laptop family lives in Main Line mansion, doesn’t like to pay the power bill RELATED: So, um, did the kid make it up? RELATED: Breaking: Lower Merion School District admits it’s used Webcam “security feature” more [...]
Or the student took a picture of himself on the laptop and put it on facebook or it came up on the school server or when it synched with the school network.
Oh please….the kid probably have issues (and parents definitiely do) but that does not negate the issues with lower merion school district. Once they admitted they did that, they were done. Upper Merion also could have gotten the remote spying webcam/microphone software but their attorney said they would open up a world of problems if they did. But between evil spying laptops, students doe vs. lmsd, older issues of racism and inequality, why doesn’t fast eddie order the state to take over the school district? For more of their shenanigans from the cheerleaders check out these other blog post someone sent:
http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/node/4267
http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/node/4269
http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/node/4266
http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/node/4260