Staff Blog
Webcam-gate, now with pictures!
I will try to process this story in my brain a little more and write something more cogent about it tomorrow. But, anyway, it seems Webcam-gate has gotten a little weirder: According to Blake Robbins' lawyers, the Lower Merion School District's super-spy Webcam gizmo shot pictures of the kid in his bed, sleeping — lots of them — and then zipped those photos around into the District's network.
And, it seems the lawyers have them.
In the filing, the Penn Valley family claims the district's records show that the controversial tracking system captured more than 400 photos and screen images from 15-year-old Blake Robbins' school-issued laptop during two weeks last fall, and that "thousands of webcam pictures and screen shots have been taken of numerous other students in their homes."
Weirder still:
Robbins, a sophomore at Harriton High School, and his parents, Michael and Holly Robbins, contend e-mails turned over to them by the district suggest [Carol] Cafiero [the system's administrator] "may be a voyeur" who might have viewed some of the photos on her home computer.
The motion says Cafiero, who has been placed on paid leave, has failed to turn that computer over to the plaintiffs despite a court order to do so, and asks a judge to sanction her.
Cafiero's lawyer Thursday night disputed the suggestion that his client had downloaded any such photos to her home computer. Lawyer Charles Mandracchia said Cafiero has cooperated with federal investigators and is willing to let technicians hired by the district examine her computer if the judge so orders.
He also said Robbins' attorney had never asked him for Cafiero's personal computer. "He's making this up because his case is falling apart," Mandracchia said.
PREVIOUSLY>> Inky: Laptop family lives in Main Line mansion, doesn't like to pay the power bill
PREVIOUSLY>> Blake Robbins' crime? Popping Mike-and-Ike's, he says.
I get that you’re trying to process the story and this isn’t the cogent version, but you misspelled the words “his” and “then”
“gizmo shot pictures of the kid in hie bed, sleeping — lots of them — and thin zipped”
just saying
Is this supposed to be a sidebar or something? It’s like 20 characters wide down the whole page.
In the article, Carol Cafiero says
“I know, I love it,” (meaning the pictures they get from kids’ computers) and therefore probably should be investigated for being a potential pedophile.
[...] students’ homes had only happened 42 times. It turns out what they meant was that there were 42 instances when they began intensive surveillance on the suspected stolen computers. This consisted of (among other things) transmitting a picture [...]
[...] PREVIOUSLY>> Webcam-gate, now with pictures! [...]
Dave, “I know, I love it,” was said in reply to “like a little LMSD soap opera,” which to me does not necessarily translate to what you seem to think it implies. She’s going to turn over her home computer anyway.