

The Spy at Harriton High - ryoshu
http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-high.html

======
adamt
The more I here about this story the scarier it sounds. It's something
straight out of 1984 and a complete invasion of privacy. Given that the
children were all minors - spying on them secretly outside of school raises
all sorts of moral and legal issues. Given that a student was reportedly
disciplined based upon these spy photos, presumably the teaching staff (and
not just one over-zealous & misguided IT bod) were fully aware of this.

This is the kind of thing the western media perceives as happening in
countries like China, not in America, the 'land of the free'

~~~
hga
While you've got a point, things like being the 'land of the free' aren't
self-enforcing.

We are and will continue to be that because the people responsible for this
will:

    
    
      Have their lives ruined.
    
      Be out a *lot* of money.
    
      Very possibly end up in prison.
    

Whereas we've recently seen that the PRC's response to people being upset that
shoddy school construction resulted in the injury or death of their child
(singular, One Child Per Family...) in the recent earthquake is to throw
_them_ in jail (or the like).

You're always going to have immoral people in a society who think they're
above the law, the critical thing is what you do to correct them and to
provide harsh object lessons for others who are tempted.

~~~
emmett
The PRC is a bad example for that; they're also likely to execute you:

[http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/china-executes-corrupt-
offi...](http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/china-executes-corrupt-
official/2007/07/10/1183833517978.html)

Nigeria or even Russia would probably be a better example; at least they're
not famous for killing people for corruption.

That said, your main point is completely correct: this is the system working.

~~~
hga
I don't know that they're _likely_ to, I get the impression that that is more
for show when things get too hot, too obvious. In this case it happened in
conjunction with events like the FDA advising us to throw out any PRC made
toothpaste. And his appeal was denied because "he was a 'great danger' to the
country and its reputation"
(<http://english.sina.com/china/p/2010/0210/303963.html>).

But you're right in part because they feel like they have to keep up
appearances and they will upon occasion reach up high, something that hasn't
been true in Russia for who knows how long. (Then again, we don't know if
Zheng Xiaoyu's real crime was losing a political battle.)

In this case I used the PRC as the counterexample because it was what the
parent commentator used. Another good one would be the place that inspired
_1984_ , where ever greater violations of civil liberties, due process and the
rule of law as well as privacy are taking place without noticeable push back.

I don't know what would be happening in the U.K. if some school there tried to
pull off this sort of nearly literal " _1984_ " (not quite, since the video
monitors in Oceania were explicitly there to spy on you, you just didn't know
when someone would be paying attention) ... but I wouldn't be sanguine.

~~~
starkfist
_I don't know what would be happening in the U.K. if some school there tried
to pull off this sort of nearly literal "1984"_

With all the video surveillance and things like ASBO laws in the UK, would a
story like this even be considered news?

~~~
hga
One wonders, but I hope it would still be a stretch from Anti- _Social_
Behaviour ("in a manner that caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm
or distress to one or more persons not of the same household as himself"
([http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/ukpga_19980037_en_2#pt1...](http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/ukpga_19980037_en_2#pt1-ch1-pb1-l1g1)
)) and cameras in public to a state required camera taking pictures of your
disrobed daughter in her bedroom.

------
elblanco
Really? Nobody's done a full forensic recovery of some of the kid's hard-
drives? Since it's a pretty good bet that at least one picture of a naked
minor was captured, the child porn cops should be all over the entire IT
infrastructure of that school and all of the employees involved.

~~~
blhack
Think about what would happen if I were to donate a pallet of laptops to my
niece's school, and then one of the parents accused me of spying on their kids
through the camera.

My house would be raided by a SWAT team and _everything_ electronic in it
would be taken...TVs hard-drives, computers, computer monitors, networking
equipment, routers, servers, camera equipment, _everything_.

The fact that this _isn't_ happening to the school administrators is hideous.
Not only did they admit that what they're being accused of is possible, they
demonstrated it!

~~~
elblanco
They also allegedly put in place official policy designed explicitly to
prevent students and parent from ensuring their safety and privacy. Disabling
the camera was an offense punished by expulsion.

To put that in perspective, I think most school districts punish students this
way if they bring a loaded rifle to school.

~~~
markkanof
Can you point to documentation of this?

It definitely sounds like something a school district would do. I am just
asking because I have seen this stated in a bunch of hacker news comments, but
haven't seen where this information came from.

~~~
elblanco
[http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-
high...](http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-high.html)

I can't find the official school policy from the school. But I haven't found
anything disputing this either.

------
seldo
I'm just waiting for the inevitable "creeper in the IT department used
spyware-laden laptops to take pictures of kids in their bedrooms".

Parents seem to have weird privacy expectations of their kids but you can be
sure they will scream bloody murder over a peeping tom.

~~~
noonespecial
I think by now its pretty obvious that every time there was a "glitch" and the
green light on the camera flashed, a picture was sent in. I've had macbooks
for years and I've _never_ seen the camera light blink like described.

Someone in that IT dept was collecting pictures of students. My moneys on Mr.
Perbix, thanks to his overly smug _god of IT_ attitude. This story is going to
get much worse before we see its end.

------
hga
See also this good guess at what actually happened, it even helps make sense
of the school's current claims:
[http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1559200&cid=3123...](http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1559200&cid=31234034)

------
mrj
That's insane. Although I find myself a little annoyed at the "can't disable
the camera" part.

A little electrical tape will fix that. Sometimes the simple solutions are the
best.

~~~
cheald
Presumably, doing something like that could be considered grounds for
punishment, based on the school's track record.

~~~
nfnaaron
Please, punish me for putting tape on my laptop at home. Please. Pretty
please.

~~~
icey
Are the laptops school property? I'm sure they could do something if they
were.

~~~
secret
Yeah, but how would they know? They would have to admit to the spying.

~~~
stavrianos
because they're so very shy about that.

~~~
secret
Ha! Good point.

------
protomyth
I am thinking that a custom OpenBSD firewall with some good logging and some
counter measures for specific monitoring software might not be a bad idea.

This story is just getting more wrong with each article.

~~~
hga
A good idea if the state ever hands you a laptop you _must_ use. Then again,
this was really in the students' faces, thanks to Apple wiring the camera and
its LED together.

~~~
brown9-2
I think that if a state ever starts mandating laptops, they'll probably be
mandating firewalls too.

~~~
hga
I don't think they can (in the US, at least, at least for now) mandate "no
firewalls" at your home. Ignoring that the state of the art as deployed
(Windows) makes that impractical.

I don't think we're even close to "only government approved firewalls at your
home".

------
rit
I grew up one township over from Lower Merion and am frankly shocked to hear
about all this going down (part of my home township is split between Lower
Merion and my school district)

It's the kind of absurdity that I wouldn't expect - it's a fairly wealthy
school district and I'm not surprised at the giving of laptops to students.
What I'm shocked at is that they seem to have completely failed to a) Hire
competent and reliable IT staff b) Internalized and understood the security
and liability issues at an administrative level.

~~~
covercash
UDSD? I can tell you that if they had the technical knowledge to implement
something like this, they certainly would have.

~~~
rit
Presumably you mean Upper Darby, in which case no, I was at Haverford.

I was out before Haverford started really implementing computers (at the time
they didn't even have computers for the teachers) but I suspect you're right -
if they could have done something like this they would have. I can recall a
very particular mentality among the administration there which was much along
the lines of 'protect the students from themselves at all costs'.

A shame, though.

------
Locke1689
I wish I had one of those in high school. It would have been fun to crack it
:)

Actually I probably would have gone after the remote administration server
too.

~~~
hga
Until you avoid expulsion only because there wasn't (yet) a policy saying you
couldn't jailbreak it, according to someone claiming to be a former student:
<http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/node/4216>

(Of course I'm wondering about the physical security on the hard drive (e.g.
an unrepairable seal); an obvious thing to do is to image the drive and
proceed from there. Although I'm sure that's explicitly against policy and
that they're looking for tool marks and so on.)

~~~
tsuraan
I haven't been keeping up on this much, but they were Mac laptops, right? Boot
it holding apple+T (I think), and it acts just like a normal firewire hard
drive. No physical damage required.

~~~
Nwallins
I think this was disabled with the EFI security password.

------
mcantelon
Anonymous is going to have fun with this chap.

~~~
iron_ball
When did 4chan become the Batman of the Internet?

~~~
allenp
They have a very long history of this behavior - probably as long as their
existence (anonymous's existence not 4chan's).

~~~
iron_ball
They have a very long history of being pranksters -- when did we start to
think of them as avenging antiheroes?

------
cakeface
My two 16 year old cousins go to Harriton. They were thrilled that they got
free laptops for use at school. I've frequently seen them or their friends
post videos to Facebook which makes me think that they know that if the light
is on, the webcam is working. I'm going to give my uncle a call tonight, I'm
sure that hes furious about this.

------
jrockway
I would just stick a piece of tape over the lens. Try writing software to
counter that.

(And the administration complains, their "evidence" is "I was trying to take a
picture of you getting undressed, but I got a piece of tape instead." Nobody
is going to say that, and so nobody is going to "call you" on your tape-
sticking.)

~~~
hga
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a zero tolerance (zero thought) policy
against "defacement", including putting "stickers" on the laptops. They
wouldn't say _really why_ you had to remove the tape, just that their policy
said so.

The plausibly deniable "oil or butter" on the lens suggested by bootload in
this topic sounds better to me, only problem there is that you wouldn't know
it was enough.

Maybe just rigorous do the tape while it's at home and you have to use it (for
classes where it's required).

~~~
bugs
Well tape especially something not as adhesive such as electrical tape can be
easily removed without defacing the computer, even half a post it note would
work as intended.

~~~
jrockway
A post-it note is what I had in mind originally.

If my kid got expelled from school for putting a post-it note over the spycam,
I would not hesitate to use my savings to sue the *&$# out of the school
district.

~~~
hga
Business opportunity: ant-spycam stickers with Post-It Note (TM) type adhesive
that have relevant for the environment graphics. I.e. I'm thinking of the
before my time IBM "Think", something small enough to fit the form factor and
that _should_ be unobjectionable in a school setting.

Any zero tolerance policy for "stickers" ought to fail in the aftermath of
this Charlie Foxtrot, especially as the nasty details come out or are
blatantly suppressed.

------
mynameishere
I have a netbook with a camera (my laptop is 95 percent closed) and it
sometimes creeps me out that it's watching me all the time (even though I'm
the only person who's ever used it.) If I had a school-issued computer, spying
is the first thing I would have thought of.

------
DavidSJ
This is really horrible.

But it's largely getting this level of attention because of the shock value
(ooh, pictures!). In fact, this is just one more predictable step in the
entrenchment of the police state that compulsory school by its nature is.

------
nym
Where's the Fox News at 11 story "Is your school taking pictures of your
children?"

... after all, they did cover pleaserobme.com

------
gojomo
If this is what school administrators do in the suburbs outside Philadelphia
-- birthplace of the constitution! home of the Liberty Bell! -- imagine what
countries like Libya or Nicaragua will try to do via their OLPC units.

~~~
rdtsc
> birthplace of the constition! home of the Liberty Bell! -- imagine what
> countries like Libya or Nicaragua will try to do

One of the major reasons countries like Nicaragua are what they are is because
the country born in the "suburbs outside Philadelphia -- birthplace of
constitution" has been sponsoring corrupt dictators there under the disguise
of some "war on drugs" or "war on communism". No this is not a diversion of
topic. The illusion (I think delusion) of liberty, equality, rule of law is
just that -- an illusion. Police, NSA, CIA have long had the ability to spy on
US citizen without any warrants. Our beloved President personally voted to
provide immunity to the telecom companies that just handed our privacy on a
silver platter to NSA, CIA and anyone who asked for it (Choicepoint &
friends). Then we turn around and are just "shocked" that a school would pick
up the cue from its big brother and run with it.

They are probably thinking: if the government is going to "protect" its
citizens by spying on them, we will "protect" our children even more by spying
on them harder!

------
cookiecaper
So I don't understand why this guy specifically is targeted. He posted some
scripts to disable the webcam for normal users, he talked about using the
software to do what it was intended to do. I'm not convinced that because he
didn't mention "theft recovery" until the middle of the podcast (granted, I
did not listen to the podcast), he must have been remotely controlling users'
computers. I don't see any evidence that incriminates Mr. Pibrix as anything
more than IT guy taking orders, and I think it's irresponsible to post
information like this without due process or at least offering Pibrix a chance
to respond.

~~~
hga
"I was just following orders" to set up a system that would _inevitably_
create child porn does not sound like a sufficient defense to me.

The software in question would phone home whenever the laptop was connected
from other than the school's LAN and start making pictures; at that point, the
only thing the system could do would be to allow retention of them or not.

~~~
rdtsc
His rational superiors should obviously start scapegoating him by now to
divert attention and blame. Their strategy at this point should be to paint
this guy as a deranged, power hungry nerd who took matters into his own hands.
They should fire him immediately.

(I am not saying whether it is his fault or someone above him ordered it, but
I am assuming his superiors are soulless bastards who can hire expensive
attorneys. He might be just as bad, but he cannot hire lawyers and PR firms).

~~~
olefoo
I was just talking about this with a friend of mine. He seems like the ideal
candidate to be thrown to the wolves.

I think the vice principal, and any other staff with _knowledge_ of the spying
capabilities should not be allowed to shove the blame onto the tech staff.
Everyone involved should be punished to the full extent of the law.

------
kvs
I loved the mechanical latches old Macbook Pro's had for this reason. Creepy
story and great reporting!

~~~
kvs
I meant the latches to close built-in iSight. Come on now, how can HN have
such a clueless member to think that the lid opens itself up:-)

~~~
stuff4ben
i have the original MacBook Pro, bought two weeks after the the line was
introduced in 2006. It has no latch to close the isight camera. You sure
you're not thinking of a different model? I don't think the older Powerbooks
had them either although I could be wrong.

