SPYCAM UPDATE: Harriton H.S. e-mail sent today...

[PCIntern]

Transcript of Remarks by Special Outside Counsel from the 4/19 Board Meeting

Hank Hockeimer, the former federal prosecutor who is leading the internal investigation of the laptop litigation, provided preliminary findings to the LMSD School Board at a public meeting on Monday, April 19, 2010. A full report will be provided to the Board on May 3,following the conclusion of a comprehensive investigation of more than two months. To view the meeting from Monday night in full, click here.The following is a transcript of a presentation of preliminary findings.
Good evening everybody. As David stated my name is Hank Hockeimer. I'm a partner with the law firm Ballard Spahr. I'm here tonight to give - sorry, there is a laptop in the way here - a bit ironic - I'm here tonight to give a preliminary report to the community relating to our investigation. We will, within the next two weeks, have a complete report-a complete written report-that will detail all of our findings. It will also detail the methodology that we used, as well as L3 Communications, a computer forensic and security firm that was hired to assist us in this investigation.

I want to say a couple things first about the charge that we have from this Board. We were told to conduct a thorough and comprehensive investigation, to leave no stone unturned and to get to the bottom of what happened. There was no effort in any way to impede what we have been doing, the Board has been completely cooperative and we appreciate that. We have interviewed over 30 witnesses, we have reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents, which primarily consisted of e-mails, and the L3 team has reviewed - I think it's something like 17 or 18 terabytes of information. I'm not a computer person but I know that's a lot of information - and to that end we have been able to develop, at this point, today being April 19, which is two months to the day that I was first contacted about this matter, we have been able to develop certain facts.

Before I get into the details I want to make sure people understand the nature of the LANRev system. The LANRev software application system primarily was purchased in the spring of 2007 by the District in order to push out updates to laptops in the field. So, instead of bringing in laptops individually and loading up software packages or patches or anything like that, the LANRev system enabled the District to push out, in a wireless way, updates to the laptops in the field.

A component of the LANRev software application was the tracking feature. The tracking feature has three elements to it. There is an IP address element meaning that, if you manually check off that box, the LANRev tracking feature will track down the IP address of a particular laptop in the field. The laptop will send a heartbeat, essentially, to the central LANRev database and notify it where it is via the IP address. The second box that can be checked is the screenshot box. What that will do is that in certain increments it will take a screenshot of the laptop, depending on whatever is in front of it, every certain period of time. And, in addition, the final box that is checked is the webcam box and the webcam box is the webcam feature is just that, it's a webcam and the default setting is fifteen minutes, so every 15 minutes, there is a screenshot taken, there is a webcam photo taken and an IP address taken. And I think that's important to know because what we have not seen in our investigation is any effort to manipulate or to utilize the LANRev system in any kind of intentional or purposeful way. The one concern we had when we got involved in this thing was can you set it to such a low setting as far as time period, that you can try, in real time, to take pictures of somebody. We have not seen any evidence of that. For the most part, if not exclusively, the settings were always at the 15-minute intervals.

So, in 2008 and 2009 the "One-to-One" laptop program was rolled out at Harriton High School and there was approximately 791 I believe, 789 I'm sorry, laptops that were issued to Harriton students. 2009-2010, with the addition of Lower Merion, there were 2,291 laptops issued. During that period of time, there were, in 2008-2009, there were 98 total activations we've been able to uncover. Sixty-eight of those were IP only addresses, meaning no screenshots, no webcam photos. And that leaves 30 activations and of those we've been able to find 25 that resulted in any images. In 2009-2010, we've seen approximately 48 now that number, and we, our investigation, as I stated, continues, and that 48 number may include some duplicates, meaning that a certain computer could have been mistakenly activated more than once. But in those 48 activations we have approximately 23 that resulted in images.

Now, today the Inquirer reported a number of total images that have been recovered. That number is approximately 56,000 total images for the two years combined. That number, though, consists of approximately 38,000 images that relate to six laptops that were stolen from the Harriton High School gym in September of 2008. There were six laptops that were stolen, and tracking was activated on September 19 for four of them, and September 22 for two of them. And the Lower Merion police were involved and ultimately people, at least one person, was prosecuted for that and the laptops were recovered. Those trackings went on for months, for a few months, and that's why the result of 38,000 images occurred. But again, those were stolen, police reports were filed and ultimately those laptops were recovered. The remaining images-and there are still significant images-involved laptops that were reported lost or missing, and this is where the significant mistake has been made. And that is that, when a laptop was reported lost or missing, tracking was activated. Frequently the way it would work is that a student would notify an administrator who would notify in turn, either one of the two people who were authorized to initiate tracking, or a building tech - and there are two building techs, there is one at Harriton and one at Lower Merion - the building tech, in turn, would be notified and then that person would notify the two people who were authorized to initiate tracking. What our investigation thus far has revealed is that the vast majority of trackings were prompted by a legitimate request to track, meaning that student reports laptop lost or missing, tracking is initiated. But then, at that point, when the student may have recovered the laptop, the communication back to the person tracking it is not made to turn it off. And so we have a handful of situations, in fact there are five or six situations that add up to 12,000 to 13,000 images, where on those five laptops those five students tracking was on for clearly too long a period of time. We have not seen any intentional or manipulative behavior in connection with those, but clearly those trackings should have been turned off earlier.

Part of our charge here is to develop recommendations and policies going forward and we're in the process of doing that. We had a meeting today with representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union and also counsel for possible interveners in this case to fashion some type of protective order, some type of permanent injunctive relief, and policies and procedures to prevent anything like this from happening again. It's important, it's critically important, for the District to learn from this situation and also to provide transparency for our investigation. We also have suggested to the federal judge who has been assigned to this case, and he has agreed to this mechanism, whereby a federal magistrate will have the particular students and their families come in and review any images that have been captured by the LANRev system, and again images is defined as pictures and screenshots. We are meeting with the magistrate on Wednesday morning and we are hoping to discuss with the magistrate the logistics and the procedures behind that process.

Let me just make sure I've covered what I need to cover. You know, again because of some of the information that came out at the end of the week - the end of this prior week - it really dictated to us that we needed to come out and provide some additional information. The investigation is continuing; we do not expect any significant or material change to the numbers that we have given tonight. We will, however though, go through the history of the use of this software, identifying any mistakes that have been made in the course of implementing this, and also again, suggesting policies and procedures going forward to ensure protection of District assets, but at the same time, protecting the privacy rights of all students of the District.

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NOW, they're going to protect 'privacy rights'...GREAT!

[Richard Steele]

1. That whole message reads like a giant "wink wink, nudge nudge"...

K&R