School district settles webcam spying suit for $610000 - Computerworld

Computerworld - A suburban Pennsylvania school district accused of spying on students using school-issued laptops has agreed to pay $610,000 to settle litigation stemming from its controversial practice.

Under the proposed settlement, the Lower Merion School District will pay $185,000 to two high school students who had sued the district earlier this year for allegedly snooping on them. The remaining $425,000 will go to attorneys fees.

The proposed settlement was approved by the district's school board of directors Monday. It results from a "lengthy, court-ordered mediation" between all concerned parties, board President David Ebby said in a statement.

"Though we would have valued the opportunity to finally share an important, untold story in the courtroom, we recognize that in this case, a lengthy, costly trial would benefit no one," Ebby noted. The statement did not elaborate on what untold story Ebby was referring to.

The school district, in Ardmore, Pa., has been at the center of a huge controversy over its use of a specialized embedded software product for tracking stolen, lost or missing school-issued laptops. The district provided laptops to about 1,800 of its high school students, but did not inform them about the embedded tracking software, which could be used to remotely activate Webcams on the laptops.

In February, Blake Robbins, a district high school student, and his parents, filed a lawsuit against the school district accusing it of spying on him in his home. The lawsuit charged Lower Merion with remotely activating the Webcam on Robbins' laptop to take thousands of pictures of Blake and others members of his family, including some of Blake in his bedroom partially undressed, and some of him sleeping.

The lawsuit was filed after a school official accused Blake of selling drugs and taking pills based on a photograph captured by the school computer at his home. In court documents, lawyers for Blake accused Lower Merion officials of taking thousands of webcam photos and screenshots of numerous other students, many of whom had never reported their laptops as being missing or stolen.

An investigation conducted on behalf of the district later found that school-issued laptops had taken more than 30,000 photographs, using the activated tracking software.

In July, a second individual , Jalil Hassan, a former high school student from the same district, also sued, claiming that his laptop had snapped close to 500 photographs of him over a two-month period.

The school district itself vigorously denied it had spied on the students and claimed that the only reason it had installed the tracking software was to help it locate laptops reported as lost, missing or stolen.

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Mexican investigator probing lake shooting slain - The Associated Press

Mexican investigator probing lake shooting slainBy APRIL CASTRO and OLGA RODRIGUEZ – 46 minutes ago

AUSTIN, Texas — A Mexican police commander investigating the disappearance of an American tourist on a border lake plagued by pirates was killed, U.S. and Mexican officials said Tuesday.

Rolando Flores, the commander of state investigators in Ciudad Miguel Aleman who was part of a group investigating the reported shooting of David Hartley, was killed, said Ruben Rios, spokesman for the Tamaulipas state prosecutor's office.

Rios said authorities "don't know how or why he was killed. We don't have any details on how he died."

U.S. officials have said threats from drug gangs who control the area around Falcon Lake have hampered the search for Hartley.

Hartley's wife, Tiffany, says she and her husband were attacked by pirates on the lake on Sept. 30, while they were returning to the United States from Mexico on Jet Skis. Hartley was shot and presumably fell into the lake.

Lesley Lopez, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, who has been involved in the investigation, said U.S. authorities were "slightly concerned that it was someone who was working as a U.S. ally on this case."

U.S. officials, particularly Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and Hartley's family have been pressuring Mexico to step up the search for Hartley and determine what happened.

Fred Garza, chief deputy sheriff in Webb County, on the Texas-Mexico border, said the search was continuing Tuesday.

Perry was expected to comment later Tuesday.

Falcon Lake is a dammed section of the Rio Grande, 25 miles long and 3 miles across. Pirates have robbed boaters and fisherman on the Mexican side, prompting warnings to Americans by Texas state officials, but Hartley's death would mark the first violent fatality on the lake.

Tiffany Hartley said men on three speedboats fired on her and her husband as they were riding Jet Skis back from a trip to Tamaulipas to photograph a half-submerged church, and that her husband was shot in the head. She said she tried to retrieve his body and his Jet Ski but the pirates continued firing and she fled to the U.S. side. Zapata County, Texas, Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez has said he has an eyewitness who corroborates her account.

Dennis Hartley, David Hartley's father, expressed shock and regret at Flores' killing.

"I just, I'm in shock about this right now," he told The Associated Press from his Colorado home. "I really don't have any hope that David will be found. I really hate other people putting their lives at stake. We don't need more sons lost. If this is true, I'm just really heart broken that this happened."

The Mexican Foreign Ministry says it has been using federal, state and local resources, including the military and helicopters, to search for Hartley's body and opened an investigation. Over the weekend, authorities named two possible suspects.

That part of Tamaulipas state is overrun by violence from a turf battle between the Gulf Cartel and the Zeta drug gang, made up of former Mexican special forces soldiers, and both are battling the Mexican military.

Last week, Perry said he expected Mexican President Felipe Calderon to call him within 48 hours to report a body had been found and that even the threat of drug gang violence against search crews was no reason to halt the efforts.

Rodriguez reported from Mexico City. Associated Press Writer P. Solomon Banda contributed to this report from Denver.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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The Caucus: Schwarzenegger Endorses Crist - New York Times

Modern love is expressed via Twitter, and so it was that California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, tweeted his affection for Florida’s governor and embattled Senate candidate, Charlie Crist, while in London.

Mr. Schwarzenegger has traveled extensively through Russia and Europe over the last week, tweeting travel updates and photos, and now, endorsements.

The governor, a fierce independent who many Republican candidates would run from this year, tweeted: “I endorse Gov @charliecristfl for Senate. Great leader, works with both parties, and our country needs someone like him in DC right now.”

Mr. Crist (7,183 followers) tweeted back to his bud Mr. Schwarzenegger (1,814,804 followers): @Schwarzenegger – “I’m honored to receive your endorsement. Thank you for the kind words my friend.”

Mr. Crist is flanked by a Republican and Democratic challenger and is running as an independent. Mr. Schwarzenegger and Mr. Crist have raised money for one another’s campaigns and have worked together on energy and environmental issues in the past.

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