Administrator agrees to surrender computer in Web cam case

The Lower Merion School District administrator who had the ability to activate the Web cams on students' laptops agreed Friday to let investigators inspect her personal computer to see if she used the remote tracking program at home, according to an attorney in the case.

The administrator, information systems coordinator Carol Cafiero, has also agreed to sit for a second deposition, attorney Mark Haltzman said. Cafiero had previously refused to answer lawyers' questions about her role in the now-infamous tracking program.

Haltzman declined to discuss the specifics of the agreement or say when Cafiero would surrender her computer or to whom. Cafiero's attorney, Charles Mandracchia, did not immediately respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment.

But the agreement, reached after a teleconference Friday with a federal judge, clears one roadblock in resolving the dispute between the school district and Haltzman's client, Blake Robbins, the Harriton High School sophomore who contends in a lawsuit that the district used the Web cams on school-issued computers to spy on students and violated his civil rights.

Cafiero's role in the program has been one of the subplots to emerge since Robbins and his parents filed their claim in February, sparking an uproar over the program, an FBI probe and new proposed legislation.

District officials have since acknowledged serious mistakes in the use of the tracking program, which let technicians remotely shoot Web cam photos and capture screen images on the nearly 2,300 laptops they gave to their students at their two high schools. Officials say the Web cams and screen shot software were turned on 80 times since September 2008, almost always to locate a lost or stolen laptop.

In a few instances, school employees activated the program if a student took a laptop out of school without paying the required $55 insurance fee, as Lower Merion officials say Robbins did last fall.

Cafiero and Michael Perbix were the only school employees authorized to activate the tracking system. Perbix previously answered questions in a legal deposition, but Cafiero refused, instead asserting her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Haltzman had said she also refused to turn over her computer. In a motion filed last week, he asked U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois to order Cafiero to surrender the machine or punish her if she refused to cooperate.

That motion said Cafiero "may be a voyeur" and may have viewed some student images on her home computer.

It also cited excerpts of e-mails between Cafiero and a school district technician in which both seem to marvel about the technology, first implemented in September 2008, that let them locate and track missing and lost laptops. When turned on, the Web cams snapped a new photo and software copied the laptop screen every 15 minutes.

It was "like a little LMSD soap opera," the technician allegedly wrote in one e-mail cited in the motion.

"I know, I love it!" Cafiero replied, according to the motion.

Cafiero's attorney, has insisted Cafiero never viewed any of the Web-cam photos from home and that she never turned on the system unless she was asked or authorized to do so by district officials. Mandracchia also said the excerpts cited by Robbins in his motion were from e-mails Cafiero and the other employee wrote in September 2008, when the district first implemented the new software and used it to track six laptops that had been stolen from Harriton High School.

In a reply filed this week, Mandracchia called Robbins' contentions false and "a scandalous, malicious and abusive attack" on his client. He also said that Robbins had "no legitimate expectation of privacy" from the camera on his school-issued laptop because he had damaged two other school laptops and failed to pay the required $55 insurance fee.

Cafiero met earlier this week with the FBI, which is investigating if any criminal laws were broken.

Cafiero and Perbix have been suspended with pay pending the outcome of an internal investigation by the district.

A full report on that investigation is due May 3.