Andrew Emmons, the Boonville Middle School teacher accused of placing a hidden camera inside a faculty restroom, officially turned in his resignation Oct. 4.
“This has been a very difficult thing,” said Schneider. “The staff at Boonville Middle School has handled this very well. But it is tough. This is a violation of people’s privacy and it was done by a co-worker, someone you should be able to trust.”
Schneider confirmed multiple victims had been secretly videotaped, but said he could not discuss the total number or their ages.
“While Mr. Emmons has resigned and his employment is terminated, this is still an ongoing investigation with law enforcement,” Schneider said. “As far as I know, there was just one camera. But as far as locations, I can’t comment on that at this time.”
A Boonville Middle School female staff member found a camera Sept. 13 and reported it to the school’s principal, William Wilder. The police were contacted, and officers and Wilder attempted to see what images the camera had captured.
“They played the video, and it’s my understanding that video actually showed the perpetrator placing the camera in the faculty restroom,” Schneider said.
Emmons had been a sixth-grade teacher at the school. He had been suspended without pay since the recording device was discovered. All of the victims have now been notified.
“I can tell people this: If they have not been notified by law enforcement or school officials, then their child or their spouse or whoever is not a victim,” Schneider said. “We have notified the victims, and informed them that they had been found on video of some sort.”
Schneider said the school corporation had its school counselors ready to help any of the victims, and would provide any resources necessary. He said the school’s staff has been working to make school days as normal as possible.
“Obviously, when charges are filed, that is going to open this up again,” he said. “Everyone is doing as well as can be expected. But this leaves a black eye on the school, the school corporation and the town.”
Emmons and his attorney met with Schneider on Oct. 3 to review the matter. As a result of that conference, Schneider sent a written recommendation to the school board to terminate Emmons’ contract. However, Emmons resigned the following day. Schneider is now in the process of notifying the state to request Emmons’ teaching license be revoked.
No criminal charges have been filed against Emmons, but Schneider said he expects charges to be filed soon. When that happens, Schneider hopes to be able to fully explain all of the details of the case. He said it has been difficult not being able to be completely open.
“I look forward to the day that we can come out with law enforcement and talk about the specifics of it, and we will,” he said. “I do understand parents’ and community members’ frustration. I promise we are doing everything we possibly can. We want to do everything we can so the perpetrator of this crime can be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
A New Jersey family who spent its summer vacation in New York’s East Hampton was shocked to find their luxury rental studded with hidden cameras, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.
The family claimed in court documents that they noticed cameras pointing directly at the beds in multiple bedrooms in the house when they were four days into their weeklong rental.
They allege that all nine members of the family who stayed at the home, including three young children, were filmed in the nude, in addition to the “bedroom activities” of the adults.
The family members are referred to only by their initials in the court documents in order to protect the identities of three minors who were filmed, according to the suit. Judd Burstein, attorney for the plaintiffs, said they wished to remain anonymous.
East Hampton police would not confirm reports that they are investigating criminal charges against Donald Torr, the owner of the home. The lawsuit alleges that Torr broke federal laws by filming sexually explicit footage of the minors, in addition to privacy laws.
Torr, a resident of Celebration, Fla., declined to speak with ABC News when reached by phone today. He told the New York Post that the cameras were installed to prevent squatters and others who might break into the home, and did not know children had been filmed.
According to court documents, the vacationers called Suffolk County police, who searched the home the following day with a search warrant and found cameras hidden in walls, heating and air conditioning ducts, and electrical outlets and pointed directly at guests in the shower, hot tub area and multiple bedrooms, according to the lawsuit.
Torr allegedly admitted to viewing all of the cameras’ footage over an internet connection when the family confronted him with a phone call.
“Defendant admitted that he was able to view any video that was recorded remotely through the internet,” the document reads. “Defendant, whoever, falsely claimed that all of the cameras, including those pointed towards beds and the one in the shower, had been installed only for security purposes.”
The family packed up and left their rental three days early, and were refunded their money by Torr, according to documents. The rental cost $6,500 for the week, according to the rental website.
The family is now seeking more than $4 million in damages.
The Suffolk County district attorney did not return calls for comment.
UNION CITY, Tenn.—A tanning salon employee says his iPhone just happened to be hidden on a ledge near the ceiling. A woman who was tanning in a private booth says she found the phone with the camera on and pointed toward her.
Police charged Dustin Lee Swinney, 23, of Union City, Tennessee with unlawful photography in violation of privacy. He’s now out of job and sharing his side of a story that even he admits is hard to believe.
He claims he used the camera phone to look for dirt while cleaning the ledge that he couldn’t normally see, and that he accidentally left the camera on, and pointed toward the tanning bed.
His boss, coworker, and police aren’t buying that story. Local 6 gave him the chance to explain.
He says it’s pure coincidence that his iPhone camera was on and in the perfect spot to catch the unsuspecting woman as she tanned.
He said he used his phone’s camera feature to look for candy wrappers atop the ledge.
He said he was recording because that’s the only way to use the flash.
But the flash on our iPhone works just fine when not recording.
“Well maybe I just don’t know my iPhone well enough to know that,” Swinney said.
The victim snatched the phone from the ledge and took it out to the parking lot where she watched the video and called police. That’s when Dustin Swinney came out to the parking lot and said he would delete all the video if she gave back the phone.
Union City Interim Police Chief Perry Barfield said the woman did the right thing by not handing over the phone.
“He probably thought he could cover up his tracks by getting the phone and possibly deleting images from the phone,” Barfield said.
“It was an accident, I’m sorry. I’m sorry it happened the way it did,” Swinney said.
Swinney told Local 6 while most people don’t believe him, his girlfriend and parents do. Right now he’s depending on support from his church and looking for another job.
Police fear there could be others but confiscated his phone and his laptop and say they couldn’t find any other video. They hope this was an isolated incident. The owner of tunnel tanning released this statement;
Upon learning of the allegations, Mr. Swinney’s employment was immediately terminated. We are also cooperating fully with the Union City Police Department in their investigation.
Verizon Wireless will soon start spying on its customers.
The telecom giant recently updated its privacy policy, allowing the company to share more data with advertisers, and several customers have equated the change with spying.
Verizon will know what websites you visit and how frequently you visit them as well as the location of your phone. The company said that its new monitoring practices will allow it to provide customers with more relevant ads.
“A local restaurant may want to advertise only to people who live within 10 miles, and we might help deliver that ad on a website without sharing information that identifies you personally.”
Getting customers connected with local businesses sounds like a good idea, but several people are concerned about Verizon’s spying practices. According to iDigital Times, the tracking function is enabled by default on Verizon phones.
If you don’t want to let Verizon use your data for marketing purposes, you can log into your account and go to Verizon’s privacy center. On that page, you should find a button that allows you to opt out of the program.
Verizon said in a press release that its new spying practices will allow it to give businesses a detailed look at their customers. For example, Verizon will be able to determine the users demographic (age, gender, race), their interests (pet owner, tennis player), and their most frequent locations (which could help companies determine billboard placements).
What do you think about Verizon’s new spying practices? Are you comfortable with the telecom giant knowing your web history and your location? Are you looking forward to seeing more relevant ads?
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A White House-ordered review of security risks posed by suppliers to U.S. telecommunications companies found no clear evidence that Huawei Technologies Ltd had spied for China, two people familiar with the probe told Reuters.
Instead, those leading the 18-month review concluded early this year that relying on Huawei, the world’s second-largest maker of networking gear, was risky for other reasons, such as the presence of vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit.
These previously unreported findings support parts of a landmark U.S. congressional report last week that warned against allowing Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE Corp to supply critical telecom infrastructure.
But it may douse speculation that Huawei has been caught spying for China.
Some questions remain unanswered. For example, it is unclear if security vulnerabilities found in Huawei equipment were placed there deliberately. It is also not clear whether any critical new intelligence emerged after the inquiry ended.
Aided by intelligence agencies and other departments, those conducting the largely classified White House inquiry delved into reports of suspicious activity and asked detailed questions of nearly 1,000 telecom equipment buyers, according to the people familiar with the probe.
“We knew certain parts of government really wanted” evidence of active spying, said one of the people, who requested anonymity. “We would have found it if it were there.”
White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden declined to comment on the review. A spokesman for Huawei said the company was not familiar with the review but it was not surprised that no evidence of Huawei espionage was found.
Last week’s report from the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Intelligence Committee noted the potential for spying through Huawei gear installed to manage traffic on wireless networks. The committee also criticized Huawei’s leadership for failing to provide details about its relationships with Chinese government agencies.
Huawei, whose chief executive officer, Ren Zhengfei, founded it 25 years ago after he was laid off by the Chinese army, has rejected the House report as unfair and inaccurate. China’s Commerce Ministry has also called the accusations “groundless.”
“Huawei is a $32 billion independent multinational that would not jeopardize its success or the integrity of its customers’ networks for any government or third party. Ever,” the company’s U.S. spokesman Bill Plummer said on Wednesday.
The House Intelligence Committee’s report did not present concrete evidence that either Huawei or ZTE have stolen U.S. data, although it said a classified annex provided “significantly more information adding to the committee’s concerns” about the risk to the United States.
Speculation has swirled about the contents of the secret annex, and both committee Chairman Mike Rogers and some intelligence officials have hinted at evidence that Huawei has participated in espionage.
Rogers, the report’s lead author, stoked concerns by saying some customers had seen routers sending off “very valuable data” to China.
But in the one case a committee staff member pointed out to Reuters, the victim – Leap Wireless International Inc – said that while some of its computers were infected with viruses earlier this year, an investigation found no evidence that the infection was deliberate or that confidential data had been stolen.
PREVENTIVE MEASURES
Pressed about why the White House review and unclassified version of the House Intelligence Committee report had not turned up a “smoking gun,” two officials familiar with intelligence assessments said U.S. agencies were most concerned about the capability for future spying or sabotage.
Similarly, Chris Johnson, a former CIA analyst on China, said he had been told that the White House review had come up empty on past malicious acts. Nonetheless, officials emerged from the review with “a general sense of foreboding” about what would happen if China asked Huawei for assistance in gathering intelligence from U.S. customers, he said.
“If the Chinese government approached them, why would they say no, given their system?” Johnson said.
Preventing state spying through technology is a high priority for U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, which is lobbying for legislation to raise private-sector security standards and readying a more limited executive order along those lines.
Reuters interviews with more than a dozen current and former U.S. government officials and contractors found nearly unanimous agreement that Huawei’s equipment poses risks: The company could send software updates that siphon off vast amounts of communications data or shut them down in times of conflict.
More than anything else, cyber experts complained about what they said was poor programming that left Huawei equipment more open than that of rivals to hacking by government agents or third parties.
“We found it riddled with holes,” said one of the people familiar with the White House review.
At a conference in Kuala Lumpur last week, Felix Lindner, a leading expert in network equipment security, said he had discovered multiple vulnerabilities in Huawei’s routers.
“I’d say it was five times easier to find one in a Huawei router than in a Cisco one,” Lindner said.
Lindner, who spent months investigating Huawei code, said the vulnerabilities appeared to be the result of sloppy coding and poor procedures, rather than any deliberate attempt at espionage. Huawei is looking into his findings, he said.
Some in the U.S. government, however, have said the alleged poor security practices at Huawei could be a deliberate cover for future attacks.
One computer scientist, who helped conduct classified U.S. government research on Huawei routers and switches four to six years ago, told Reuters that he had found “back doors” that his team believed were inserted with care.
He said these back doors could enable attackers to install malicious software that would make critical government networks inoperable, allow hackers to gain entry into highly classified systems and enable them to spy on all traffic. He requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the research.
Huawei has denied the existence of these back doors. Plummer also noted that any vendor’s gear could be targeted by hackers, and the company would address any vulnerabilities it finds.
The United States’ closest allies have rendered a split verdict on Huawei. Earlier this year, Australia barred Huawei from becoming a contractor on the country’s National Broadband Network, and Canada said last week that Huawei could not bid to help build a secure national network. In Britain, however, a spokesman for the Cabinet Office said Huawei’s products were fully vetted and did not represent a security concern.
Dutch Ruppersberger, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and co-author of the report, told Reuters that the burden of proof had been on Huawei and ZTE, which cited Chinese government restrictions in limiting their responses.
“China has the means, opportunity, and motive to use telecommunications companies for malicious purposes,” Ruppersberger said.
Republican Rogers’ staff did not respond to questions about the contents of the classified annex or the White House review.
(Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Franciso, Jim Finkle in Boston, and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Additional reporting by Paul Eckert and Jim Wolf in Washington and Jeremy Wagstaff in Kuala Lumpur; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Lisa Von Ahn)
