Webcam

The family of the teenager in the middle of Lower Merion's "webcamgate" controversy travels in good company. You can tell from a snapshot on the father's Facebook page. Michael E. Robbins is beaming inches away from a smiling Hillary Rodham Clinton. Outside the family's Penn Valley home yesterday, Holly Robbins wouldn't talk about their lawsuit against the Lower Merion School District - but chuckled when asked about the photo of her husband with the secretary of state. She said it was taken at a fund-raiser during Clinton's 2008 run for president.

TORONTO - A 29-year-old man has been charged with the murder of a college student whose frantic boyfriend in China watched though a webcam as she struggled with an attacker, police said yesterday. Brian Dickson was charged with first-degree murder, Toronto police spokesman Tony Vella said. Dickson was scheduled to appear in court this morning. Police did not release any more details but asked the media not to publish any photos of Dickson, saying it could compromise the investigation.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - A Rutgers University student gave some of the most damaging testimony yet Wednesday in a former classmate's trial for allegedly using a webcam to spy on his roommate's intimate encounter with another man. Lokesh Ojha described helping the defendant, Dharun Ravi, adjust his webcam so he could get a clear view of his roommate's bed. Authorities say that by then, Ravi had already spied on roommate Tyler Clementi once and...

"Webcamgate," the Lower Merion School District soap opera about two teens and two school-issued laptops that spied on them, was never supposed to be about money. But that's exactly what brought the whole screwy saga to a close yesterday - a boatload of money. The district's Board of School Directors voted unanimously to pay $610,000 to settle lawsuits filed by the families of Harriton High sophomore Blake Robbins and Lower Merion High graduate Jalil Hasan, both of whom were unknowingly photographed scores of times at home by webcams on Apple MacBooks.

The letter from Lower Merion school administrators delivered the news three weeks ago - her son had been secretly monitored by the webcam on his school-issued laptop. But only when Fatima Hasan saw the evidence did the scope of the spying on her son Jalil become apparent. There were more than 1,000 images surreptitiously captured by the computer - 469 webcam photographs and 543 screen shots. All were evidence in the case against the Lower Merion School District and its now-abandoned electronic monitoring policy.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - A man who witnesses say was watched via webcam kissing a male Rutgers University student who later committed suicide told jurors Friday that he saw the camera pointed in their direction while they were being intimate. "I had just glanced over my shoulder, and I noticed there was a webcam that was faced toward the direction of the bed," the man, identified only as M.B., said in court, later noting that there was no light indicating it was on. "Just being in a compromising position and seeing a camera lens, it just stuck out to me. " The man testified that he had met Tyler Clementi in August 2010 through a social-networking site for gay men and said he texted repeatedly after their third and final rendezvous.

HACKENSACK, N.J. - The New Jersey Attorney General's Office is reviewing the case of a Rutgers University freshman who jumped from the George Washington Bridge last week after images of him having sex with another man were broadcast on the Internet, and will decide whether to prosecute the incident as a bias crime, a spokesman said. A body that was pulled from the Hudson River on Wednesday was identified yesterday as that of Tyler Clementi, a 2009 graduate of Ridgewood High School. The death was ruled a suicide.

Lower Merion School District has resolved another lawsuit with a former student over its secret monitoring of student laptops. The district reached a settlement last week with Joshua Levin, a 2009 graduate of Harriton High School. In a lawsuit filed in June in federal court, Levin contended the suburban school district violated his civil rights by capturing nearly 8,000 webcam photos and screen shots from his school-issued laptop between September 2008 and March 2009. Levin's lawyer said Wednesday the settlement proposal was higher than the $10,000 payments offered to other affected students but he would not discuss details.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday closed their investigation into Lower Merion School District's secret use of software to track student laptops, saying they found no evidence that anyone intentionally committed a crime. The decision, announced by U.S. Attorney Zane Memeger, ended a six-month probe by the FBI into allegations that district employees might have spied on students through webcams on their school-issued laptops. In a brief statement released by his office, Memeger didn't disclose details of the investigation, but said agents and prosecutors concluded that charges were unwarranted.

A federal judge Friday permanently barred the Lower Merion School District from using webcams or other intrusive technology to secretly monitor students through their school-issued laptops. The five-page injunction signed by U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois also requires the suburban district to adopt transparent and expansive policies by September to govern its student laptop program. It says Lower Merion can implement an alternative to webcam tracking to find missing or stolen computers, but only if the technology is "conspicuously disclosed" in a document signed by students and their parents.

The parents of a Rutgers University student who killed himself after his roommate used a webcam to see him kissing another man have decided not to sue the university or anyone else involved in the case, preferring to focus on the foundation started in Ryan Clementi's name. "They're just in a spot now where they have this opportunity - because of the fact that the media has made this case so well-known - to do some very good things through the foundation," Paul Mainardi, an attorney for Joseph and Jane Clementi of Ridgewood, N.J., said Friday.

WASHINGTON - A software program developed by a Pennsylvania company to track the locations of rented computers secretly collected confidential and personal information about consumers, including medical records, bank statements, and even webcam pictures of couples engaged in sex, the Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday in a settlement that bars eight companies from any further cyber-spying. The case involved seven rental companies and an Erie County, Pa., firm called DesignerWare L.L.C., which licensed its PC Rental Agent software to stores so they could shut off and recover computers that had not been returned in time or had been stolen.

Q: I'm a college student just starting my sophomore year. To make a few extra bucks, I've given some thought to being a webcam model during my spare time. A girl in my building has been doing it for a few years and makes out very well. I asked if she was worried about someone she knows seeing her, but she said you can block out users from states where you might know someone or even block users from the U.S. (or other countries) in general. I also asked if it was considered prostitution, but she said it's really no different from being a phone sex girl and that it's more acting than anything else.

Dharun Ravi, the former Rutgers University student convicted of using a webcam to spy on his gay roommate having a sexual encounter, is set to be released from the Middlesex County Jail on Tuesday, after completing 20 days of his 30-day jail term. Ravi, 20, received five days' credit for good behavior and five more for working while in jail, according to an Associated Press report. Such credits are standard for a 30-day sentence. The Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office plans to appeal the jail term imposed by Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman, which it contends was too lenient.

Dharun Ravi arrives at the Middlesex County Sheriff's Department in New Brunswick, N.J., to be fingerprinted and photographed before being driven to the county jail Thursday to serve a 30-day term. The former Rutgers student was convicted in the webcam spying case involving his gay roommate, who later committed suicide.

Dharun Ravi wants to go to jail. The former Rutgers University student convicted of spying on his gay roommate in a sexual encounter with a man has asked Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman for permission to begin serving the 30-day prison sentence Berman imposed last week rather than wait for the appeals process — which could take months — to be completed. Ravi is expected to be at a hearing before Berman in Middlesex County Court tomorrow morning to formalize the request.

By Lalita Clozel   This week, former Rutgers student Dharun Ravi was sentenced to 30 days in jail for using a webcam to spy on an intimate encounter between his roommate, Tyler Clementi, and another man shortly before Clementi committed suicide. Prosecutors, gay-rights advocates, and others have argued that the sentence is lenient given the charges. In fact, it's fairly harsh.   The Clementi case appears to fit a victim-vs.-bully narrative: A young, gay introvert is rudely exposed by his roommate and then jumps off a bridge.

Even the 30-day prison sentence given to a former Rutgers University student who used a webcam to secretly record his roommate having a romantic encounter with another man may have been too much. Many legal experts agree that Dharun Ravi, 20, probably wouldn't have been charged with any crime had not his victim, Tyler Clementi, committed suicide two days after the September 2010 incident. Even so, there was no evidence that Ravi's despicable act directly triggered Clementi's death.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Lawyers for Dharun Ravi, the former Rutgers University student convicted of spying on his college roommate kissing another man, have asked a Superior Court judge to overturn the jury's verdict, arguing among other things that the state's bias-intimidation law was misused. In a motion filed Tuesday, Steven Altman said that evidence in the case did not support the invasion-of-privacy conviction and that the bias-intimidation charges were unfounded. Altman asked Judge Glenn Berman to throw out the conviction or grant Ravi, 20, a new trial.

PLAINSBORO, N.J. - The former Rutgers University student convicted in a webcam spying case said that he was insensitive toward his gay roommate but not biased, and that he didn't think he was the reason for his roommate's suicide. Dharun Ravi, 20, was convicted last week of invasion of privacy and bias intimidation, a hate crime, after using a webcam to view a snippet of Tyler Clementi's dorm-room liaison with another man, then tweeting about it. The case drew huge attention when Clementi, 18, threw himself off the George Washington Bridge.