(La Porte County, IN) - The La Porte County Sheriff’s Office is trying to identify the source of pornography that wound up on the screens of viewers during a live broadcast of a public meeting Monday night on ZOOM.
Elected officials and other people in attendance, physically, were also subject to the graphic material on a monitor showing the ZOOM broadcast so everyone in the room can see and hear the individuals taking part in the meeting virtually.
“We’re conducting an investigation,” said La Porte County Police Capt. Derek Allen.
Somehow, a hacker introduced the explicit video about 30 minutes into the ZOOM broadcast of the La Porte County Council meeting.
The sheriff’s office responded to a request from La Porte County Commissioner Joe Haney, who would like to see criminal charges filed, if possible. He’s particularly disturbed by such a display being introduced in a public setting and children, perhaps, catching a glimpse of it on ZOOM screens at home.
“I think there were a number of different laws that were broken at the state and federal level,” he said.
Haney said he was watching the meeting at home when X-rated images along with audio containing racial slurs took over his screen for a couple of minutes. He immediately reached out to information technology employees of county government to look for any security lapses a hacker could have taken advantage of and tighten any such weaknesses in the system.
“We’re going to do everything in our power to make sure this kind of thing never happens again,” he said.
La Porte County Councilman Mark Yagelski described everyone at the meeting as stunned by the unexpected drastic change of what was being shown on the monitor.
“Everybody was in shock,” he said.
The meeting was paused while Yagelski quickly made his way to an electrical outlet and pulled the cord to turn off the screen.
Yagelski said he then went outside the meeting room and consulted with IT Director Darlene Hale. He acted on her advice to have the cord powering the ZOOM meeting pulled to stop the broadcast.
The meeting then resumed.
“It’s a shame the public had to see that. It was upsetting for the people who were there. We got to fix it and we’re already on it,” Yagelski said.
Allen said it’s too early in the investigation to even speculate on who was responsible and their location.
“It may take some time to get some information that we need gathered up to look at any possible criminal charges that may apply,” he said.
Allen also said the investigation could show the ZOOM platform may also need some tightening of security in their system.
La Porte County Prosecutor Sean Fagan said any charges in the case might have to be filed at the federal level if the pornographic material originated from outside the state or country. He said trespassing is among the state laws that could be prosecuted locally, though, if the perpetrator used a computer system or network belonging to someone else without permission to disseminate the images.
Fagan said he and the sheriff’s will discuss the findings before a decision on what steps to take next.
“We’re going to talk about this once the investigation wraps up,” he said.
