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Hudson school budget hearing 'Zoom bombed'

Jun 08, 2020 6:00 am
Jeanette Wolfberg is reporting for The Columbia Paper Hudson School District Superintendent Maria Suttmeier on June 2, was in the midst of a presentation of the district's proposed 2020-21 $50 million budget, when a computer hack led officials to shut the meeting down. Suttmeier and Business Administrator Jesse Boehme were concluding their preliminary remarks and questions from the online audience when what the district described as “inappropriate and unrelated material” suddenly appeared on the teleconference screen. Suttmeier immediately stopped the meeting. The following day, board president Carrie Otty said the public portion of the meeting had not continued. “We were Zoom bombed,” she said. Zoom meeting software is widely used for online gatherings of many kinds, but the software is also vulnerable to security breaches. Suttmeier said the district's IT director was investigating what occurred and she promised to issue a public statement once more was known. The district website later reported the meeting had been “disrupted by inappropriate actions of at least one of the public participants in attendance. The district does not condone the action of the participant(s), and we apologize for the inconvenience caused by this occurrence.” Later Suttmeier said a complaint was filed with the local police. As a result of this event, district officials are changing the protocols for connecting to meetings. During the June 4 meeting, questions or comments from the public had to be submitted in advance and the board broadcast the hearing via livestream, without Zoom. Read the full story in The Columbia Paper.
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