School Spies on Students at Home With Webcams: Suit
Administrator remotely activates student's webcam to watch his “improper behavior” at home: lawsuit
By TERESA MASTERSON
Updated 3:29 PM EST, Thu, Feb 18, 2010
A Philadelphia-area school official confronted a student with photographic evidence that he was doing bad things at home. She got her evidence by activating the webcam on the laptop in his house, a lawsuit claims.
Lower Merion School District officials are spying on students and their families inside their homes with Web cameras installed in pupil laptops, claims Blake J. Robbins in a lawsuit against the district.
The lawsuit, filed Feb. 11, alleges that webcams in personal laptops -- that are issued to every high school student -- can be, and have been, remotely activated by school administrators without a person in the same room as the laptop being the wiser.
How did Robbins and his family find out administrators could spy on them?
On Nov. 11, Harriton High School Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko told the teen that he “was engaged in improper behavior in his home,” and showed Robbins photographic evidence from his webcam, according to the suit.
Upon hearing about the incident, Robbins’ father, Michael Robbins, got confirmation from Matsko that the school district does in fact have the ability to remotely activate any of the students’ webcams at any time -- even if the computer is not being used.
Superintendent Christopher McGinley boasts of the laptop program on the districts’ site, saying that it “ensures that all students have 24/7 access to school-based resources.” But administrators never told students or their families that district officials had "24/7 access" into their homes at the same time, according to the lawsuit.
The class action suit, which represents not only Robbins and his family, but all 1,800 students given one of these “spying” laptops, is based on the claim that the district is violating the Constitution’s Fourth Ammendment right to privacy and the Civil Rights Act, among others.
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