School spying on students via web cams

Some background: In a suburban Philadelphia school district, all students were issued lap-tops. Apparently, the school district installed software on these laptops that turns on the web cam remotely. Their reasoning is that this prevents theft; when someone steals a lap-top, a school official can turn on the web cam and determine where the lap-top is.

Sounds like okay reasoning, even though it's incredibly creepy. Any school official can turn on any student's web-cam at any moment. And that's exactly what happened. A Vice Principal at one school confronted a student about inappropriate behavior in his home. As proof, the Vice Principal had a screenshot taken from the student's webcam. Essentially, a school official spied on that student while he was in his own home. Creepy.

I've copied a news article on it below, but how do you feel about it? Does it matter if it's legal or not (it may indeed be legal)?

Pa. school official defended in webcam spy case
Feb 20, 3:54 PM (ET)

By RON TODT

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A suburban Philadelphia school district accused of secretly switching on laptop computer webcams inside students' homes says it never used webcam images to monitor or discipline students and believes one of its administrators has been "unfairly portrayed and unjustly attacked."

The Lower Merion School District, in response to a suit filed by a student, has acknowledged that webcams were remotely activated 42 times in the past 14 months, but only to find missing, lost or stolen laptops - which the district noted would include "a loaner computer that, against regulations, might be taken off campus."

"Despite some reports to the contrary, be assured that the security-tracking software has been completely disabled," Superintendent Christopher W. McGinley said in a statement on the district's Web site late Friday. Officials vowed a comprehensive review that McGinley said should result in stronger privacy policies.

Harriton High School student Blake Robbins and his parents, Michael and Holly Robbins, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Tuesday against the district, its board of directors and McGinley. They accused the school of turning on the webcam in his computer while it was inside their Penn Valley home, which they allege violated wiretap laws and his right to privacy.

Full Article

That's so creepy on so many levels.

I read about this before. I think that school official should be fired and possibly even face criminal charges of some sort. It's really quite disgusting that anyone would use the cameras for that purpose.

I agree with the above statments! If something they saw on the webcam is nothing to do with the theft of the Laptop, then they should just leave alone! It does, infact, break privacy laws (in The UK, anyway, I don't know about the US)

I think that's wrong and creepy. For all we know, that school official could be a stalker. What if a pedophile got a hold of that technology? It's essentially giving anyone who has the laptop 'Peeping Tom' tempations. Super creepy.

The problem with calling this illegal under specific privacy laws is that the lap-top is the school's property. So since the school owned the lap-top, it had discretion in turning the webcam on and off. That doesn't mean what they did was legal, but it does complicate things.

Regardless of the legality of it though, the responsible people should be fired.

Yikes! What creeps!
At least you can put some painter's tape over the lens. Does no damage, but covers it up well.

*puts some tape over her webcam*

LittlePetRock wrote:Yikes! What creeps!
At least you can put some painter's tape over the lens. Does no damage, but covers it up well.

*puts some tape over her webcam*

Sounds simple enough. It would be interesting to see how the school board would react to something like that.

Oh boy, this is an interesting topic of conversation. Well, I would say that this is definately disturbing, and I'm glad that my school doesn't have anything like this. They don't give out laptops at all. They just have hall and street cams. Then again, they might actually do something like that to the students here, except it would be a button on our clothing.

I don't see how they could determine for sure where the laptop is even if they could turn on the webcam. As stated in the article, any student who stole a laptop could just cover the camera with tape.

Seriously, the school system is so in the wrong here.

This is so disgusting and wrong on so many levels.
The people responsible should be fired. Just because we're teenagers doesn't mean we don't have a right to privacy.

That is incredibly creepy. This school should be sued, shut down, sued some more, then kicked out on the street, sent to jail, released, sued some more, then kicked in the balls.

I actually live in the Philadelphia area and heard about this. The webcams were just supposed to take pictures every few hours so the school could keep track of the laptop itself. Although a risky course of action, I wouldn't call it spying since the school wasn't monitoring for drug use, or anything perverted. It was just to make the occurrence of stolen laptops less frequent.
I'm not trying to seem like the bad guy, since all of you seem to strongly believe that this is disgusting. But, from reading several articles on this, it became clear that the school was at it's wits end with the costs of lost laptops, and needed a quick solution. The solution they chose was not the best one, but it was cost effective. I think people are blowing the privacy issue way out of proportion.
I agree that we all deserve privacy, but if students are taking laptops home from school they should expect to have the school keeping track of their behavior on the laptop.

f1shes wrote:I actually live in the Philadelphia area and heard about this. The webcams were just supposed to take pictures every few hours so the school could keep track of the laptop itself. Although a risky course of action, I wouldn't call it spying since the school wasn't monitoring for drug use, or anything perverted. It was just to make the occurrence of stolen laptops less frequent.
I'm not trying to seem like the bad guy, since all of you seem to strongly believe that this is disgusting. But, from reading several articles on this, it became clear that the school was at it's wits end with the costs of lost laptops, and needed a quick solution. The solution they chose was not the best one, but it was cost effective. I think people are blowing the privacy issue way out of proportion.
I agree that we all deserve privacy, but if students are taking laptops home from school they should expect to have the school keeping track of their behavior on the laptop.

I agree completely. Remember everything has a price