Staff Blog
Dept. of Holy Shit: Big Brother is watching, kids (now, with update!)
On Feb.11, a student filed a class-action lawsuit against the Lower Merion School District alleging "invasion of Plaintiffs' privacy, theft of Plaintiffs' private information and unlawful interception and access to acquired and exported data and other stored electronic communications … "
Basically, the gist of the complaint is this: The school district issues each of its students a laptop computer to take home (which is actually pretty cool). These laptops contain webcams. According to the suit, "Defendants [that is, the school district] have been spying on Plaintiffs … by Defendants' indiscriminate use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students by the School District."
Lead plaintiff Blake Robbins, a student at Harriton High School, learned about all of this on Nov. 11, 2009, the suit says, when assistant principal Lindy Matsko "informed [Robbins] that the School District was of the belief that [Robbins] was engaged in improper behavior in his home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in [Robbins'] personal laptop issued by the School District. … [T]he School District, in fact, has the ability to remotely activate the webcam contained in a student's personal laptop computer … at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam … ."
The nature of Robbins' alleged misbehavior isn't clear from the lawsuit; we're going to dig into this story a bit more in the near future. (I may have missed something, but so far the only media attention this story has gotten, that I've seen, anyway, came from BoingBoing. You can read the lawsuit yourself here, or the DailyKossacks' reaction to the BoingBoing story here.) We'll be trying to get comments from Robbins and/or the School District up here today. But if this story is at all true … holy shit. Spying on kids, in their bedrooms? What if they, you know, decide to change clothing? It's one thing to track how students use school district property — if they're visiting hardcore porn sites or whatever — it's quite another to use a webcam to monitor and capture their daily activities, outside of school, in the supposed privacy of their own homes.
Again, with the caveat that what is alleged above actually happened, and with the risk of rushing to judgment, Matsko and every single member of the Lower Merion School District who signed off on this scheme needs to be sacked, yesterday. I can't imagine a more asinine invasion of students' privacy. George Orwell would be proud.
We'll update as updates come in.
UPDATE: The Inky and DN both have their stories up. (Not for nothing, but we beat them by a good hour. Ha!) And while the school district has yet to return our calls — though they promised to, soon — a spokesman told the Inquirer:
"This is the first we have heard of this lawsuit being filed and the plaintiff's allegations," he said today. "However, we can categorically state that we are - and have always been - committed to protecting the privacy of our students."
"Our district was one of the first to provide free laptops to all of our high school students," Young said. "This initiative has been incredibly successful and well received in our school community."
"We have referred this matter to our attorneys for appropriate legal action and plan to communicate with parents and students with more information as it becomes available."
We have calls out to the kid's attorneys, too. If they tell us anything useful, we'll post.
putting the loco in in loco parentis
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I live in Lower Merion and will not be able to afford the school taxes after this thing is over. It’s time to set a precedent so no one else will ever try this again. I see jail time for all involved and if there are any compromising shots of anyone under 18, the whole bunch of them should be put on the national sex preditor’s list for life. That will stop it.
The City of Big Brotherly Love.
These kids are learning a valuable lesson at school today.
(Not for nothing, they beat you to every other story imaginable by more than good hours.)
After further investigation on the School District website, it appears this story is a gross distortion and misrepresentation. The webcam security feature was activated only once at the request of the student who owned the laptop, which had been stolen. The webcam image was used to identify the thief and now the parents of the thief are trying to evade the theft charges with a frivolous lawsuit. American legal system hijacked again with the help of sloppy reporting…
I saw nothing on the school district website outside of an explanation of the intended use of the webcam system. If it is true that the kid is a thief than a judge should throw this out of court and the parents should be ashamed. However if there is proof the administrators were breaking the law somehow, in lieu of a civil action lawsuit, why isn’t this being pursued one way or the other by a prosecutor for a crime being committed, either by the student or by the school administrators…or both. It in no way should be a class action suit against a school district.
MayDay82, where on the school district Website are you seeing that “the webcam security feature was activated only once at the request of the student who owned the laptop” and that the plaintiff is actually the person who stole the laptop?
I don’t see anything corroborating that claim on the school district Website. Do you have a link?
This story made http://detentionslip.org ! Check it out for all the crazy headlines from our schools.
Mayday82 is an astroturfer who has posted that exact same comment on dozens of websites running this story. Boing Boing recently tossed his/her ass out onto the street.
I suggest you delete the post and/or mock that idiot and/or both, accordingly
MNM is an even stupider astroturfer who didn’t realize the first dumbshit astroturfer had already posted that dumb-as-fuck message on this blog.
[...] story is everywhere (Huffington Post, Boing Boing, New Zealand Herald, CNET, Philadelphia City Paper etc). A school district is being sued for spying on its 2300 students (and their families) at home [...]
http://citypaper.net/blogs/clog/2010/02/19/lower-merion-school-district-issues-response-to-webcam-spying-charges/
it was stolen and the parents filing a suit are pointing to a red herring
Even if the kid stole this laptop, or reported it stolen, the correct thing for the school to do would be to contact the police and file a report and let the police investigate and get a warrant to turn the camera on as part of the investigation or simply use a lojack feature to locate the stolen lap top. If your car was stolen, you would not be able to confront the thief yourself no matter how much “proof” you had, you would still need to go through legal channels or face charges yourself.
Lower Merion School District needs to get this lawsuit to a federal court mediator yesterday, settle and cut their loses. Their liability ins will cover it. Then they need to fire whoever allowed this to happen. If their Board atty approved the webcam policy then fire the firm and sue them for malpractice!
[...] http://citypaper.net/blogs/clog/2010/02/18/dept-of-holy-shit-big-brother-is-watching-kids/ [...]