School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home
 

fixed click it now


By Cory Doctorow at 11:49 PM February 17, 2010

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools' administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins's child was disciplined for "improper behavior in his home" and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.

If true, these allegations are about as creepy as they come. I don't know about you, but I often have the laptop in the room while I'm getting dressed, having private discussions with my family, and so on. The idea that a school district would not only spy on its students' clickstreams and emails (bad enough), but also use these machines as AV bugs is purely horrifying.

Schools are in an absolute panic about kids divulging too much online, worried about pedos and marketers and embarrassing photos that will haunt you when you run for office or apply for a job in 10 years. They tell kids to treat their personal details as though they were precious.

But when schools take that personal information, indiscriminately invading privacy (and, of course, punishing students who use proxies and other privacy tools to avoid official surveillance), they send a much more powerful message: your privacy is worthless and you shouldn't try to protect it.

This is on the Main Line (i.e. buttloads of $$$). I can't imagine who thought they could do something that could so open them up to a lawsuit, because these parents have the money to drag it out plus tax. My only guess is it was a teacher who absolutely hated the school/community and everything it stood for and did this to get back at them.

I really want some more information about exactly what happened.

I agree that it is creepy that the school could do that with the webcam, but it's really more surprising to me that they were actually doing it. (I don't think most schools really want to monitor the kids anymore than they have to.)

I wonder if there's a critical piece of information missing from the story that might make the behavior a little more understandable.

What exactly was the kid doing when the picture was snapped?

Link doesn't work.

Vito, fixed

The article doesn't say and apparently it's not specified in the suit.

Could we be talking a screen capture picture that led to student discipline rather than an actual photo of the kid?

It's creepy that they had the ability to monitor the kids by webcam anyway, but I always wonder about school news stories including behavior that no reasonable person would have thought was a good idea. I tend to think there's more to the story than is getting reported. Not that it would eliminate the creepiness.

I read that they thought the kid was taking/selling drugs.

The "drugs" turned out to be Mike and Ikes. Nice job, school.

It really doesn't matter what the kid was doing. The school has no right to eavesdrop, spy or cyberstalk - let alone record - kids and their families in their own homes. I hope the school and the district - which surely knew about the software purchased for such spying activity - gets nailed.

Yeah, that's spying. That's CIA level spying. And it was an administrator? Thank god they hired inept people to spy on children. That is horrible.

If it turns out that they did purchase the software for this kind of spying, isn't it likely to turn out that the parents probably signed something that at least theoretically gave them the power to monitor the computer? (not that webcaming was what any parent would have thought of)

School systems do stupid stuff, sure, but it seems really baffling that they thought that spying by webcam on kids off-campus, for anything other than misuse of the laptop, was going to fly. It's such a breach of common sense with so little self interest for the district that I can't imagine the district did intend to do it.

Maybe the assistant principal in question decided to overstep what the district might have had in mind in terms of their statement about lost or stolen laptops.http://www.lmsd.org/sections/news/de...u=lmsd&id=1143

ETA: in contrast to my first paragraph, the letter from the district owns up to never explicitly warning people about the software. EATA: the letter also notes that the assistant principal wouldn't have had access to the program.

That is crazy. I cant even begin to imagine.

Yeah, that's spying. That's CIA level spying. And it was an administrator? Thank god they hired inept people to spy on children. That is horrible.

Yup, I'm very familiar. The Lower Merion school district is one of the wealthiest in the country.

Even if parents/students over 18 signed Terms of Use agreements, it doesn't give the school access to the students' home Internet networks. They didn't just record keystrokes like many companies do, they recorded live video and audio, too. They basically placed a video camera inside their students' homes. Not even the police can do that.

A question: is this common nowadays, schools buying laptops for all students? I'm wondering what the school districts are getting out of it. Aside from ensuring all students learn how to use a computer in case they don't have one at home, I'm thinking that schools must be finding other ways to argue for them. After all, computers for every student in a district (assuming this is a district policy and not just a school) is expensive, and yet I'm guessing that most districts that can afford to do this are wealthy districts with families that could likely afford to buy their own laptops.