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

[UGAalum94]

I don't think many parents sit back and take it when schools do bad stuff to their kids, nor should they, but there are a lot of people who don't read the fine print when they sign the paperwork for something that seems beneficial and no cost to them.

I doubt the contract spelled out approval to spy on the kids, but I think it's possible that it granted freedom to monitor use of the computer in a way that the district thought that covered what they were doing, and that, assuming that the district did only what they say they did, I suppose the court will have decide the limits of.

Have you seen the photo of the kid in question or seen direct reference to what happened to him with the school, other than his own suit? I've seen comments about candy, but I've also seen comments, maybe on ATL, about the kid having a lot of drug references on his publicly accessible facebook page, including photos that appeared to have been taken with his webcam.

I'd be about as baffled about why school personnel would try to act on what they saw on a kid's facebook or even why they'd be looking at it, but I think it's possible, if the comments about his facebook are correct, that a principal could say something to the kid about drug use based on having seen the image elsewhere.

I have reservations about whether it's plausible that the school used the software exactly as they claim, but I also have reservations about believing that the kid was disciplined at school because they took a picture of him taking what they thought was a pill at home.

It just doesn't make sense no matter how they gained their knowledge. Schools don't typically, in my experience, try to investigate and punish kids for their off campus drug use.

It will be really interesting to see what else comes out in the case, assuming that it gets released to the public.

It's not that I don't think the district lacks a motive to lie, but I think that the kid's claims are suspect too.

ETA: well, I can think of some cases in which schools tried to drug test kids with either blanket testing or random testing, and I've seen consequences in extra-curriculars for arrests or convictions, but the policies were either pretty immediately legally challenged or so ridiculously spelled on in advance to make them hard to compare to this. For all the reasons that you think, Peppy, that the parents wouldn't have signed terms that granted the school too much ability to monitor the kids, I can't see how the district or any of its personnel would think that doing what they are accused of was ever going to fly. If you work in a relatively lawyered up community, you learn to be sensitive to the legal limits of your authority, I think. The behavior they are accused of just seems so legally risky as to defy belief unless maybe they thought they had advanced permission because of the scope of releases to participate or they really did use it in the limited way they claim. But I guess I've been amazed by stupidity before.