School Administrators Allegedly Spied on Students With Webcams

School Administrators Allegedly Spied on Students With Webcams

Blake J. Robbins vs. Lower Merion School District (PA) et. al., a lawsuit recently filed, alleges that the laptops issued to students were used to spy on them, both at school and at home. But school administrators weren't just spying on the e-mail that students sent or the Web sites students visited: The suit alleges that administrators were able to activate the laptops' cameras and both hear and see what students and their families were doing at any given moment. "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," Cory Doctorow wrote at BoingBoing. "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." Download the complete suit in PDF form here.