“Administrators of a wealthy suburban school district have been spying on students and their families at home after giving them laptops fitted with webcams, according to a lawsuit filed by parents.
The Lower Merion School District, which administers a Philadelphia suburb that is one of the wealthiest parts of Pennsylvania, issued all 1,800 students at its two high schools with laptops so they could access school materials at home.
However, according to a civil action filed in the local US district court, neither parents nor their children were ever warned that the access worked both ways.
Michael and Holly Robbins claim they were alerted to the snooping when an assistant principal at Harriton High School warned their son, Blake, in November last year that he was “engaged in improper behaviour in his home”, citing a photo taken on his laptop webcam as evidence.”
Read more at The Telegraph
Well, what can you expect from Americans? The scary part is, Britain seems to be going down the same route…
Shameful!! Puts a new spin on the PRISONER line ‘I am not a number, I am a free CAM.’
Nice.
Shouldn’t the parents be prosecuted for abuse for naming their child Blake?
Do we really want to know what ‘improper behaviour’ he was engaged in whilst in front of his laptop?
You know how folks go on and on about stricter rules over internet so as to combat folks taking advantage of kids etc? And yet, all this time group of people in a position of power was spying on children (which included those unfortunate kids undressing etc). How messed up is that?
Well if they are stupid enough to use a web cam when they are getting undressed then clearly they need more educating.
If the laptops belong to the school then the school has every right as the owner to look at the content stored on them. As ultimately they would be responsible.
If I was the parent I wouldn’t be taking legal action I’d be wiping the hard drive and paying more attention to little Blake and his inapproprite behaviour. I certainly wouldn’t be letting everyone know about it !!!
Doesn’t it sound a little creepy someone at the school thought “lets spy on the kids”? Orwellian?
I just wonder the legality of what the school have been alleged to have done, surely in some cases they could well be prosecuted.
@ Gail — They (the children) wouldn’t of had to of turn it on, the school could of done that, using software that is meant for enabling repairs over the phone etc.
I love A J Irving’s comment, shouldn’t the parents be prosecuted for naming their son Blake. Perhaps the “Improper behaviour” refered to in the article was that he was trying to change his name on his passport etc by destroying them.
Gail,
The point is that the students did not know about the cam, and that it could be activated remotely.
That’s a step beyond looking at the content.
Gail: I think you misunderstand. The school was using an “adminstration software” to activate the webcam built into the screen while it was at home. The students did not activate it.
hey! cant they be nailed on possession of kiddie porn?
Surely the story about the “giant pet rodent” is more interesting?
Okay, firstly, what business is it of the school’s if their students get up to ‘improper behaviour’ in their own homes? And secondly, I think filming someone when they are not aware that they are being filmed is a bit improper, don’t you?
So-called internet security in schools is pretty rubbish over here aswell. My school has an internet filter (which is supposed to block inappropriate websites,) but half the websites that people are supposed to access for their lessons or homework are blocked, and teachers are still catching boys looking at porn (which, according to the crappy internet filter, isn’t inappropriate!)
This is sort of the reason why I won’t ever get a web cam…..
LC x
“engaged in improper behaviour in his home”…one can only imagine too well what a teenage boy gets up to at home…
wow, complete invasion of privacy. That’s pretty scary
Don’t forget you British people… you guys have CCTV cameras virtually everywhere in London watching you all the time… talk about Big Brother!
I am near where this school district is located and am a news reporter-I’ve attended many school board meetings, though I’ve never covered this particular district. There have been several updates to this story since the British Telegraph article. Out of 2,300 distributed laptops, cameras have been activated 42 times, according to the school district, which states it has a policy of activating them when a laptop is reported lost or stolen. Only two district officials (in IT) have authorization or passwords to do this. So it shouldn’t be to hard to figure out what really happened.
The FBI has just gotten involved in the case too, to determine if the district engaged in illegal wiretapping in doing this. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100219/ap_on_hi_te/us_laptops_spying_on_students
@Maureen
Yeah, we have cctv camera’s everywhere in every city. 3/4 of them don’t work because they’re either broken or just casings to hang a movable camera in if area crime trends rise…the rest noone is watching.
Cctv is a joke in this country. Only place it’s ever monitered is in shopping centres and the odd traffic camera
the web cam can only be remotely activated if the laptop is open. Just close the screen.
Also, the school is seriously in the wrong. You need a court order to place surveillance on individuals.
they say it was for security if the laptop was stolen,to try and get it back. But they were not reported stolen, so why are the controlling staff accessing the cameras other than for porn.
plus, how stupid do they have to be. “hi parent of our student, we have been watching your child on a web cam without your permission and see they are doing something inappropriate” – watching them is inappropriate you losers.
For all you people saying it’s the childrens’ fault for having the computers with the webcams in their room, consider this.
If I were to generously gift a near friend of mine a very good book, soo good in fact, that she’d probably decide to keep it in her bedroom, and I were to just conveniently forget to mention the hidden camera streaming videos of her “in her birthday suit”, would it be her fault for stupidly keeping a book in her bedroom?
take taht story, and change it to be about a child, and you have a recipe for the most disgusting child pornography news story ever encountered. Or you could just scroll up a bit and read the news story again.
Get my point?