14 DAY TRIAL // A lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court claims that Lower Merion School District officials used school-issued laptop computers to illegally spy on their students. According to suit filings, officials at the Harriton High School in Rosemont remotely activated the webcam on a student's computer last year because the District believed the respective student "was engaged in improper behavior in his home," according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
After an assistant principal at Harriton confronted the student for "improper behavior" on Nov. 11, using a photograph taken by the webcam as evidence, Michael E. and Holly S. Robbins, of Penn Valley, filed the suit on behalf of their son, Blake. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the parents are seeking class action status for the suit.
The report reveals that school-owned laptops had been issued to 2,290 high-school students, starting the last school year at Harriton. The initiative was to promote more "engaged and active learning and enhanced student achievement," according to superintendent Christopher W. McGinley, who did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
"The laptops do contain a security feature intended to track lost, stolen and missing laptops," the District said, in a statement on its website. "This feature has been deactivated effective today. [...] Upon a report of a suspected lost, stolen or missing laptop, the feature was activated by the District's security and technology departments," the District added in a later statement.
"The tracking-security feature was limited to taking a still image of the operator and the operator's screen. This feature has only been used for the limited purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop. The District has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever," it pointed out.
However, the District did not tell students that it could activate the cameras at any time, according to suit filings. And while the suit claims the school district violated federal and state wiretapping laws, as well as students' civil rights, it also alleges that the District's use of the webcams led to an invasion of privacy and that any intercepted images could be "images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various states of undress."