Doofus Of The Day #323

Today's award goes to whoever in the Lower Merion School District of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had the bright idea to invade their students' privacy by remotely controlling the cameras on their school-district-issued laptop computers. Philly.com reports:

A Lower Merion family has set off a furor among students, parents, and civil liberties groups by alleging that Harriton High School officials used a webcam on a school-issued laptop to spy on their 15-year-old son at home.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court, the family said the school's assistant principal had confronted their son, told him he had "engaged in improper behavior in [his] home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in [his] personal laptop issued by the school district."

The suit contends the Lower Merion School District, one of the most prosperous and highest-achieving in the state, had the ability to turn on students' webcams and illegally invade their privacy.

While declining to comment on the specifics of the suit, spokesman Douglas Young said the district was investigating. "We're taking it very seriously," he said last night.

The district's Apple MacBook laptops have a built-in webcam with a "security feature" that can snap a picture of the operator and the screen if the computer is reported lost or stolen, Young said.

But he said "the district would never utilize that security feature for any other reason." The district said that the security system was "deactivated" yesterday, and that it would review when the system had been used.

. . .

The suit says that in November, assistant principal Lynn Matsko called in sophomore Blake Robbins and told him that he had "engaged in improper behavior in his home," and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam in his school-issued laptop.

Matsko later told Robbins' father, Michael, that the district "could remotely activate the webcam contained in a student's personal laptop . . . at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam" without the knowledge or approval of the laptop's users, the suit says.

It does not say what improper activity Robbins was accused of or what, if any, discipline resulted. Reached at home yesterday, his mother, Holly, said she could not comment on advice of the family's lawyers.

. . .

Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy watchdog group in Washington, said she had not heard of any other case in which school officials were accused of monitoring student behavior at home via a computer. If the allegations are true, she said, "this is an outrageous invasion of individual privacy."

Witold J. Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, told the Associated Press: "School officials cannot, any more than police, enter into the home either electronically or physically without an invitation or a warrant."

Virginia DiMedio, who as the Lower Merion district's technology director until she retired last summer helped launch the laptop initiative, said yesterday: "If there was a report that a computer was stolen, the next time a person opened it up, it would take their picture and give us their IP [Internet protocol] address - the location of where it was coming from."

She said that the feature had been used several times to trace stolen laptops, but that there had been no discussion of using it to monitor students' behavior. "I can't imagine anyone in the district did anything other than track stolen computers," she said.

There's more at the link.

I could hardly believe my eyes as I read this: then, I had trouble controlling an explosion of real rage. If I'd had a child who'd been issued one of these computers, you can bet your life I'd be in the offices of the school district within minutes, demanding to know whether anyone had ever accessed my child's computer remotely while he or she (and it) were off school premises. If they wouldn't answer, I'd knock heads together until they did - and if it turned out that they had spied on him or her in that fashion, I don't think I could promise to control my reaction. Of all the unmitigated (and criminal) gall!

I sincerely hope the Robbins family succeeds in legally crucifying both the school district, and any and every employee involved in this scandal. Heads should roll. I think those responsible should also face criminal charges under Federal wire-tapping and child pornography statutes: but I daresay the education authorities will do everything in their power to prevent that. I can almost hear their thoughts - "We can't have our people exposed to that sort of thing. After all, they did it for the chiiiiil-dren!!!"





Peter