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Big Brother Or Legitimate Surveillance? Snooping School Snaps 56,000 Photos

By Dan Filler

 Some of you may have read about the controversy swirling around the Lower Merion School District, on Philadelphia's affluent Main Line.  In the last two years, the district decided to issue each and every student his or her own laptop.  (What?  Your school district doesn't do that?)  In order to stop theft (or perhaps assist students who'd lost their machines), the school installed surveillance software that allowed a school technician to remotely snap photos using the computer's camera.  You get the idea: when a computer is stolen, the school would presumably provide the cops with photos of the thieves.  Of course, the school district didn't tell all the kids and parents that the computers offered this feature.

Unfortunately, the school didn't have total control of its surveillance process.  Among other things, we've recently learned that the school didn't have formal procedures for authorizing the technicians to take the pictures.  Sometimes, they forgot to turn off the surveillance even after the laptop was found.  And they used the cameras not simply in cases of theft but also, in at least one case, to track the computer of a person who'd failed to pay the mandatory $55 insurance fee.

All this got Lower Merion in hot water.  A couple of months ago, Blake Robbins - a student - sued the school district for allegedly spying on him.  In this complaint, he claimed that an assistant principal confronted Robbins in school, accusing him of improper behavior at home, and cited the content of a photo that had been snapped with this surveillance system.  

Now it turns out that in the last two years, the surveillance system was used 146 times and captured 56,000 photos.  While most of these were probably within the officially intended scope of the program, technicians failed to stop the surveillance even after several of the computers were found.  In fact,  13,000 of the pictures were snapped after computers had been located.  The district assures everyone that nothing really inappropriate was photographed.  No need to worry, folks.  But hey - we did notice that your wallpaper is peeling in the corner!

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on April 20, 2010 (boomark / email).