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!
Comments