When Schools Spy on Kids and Their Families
Tags: privacy, security, news, education
Published: 2022-06-17 14:31:41

Imagine this: a school accuses a 15-year-old of taking illegal drugs, but that isn't the most concerning part for the student. The evidence is strange.

The school shows photos of him at home. In his bedroom!
The pills? A photo featuring him...eating "Mike and Ike" candies.

The school has been taking photos of him through his student-issued laptop webcam.

How long were they watching him?
Were there photos of him changing clothes?
What about other students? And family members?

This actually happened in 2010, and his family was asking these questions.

A federal class-action lawsuit, against the Lower Merion School District in Philadelphia, revealed school laptops had collected over 57,000 images (mix of photos and screenshots). The true total was somewhere higher, due to images thought to have been deleted before investigations.

Software, meant to track down lost laptops, had taken webcam photos and screenshots. Retrieved laptops would sometimes leave the software active. Other times? Photos were allegedly taken to snoop on students that they had suspicions of.

The school didn't tell students or parents since it would "defeat its purpose." A student tech intern became aware of the software long before this incident. Concerned, they sent an urgent email to the IT Director.

The response:

> _"...If we were going to monitor student use at home, we would have stated so. Think about it—why would we do that? There is no purpose. We are not a police state. ... There is no way that I would approve or advocate for the monitoring of students at home. I suggest you take a breath and relax."_

Another response from the IT Department agreed with the Director:

> _"...Being a student intern with us means that you are privy to some things that others rarely get to see, and some things that might even work against us. I assure you that we in no way, shape, or form employ any Big Brother tactics..."_

TheftTrack, the software now discontinued, cost the school ~$156,000 to rollout. Legal fees and settlement costs of the lawsuit resulted in over $1.8 million (liability insurance covered $1.2 million).

If you're wondering why people place stickers or post-it notes on their laptop webcams, this is just one example of why.

This entire story is a fiasco. Yes, there are takeaways across the board around privacy and security. But I hope that intern made it somewhere where their words carry weight. Interns and juniors bring insights that aren't blurred by old patterns, blind spots, or "this is how we've always done things"-style justifications. They are more than an extra pair of hands.

And in the case of this school district, they may literally have million-dollar ideas.

## Resources

- I first learned about this lawsuit while reading Cory Doctorow's book, [_Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age_](https://consumerist.com/2015/01/22/4-ways-copyright-law-actually-controls-your-whole-digital-life/).
- [Wikipedia has a great article about the lawsuit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District), where I was able to learn more about the outcomes.

## What do you think?

I wonder how many other similar lawsuits have unfolded, and how often student-issued laptops are still treated this way across schools.

How many students have been disciplined by a school the way this school had tried, but without people batting an eye as to how a device was used, leaving everything to continue?

I can't imagine being comfortable bringing those devices into the home unless the parents were unaware as to what the software was capable of doing, which often is a mystery (until something like this lawsuit pops up).

Contribute to the conversation:

- Did you know of this story? What are your thoughts?
- Do you know of similar news stories, or anecdotal ones?
- Do you have kids in school, and has this been a concern where you are?
- Do you work in education, and have you seen similar issues, or perhaps good solutions to privacy concerns?