School Issued Laptops Used to Spy on Students

A federal lawsuit accuses a Pennsylvania school district of using school-issued laptops to spy on students and their families using an embedded webcam.

The lawsuit contends that that Lower Merion School District gave each high school student a laptop to use in school and at home but did not tell the students that the laptop contained a webcam that the school could activate at any time to take pictures of the students and anything else within range of the laptop.

The capabilities of the webcam came to light when the school district told one of the plaintiffs that it believed he was engaged in improper behavior in his home “and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor Plaintiff’s personal laptop issued by the School District,” the complaint alleges.

The school district verified the webcam’s existence. The complaint states that the school district could activate the webcam remotely at any time and “capture whatever images were in front of the webcam, all without the knowledge, permission or authorization of any persons then and there using the laptop computer.”

The complaint seeks damages under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Stored Communications Act, and the Fourth Amendment. The plaintiffs have requested that the lawsuit be certified as a class action for all students in the high school.

Following the filing of the lawsuit, the school district issued a letter admitting that each laptop does have a webcam that can be remotely activated, which was “installed to help locate a laptop in the event it was reported lost, missing or stolen so that the laptop could be returned to the student.” The letter also states that the school district was immediately disabling the security-tracking program and would conduct a “review of security procedures to help safeguard the protection of privacy, including a review of the instances in which the security software was activated.”

Robbins v. Lower Merion School District, E.D. Pennsylvania.