Lower Merion schools hit with new webcam spying suit

Philadelphia Inquirer ^ | 06/08/2011 | John P. Martin

[Kid Shelleen]

Eight months after the Lower Merion School District thought it had settled the furor over secret monitoring of students' laptops, the district faces a new legal battle on the issue.

On Monday, a 2009 graduate of Harriton High School sued the school district, claiming it violated his civil rights by capturing nearly 8,000 webcam photos and screen-shots from his laptop between September 2008 and March 2009.

[Clintonfatigued]

Perhaps this is why public schools don’t assign the book “1984.” It cuts too close to home.

[utherdoul]

some duct tape over the webcam would fix the issue. Not to mention the dozen or so other ways one could disable any monitoring software.

[Vendome]

This was written by a 3rd grader....?

[Steely Tom]

Number of days between 1 Sept 2008 and 31 Mar 2009: 211.

Divide 8000 by 211: at least 37 images captured per day.

Let's say that the student was using the laptop for five hours a day. That's more than seven images per hour, or one every nine minutes or so.

[afraidfortherepublic]

How did this student know that these pix were taken? Sounds to me like someone has figured out a clever way to raise money for his college tuition.

School district is stupid, however, for continuing this practice after being caught at it before.

[TruthConquers]

Well, that would be the point of the lawsuit.

Is the student attractive? Male or Female? Who had access to their pics?

Discovery should prove interesting.

And the public school deserves to be sued into oblivion.

[metmom]

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Hm. I thought they decided that the original case had no merit.

In before the public school pervert defenders.

[BobL]

“Perhaps this is why public schools don’t assign the book “1984.” It cuts too close to home.”

No kidding. About all the Lower Merion schools need to do now is add the capability to transmit video messages, individually, to each laptop that is opened...and of course laptops MUST be left open and on.