Quote:
Pa. School Faces FBI Probe, Lawsuit, for Using Webcams on Laptops to Watch Students at Home

Internet Security Expert Says District May Have Gone Too Far

By SUZAN CLARKE
Feb. 22, 2010

The FBI and a Philadelphia-area prosecutor are looking into whether a school district broke the law when it remotely activated cameras on school-owned laptops and watched students in their homes.

The parents of 15-year-old Blake Robbins have filed a lawsuit against Harriton High School of the Lower Merion School District, alleging their son's privacy was violated.

The teenager said he found out about the remote surveillance when he was confronted by his assistant principal at the Rosemont school.

His suit, which seeks class-action status, alleges that school vice principal Lindy Matsko on Nov. 11 cited a laptop photo in telling Blake that the school believed he was engaging in improper behavior. He and his family have told reporters that an official mistook a piece of candy for a pill and thought he was selling drugs.

He denied the accusation and said the school took pictures of him via the laptop's camera without his knowledge.

The district has admitted it made a mistake in not clearly explaining the technology available on the computers that it issues to every student as a way to enhance their educations.

District officials have acknowledged that they had remotely activated webcams on school-issued laptops 42 times in the past 14 months to find missing computers. They said they never did so to spy on students.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/...9905488&page=2
Obviously, if they took a picture of this kid from HIS computer it wasn't lost, so why did they activate the camera?

David Ebby, President *
Linda Doucette-Ashman, Vice President *
Diane DiBonaventuro *
Gary Friedlander
Melissa Gilbert *
Susan Guthrie *
Lyn Kugel *
Jerry Novick
Lisa Fair Pliskin *

http://www.lmsd.org/sections/about/d...=board&p=board

If you take a look at the Lower Merion School District, the Democrats control the district 7 to 2.

Sources political affiliation:
http://www.lmsdvote.org/
http://www.lmsdvote.org/two_parties_two_views.htm
http://www.smartvoter.org/2009/05/19/pa/mny/race/021/

I think it was the Democrats that were screaming about FISA and the Patriot act? Here it's alleged they abused their authority by spying on kids in their own homes. They claim the feature was designed to locate lost of stolen laptops, but that's ridiculous. The FBI has a whole lot of pictures of bank robbers they can't identify. If lost or stolen recovery was the true intention, they would have simply installed LoJack for laptops. Their shameful actions should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law if the FBI finds invasion of privacy or worse yet inappropriate photos of children in their homes.