by Jake Meyer
Most of us carry gadgets and use technologies that allow us to be tracked, recorded, and watched.  Cell phones contain GPS units that allow the user to be tracked.  Internet search engines record keystrokes and search queries.  Photos taken for the purposes of Google Maps have caught cheating husbands, when their car was found in a mistress’s driveway.  Almost all cell phones include a camera and allow for video recording, and a bystander can easily capture and post photo or video evidence of you in an embarrassing or compromising situation, but at least then you’d be in public, or aware of the bystander’s presence.  But what if your school district was snapping photos of you and your kids inside your home without you knowing?

At the Merion School District in Eastern Pennsylvania, each of the 2,300 high school students receive a laptop.  The students are required to pay a $55 insurance fee with a $100 deductible if the laptops are damaged or lost.  Because the laptops are frequent targets for theft, each laptop had tracking-security software installed that could be activated remotely to capture images of the user via the laptop’s built-in webcam.  When a laptop is reported lost or stolen, a technician can remotely activate the software which records photos from the webcam and screen shots of what the computer user is doing. School officials report that the software was activated 42 times this school year.

In at least one instance where the software was activated, the school did not observe a theft, but instead peered into the home life of one of their students.  On November 11, 2009, Blake Robbins, a 15 year old sophomore was told by assistant principal Lindsey Matsko, that she thought he was engaging in improper behavior at home.  The school district had captured images from the web camera attached to Robbins’ laptop that appeared to show him handling pills.  Matsko was mistaken, however, as Robbins was eating Mike and Ike’s candy.

On February 11, 2010, Robert Blake and his parents filed a class action law suit against the Lower Marion School District.  The complaint alleges that the school district has “been spying on the activities of Plaintiffs and Class members by [the school district’s] indiscriminate use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams,” and that the “School District has the ability to and has captured images of Plaintiffs and Class members without their permission and authorization, all of which is embarrassing and humiliating.”  The complaint continues to allege that “many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various stages of undress.”  Savannah Williams, a sophomore at the school, says that she keeps her laptop open in her bedroom while she is “getting changed, doing [her] homework, taking a shower, everything.” Because of stories like hers, the complaint makes it clear that if it is discovered that the school district possesses images that could be concluded to be child pornography, the plaintiffs will modify their complaint.

The ACLU filed an amicus curiae brief on February 22, 2010 in support of the plaintiff’s complaint.  The ACLU argues that remote activation of the web camera constituted an unlawful search of the plaintiff’s private home.  The ACLU also argues that in police investigations, the “‘extraordinarily serious intrusions into personal privacy’ caused by video surveillance has prompted some courts to require the government to justify such searches ‘by an extraordinary showing of need.'”  Moreover, although in school searches generally require a relaxed “reasonable suspicion” standard, the district’s search occurred outside of the school setting and inside the private home of an individual.

On February 22, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania issued a gag order preventing the parties from publically discussing the case without giving the other party notice.  The court also barred the school district from using the remote activation software.

The lawsuit has created controversy in the community.  A group of parents held a meeting on March 2 to discuss strategies to prevent the class action suit from moving forward.  More than 100 parents attended the meeting and nearly 400 families of high school students have signed a petition opposing the lawsuit. Parents who oppose the suit argue that the lawsuit will cost the school millions of dollars.  Some parents argue that it is enough that those responsible “already admitted that they made a mistake.”

These parents, however, are wrong to try to prevent this lawsuit.  First, these parents opposed to the suit would surely change their mind if they found that the school had been monitoring their children and themselves in their home through a web.  Secondly, these parents are missing the point of a lawsuit such as this.  Although the lawsuit may cost the millions of dollars, lawsuits such as this one help protect the privacy rights of the individual and also help to set a precedent.  As more cameras, sound recorders, and data recorders enter our world, we have to be vigilant to fight for our privacy rights.  Some have suggested that technologies can change our privacy rights, because our expectation of privacy changes.  For example, do we have as much of an expectation of privacy now, considering that many of us publish personal facts about ourselves on internet websites like Facebook?  As these technologies become more pervasive in our world do we have lower expectations of privacy?  I think we should always have an expectation of privacy in our home regardless of the technologies available and that cases like this one serve to protect those rights in the future.