School Laptop Surveillance: Equipment Recovery Or Peeping Toms?

By The River Wanders

According to documents filed in the case of a Pennsylvania school district accused of spying on students using secret tracking software, program administrators were aware of the intrusive images and screenshots being taken by the school-owned computers.

Not only was Lower Merion School District’s program administrator Carol Cafiero aware of the data gathered without students’ knowledge or parents’ consent, she joked about the collection of information in emails:

“It was like a window into ‘a little LMSD soap opera’,”a staffer is quoted as saying in an email to Carol Cafiero. “I know, I love it,” she is quoted as having replied.

The relatively affluent school district provides each student with a laptop computer and claims to activate the tracking program only when the equipment is lost or stolen.  At issue in the pending court case is the validity of that assertion, as well as who was able to view data retrieved from the tracking program and for what purpose.   A high school student in the Lower Merion district sued the school after a school official approached him with accusations of drug use.

By: TheRiverWanders

Independent parent, aspiring author and generally good egg with an occasional foul temper whose deepest curiosities lie in psychology, law, government, history, equal rights, animal rights and child development. Progressive. Allergic to stupid.