On February 11, 2010, Michael E. Robbins and Holly S. Robbins on behalf of their son, Harriton High School sophomore Blake J. Robbins filed a class action lawsuit against the Lower Merion School District, The Board of Directors of the Lower Merion School District, and Lower Merion School District Superintendent Christopher W. McGinley.
Photo by Madeline Burger '11
In the case documents, the Robbins’ fam¬ily lawyer Mark Haltzman alleges that, “unbe¬knownst to Plaintiffs and the members of the Class, and without their authorization, Defendants have been spying on the activities of Plaintiffs and Class members by Defendants’ indiscriminate use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students.” Haltzman continues by accusing the School Dis¬trict that, “continuing surveillance of Plaintiffs’ and the Class members’ home use of the laptop issued by the School District, including the indiscriminate remote activation of the webcams incorporated into each laptop, was accomplished without the knowl¬edge or consent of the Plaintiffs or the members of the Class.” Haltzman later alleges that after, “an examination of all of the written documentation accompanying the laptop, as well any documen¬tation appearing on any website or handed out to students or parents concerning the use of the lap¬top, reveals that no reference is made to the fact that the school district has the ability to remotely activate the embedded webcam at any time the school district wished to intercept images from that webcam of anyone or anything appearing in front of the camera at the time of the activation.”
The Robbins family claims that on November 11, 2009, Harriton High School Assistant Principal, Lindy Matsko, informed Blake of the district’s ca¬pability to obtain images from the webcam through their remote access software. According to case documents, the Robbins family alleges that Matsko accused Robbins of engaging, “in improper behav¬ior in his home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam imbedded in minor Plaintiff’s personal laptop issued by the School District.”
It should be mentioned that the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News have reported that the district data has been subpoe¬naed by federal prosecutors and that an investi¬gation has been launched on both federal and lo¬cal levels. When The Merionite inquired about this development, Lower Merion School District Community and Public Relations Director Doug Young stated that he could not “speak to that.”
Lower Merion School District was informed of these allegations on February 18, 2010. School District Superintendent Christopher McGinley stated that upon hearing of the allegations listed in the aforementioned lawsuit, the district made the decision to “completely disable” the LANRev soft¬ware that was able to remotely access the webcams that were on every school-issued laptop. McGinley went on to state that, “this [software] feature was limited to taking a still image of the computer user and an image of the desktop in order to help lo¬cate the reported missing, lost, or stolen computer.”
In every subsequent statement that the School District released, it was explicitly stated that the LANRev software was used only to track down a reported missing, lost or stolen computer and was never used to “spy” on students and their families. Insofar as this is concerned, Doug Young states, “we have a log of every time it was utilized and I think that we have been pretty adamant that at no time had it been turned on for any other reason then for a reported lost, stolen, or missing laptop.” In a state¬ment released to the Lower Merion School District community, McGinley mentioned that there were, “fewer than 50 instances in which the tracking soft¬ware was used this school year, its sole purpose was to try to track down and locate a student’s computer.”
In a statement released on Monday, Ab¬solute Software, the owner of the LANRev software stated that they would be shipping an updated version of their software to all of their clients within the next few weeks. Ste¬phen Midgley the company’s head of market¬ ing stated that this updated version of the soft¬ware would disable the “Theft Tracking” ele¬ment, which allows administrators to switch on the laptop’s camera and take a photograph of the supposed thief of the stolen computer.
When The Merionite asked Young to confirm if the student mentioned in the above cases laptop was reported lost, stolen, or missing. Young stated that, “I can’t comment to the specifics of the case, but what I can confirm is that there would not be a sce¬nario where the security feature would have been turned on unless there was a reported lost, stolen or missing laptop.” Young later went on to say that this would also include “a loaner laptop that would be taken off campus without the consent of the district.”
In another press release, Superintendent McGin¬ley responded to allegations mentioned in court case documents that stated that the district nev¬er expressed anywhere that they had the capa¬bility of remotely accessing student webcams.
“There was no formal notice given to students or their families. The functionality and the intended use of the security feature should have been communicated clearly to students.” Young echoed those sentiments: “We have done some pretty amazing things in providing laptops but there is a responsibility that when you implement an initiative like that and when you are on the cutting edge of tech¬nology, that policies and procedures are clearly communi¬cated and the features and functional¬ity as they may relate to privacy are clearly com¬municated…and there is no question that we came up short as a district in communicat¬ing as best as we could.” Young then went on to state: “the idea that the district in¬tended to spy on its students is just completely off base. That’s not who we are. That’s not what we would do and, it’s regrettable for the community to be put in this position—it is incredibly regrettable.”
Most recently, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have spoken out in support of the Robbins’ family. In a statement released by EFF attorney Kevin Bankston, he stated: “there is no federal statute that criminalizes or creates civil liability for such secret videotaping unless it involves sound, because then it is an inter¬cept of a verbal communication.” Bankston goes on to state: “that’s something that congress should ad¬dress particularly now that everyone potentially has a surreptitious video device staring them in the face when they’re at their laptop.” ACLU attorney Vic Walczak released a statement in support of the Rob¬bins family’s allegations and states that they are sup¬porting the family so they can share their knowledge about both civil liberty and constitutional laws: “we filed the amicus brief to share our expertise in this area of constitutional law and to support the plaintiffs’ efforts to make sure this surveillance stops immedi¬ately.” Both the EFF and the ACLU agree that they hope this lawsuit will make entities think twice about spying on the people that they provide laptops for.
Despite the current controversy, Young made clear that the district is steadfast in its commitment to be a vanguard of technology. “There is always going to be questions about the efficacy of those elements of technology and there are always going to be pro¬ponents. Technology is controversial but we won’t stand pat and be afraid to expose our students and our school community to the benefits of technology. “
As of February 23, three Lower Merion School District parents created an online petition that sup¬ports both Lower Merion School District and Su¬perintendent McGinley and urge them to resolve the issue in a “non-litigious” manner. On the petition web¬site it states: “As parents who consider the teachers and officials at our schools to be respected partners in educating our children as well as people to whom we entrust some of the work of molding their char¬acter, including their understanding of moral behav¬ior, we wish to express our solidarity with Dr. Chris¬topher W. McGinley, the Superintendent of Schools for the Lower Merion School District as he handles the issue of privacy with regard to the free laptop pro¬gram.” In the petition, it acknowledges that the dis¬trict “should have clearly communicated to students and parents alike” the capabilities of the software that were on the school issued laptops however, they still stand strong with the School District. At the time of press the petition had been signed by 210 parents.
By Conor Ferguson
Class of 2011
