Spy Game

After giving its students laptops to take home, a Pennsylvania high school is accused of remotely activating the computers’ webcams to monitor students’ behavior. “Blake Robbins and his parents filed a class-action suit against the Lower Merion School District in Ardmore, Pa., alleging ‘indiscriminate remote activation of a webcam’ and ‘intentional interception of … private webcam images’ by school officials. The issue arose, the Feb. 11 lawsuit says, when Harriton High School assistant principal Lindy Matsko told Blake that he was suspected of engaging in improper behavior and that the evidence was an image from the webcam embedded in the school-issued laptop. ‘If the facts are as they appear to be in the claims by the student, it’s shocking,’ says John Palfrey, a law professor and co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.”