Stephanie Lovett-Bowman, Tuesday, October 12, 2010 | Filed under: Student Privacy
A Philadelphia-area school district has settled lawsuits filed by the families of two students who accused the district of tracking them through district-issued laptops. The students had alleged that the Lower Merion School District secretly spied on them and other students through the webcameras in their district-issued laptops. One student alleged that the District took hundreds of pictures of him while he was at home in his bedroom. The District said its laptop tracking program was intended to be activated when a student reported that a laptop was missing. After the allegations surfaced, the District suspended two staff members who oversaw the tracking and conducted an investigation, which the District reported found no proof that employees ever intentionally spied on students. Beyond the $610,000 settlement, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the team of lawyers and computer experts the District hired to defend the lawsuit had submitted more than $1 million in bills.
To read more about the lawsuits, click here: http://tiny.cc/1hocy