A paranoid school board has authorised spying on students through their laptops after they get home, a court was told. The Lower Merion School District of Ardmore in Philadelphia remotely activates the cameras in school-provided laptops.

According to the lawsuit filed by a high school student and his parents the school has spied on students and families by "indiscriminate use of and ability to remotely activate the Webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students by the School District." More than 1,800 students at the district's two high schools have been given laptops as part of a state- and federally-funded "one-to-one" student-to-laptop initiative.

Michael and Holly Robbins found out about the alleged spying last November after their son Blake was accused by a Harriton High School official of "improper behaviour in his home". We don't know what the kid was doing, but hell even if he was relieving some tension caused by  teen hormones it was none of the school's business. Apparently the school official had a snapshot which was taken by the kid's laptop. An assistant principal at Harriton later confirmed that the district could remotely activate the Webcam in students' laptops.

The Assistant Principal later told the family that it was the school's right to remotely activate the Webcam contained in a student's personal laptop computer issued by the school district at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the Webcam. Apparently it did not think that it would need to warn or obtain permission of anyone using the laptop. The laptop computer is located, regardless of whether the student is sitting at the computer and using it.

Not surprisingly the lawsuit accuses the school district of violating the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), and other federal and state statues, including the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act. US schools have a nasty habit of thinking that they are gods. A number of them have taken it upon themselves to punish kids for what they do when they are not even at school.

We blame it on the fact that they are given too much authority from parents and fail to see that they are just supposed to teach kids to read and write not impose a neo-conservative, often religious agenda on teens.