Pennsylvania school denies spying and student denies drug dealing
Blake Robbins, the kid at the center of Pennsylvania School Spycamgate
This month, Pennsylvania high schooler Blake Robbins and his parents filed an invasion of privacy lawsuit against their school district for spying on students at home by remotely activating the webcams in school-issued laptops. After news of the lawsuit went viral, the Lower Merion School District rethought its spycam feature.
The school’s superintendent sent out a letter to parents Thursday night letting them know that the feature was being turned off. But Superintendent Christopher McGinley also denied that the illicit spying had ever taken place at all. He claimed that the feature had only been used to find stolen laptops.
That statement is at odds, of course, with the Robbins court complaint. Robbins claims a vice principal disciplined him for “improper behavior at home” and presented him with a webcam shot as evidence. The school denies this, saying that, “at no time did any high school administrator have the ability or actually access the security- tracking software.”
Robbins’ lawsuit doesn’t mention what that improper behavior was. But the family revealed the charge during an interview with CBS News. “She thought I was selling drugs which was completely false,” said Blake Robbins. Robbins says that the webcam photo that vice principal Lindy Matsko presented him with as evidence shows him holding Mike & Ike candies, not drugs.
To make his case stronger, Robbins may want to clean up his Facebook page…
A review of Robbins’ Facebook page — which has low privacy settings — indicates he is familiar with “the drug culture.” He has status updates in January like this Kid Cudi lyric, “crush a bit. little bit. roll it up. take a hit,” and this Lil Wayne/Akon lyric, “We know magic, turn weed smoke to gun smoke.”
He did join the the Facebook group Teenagers who actually don’t drink or do drugs, at the end of January, but it appears that a number of teenagers join said group just to leave messages like this on its wall: “AHHH!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE METH!!!!!!!!! I SMOKE WEED!!!!!!!!”
Regardless of his Facebook claims, Robbins is adamant about the school being in the wrong for spying on him. The lawsuit and the school spying program are the talk of the town in the suburbs of Philadelphia where this story has gone down. And other students have come forward to claim possible spying.
The Legal Intelligencer noted this comment on Digg made by one willhockey16, who claims to have also participated in the Pennsylvania laptop program:
Occasionally we would notice that the green light was on from time to time but we just figured that it was glitching out as some macbooks do sometimes. Some few covered it up with tape and post its because they thought the IT guys were watching them. I always thought they were crazy and that the district, one of the more respectable ones within the state, would never pull some ***** like this. I guess I was wrong.
Image by nicole_writes via Flickr
And ABC7 hunted down some students who claim to have seen their green lights come on at strange times, indicating that their cameras had been turned on. The FBI is now investigating as well. A school spokesman, though, says that the cameras have only been activated remotely 42 times since the program began 14 months ago.
So many questions: Is the spying paranoia breaking out among students now a result of mass hysteria? Or has the school really been activating cameras and watching kids at home? And is it really possible to mistake Mike & Ike candy for drugs?
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The young man in question may have been doing something extralegal, but the school was definitely invading the boy’s privacy. Things like this have to be stopped. One way for it to stop is for young people to get their acts together, raise their morals to a higher level, and think about the consequences of their actions. But under no circumstances should Big Brother spy on them!
[...] Not-so-hidden camera in school laptop spies on Pennsylvanian student [...]
Did the parents specifically waive the rights of their children? Because as minors, I don’t think they would have the rights to do so themselves. I’m quite surprised the DA isn’t looking into this.
Mike and Ike’s are absolutely addictive and Macbooks do not glitch out, fool!
But I would worry about the drug use becoming the issue. Either the camera was turned on because the computer was reported stolen or if it was turned on for any other reason, the boy’s privacy was invaded by Kobe Bryant’s old teachers.
I would add one other thing: The kind of invasion alleged is nasty enough that I would hope any school with such a program has a second level of criteria beyond “reported stolen.” It isn’t hard to imagine that someone warped enough to want pictures of a teenage boy’s bedroom (that’s really, really twisted- the posters alone are generally gag-making and the mess- Mercy!) could report computers stolen just to justify turning on the camera.