Webcam Spying

I've seen several news stories over the past few days about the webcam spying incident that has occurred in the lower Merion School District, based in Ardmore, PA. The article, "School accused of off-campus Webcam spying" explains this case in detail. The basic story here is that the local high school distributed laptops to many of its students. These laptops were to be used throughout the school year as a long-time loaner type program. Additionally, each of these laptops came equipped with a webcam; a standard feature on most of today's laptops.

As the article's title implies, Harriton High School was eventually accused of using these built-in webcams to spy on several of its students without their knowledge. Eventually, while spying on one of the students, school officials witnessed some objectionable behavior (while the student and his laptop were at home), and contacted the student's parents. The school even went so far as to provide the parents with incriminating pictures as proof of the behavior; "Many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors, and their parents or friends, in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various stages of dress or undress."

Thankfully, this student's parents had enough sense to recognize this practice as a major violation of personal privacy. Accordingly, this has now led to a massive federal wiretapping investigation at this particular school. Of course, the school defends this practice by explaining that the ability to remotely activate and view webcams on the loaner laptops was a security feature, to be used if the laptop was ever lost or stolen.

This abomination of socially beneficial information technology practices is truly frightening, especially after my previous blog post on cell-phone tracking. It seems that organizations are minimizing the importance of our personal privacy at every possible turn.

This really makes me wonder about any company issued device. Many of our devices which our companies lend to or purchase for us have the ability to capture sound and/or video. Perhaps the idea that the IT department at work could remotely hijack your Blackberry for the purpose of spying or 'ensuring security' isn't really so far-fetched at all.

I think the core issue here is where company/school property ends and where personal property begins. Obviously the organization which lends the equipment should have some ability to ensure the safety and security of the device (computer, phone, company car, etc.), but these measures must not undermine an individuals' constitutional rights to privacy.

Perhaps we still have a long road ahead of us in ironing out this complicated juxtaposition. Until then, maybe we should all think twice before doing or saying anything in front of our school or company-issued devices. In the specific case illustrated in this article, many of the students of Harrinton High School now keep a small piece of masking tape over their webcams when they aren't using them; just to be sure.