Where Are Our Limits?

ROSEMONT, PENNSLYVANIA-Once a town completely content and happy about their educational system is now amid an uproar. It’s one of the first privileged towns to issue Macintosh laptops to all 2,300 students in both high schools, but with this generous gift, came an unlawful and unwanted price tag.

None of the students or parents of these two high schools were aware that school officials had ordered computer technicians to activate secret webcams on each laptop. While they claim it was only for “finding lost or stolen laptops,” it appears not to be the only case. Blake Robbins, a 15-year-old attending Harriton High School, who did not report his laptop missing or stolen, was eating Mike and Ike’s while on his computer. The next day the vice principal called him down to the office and accused Robbins of taking drugs/illicit pills and disciplined him for “improper behavior in his home” based off evidence of webcam photos. Since then, the, technicians have been suspended and Robbins’s family is suing the school and superintendent.

First off, using webcams to find missing/ stolen laptops is the most ridiculous excuse I have ever heard for spying. If you wanted to find a laptop, why wouldn’t you install a GPS device into the laptops instead of webcams? GPS’s give you an exact pinpoint location, while a webcam might only show you a picture of a blank wall, and unless you know every wall, in every building, in every town, city, state, or country, chances are you’re not going to find your missing laptop. Also, why wouldn’t school officials inform parents and students that the laptops would be activated if reported lost or stolen. Why the need for secrets and evasion?

If this situation had been subjected by anyone other than these school district officials, their butts would be thrown in the slammer and we wouldn’t hear from them for the next ten to fifteen years. So what does this say about our government? As long as you’re a school official, you can do whatever you please, including spying on your students in the privacy of their own bedrooms? Where are our limits!

The only people who are allowed to spy/ keep surveillance on others are law officials, and even they need a warrant issued by a judge. Last time I checked, school computer technicians don’t carry around a badge and handcuffs.

I don’t know about you, but when I get dressed in the morning I don’t throw a curtain over my computer. Why? Because it’s an inanimate object and I was taught when you turned off a computer you couldn’t see anything on the screen, and no one could see you. Now this common trust in technology has been broken. What next? Will I have to start hanging a curtain over my chair, or how about my desk, because I want some privacy in my own room? There has to be some boundaries. If your school suspected you of “improper behavior in your home,” does that suddenly make it acceptable to put webcams in your bathroom? And if that’s okay, then why are all these perverts in jail?

The fact of the matter is the school knew this was wrong from the beginning. That’s why they never informed students or parents, they violated their own policy by spying on Robbins when his laptop was not reported lost or stolen, and they suspended the technicians (not exactly what I would call the behavior of an innocent party). Right now the FBI and a Senate Committee are looking into this case to see if any particular laws were broken, and if these people come out innocent, I will surely lose all faith in our legal system. Bill Clinton, our former President and government official once said, “We must protect our citizen’s privacy- the bulwark of personal liberty, the safeguard of individual creativity.” It’s funny how this powerful man in our government gave this bold statement, and still this same government that controls our nation’s schools think that secretly, invading, webcams are an exception.