Voyeur culture

by M. Stewart

It's starting to look like that suburban Philadelphia school district that got caught spying on students through laptop webcams may be in deeper trouble than anyone suspected. In a federal court filing last week, the attorney representing the high school sophomore who filed suit against the Lower Merion School District said that "[d]iscovery to date has now revealed that thousands of webcam pictures and screen shots" were downloaded by school officials from "numerous other students." [see Wired News]

The focus of attention appears to be on the district IT administrator, who "invokes the Fifth Amendment to every question asked of her, including a question asked as to whether she had ever download[ed] pictures to her own computer, including pictures of students who were naked while in their home." According to Wired, "the lawsuit seeks class-action status to represent all the district's 2,300 high school students."

In an e-mail message cited in the motion, another district employee contacted the IT administrator, saying "It's like a little LMSD [Lower Merion School District] soap opera," to which the administrator replied, "I know, I love it!"

Years ago in Virginia, one of my students, who worked as a student employee in my school's IT department, proudly demonstrated to me how easy it was for him to hack the campus email system and read everyone's mail. He claimed knowledge of faculty and staff affairs and other student and employee secrets. Since then I have assumed that someone is watching everything I do on the internet. It's not paranoia when it's true.

I know this isn't news to most of you, but it's easy to forget and easy to get sloppy. And it's not just about doing illegal or immoral things at your computer. The issue is that you have NO privacy on the internet--none, especially at work. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive or misinformed.

While it's likely the Pennsylvania school district will be found guilty in the laptop snooping case, it's useful to remember that the only reason they got caught was the sheer stupidity of the IT supervisor and other staff members at the high school. But most IT people aren't that stupid.