Student privacy invasion in Robbins v. Lower Merion School District

Webcams

For years, school districts have recognized the need to incorporate computers in education. This need has only become stronger as technology has become a dominant factor in people's lives, and in the economy. If schools are to teach children how to function in the adult world, computers must be part of that education. Some districts -- those apparently bestowed with generous budgets, have taken to providing computers for their students or at least some of them. The benefits of doing so are numerous. An NBER working paper noted that student learning effectiveness is enhanced by the use of computers in education (Barrow, Markman & Rouse, 2008). Indeed, there is even talk that if computers are used more widely, they could even be cost-effective in education, reducing the need for both teachers and for physical infrastructure.

However, there are downsides to the use of computers in education, and one such downside emerged recently. The situation is encapsulated in the case of Robbins v. Lower Merion School District, and centered around student privacy and the invasion thereof (Doctorow, 2010). In this case, the school district had issued Mac computers to a large number of students. After a time, one student, Blake Robbins, was disciplined for allegedly taking drugs at home. The student was presented with evidence that was taken by the school district on the laptop's webcam (Bliman, 2010). Apparently, the district had accessed the computer remotely, and used the camera to spy on the student while the student was at home. When that case was announced, other students came forward with similar allegations. The school district, Lower Merion in Pennsylvania, had done the same to them. Students also noted that their web surfing habits were recorded and correspondences including instant messages were monitored by school officials.

Blake v. Lower Merion School District

The Blake case was the first to reach the courts, but other cases did as well. It was noted that legally, the Constitution grants very limited powers to schools to deal with issues that occur off-premises and after hours, especially when those things are not directly related to the school (Clarke, 2010). The FBI also launched an investigation into the school district at this time. The case was ultimately settled out of court with a large settlement going to the Blake family. This outcome unfortunately makes it more difficult to provide clarity with respect to the legality of the school's actions, though they are believed to have been illegal.

Schools have limited capacity to discipline students. While it is reasonable that a school can punish a student for what it believed was illegal drug use if that drug use took place on school grounds, what the school can do if the drug use takes place at the student's home is minimal. In the normal legal system, police need warrants to enter the premises of a suspect, and there are standards by which a court would grant a warrant. The school board in this case would have lacked a warrant, and would have had no grounds to obtain one either. Moreover, illegal drug use off-campus sits outside of the school's disciplinary jurisdiction, because the drug use did not affect the school in any way. The settlement therefore was the school board's way of both ducking the real issue and of avoiding what could have been an even larger settlement had the case reached a jury.

The Future of Webcams and School Laptops

There are noble intentions with the issuing of laptops to students. The educational outcomes are generally positive. The merits of spending money on computers that the students can probably afford anyway is its own argument that might factor into the debate about this subject in the future. However, it is clear that there are now risks to be balanced against the benefits. Students can never truly be certain that they are able to trust the computer that their school gives them. There is very much the risk that they are being spied on, and there it usually no way for the student to tell. This undermines the education system as a whole. That said, the issue is not so significant that students are going to turn down free laptops.

School boards will now need to beef up their internal controls and their ethics programs in response to this situation. The situation occurred because multiple people at the school board were morally bankrupt, but yet had positions of power. Certainly, there was an egregious lack of ethics involved. School boards will now need to ensure that there is specific ethical training that incorporates the lessons from this case. It is sad that this would even be needed but that is the state of things.

From a technological perspective, there are two other solutions that can help to ensure something like this never happens again. The first is that there should be -- if this is technologically possible -- blocks on software that can allow remote access to anything, from webcams to Internet surfing records. If such software is installed, it would protect student privacy.

Lastly, school boards can work with computer makers to have computers that do not have tracking facilities, or do not have webcams. If there are times when a webcam might be desirable for education purposes, the school board should work around that so avoid having any webcams. A school model of the computer in question -- and Apple does a lot of work in education -- would alleviate the problem entirely.

Conclusion

A lot of the proposed solutions are essentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Good ideas like webcams are rejected simply because some unethical people misused them. Yet, that is something how things work in this world. If webcams are to remain, there needs to be safeguards to protect the privacy of students. The students themselves need to be aware of the risks, and the people in the school board need to be aware of the ethical risks that they face. The school boards in this case actually tried to argue that they only use things like the webcam as a security measure -- blatantly untrue -- butt the school board members apparently did not understand that there were ethical considerations at play. They should have, and future educators using school-issued laptops need to understand the ethical implications, too.

The threat of misuse does not, ultimately, preclude the use of laptops with webcams in an academic setting. However, knowing how easy it is for people to hack into the laptop and send information back to the school board, it is not unreasonable that people and especially students would be suspicious of this technology in the future. Thus, if schools are going to continue with programs like these, they must build in safeguards. That could mean altering the software and hardware on the computers to accommodate student privacy needs, and it could also mean significant training upgrades for educators, and attempts to rebuilding the shattered trust between students and the education system.

Work Cited:

Barrow, L., Markman, L. & Rouse, C. (2008). Technology's edge: The educational benefits of computer-aided instruction . NBER Working Paper No. 14240