Ok, this is one of the most unsettling tech stories I've seen in a while .... from philly.com (h/t Geekology).

A Lower Merion family has set off a furor among students, parents, and civil liberties groups by alleging that Harriton High School officials used a webcam on a school-issued laptop to spy on their 15-year-old son at home.
[...]
Fueled with state grants, the Lower Merion district issued laptops to all 2,300 high school students, starting last school year at Harriton and later at Lower Merion High, to promote more "engaged and active learning and enhanced student achievement," Superintendent Christopher W. McGinley said in a statement. [...] The district's Apple MacBook laptops have a built-in webcam with a "security feature" that can snap a picture of the operator and the screen if the computer is reported lost or stolen.
[...]
The suit says that in November, assistant principal Lynn Matsko called in sophomore Blake Robbins and told him that he had "engaged in improper behavior in his home," and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam in his school-issued laptop.

Matsko later told Robbins' father, Michael, that the district "could remotely activate the webcam contained in a student's personal laptop . . . at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam" without the knowledge or approval of the laptop's users, the suit says.

I'm sort of at a loss for words. What could possibly go wrong with this feature? One parent states the obvious:

Parent Candace Chacona said she was "flabbergasted" by the allegations. "My first thought was that my daughter has her computer open almost around the clock in her bedroom. Has she been spied on?"

No kidding.

The school district appears to be taking it seriously (of course, I imagine a class action lawsuit has that effect on a school district).

While declining to comment on the specifics of the suit, spokesman Douglas Young said the district was investigating. "We're taking it very seriously," he said last night. [...] But he said "the district would never utilize that security feature for any other reason." The district said that the security system was "deactivated" yesterday, and that it would review when the system had been used.

Obviously, there are an awful lot of questions dangling. Widener University law professor Stephen Henderson said using a laptop camera for home surveillance would violate wiretap laws, even if done to catch a thief. So, it seems the whole policy might be illegal to start with. But even if there is some precedent that makes what they are doing legal, does the school system have a written policy on the security features? Have they ever done it before? How many times? Under what circumstances? Did the principle go beyond school regulations?

This just makes me so mad on so many levels. There is something seriously wrong with the attitudes of our schools today. The practice of penalizing students in school for behavior off school grounds and outside of school hours is egregious enough ... but this takes it to a whole new level. We are getting dangerously close to the state having more authority to raise our children than parents. But hey ... kids don't have rights, so it's all good I guess :-(

Just another depressing data point in a totally lame week.