How a lawsuit over school laptops evolved
Soon after Lower Merion schools started handing out laptops to high school students in 2008, a school board member had a question: Were any being lost or stolen?
The query, from Jerry Novick, drew a small smile from the technology chief, Virginia DeMedio.
"We did have a theft," she said. "And we have a way we can track them. . . .
"There were six that were taken. All but one came back."
Satisfied, the board moved on to other matters. No one mentioned that the district had tracked down those computers with a powerful software program that could secretly snap photos of the user.
That conversation, captured on video, hinted at the roots of the Web cam debacle to come: Lower Merion administrators' near-evangelical faith in the power of computers to remake education - and a corresponding blind spot on the potential hazards of their own use of technology.
Those perils became clear last month with the disclosure that the school had secretly snapped photos of a Harriton High School sophomore in his home - sparking a civil lawsuit, a federal criminal investigation, and an international uproar about privacy in the digital age.
A review shows that Lower Merion administrators blew past warnings of trouble and missed obvious opportunities to disclose the Web cam capability to parents and students.
