Monica Yant Kinney: Another pin in the privacy balloon | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/28/2010

Monica Yant Kinney: Another pin in the privacy balloon | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/28/2010

In the week since the Lower Merion School District "Webcamgate" saga went viral, many have focused on unanswered questions, angry denials, and salacious details about the accusing family. But let's not lose sight of the unassailable facts:
Lower Merion officials admitted using remote-access Web cam software 42 times this academic year, ostensibly to hunt missing laptops.
They admitted they had not sought parental permission to peer into minors' personal lives and homes.
And the district did not put a halt to the clandestine activity until it was sued by the family of Harriton High student Blake Robbins.
As Lillie Coney of the Electronic Privacy Information Center put it: "If they thought it was right, they wouldn't have stopped.
"But they weren't thinking. And they weren't planning to get caught. So they didn't tell anybody."
A fourth fact about this educational eye-opener? That it's yet another example of a troubling post-9/11 erosion of personal privacy.
Much of what we used to hold dear we now give away in exchange for convenience or store discounts. Other personal liberties are snatched from us in the never-ending war on terrorism.
But school district techies peering into private homes, even for a moment, under the guise of locating a lost laptop? Even in this "surveillance society