As progress is made to the investigation of the unbelievable webcam spying case at the Lower Merion school district, parents will soon be notified if their children were in any of the 56,000 images that were secretly captured.
News first broke of the school’s alleged illegal actions when Blake Robbins was called into the vice principal’s office for engaging in “improper behavior” at his home. His school-issued laptop with embedded webcam-monitoring software was on while he was in the privacy of his own home, and an IT official at the school remotely activated his webcam, seemingly without cause.
The story hit the blogosphere with derision, and to some extent, outright horror.
Even though the school tried to argue that none of the webcams were ever remotely activated without proper reasoning, that claim quickly became discredited when it was revealed that 56,000 pictures were taken of students from their webcams without their knowledge. Uncovered e-mails between school officials discuss the secret images as unraveling a “soap opera” between the district’s students.
Tomorrow, a federal civil judge who is overseeing the case will decide exactly who has access to the 56,000 photos, and will also determine how to notify parents of whether or not their students were victim to the school’s voyeuristic activities.
An attorney for the school district has said that none of the pictures were “salacious,” but some of the disclosed images show Blake Robbins at least partially undressed.
