School's invasion of privacy raises questions about its security practices

Contributed by Debbie Howlett (Freitag, 23 Juli 2010) | Category : Email archiving

The Lower Merion school district in Pennsylvania has recently become news worthy for all the wrong reasons.

Initially, the school seemed to moving into the 21st century effectively, issuing its students laptops to increase its technological capabilities. However, this manuever quickly became a nightmare when reports began to surface that school administrators were spying on students through the webcams on the issued computers.

According to Gizmodo, many students from the district emailed the site stating the green lights on their laptops, which usually indicate the active use of a webcam, were turning on at random times during after-school hours. Furthermore, one student at Harriton High School was reportedly informed he was engaging in "improper behavior" at his house, which increased suspicion among the students.

Soon after, a lawsuit was filed against the district, claiming it was conducting "unauthorized, inappropriate and indiscriminate remote activation" of its laptops. It has since been determined that the school has a tracking system in place that uses these cameras to determine the location of the laptop if it is stolen or misplaced.

The school has now actually banned the use of webcam shots completely, whether a laptop has been stolen or not. A federal judge has also given the school until September to put a new security policy in place regarding their technology. In addition, school officials are prevented from activating a laptop's webcam, recording any video or audio, taking any screenshots and accessing any files created by students before the ruling.

In cases such as this, email archiving becomes incredibly important. While no fines or sanctioned were issued to the school, the school most likely had to produce any and all email correspondence involving the laptops and their security measures, which many school administrators were aware of. However, failure to produce such emails would have resulted in heavy fines, as it could have been received as a hindrance to the truth.

An example illustrating such fines occurred in a different industry in 2006 when the Securities Exchange Commission handed down a $2.5 million penalty to Merrill Lynch. The financial management and advisory company was assessed the fine when it failed to produce email correspondence and thus, the SEC ruled the company had impeded a government investigation into its business practices.