Woes Deepen for Lower Merion School District, FBI Now Involved

The Lower Merion School District was already facing a pretty embarrassing lawsuit alleging that district official used webcams on school-issued computers to spy on students. Whether or not these allegations are true, the lawsuit is a publicity nightmare. And the dreamer of that nightmare won’t be waking up anytime soon. Count the FBI and a federal grand jury among the parties interested in Lower Merion’s actions.

The FBI has opened an investigation as to whether the district’s actions were in violation of federal wiretapping or computer intrusion laws. The federal grand jury has subpoened records relating to the issue.

The school district admitted last week that it remotely accessed webcams on 42 separate occassions; however, they are holding to the line that this was only performed as a security measure when laptops were lost or stolen. The district has not expressly stated that the laptop at the center of the lawsuit was stolen, though it says that Lower Merion never violated the policy of remotely accessing computers only in the event of a missing device.

Regardless of whether or not the district’s actions are found to be at odds with the law, it welcomed potential disaster by allowing for a remote-access feature and not expressly disclosing the information to students and families. Not helping matters is an NBC Philadelphia report that the Robbins student involved in the lawsuit was eating candy that the district mistook for pills in reprimanding him. [ Washington Post via Ars Technica ] [Photo: bdjsb7]