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School Uses Webcams to Spy on Students - Is This Ethical?

A school district in Pennsylvania is in a bit of trouble after allegedly using webcams on school laptops to monitor their students in and outside of school using spy software. The students and parents were uninformed about the use of this software and discovered it only after one student was called to his principal's office for bad behavior in his home. The principal then used a picture taken with the spy software to prove his case.

While the school district continues to maintain that they did nothing wrong, this definitely seems to be a form of privacy infringements. Should the school district have at least informed the parents of their use of the spy software? Has anyone every come across a situation like this in your schools?

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Tags: education, internet, privacy, safety, webcams

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Comment by Rebecca Martin on October 5, 2011 at 3:20pm: I feel that even though the schools didn't intend this software to be used as harmful, they still intended it to spy, which is against the law. Parents should have been notified about the software installed on the computers so that they know when their children are being video taped or spied on. After reading the articles, I am shocked that these people weren't prosecuted for this!

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