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Federal investigators have decided not to pursue criminal charges on the Lower Merion PA School District. If that school district sounds familiar to you, it should – Lower Merion PA School District admitted to taking thousands of pictures of schoolchildren without their parent’s consent through the built in webcam in the school-provided laptops issued to students.

This whole fiasco started back in February when Assistant Principal Lindy Mastko of Harriton High School informed a student that they were engaged in inappropriate activity at home. The parents, of course, wanted a little more information about how the Principal knew about the “inappropriate activity” , at which point, the Principal confessed that the web cams in the school issued laptops could be turned on remotely, and used to monitor students.

The Superintendant of Lower Merion PA School District issued a statement shortly thereafter that the webcams were only to be activated in cases where the laptop was reported stolen, or missing, and that the issue was “under review”.

Shortly thereafter, a large group of parents from the school district got together and filed a class action lawsuit against the school for spying on students. Through the course of the suit, the FBI got involved to determine whether or not the school had acted criminally by spying on the students. Thousands of images were captured of students while they were off school grounds, leading to some pretty severe privacy concerns.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, Federal Investigators have decided not to pursue criminal charges. They claim that they couldn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that school employees had criminal intent to spy on students. This ruling is a little surprising when you stop to take in the full scope of the situation. Thousands of pictures were taken of minors without their knowledge, and without their parent’s consent, which seems like a very criminal course of action.

The class action lawsuit filed by the parents is still going on, and it seems like a safe bet that the parents will at least get some satisfaction on that front.

Fortunately for students, the Lower Merion PA School District has implemented new privacy policies to ban webcam, and microphone monitoring. Still, it seems like that should have been the policy all along, rather than becoming the policy after the Lower Merion PA School District got caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar.