Motherboard

The internet was screaming today over news that a high school principal was spying on a kid using his webcam. But that in itself is hardly news. Schools have been doing this for years. In the video above, an excerpt from Frontline’s recent documentary Digital Nation, a principal at a school in New York City where every kid gets a laptop uses preinstalled spy software to watch his students check their hair and Facebook—and sometimes to freak them out by snapping photos of them on Photo Booth and tsk-tsking them right in their gchat windows.

The video doesn’t meditate on how schools are using this awesome China-ish one-way Chatroulette technology to spy on kids; the double edged sword here is how computers are helping kids learn while turning them into rampant multitaskers who can’t listen to a teacher talk about Boo Radley without blogging about it on a class website, while sneaking in youtube videos (if they can get around school firewalls using proxy servers) and chatting with friends. (We talked to the producer about the multitasking threat)

Today’s development might finally give kids like this a new and important topic to gchat about (while their principals look on of course): a principal in Philiadelphia used the software to creepily spy on a student in his freaking home, and then, if that weren’t jerk enough, to punish him for his “improper behavior.” A class action lawsuit on behalf of all the school’s students is underway. (And a new toy watch holds out the possibility of some kind of retribution.)

Then again, that technology has already killed their privacy may not be news to many kids. And despite all the talk spouted by educators about protecting kids’ privacy and watching out for internet predators, kids already seem pretty comfortable with abandoning their privacy all by themselves. Kids aren’t using proxies at school because they want to protect their identities; they’re using them to watch Miley Cyrus videos and post photos of themselves.

Maybe, in some twisted way, principals are using their network of spy webcams to teach a little object lesson, albeit a depressing and unhelpful one: you might be being watched, and there’s very little you can do about it. Well, besides turning off that school laptop and just learning the old fashioned way. But wait—now you kinda need that computer to learn. Hmm. Forget about knowing how to spell “conundrum.” You can Google it, or just wait until your principal spell checks your chat window.