5 lessons from the documentary “Spy High” about the webcamgate scandal from Lower Merion

Many people in Lower Merion may think that they know what happened during the school district's webcamgate scandal-but the students were secretly photographed by school laptop webcams. But only a few know the whole story.

Spy onA four-episode document that is streamed on Prime video is the first top-class attempt to disguise the complex network of lawsuits, violations of privacy and allegations for illegal surveillance that broke the Philadelphia suburb in Philadelphia in 2010 after the news was secretly recorded in their houses.

The Lower Merion School District had issued 2.306 Apple MacBooks to students with security software. If school officials found that the device was lost or stolen, they could activate the software from a distance to pursue its location. This was triggered by webcams to capture photos and screenshots of the laptop in 15-minute intervals.

The minors photographed a total of 36 laptops, and the majority of the pictures were taken after alleged student violations were fixed because the employees often could not switch off the tracking software.

The director Jody McBeigh Schultz-Schultz-Schultz-Schultz-Schultz-Schultz-Schultz-Schultz-Schultz-supported by the company of the executing producer Mark Wahlberg, unrealistic visiting ideas one of the most notorious chapters in the region with a fresh, expanded perspective that offers important insights for history for the familiar and new history.

Here are five snack bars.

1. Blake Robbins is a complicated poster child

The Robbins family was the first to have sued the Harriton High School official after the Harriton High School, who had accused the 15-year-old Blake Blake. As evidence, they quoted a photo of him with a “pill” that was actually Mike and Ike Candy.

“I had assumed that a friend led it through the camera and handed over to the school,” said Holly Robbins about the photo until she called his school consultant. “She said 'I can't tell you where it comes from. However, I really think that you should involve a lawyer here.'”

The Robbinses, as the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Bill Bender describes in the series, were “more like a Delco family than a main family”.

The parents of Blake Robbins – a disputed couple with debt hills – had not paid any insurance fees that the school needed for the device, which triggered the laptop tracking.

More than 400 photos of Blake were taken, many in his bedroom in various moving states, including a particularly disturbing picture of him asleep. “This is the ultimate Big Brother moment,” says the former reporter of Inquirer and editor John Martin in the series.

Robbins claims that because of his call to celebrate and smoking weeds, he described as a bad teenager, which caused the school officers to supposedly spy on him.

“What did I do wrong? Did I take pictures of a 15-year-old boy?” Asks Robbins, now 31 and a resident of Los Angeles, on the screen and wear a thick chain and a blazer while holding his little dog Ozzy. The school district ultimately paid Robbins an agreement of 610,000 US dollars. 425,000 US dollars went to Mark Haltman, the family lawyer.

2. Racism, which is shown as a key role in monitoring

Mcveigh-Schultz sets up the documentary in order to first concentrate on the Robbinssen, but expands its scope to present an elite school community with a history of the marginalized black pupils.

The legal challenges include a lawsuit that claims that black students have been disproportionately into special school classes and a redistribution from 2008, which was accused of discrimination due to the breed.

“They do not believe that we have the ability to go forward, or we don't have the brain, just because of the color of their skin,” says Ardmore, native June Coleman-Alen, the parent of a son who was placed in Special Ed, and another son, the victim of webcam surveillance. “” Oh Lower Merion is the best school ” – sure if you are Caucasian or whatever. Of course it's probably the best school. It is not for us.”

Several respondents emphasize the greater problems of classism and institutionalized racism of lower merion as a decisive context.

The series causes school administrators to pick up pupils who considered them as a troublemaker and used surveillance technology to keep an eye on their behavior outside of school.

3 .. Keron Williams is 'Student Doe'

The 31-year-old Keron Williams and a part-time DJ, one of the sons of Coleman-Allen, never spoke publicly about being one of the webcam scandal victims until Mcveigh-Schultz called.

Williams, a scout, skaters and Honors students, was shocked in 2009 when the director of the Lower Merion High School informed him that a girl had been stolen her bracelet and other things and identified the perpetrator as afro-American skateboarder with a black jacket.

The next day the green light flickered on William's school laptop, although it was never lost or stolen.

“I am 100% convinced that it was done on purpose,” says Coleman Alen. They submitted a lawsuit for the student against the Lower Merion School District, hoping to protect Williams from public control. The school district initially insisted that Williams signed a confidentiality agreement that he rejected, and finally the school district paid an agreement of $ 13,500.

Share his story in Spy on Was cathartic for Williams. “The documentary is the first time that people really knew that I was involved, so there was a shock for everyone,” he told the Inquirer in an interview. “Finally, able to tell my story about Jody and his team, it felt peaceful to preserve this publication and to see and validate the reactions of the people.”

4. Some of the accused school district staff are still working there

The Lower Merion School District ceased the Ballard Spahr law firm for the investigation, and his report, which several respondents had found, found that school staff were negligent the implementation of the tracking software, but there was no criminal intention to spy on students. The FBI also examined, but these efforts did not provide any charges against school administrators or leaders, some of whom are still employed in the school district.

Spy on Notes on the lack of significant consequences as the main source of confusion. There are still questions, especially with regard to the deletion of the photos and how it could be possible that none of them were shown explicit nudity according to the school district.

The school district refused to take part in the documents and said Mcveigh-Schultz that no employees were interested in being interviewed.

“I understand why you feel like not giving this oxygen,” the director told the Inquirer. “Everyone in this story thought they did what was best for the students of Lower Merion, but I think there were obviously many unintentional consequences that came from mistakes.”

5. School monitoring remains a persistent problem

The webcamgate from Lower Merion was one of the earliest examples of school surveillance that went wrong – years before the pandemic got involved most schools in any form of learning online. Nowadays, students across the country use school equipment who monitor their activities every day and create countless opportunities for abuse or abuse.

Spy onThe end is far from Lower Merion and travels to Minneapolis, where school uses software to monitor Google chats and observe words in connection with death, weapons and LGBTQ terms. An incident caused administrators to draw a parent to the online talks of his child – which the student kept privately – and accept the student as a gay.

“That brings you away from the series at the end [saying]”Oh, I have to think about it when I go to school,” said Mcveigh-Schultz. “This is important to me, and it is really important for everyone just because this kind of [surveillance] is so widespread in all aspects of society. ”

As a parent himself in Los Angeles, Mcveigh-Schultz, is worried about the risks related to the school iPad's school.