Tech

Pa. school: Webcams used 42 times to find laptops

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PHILADELPHIA — A Pennsylvania school district says it remotely activated webcams 42 times to find missing student laptops, but never did so to spy on students, as a lawsuit claims.

Lower Merion School District spokesman Doug Young says the district recovered 28 of those laptops over 14 months. The others remain missing. The district has about 2,300 student laptops.

A high school student accused the school in a federal lawsuit this week of turning on his laptop camera while it was inside his home.

Young tells The Associated Press that only two technology department employees were authorized to activate the cameras – and only to locate missing laptops.

He says Lower Merion school officials did not tell students and parents about the security technique.