Fact is, though, if there's anyone at fault here, it isn't Matsko -- it's the IT geeks who implemented this "laptop tracking" technology and the school administrators who approved its use.

Outrageous as it seems, this practice does not seem to be that unusual. First there's that school in the Bronx that uses Webcams to , which was featured in an NPR Frontline documentary, "." It's pretty damned creepy.

Then I got an email from a reader, a former school systems engineer who goes by "anonymous" (no, not that ), who says his former employer -- . -- has done the very thing Lower Merion school officials have admitted to doing, and for the same reasons. His take on it is somewhat chilling.

In the first year of the laptop program, the laptops were running Mac OS 9 which had a remote control program called ARD. Principals, the technology department, etc used ARD to push software to the laptops, and also to monitor what students were doing. I know firsthand that many students had figured out how to run ARD on their own to remote control other students' laptops.

[The district] upgraded to OSX several years ago. With the latest laptops that have been issued to the middle school students, the administrators, technology department, etc have the ability to use the built-in cameras by remote control exactly as was done at Lower Merion...