Blake Robbins Lawsuit: Webcam Tracking, Images, and Settlement

The Blake Robbins lawsuit was a 2010 federal case in which a Harriton High School sophomore and his parents accused Pennsylvania’s Lower Merion School District of secretly activating the webcam on his school-issued MacBook to photograph him inside his home. The suit settled in October 2010 for $610,000.¹

What Set the Case Off

Blake Robbins, then fifteen, was called in by assistant principal Lindy Matsko, who accused him of “improper behavior” at home. According to Robbins, Matsko showed him a webcam photograph taken by his school laptop and suggested he was selling drugs. The image actually showed him holding Mike and Ike candy.² His mother, Holly Robbins, later told reporters she did not believe the school had any right “to put cameras inside the kids’ home, inside their bedrooms and spy on them.”¹

Matsko herself denied ever monitoring students by webcam or authorizing anyone else to do so, and said that in more than a decade as an administrator she had never disciplined a student for off-campus conduct unrelated to a school event.³

The Laptop Program and Tracking Software

Lower Merion had issued Apple MacBooks to roughly 1,800 high school students under a one-to-one technology program. The laptops ran software called LANrev, later renamed Absolute Manage, which could remotely turn on the webcam and take a screenshot every fifteen minutes.⁴ The district said the feature was meant only to help locate lost or stolen computers. Superintendent Christopher McGinley described the initiative as part of building a “mobile, 21st-century learning environment” and said the webcam feature was disabled as soon as the lawsuit was filed.⁵

Two IT employees operated the software: technology coordinator Carol Cafiero and computer technician Michael Perbix. Both were placed on paid administrative leave after the suit was filed.⁶ Perbix’s attorney said his client activated webcams only when directed by supervisors. Cafiero maintained she never turned on the technology “independently, without authorization,” but during an April 2010 deposition she invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked whether she had downloaded student images to a personal computer. An email surfaced in which a colleague described watching the captured images as like watching “a little LMSD soap opera,” to which Cafiero replied, “I know, I love it!” Her attorney said the exchange reflected enthusiasm about recovering stolen laptops, not any interest in students.⁷

The Complaint

Blake Robbins and his parents, Holly and Michael Robbins, filed suit on February 22, 2010, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The case was assigned to Judge Jan E. DuBois.⁸ The complaint accused the district of “spying on the activities of Plaintiffs and Class members” through “indiscriminate use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams,” and said the captured images were “embarrassing and humiliating,” potentially including pictures of minors “in various stages of undress.”⁹

Attorney Mark Haltzman sought class certification for all 1,800 students in the program. A second student, Jalil Hassan, filed a separate suit raising similar claims. The district resisted certification, and in May 2010 the court entered a temporary injunction before sending the case to court-ordered mediation.

How Many Images and Whose

An internal investigation by the district found the tracking software had captured roughly 56,000 webcam photos and desktop screenshots over about two years.⁴¹⁰ About ten officials had authority to request activation, but the district had no written policy governing when to turn the feature on or off, and investigators found it was sometimes left running for months.

Of the 2,306 laptops the district had issued, the FBI later determined that 36 had captured images of students at home without their knowledge. Most of those 36 students came from minority backgrounds, raising questions about whether the surveillance was applied disproportionately to students of color.²

Criminal Investigations

Within days of the lawsuit, the FBI opened a criminal investigation into whether district employees had violated federal wiretap or computer-intrusion laws.¹¹²¹²

The Settlement

After mediation, the parties reached a $610,000 settlement in October 2010 that resolved both the Robbins and Hassan lawsuits and a related insurance coverage dispute. The money broke down as follows:

Blake Robbins received $175,000, placed in a trust with $25,000 available up front.
Jalil Hassan received $10,000.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Haltzman received $425,000 in legal fees.

The district’s insurer, Graphic Arts Mutual Insurance Company, agreed to pay $1.2 million toward the district’s overall legal and settlement costs.¹³ Under an earlier court order, the district had to let students and parents view any images captured of them; the images were then to be destroyed.⁹

A third student, Keron Williams, settled separately for $13,500 after refusing to sign a non-disclosure agreement attached to an initial $10,000 offer. His laptop had never been reported lost or stolen, which cut against the district’s stated justification for turning on the camera. He was kept anonymous at first out of his mother’s concern that public exposure could harm him.²

The District’s Response

Lower Merion acknowledged that it had “captured thousands of webcam photographs and screen shots from student laptops in a misguided effort to locate missing computers,” apologized, and said it had revised its policies and put safeguards in place.¹ The tracking software was permanently disabled, and a 60-person committee of faculty, administrators, families, and an outside consultant was assembled to draft new rules on technology, privacy, and security.¹⁴

Superintendent Christopher McGinley left the district in 2014 to become an associate professor at Temple University; his departure was described as voluntary and was not publicly attributed to the scandal.¹⁵²¹⁶ By that point Blake Robbins had long since left the Philadelphia area for Los Angeles, and his parents had relocated to Florida.

1
CBS News. Settlement in School Webcam Spy Case
2
Time. Spy High True Story
3
ABC7. Lower Merion Webcam Case
4
NBC Philadelphia. WebcamGate: 56,000 Shots Taken via Student Laptops
5
The Guardian. Schools Spied on Students via Webcams
6
WHYY. Two Lower Merion School Employees on Administrative Leave
7
NBC Philadelphia. Lower Merion IT Staffer: I’m Not a Voyeur
8
ACLU of Pennsylvania. Robbins v. Lower Merion School District
9
IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. PA Webcam Spying Case Resolved
10
WHYY. School District Admits to Taking 56,000 Laptop Photos
11
NBC Philadelphia. FBI Launches Criminal Investigation Into Webcam Spying
12
6abc. FBI Investigation Into Lower Merion Webcam Spying
13
NBC News. Lower Merion School District Settles Webcam Lawsuits
14
NBC Philadelphia. Laptop Meeting in Lower Merion School District
15
Main Line Media News. Lower Merion Superintendent McGinley Stepping Down
16
Youth Today. Q&A: Spy High Amazon Documentary Probes Dangers of Online Student Surveillance