The Lower Merion School District in suburban Philadelphia is justifiably in hot water over switching on webcams on school-issued laptop computers inside students' homes without families' knowledge or permission.

The district is the defendant in a lawsuit filed by a student who, after at least one instance when his computer webcam was activated without his knowledge while he was at home, was accused of engaging in what school officials perceived as improper behavior.

The latest news connected to the situation is that the FBI will examine whether the district violated computer-intrusion laws. It is the view of the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is not involved in the case, that such actions by the district could amount to illegal electronic wiretapping.

"School officials cannot, any more than police, enter into the home either electronically or physically without an invitation or a warrant," said the ACLU legal director, Witold J. Walczak.

Where Lower Merion officials possibly can be seen as having made a grave error was in not informing parents or students that the webcams might be activated in their homes without an official notification.

On Friday, district officials acknowledged that they had remotely activated webcams 42 times in the past 14 months, although they claimed those activations never were meant to spy on students, as the lawsuit filed by the student alleges. The district has said the activations were aimed at helping to locate missing laptops.

But students and their families nonetheless were unaware that their privacy was being invaded within the walls of their homes.

"Who knows what they are seeing?" Walczak said.

It's right for a school district to require a student to pay for a lost computer — just like it is right for a district to require payment for a lost or destroyed textbook. Protecting such property is part of learning responsibility.

But no school system, no matter how technologically advanced — and affluent Lower Merion is advanced, issuing laptops to each of its 2,300 students — should ever feel comfortable doing what Lower Merion admits that it did.

The distict said only two employees in its technology department had authorization to activate the cameras. But the fact that it was a high school vice principal who confronted the student about his alleged "improper behavior in his home" — stemming from photographic evidence "embedded" in his school-issued laptop — suggests that, at least in this one instance, the search for a lost computer went beyond the stated purpose for activating the webcams.

There is little margin for error when it comes to people's privacy. As recently as 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the privacy of the home when it ruled police could not, without a warrant, use thermal imaging equipment outside a home to see if heat lamps were being used inside to grow marijuana.

High court Justice Antonin Scalia, quoting a previous case, said Supreme Court precedents draw "a firm line at the entrance to the house."

Lower Merion officials apparently need a refresher course dealing with students' privacy.

And in the Lower Merion case, it was not just the students' privacy that potentially was violated. The privacy of any other members of the household, as well as any visitors at the time the webcams were turned on, was potentially at stake.

The district has said the tracking feature would not be activated again "without express written notification to all students and families."

But if the district hopes to remain free of future questions and allegations, it will limit itself to seeking financial compensation for lost computers, and do away with high-technology searches.

A policy of not issuing final grades until all financial debts to the district are satisfied is better than invading students' and parents' privacy.

An article in Sunday's Butler Eagle noted the comments of privacy experts who said the Lower Merion case shows how even well-intentioned plans can go awry if officials fail to understand the technology and its potential consequences.

The district should have sought expert legal advice before launching its webcam-activation procedure. Any legal advice it might have gotten wasn't worthy of an "expert" classification.

All school districts should learn from the experience of this suburban Philadelphia district.

— J.R.K.