Report: No spying in Pa. school laptops case

The report also criticized leaders and several members of the IS department as “not forthcoming with the board, administrators, and students about what TheftTrack could do and how they used it,” citing incidents demonstrating “an unwillingness … to let anyone outside of the IS Department know about TheftTrack’s capabilities.”

Many of the photos show students in school, and others show walls or empty or dark rooms. Others, however, show students and family members or other people in their homes and elsewhere, but none contained nudity.

The report said the tracking system was intended to help recover stolen computers and the district used it successfully for that purpose. But it said the district also used the system for missing computers and for unknown purposes and left it activated for long periods in cases “in which there was no longer any possible legitimate reason” for capturing images.

The report faults administrators who had information about the program with not having appreciated the privacy concerns raised.