I was about to begin this with the standard “if this turns out to be true.”

But the Lower Merion School District has in fact admitted that they were able to surreptitiously activate the webcams on school-issued laptops and watch students at home.

I’ll probably get angry in a few minutes, but right now I’m just sitting here stunned and speechless at a privacy violation that would seem to set a new standard of odiousness. 

I’ll say this for the Lower Merion School District: At least they did us the favor of violating privacy with such heavy-handedness and lack of sophistication that no one will be able to sanely argue that their actions were in some gray or uncertain realm. This was surveillance at its best and most sinister, straight out of  Orwell.   

And they’re being sued.