The webcams that officials could turn on remotely without students’ knowledge at a wealthy suburban Philadelphia school district have been turned off, the superintendent has said.

The announcement came hours after disclosure Thursday of a lawsuit filed by parents of the Lower Merion School District student that claimed the laptops handed out by the district were used to snoop on teenagers at home.

Some students, angry at news of the alleged spying, have taped over the laptop cameras and microphones.

Grade 10 student Tom Halperin described students as “pretty disgusted” and pointed out his class recently read 1984, the George Orwell classic that coined the term “Big Brother.”

“This is just bogus,” Halperin, 15, told The Associated Press as he left Harriton High School with his taped-up computer. “I just think it’s really despicable that they have the ability to just watch me all the time.”

The webcams would not be used again unless there were “express written notification to all students and family,” superintendent Dr. Christopher McGinley said in a statement.

The cameras, which the lawsuit said were remotely activated without students’ or parents’ knowledge, came with the Apple computers the school district gave all of its 1,800 students.

If a laptop vanished, the webcam was switched on remotely by the school district’s security and technology staff. “This feature has only been used for the limited purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop,” said McGinley.

Students only found out the webcams could be turned on remotely when a principal told a student they had a picture of him doing something wrong in his home, the lawsuit said.

“The school district has the ability to intercept images from that webcam of anyone or anything appearing in front of the camera at the time of activation,” the lawsuit claims.

“The school district has the ability to remotely activate the embedded webcam at any time.

“Many of the images captured may consist of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including various stages of undress.”

It was only when an assistant principal at Harriton High School told Grade 10 student Blake Robbins she had a picture that proved he “was engaged in improper behaviour in his home” that anyone realized the school could peep into students’ home lives without them knowing, the lawsuit says.

Assistant principal Lindy Matsko “cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in” Robbins’ school-issued laptop, the lawsuit says.

Blake’s parents, Michael and Holly Robbins, filed the lawsuit Feb. 11 on behalf of all 1,800 students at Lower Merion’s schools. The lawsuit alleges the webcams violate the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of privacy, Pennsylvania common law, the U.S. Civil Rights Act, and a variety of other laws.

In his welcome to students, posted on the district website, McGinley speaks glowingly of the program to give every student their own laptop and create “an authentic, mobile, 21st century learning environment.”

The program “ensures that all students have 24/7 access to school-based resources.”

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The Robbins lawsuit contends the district also had 24/7 access to the students “by the unauthorized, inappropriate and indiscriminate remote activation of a webcam.”

Serving the wealthy Main Line outside of Philadelphia, the Lower Merion School District “is one of only two districts in Pennsylvania to earn Moody’s highest bond rating,” information in McGinley’s biography says. Its teachers are among the highest paid in Pennsylvania and its students’ college-entrance scores are among the highest in the country, the information says.