IASA

Yesterday, I spent a good deal of the day reading and rereading the class action suit filed by the Robbins family against the Lower Marion School District. The suit alleges that the school invaded the privacy of Mr Robbins (who is 15) and other students of the school district. The schools had provided Mr Robbins and other students with laptops as a part of a program to bring e-learning opportunities to the student body. The laptops were installed with a webcam and can be remotely administered to take snapshots of whatever is in front of the camera. The system was installed to help track missing or stolen laptops but the case alleges that the schools used it for much more.

I believe this case represents a very significant moment for IT architects and technologists in general. The issues at stake are tremendously important and include the privacy and safety of minors, the potential for the abuse of privacy by government, security, as well as government IT policy which could impact millions if not billions of dollars worth of spend. There are so many elements to discuss that it would be difficult even to list them in a single post.

Let's start with a simple but interesting oversight on the part of the plaintiffs. They named 3 groups in the case; a) the school, b) the district and c) the superindendent of the school district. Many of you may not be aware but for some time I have been predicting that IT would begin being named in these types of cases. They did not do so in this particular case but other cases I have seen are leading us there. Here is a question, are any of the named individuals qualified to understand the privacy implications of a complex technology system? Even if your answer is yes, aren't the contractors and IT staff involved equally responsible and much more qualified for identifying and escalating such potential issues? If that is so, what is our (IT architects and IT staff) liability or culpability in these claims?

IASA will be following and pursuing the stakeholders in this case. In addition I will be forming a small leadership team to discuss these issues and what if any response IASA should make and where our responsibilities lie. I will be keeping you informed of any results we discover.

Follow up posts will include: IT architect liability and licensing issues, public inspection of IT systems, the 'doh! we didnt know response', and details on the case progression.