The True Story Behind Spy High’s School Spying Scandal

For 15-year-old Blake Robbins, life was pretty ordinary. Until Nov. 11, 2009, when he was called into the principal’s office at Merriton High School in the Lower Merion School District in Philadelphia. He was shocked to discover that the school was accusing him of consuming and dealing drugs. Robbins was even more surprised to learn that they had proof: a photo of him holding the alleged drugs. But something was off. The photo was taken with Robbins’ laptop in his bedroom.

It begged the question: How did the high school get a picture of a student in their bedroom?

The case caused a national scandal in 2010, and it’s now been given the docuseries treatment in Prime Video’s four-part Spy High, out April 8. Here’s what to know about the spying scandal that rocked America; one that wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of another show releasing a new season the same week, Black Mirror.

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A dream turns into a nightmare

At the beginning of the 2009-2010 academic year, the Lower Merion School District gave their entire student population of 2,306 students (including both Merriton HS and Lower Merion HS) brand new Macbooks to streamline schoolwork. Unsurprisingly, students were thrilled at getting a top-of-the-line laptop for free. They would use AIM chat to keep in touch with their friends at school and home, video chat, play games…everything a laptop could provide was now at their fingertips.  

What seemed like a dream come true became a nightmare when Blake Robbins was called into the office, with school officials using photos taken on his laptop to accuse him of a crime. Robbins never took those photos, and the school refused to tell him how they got them. Robbins’ parents were terrified that the school was using the laptop to spy on their son and other students (including their daughter Paige). The Robbins family promptly filed a lawsuit against the school board. 

The lawsuit soon became a national news story, widely referred to as WebcamGate. The revelation that a school could be spying on their students in and out of the classroom was a cause for alarm across America. The school board argued that the webcams were only activated to find stolen or missing laptops, but Robbins’ computer was never reported as such. The Robbins family lawyer, Mark Haltzman, filed an order for the school board to release the photos they had of Blake, which led to the release of over 400 photos of the 15-year-old taken on his laptop without his knowledge. This included photos of him sleeping in bed.

An FBI investigation was launched, with the school board under considerable fire for allegedly spying on their students. As the case dragged on, public opinion started to shift against the Robbins family, with many alleging that they were suing because they needed the money and wanted to soak up their 15 minutes of fame. Both Blake and Paige Robbins were bullied relentlessly at school, and the school board launched a defense, hiring a top Philadelphia law firm and attorney Henry Hockeimer to conduct their own investigation on WebcamGate.

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The investigation grows

The FBI investigation uncovered that the school board had taken over 56,000 images using a remote technology called Theft Track, designed to take random photos on a laptop webcam considered lost or stolen. That number far exceeded the 400 originally released of Blake. Of the 2,306 issued laptops, 36 of them captured images of students at home without their knowledge. When it came to Robbins, the school board argued they turned on the tracking on his laptop because he hadn’t paid for insurance after breaking the first laptop, leading them to consider the laptop stolen, and were therefore trying to find the computer. However, in the parental consent forms required to get the laptop in the first place, there was no mention whatsoever of any sort of remote tracking. Spy High uncovers several e-mails from the school board’s IT department that show they not only knew the location of Robbins’ laptop thanks to the tracking (and therefore knew that it was not missing), but purposefully continued to track and take photographs without his consent. 

Suspicious of Robbins because of his disciplinary issues at school (which largely stemmed from being late to class), the monitoring led to an image of Robbins holding what looked like drugs, which led to the Nov. 11 meeting and breakthrough on the case. Through the process of discovery, an internal school district email was uncovered which urged that parents should be made aware of the tracking, concerned that “a huge uproar” could occur if they were left unaware. Virginia DiMedio, Director of Technology and Information Services at LMSD, replied saying, “There is no way that I would approve or advocate for the monitoring of students at home,” and “I suggest you take a breath and relax.” Parents remained unaware of Theft Track, the feature that allowed for remote photography.

More students came forward with lawsuits of their own upon realizing they were being spied on. Jalil Hasan, 17, filed suit, as did a student who preferred to remain anonymous, called “Student Doe.” In Spy High, that student’s identity is revealed as Keron Williams. Most of the 36 kids who were targeted came from minority backgrounds, and Keron’s mother had originally opted to conceal his identity because she feared that public exposure could have severe consequences for her son. In both Hasan and Williams’ cases, their laptops were never reported to be lost or stolen, nor were there any issues with paying for the insurance. The series details how betrayed the students felt to be spied on by an institution they were supposed to trust, and the impact on their mental health and development. 

A disappointing resolution

The FBI’s investigation ended with the decision to not pursue charges against LMSD. They claimed to have not found enough evidence to prove criminal intent behind the spying, despite not having interviewed any of the students. Robbins, Williams, and Hasan were all pressed by their attorneys to settle their lawsuits and avoid the difficulties of battling their cases in court. Eventually, they all agreed. As the main public face of the WebcamGate lawsuits, Blake Robbins’ settlement was for $600,000—a lot of money for any teenager. However, only $175,000 was awarded to Robbins himself, with $425,000 going to legal fees. Hasan, who had the same lawyer as Robbins, was awarded $10,000. Williams was told to sign an NDA to receive $10,000, but he refused, eventually getting a settlement of $13,500.

Fourteen months after Robbins’ settlement, his sister Paige, 19, was fearful that the images captured of her could be inappropriate and could damage her own ambitions of one day being district attorney. She brought forward her own lawsuit against the school district. A spokesperson for LMSD referred to the suit as “an attempted money-grab,” and Paige received a torrent of abuse online, including disturbing antisemitic messages. Robbins withdrew the lawsuit. 

Spy High also explores the rise in monitoring software in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a massive increase in students acquiring laptops for school, and the docuseries reports that 88% of schools use some type of monitoring software. The consequences reach further than potential crime. Software can flag words like “gay,” leading to students being forcibly outed, like Leo Holcomb in Minneapolis (he and his friend, Charlie Schmidt, helped get monitoring software banned in the state of Minnesota). But a huge number of students are still being monitored across America. The Center for Democracy & Technology estimates that 23 million students are attending public schools that actively monitor their online activity.

LMSD refused to take part in the documentary, saying in a statement, “In 2010, the independent investigation into LMSD’s use of the LANrev TheftTrack system found no evidence that the feature was used to ‘spy’ on students.” At 18, Blake Robbins left Lower Merion for Los Angeles and has never returned. His parents, tired of the abuse stemming from their lawsuit, moved to Florida.