In a disturbing and well-publicized recent incident that the media has dubbed “Webcamgate,” a Pennsylvania high school sophomore discovered that a laptop on loan from his school was surreptitiously photographing him in his own home.

Harriton High School, in the Lower Merion School District in Ardmore, Pa., issues its students Apple laptops with TheftTrack software installed. The software can be activated to locate a laptop that is reported stolen or missing by capturing photos and screenshots from the computer. Blake Robbins discovered the program had been activated on his laptop, which was not stolen or missing.

Over 15 days last fall, the computer captured 210 webcam photos and 218 screenshots of Robbins, including photos of him sleeping and partially undressed. Blake's parents filed a lawsuit against the district in February.

On Tuesday, Ballard Spahr released a 69-page report into the incident criticizing the school district for the lack of a written policy on the use of TheftTrack. It found no evidence that employees were intentionally spying on students but was critical of an IT staff that activated TheftTrack “without any apparent regard for privacy considerations or sufficient consultation with administrators.” In many instances, when the software was used for legitimate purposes, staffers failed to subsequently turn it off.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

The report's most pointed criticism was aimed at [district IT chief Virginia] DiMedio and her staffers, who investigators said “were not forthcoming” about the tracking technology and were unwilling “to let anyone outside” of their department know that the Web cams could secretly snap and store photos every 15 minutes a laptop was running and online. … The report also said DiMedio's successor, who arrived after she retired last summer, initially described the department as the Wild West–”because there were few official policies and no manuals or procedures, and personnel were not regularly evaluated.”