The row over a Philadelphia school district accused of secretly spying on pupils through laptop cameras escalated today after it acknowledged capturing more than 56,000 images of its students, many of them in their homes.
When the scandal first broke, it was believed that only a few pictures had been taken of one pupil, Blake Robbins. But court papers released this week showed that thousands of images were taken of Robbins and other students.
Robbins and his parents have filed an action against the school district of Lower Merion in an affluent suburb of Philadelphia. Court papers from the Robbins's lawyers said that at first it was thought that the laptops' "peeping tom" technology had produced a few images but they found more than 400 of Robbins, including images "showing him partially undressed and sleeping".
There were images of other students in their homes as well.