Senate panel sets Phila. hearing on Web surveillance

A U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing on surveillance-law issues related to the Lower Merion School District's laptop-spying allegations will be conducted in Philadelphia's federal courthouse Monday.

But no one involved in the Web-cam fracas is expected to appear.

A witness list for the hearing indicates that U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (D., Pa.), who chairs the crime and drugs subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, plans to call five national technology and law experts unaffiliated with Lower Merion schools or the family of Blake Robbins.

Robbins' family sued the Lower Merion School District alleging that their right to privacy had been violated by the district's Web-cam surveillance.

A statement from Specter's office said the hearing will examine the legal questions about the advent of new video and computer technology without dwelling on the Lower Merion allegations, which are the subject of a criminal investigation as well as the Robbins' lawsuit.

The listed witnesses for the hearing are Kevin Bankston, attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation of San Francisco; Robert Richardson, director of the Computer Security Institute of Swarthmore; Fred H. Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law; Marc Zwillinger, a Washington attorney; and John Livingston, chairman and chief executive officer of the Absolute Software Corp. of Vancouver.

The hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday.