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The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, accuses district officials of using a webcam on the school-issued laptop of a Harriton High School sophomore to spy on the boy in his home, and to snoop on other students at home." The case has riveted not only students and parents, but also privacy experts who called it unprecedented - and perhaps a harbinger of the future as the reach of technology expands beyond school walls. "This is the first one where we've seen this scenario," said Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. "This is definitely a new one."

CNN) -- A 19-year-old Pennsylvania woman sued her former high school Thursday, claiming school officials invaded her privacy and violated her free-speech rights when they confiscated her cell phone, found semi-nude photos stored inside and turned the phone over to authoritie

Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.

"Last week, allegations that a school-issue laptop computer had secretly snapped a photo in a Lower Merion teen's bedroom sparked a furor among many students, parents, and privacy experts in this region and nationwide. But there was one group less surprised than others: computer professionals, who have long worried about increasingly common Web cams and their ability to intrude anywhere laptops go."

Across the country, many school districts that provide laptops to students rejected the technology after seeing potential problems - ones that did not deter Lower Merion education officials. Other districts chose to keep computers in the schools, and some are now reexamining security and privacy guidelines to prevent abuses of those laptops that do go home. In Lower Merion, school-issued laptops contain cameras that the school can trigger remotely, then retrieve the photos taken. The district has said cameras were part of its security precautions and were activated only to track lost or missing computers.

These are among the findings of a new study appearing this week in First Monday, a peer-reviewed online journal. The four co-authors of the study argue that such age restrictions, inspired by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, are mostly ignored by kids and parents and only encourage dishonesty.

"We need to create a place that affords privacy but retains accountability. One that's for more than just venting - a place to communicate problems and observations with an expectation of being heard. This could be the platform for a new journalism based on trusted values. John S. Knight, one of the two brothers who ran the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain (and created the Knight Foundation), understood that local journalism was more than about disseminating facts, or selling papers. He believed a newspaper editor ought to be the "conscience of a community." Journalism, at its best, is as much about listening as it is about publishing or broadcasting "

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Your phone company knows where you live, what websites you visit, what apps you download, what videos you like to watch, and even where you are. Now, some have begun selling that valuable information to the highest bidder.