Blake's school accused him of selling drugs. But the photo 'evidence' had been taken in his bedroom.

When 15-year-old Blake Robbins was called into the vice principal's office at his prestigious suburban Philadelphia high school in 2010, he had no idea he was about to become the face of a national privacy scandal.

The teenager found himself accused of drug dealing, with the evidence being a grainy webcam photo taken from his school-issued laptop. The real plot twist? The photo was taken while he was in his own bedroom.

"She held up a picture of Blake in his bedroom, holding up something in his hand. She accused him of selling drugs," Blake's mother, Holly Robbins in Prime Video's new four-part docuseries.

Watch the trailer for Spy High. Article continues after video.

The Lower Merion School District had equipped students with MacBooks to enhance their education. What students — and their parents — didn't know, however, was that school administrators had installed software that could remotely activate webcams without any indication to the user. Essentially, it functioned as a secret surveillance system that extended into students' homes.

The school present Blake with an image of him in his bedroom, holding a small yellow object they thought to be drugs. His family was outraged.

"I was horrified," Holly said in the documentary.

Blake was not holding drugs, but the invasion of privacy soon became the catalyst for a federal lawsuit.

"He didn't know who saw him undressed, who saw him sleeping," Holly said.

And Blake wasn't alone. Other students, particularly Black students like Keron Williams and Jalil Hasan, were disproportionately targeted for surveillance, adding a troubling dimension of racial bias to the privacy violations.

The case, often referred to as "WebcamGate," quickly attracted national media attention. What started as one family's fight soon evolved into a broader conversation about digital privacy, technology in education, and how quickly our rights can be compromised in the name of authority.

Image: Prime Video.

The scale of the school district's intrusion was staggering. When FBI investigators looked into the case, they discovered the true extent of the surveillance: school officials had collected over 56,000 webcam photos and screenshots using software called Theft Track. This program was ostensibly designed to recover lost or stolen laptops by surreptitiously taking photos through the webcam without alerting students.

Initially, the Robbins family was aware of roughly 400 photos taken of Blake through his laptop's webcam — including pictures of him sleeping.

"I saw pictures of me in class. I saw pictures of me at home. I saw pictures of me video chatting with my friends," Blake recalled.

But as the investigation deepened, the truth emerged that Blake's experience was part of a much larger pattern. Of the 2,306 laptops distributed to students throughout the district, officials had secretly activated surveillance on 36 devices, capturing thousands of images of unsuspecting teenagers in their most private spaces — their bedrooms, bathrooms, and homes.

As Blake and his family — as well as several other students — pursued their lawsuit, a community initially supportive began to fracture. Facebook groups emerged with names like "Blake Robbins is full of sh*t," demonstrating how quickly public opinion can turn against those who challenge authority — especially when they don't fit the mould of the "perfect victim."

The case ultimately raised crucial questions that remain relevant today: How much surveillance is appropriate in schools? Where do we draw the line between safety and privacy? And most importantly, who gets to decide?

Despite the scale of the surveillance, justice proved elusive for the affected students, and the FBI ultimately decided not to pursue criminal charges against the Lower Merion School District. They said the case lacked sufficient evidence to prove criminal intent — a conclusion they reached without interviewing any of the affected students.

Image: Prime Video

With lengthy court battles looming, the students' attorneys urged them to settle their claims. Blake Robbins, who had become the public face of the scandal, received a $600,000 settlement — an impressive figure on paper, but in reality, only $175,000 went to Robbins himself, with the remaining $425,000 consumed by legal fees. The other students received significantly less compensation: Jalil Hasan, who shared the same lawyer as Robbins, was awarded just $10,000. Keron Williams initially refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement that came with a $10,000 offer, before eventually securing a marginally better settlement of $13,500.

Spy High offers a fascinating look at a case that helped shape digital privacy discussions in the early 2010s, with implications that only grow more relevant in our increasingly connected world. The series expertly balances the personal story of an imperfect teenager thrust into an extraordinary situation with the broader social and legal ramifications of surveillance culture.

As Blake himself points out in one grimly ironic moment in the documentary, we've since embraced even more invasive technology: when he forgets a statistic during an interview, he casually asks Siri for help — the same kind of always-listening technology that would have seemed dystopian when his case began.

Feature Image: Prime video.