I am wondering if the inappropriate behaviour was a case of one student stealing another students laptop
Including possibly the boy.
I am reminded of this story, in which the school suspended two students for taking sexy pics of themselves and posting them on a “private” (in the sense that anything on the Internet is private) website, despite the pictures having nothing whatsoever to do with the school.
While I think the girls were criminally stupid, it’s none of the school’s damn business what they do in their free time.
(Note: I’m really hoping that the phrase “lollipop-shaped phallus” in that link is supposed to read “phallus-shaped lollipop”, or I’m officially skeeved out.)
That actually makes a whole lot of sense, and I don’t think I’d blame the school if this is what actually happened. But we don’t know yet.
Stupid, probably, but I don’t see what’s criminal about it.
Yes, especially since it’s a large, multi-coloured novelty lollipop-shaped phallus. :eek:
Just being hyperbolic, although the message that you shouldn’t post anything on the Internet you wouldn’t want put on a billboard next to the interstate cannot be reiterated often enough. Once it’s there, it’s there forever and anyone can see it.
Z
In this case, though, it’s a school laptop that’s at issue.
Not necessarily. It’s important to remember that this is just the very earliest stages of the lawsuit, and thus the investigation, by both the plaintiff and the defendant. That’s why there is always extensive pre-trial discovery, both of documents and representatives from both parties, to try and determine the accuracy of the complaint. It may be a misunderstanding of some sort, or it may be that the school authorities have just started to investigate thoroughly, doing an internal investigation, but felt that it was necessary to put some sort of general statement out to respond to the media.
The plaintiffs appear to have dealt with an Assistant Principal, as the administrative representative to deal with students and parents, but the school division may be speaking from the perspective of their internal organization, in which only IT people get the reports of stolen laptops, etc.
It’s way to early to conclude exactly what happened here, based solely on a statement of claim and media releases.
Do we know it’s not a case of; we’re giving you laptops with the understanding that they are to be used for schoolwork and not to be used for any nefarious purposes, we reserve the right to check (remotely) in class, that you’re not playing games, etc, and to occasionally check the content of the laptop (remotely) to check you have not engaged in nefarious acts, ie downloaded porn?
I can see how the above arrangement could be twisted into the OP by a parent wanting to defend their kid. Especially a rich helicopter parent with an expensive lawyer.
Is it possible they are suggesting home schooling as they know when this plays out, a kiddie porn revelation is going to ruin this child’s high school experience and perhaps put him in real danger?
I’m not trying to defend anyone but the OP just seems so outrageous as to be implausible.
On the other hand, the fact that you signed it does not necessarily mean you waived every right that the document says you do. In any case, a waiver is not proof against a suit; it’s just a handy defense.
Assuming the facts are as stated and a jury trial occurs (highly unlikely, IMHO) the parental consent form will barely be an issue.
IANAL. However, presumably the school board refused to divulge the names of its IT staff.
Scanning the disk remotely wouldn’t be much of an issue, since you’d probably want to run virus scans anyway (though, this being a Mac, it would be less important.) However, unless you request that the student put a mirror up to the laptop, I don’t quite get how turning on the webcam does anything to ensure that the laptop is used for school purposes.
One is not a helicopter parent when one is called into the Asst. Principals office. I don’t know if this nonsense comes from you hating parents or wealthy people. We also don’t know that this family is rich - we are pretty sure they aren’t poor. A friend of mine from college came from this area - upper Middle class, not rich.
Well, the only response from the district is that the cameras are only used for security purposes. If the laptop had been reported stolen, they could have said so without violating anyone’s privacy, so that doesn’t seem plausible. I wonder how many kids this idiot peeked in at before finding someone doing something wrong, and I wonder who could be stupid enough to brag about spying. Still, when I was on Site Council at my kid’s high school, our new principal might have done just this.
My guess is that the district is stonewalling at advice of their lawyers while they prepare to throw this moron under the bus. I’m betting that they are stating their policy correctly, but not how it was implemented.
The Register article on this today claims that there was nothing in the fine print permitting snooping, but they might be mistaken.
Presumably they’re just quoting the complaint, which says the same thing. I’d wait to read the defendants’ response. Even if the waiver did permit snooping, it’d probably be worded in a vague enough manner that the plaintiffs could plausibly claim it didn’t permit it.
Surely this hypothetical stratagem would appear purpose-built to collect images of masturbating teenagers. I will eat my own head with mayonaisse if this turns out to be the case.
—oops! wrong thread!
It’s possible that the school checks the laptop from time to time at school, for updating and cleanup. If the boy had saved a file marked “pen!s.jpg” on his desktop, it could have been spotted them.
Given how common sexting is, I find this more plausible than a school official remotely spying on kids, but of course I may be wrong. Again, there should be server files that can say conclusively whether any remote access took place that night.
Ah, I see. I wasn’t sure if you meant “criminally stupid” as extremely stupid, or as both stupid and criminal.
Ok here is my wild-assed guess as to what happened. Kid stays home from school for some reason that is not legit. Like he said he had to go visit a dying aunt or something. IT guy then notices activity on the laptop, checks it out and sees the kid in his room playing WoW and snaps a picture of it with a time stamp. Kid busted!
Yeah, cooler heads have prevailed and I was on the point of posting to the effect that my temper has, once again, gotten the better of me. (Believe that or not, just as you choose)I will point out that there were a few people who posted in agreement with me; will you be similarly questioning them?
However, IF the device in question constitutes outright spy ware just to randomly check up on students, or if there was some hope the student being checked up on would be engaging in some sort of lewd and lascivious behavior, what I said stands.
And if they were really smart they’d not cover it up so they can be part of the class action lawsuit that will cover the cost of college tuition for each student involved.
Something *vaugly *similar happened to one of my classmates senior year. It was the week before the last the year. We’d just gotten back from our senior trip and he decided to take some naked pictures of himself to sent to a girl he met down in Florida (he was 18 and did have a nice body). He didn’t have a digital camera, but was on the school paper. You can see where this is going. He had another friend (a football teammate) take pictures of him naked in the lockerroom with the school’s camera. :smack: He was fully naked, had his dick in hand for some, and finished the set fully erect. He forgot to delete the pics from the camera after he uploaded them. :o
Mrs Journalism Adviser was in for quite a shock when she went to use the camera. No laws were actually broken, but he probally could have been expelled. However since he was graduating in a few days, a football player, and had joined the Army (our principal loved football & was very patriotic) he was just suspended the rest of the year (but allowed to take his final exams) and they let him graduate on stage. Oh, and he was kicked of the school paper. Also a few dayswhile running some last minute yearbook errands I managed to walk in on said journalism teacher showing those pictures to 2 other teachers (all middle-aged women) on her computer.