Also the School District is now admitting that parents were not told the laptop camera could be remotely activated.
From the above article.
The kid claims that the assistant principal accused him of dealing drugs and used the webcam picture as evidence, according to this CBS New story.
Honestly, if someone does something wrong, I really don’t care how they get caught. The problem for me is whether what the kid did was wrong. With drug dealing–well, I’m not sure. I mean, I know for sure I wouldn’t care if the kid had physically hurt another human being, but I don’t know that for sure.
I’m definitely against any idea of the school being able to punish the kid of any legal behavior outside of school. (That would include doing something with the laptop he doesn’t have permission to do. He doesn’t own the laptop, so that would be vandalizing property.)
But, then again, I’ve never ever gotten to worked up about privacy. Too often it’s a code word for not wanting to be watched so I can do something unseemly. There are legitimate reasons for privacy, but being able to do something wrong is not one of them.
When it comes to drugs, I usually err on the side of caution and assume all recreational ones are bad. So my instinct is to say that the kid deserves to be in trouble. As for the school? All they need is a sufficient punishment to keep them from doing something illegal again.
This attitude seems to be getting more and more common. I still find it disturbing.
Dear God, please make sure BigT is never in any position with any authority whatsoever. TIA.
Frankly speaking, neither to I.
But this doesn’t mean that the catching party gets a free pass just because they were “right” if they broke laws in the catching.
So in this case, if the boy was dealing drugs, that should still be punished, but the IT guy should also be punished for the invasion of privacy,.
But isn’t the issue here about whether or not the school has the authority to punish a student for something that was done off of school grounds? I mean, a kid smokes a joint at school and he gets in trouble with the school…I understand that totally. But if a kid smokes a joint at home the punishment should be the responsibility of the parents or guardians, right? I guess the question here is where does the school’s authority end? I can understand busting a kid smoking a joint in the boys’ bathroom on school property, but how could any administrator possibly think they have the authority to bust a kid for doing the same in his bedroom, especially if they’ve caught him on a hidden camera?
Where does the school’s authority or jurisdiction end? I seem to remember some classmates in highschool who got in some trouble (not anything serious, just suspension for a couple days) for smoking cigarettes across the street from school. They thought they’d be ok if they weren’t on campus, but the school police still busted them.
That’s slightly different - while they may not technically have been on school property, they were “at” school in the sense that they were attending classes and had not been excused.
Anyway, if they were minors, the police could arrest them for smoking anywhere.
I don’t think this has been posted yet, so . . .
From here:
Well intentioned, maybe. But stupid, stupid, stupid, just a tad.
This. We don’t need petty bureaucrats, school administrators, supervisors, or neighborhood busybodies spying on us. That’s what it is, snooping and spying. So let’s say its all OK. How about that? Police peeking in the window or barging into your home without any reason or probable cause, the neighborhood watch or block association opening your mail, the neighborhood loony setting up surveillance cameras in your bedroom window, the boss who disapproves of your evening beer, etc.
It’s no big deal, anyone can spy on you. After all, you MIGHT be up to something, right?
If not, you don’t have to worry, right?
I lead a quiet life, some might call it dull, but I like it. But if I caught someone spying on me, I’d be pissed off about it. It’s one thing to collect evidence against a suspected criminal WITHIN THE LAW. It’s a whole different thing to spy, just for the sake of spying.
First of all, two wrongs don’t make a right. The boy may have been breaking the law, but the school was not justified in violating his privacy. Privacy, by the way, means having the right to engage in normal behavior without fear of spying.
Even if the school thought it had probable cause to suspect that the boy was dealing drugs, well, that’s what the police are for. Let the police do its job and pursue a case in accordance with US and Pennsylvania law, including getting the necessary warrants from a judge. In fact, if a crime was being committed, the school had the duty to notify the police, not take matters into its own hands.
That being said, I researched the Pennsylvania state law relevant to school authority over students.
This means that the school’s authority over students exists from the time the student leaves his house to go to school to the time he gets home from school. This authority does not extend to anything the student might do within his own home, nor does it extend to anything the student might do outside regular school hours including the time it takes for the student to go to and from school. The only exceptions to this that I know of are those activities, such as extracurricular activities or cooperative or vo-tech programs that take place outside the school building, but that are still under the purview of the school. Therefore, the school administration was clearly in the wrong for using the webcam to spy on the student in his home, outside of regular school hours.
Furthermore (from the same page, so I’m not going to link it again):
Note that these regulations have effect within the school building. There is no provision covering a search at the student’s home, or any other student- or parent-controlled area, such as the student’s car when it’s parked away from the school. Again, if there was reason to suspect that the student was engaged in illegal activity, the school should have called the police. Now they’re facing a very public lawsuit and the PR nightmare and huge legal bills that that suit entails.
If someone with better Google-fu can find relevant, current PA or federal law that contradicts what I just posted, have at it.
Oh, and BigT, your last name wouldn’t happen to be Kravitz, would it?
I live in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, just a few miles from the Merion school district (but not in it). As a result, I get to read and hear some of the local reactions to this event.
Let me just say that any anger shown in this thread dissolves into expressions of puppy love compared to the anger the parents of kids in that school district are expressing. Anyone with any relationship to the school district there is in deep, deep trouble regardless of how this all eventually turns out.
The students and parents did have to sign an “appropriate use” agreement which apparently mentioned that the laptops could have their hardware remotely monitored, but never mentioned that that capability included turning on the laptops’ webcams. I remember reading one parent’s reaction that I can no longer find and can only approximately (and probably semi-mis-) quote: “My daughter was given one of those laptops and keeps it open in her bedroom where she changes her clothes. Are you telling me that she school district has the ability to take pictures of her doing so with the laptop’s webcam AND NEVER TOLD US THEY HAD THAT ABILITY?”
This morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer’s article about this issue has a quote from a school spokesperson (one Douglas Young) admitting that the school’s notification of the laptop’s remote access capabilities never specifically mentioned the webcam and that was “a significant mistake”.
I’ve also seen statements in news articles to the effect that remotely turning on a laptop’s webcam and watching it inside the user’s home is something that even the police are not allowed to do without a specific court order, and to date nobody’s made any claims about having obtained any such court order.
I really, really would not want to be a taxpayer in that school district right now.
While this is indeed weapons-grade stupidity, it reminds me a lot of this experienced assistant principal with YEARS on the job, who conducted a “thong check” at a school dance in Poway Unified SD (San Diego, CA, area) that included the lifting of girl’s skirts and the visual and perhaps physical inspection of their buttock and/or genitalia.
:eek:
And the administrator continued to protest her innocence and defend her excellent judgment, probably to this day (case was from 2002, hence the old link- many stories have since been removed from Yahoo, etc).
Lower Merion’s superintendent is relatively new on the job- I don’t expect him to last long, and the over-under on him getting another job is probably not worth a bet. Not that any of this is his fault, or that he would even have been aware of it- but as many baseball owners have realized, you can’t fire the whole team, but you can sure as hell fire the manager.
I think the word they are looking for is expensive mistake. I would love to be an attorney right now, I could probably retire off the fallout that is coming.
It now looks like the student was observed thru the webcam eating candy, now known as “inappropriate behavior.” Observer thought it was illegal drugs, and the vice-principal accused the student of such. It’s also possible it was illegal drugs, but I fail to see that to be a factor.
So even if the laptop had been reported stolen, and the webcam activated to try to retrieve the unit, I find it hard to believe that a picture of a student eating something, legal or otherwise, is related to recovery of the unit. And even if the district activated the cam only for that reason, it makes a mockery of their ultra-pure intentions if the authorities pass around unrelated images.
One thing puzzles me. I have seen reports that from 1800 to 2400 laptops were given out to students – not sure what age group – since last fall. How come none of those students, which I would expect included a whole lot of nerds, detected the spy software? It’s possible that some did, and disabled it, but if I were one of those nerd students, I would sieze the opportunity to blow the lid off an obviously scandalous situation. And if even one student reported that finding to his parent, I can’t see the parent keeping quiet about it for long, either. And in this kind of community, some parents are probably lawyers.
And the school district has a new logo.
We’re searching everyone with the initials BT for contraband. Bend over and spread 'em. Surely you don’t mind, do you?
If someone had a remote camera on me during my HS years the inappropriate behavior would have been jerking off.