Is Lower Merion spying students inside their home? LM official responds [Unbelievable Alert]

Norristown Times Herald ^ | 02/18/10 | Richard Ilgenfritz

[pray4liberty]

I’m sure we will find out the truth eventually, as I doubt the district could cover up the illegal surveillance if it really happened.

Sure they can. They can wipe the hard drives clean and then sell them on eBay, or to another unsuspecting school district. They don't have to make things easy for the FBI. And the worst part of it is, possession is 9/10ths of the law and by doing the above they will be essentially framing other innocent people, to cast reasonable doubt.

[metmom]

Even if they are able to do that and get away with it, their cover has been blown, and nationwide at that.

It will be very difficult for them or any other school district to try to pull or get away with something like that again.

Have the parents and students turned in their laptops yet?

They ought to. What’s the school district going to do if all of them do it? Expel ALL the students? Fail them all? They can’t retaliate what with the national attention this is getting.

[pray4liberty]

The worst are actually non-teachers, teachers aids, teaching assistants, & computer lab personnel. It seems that the lower the rank, or pecking order, or whatever, the more bluster and arrogance and less concern for the students. Some of those are real gestapo and nasty as all get out.

We had a teacher's aide who passed himself off as an administrator in court (he was the son of an administrator and had the same last name) and gave false and misleading testimony.

He abused the kids, too, by body-blocking them, getting in their faces and physically shoving them down the hallway.

The last straw came when he endangered a minor. By the time I was through, he was finally fired. The system never charged him for deceiving the court or for the abuse.

[metmom]

I think that that is about the most irritating thing about the public school system for me. That they protect their own to that extent from the consequences of actions that would land ANYONE else in jail for a long time.

I can’t figure out why they think that they are so much above or outside the law. Schools should not be sanctuaries for illegal behavior and that is EXACTLY what they have become.

And pity the student who legally brings Advil to school.

[pray4liberty]

If there are any compromising pictures of the students, there may be a copy on the laptop, but more likely on the school servers in the administration office.

Those are the storage devices the FBI needs to see. My guess is that they were wiped clean when the story broke.

The FBI has ways to get the data back, but it may be so destroyed as to be unusable. Also the District's IT guy is pretty savvy, and destruction of evidence can be pinned on him--unless they give him immunity.

The District is not completely safe. Evidence may be stored on the Internet provider's servers and the school district has no access to that. If the ISP has backups, the FBI could subpoena those.

Let's see who talks.

[pray4liberty]

I can’t figure out why they think that they are so much above or outside the law.

They are liberals for the most part, and believe consequences are for the little people, not them.

[metmom]

I’ve heard that nothing on computers is ever really gone for good.

[pray4liberty]

And pity the student who legally brings Advil to school.

Or, in an emergency, uses his own inhaler on another student to save her life!