I wonder how many young girls and boys were viewed in their bedrooms with little or no clothes on?
It doesn’t even matter if the spying was established for what the school thinks was a “legitimate” purpose.
As an agent of the State, the U.S. Constitution applies. This is a form of warrantless (and baseless) wiretapping. The 4th Amendment is very much in play here.
And they used it to accuse a kid (wrongly) of having drugs in his room! Proof that is was illegally snooping beyond the ostensible “notebook locater.”
Every person associated with this event should be held to that standard...and if they cannot prove they report the laptop STOLEN to the police, should be tried, convicted and imprisoned.
“A Philadelphia-area school district finds itself under scrutiny after remotely activating a MacBook Web cam and capturing a young student engaging in ‘improper behavior at home,’
This is NOT alleged in the lawsuit. The lawsuit claims:
a) A Vice Principal spoke to a student about “innappropriate behavior” she saw in a photo “embedded” on his school issued laptop.
b) The student/parents were told that the laptop web cams CAN be activated remotely for theft recovery.
It does not state that the photo in queston was obtained in this manner. If had been obtained that way, you could bet your entire net worth and anything you could borrow, that the lawsuit would have made that specifi claim. The photo was alomst certainly taken by the student with the webcam, or with another camera and uploaded to the laptop.
The press has fallen into the crafty plaintiff’s laywer’s trick of jumping to exactly the false conclusion that the wording of the lawsuit was designed induce them to jump to.
Anytime you hear about a lawsuit, read it carefully and keep in mind that it has likely been prepared by someone with character similar to that of John Edwards.
From the various thread I have read here at Free Republic, the problem was that the school ‘thought’ the student was using drugs, when the kid was ONLY eating candy, a Mike and Ike red capsule looking candy.
So, it was NOT a problem of theft involved.
And the big unanswered question is “WHY WAS THE SCHOOL WATCHING THIS ONE KID OUT OF OVER 1600 KIDS? “ How many OTHER kids have they “watched”?
The school thought they had uncovered a drug problem.
The school instead revealed their nanny state power hungry parental right grab.
Glad I homeschool.
The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.
Well, that's better. Now we can sleep easy tonight.
NOT!
We should take their word about this when they lied the first time? I don't think so.
The computers should be turned in.