Robbins told reporters outside his house last night that the improper behavior he was cited for was eating Mike & Ike candies, which he said the school mistook for illegal pills.
They are doomed
Posted on 02/20/2010 5:22:28 AM PST by grjr21
A federal invasion-of-privacy lawsuit may be the least of the Lower Merion School District's problems.
Allegations that the affluent suburban district used webcams on school-issued laptops to "spy" on students in their homes has now caught the attention of Montgomery County detectives and the FBI, both of which are looking into whether the practice violated wiretap and privacy laws.
The district is also fighting off a coast-to-coast onslaught of negative publicity that appeared to be growing more intense yesterday.
Some creeped-out students have placed tape over the cameras, and parody T-shirts are already being sold on the Internet – including one that features the ominous red camera eye of HAL 9000 from the sci-fi film "2001: A Space Odyssey" inside the district's circular logo.
"Upon arriving in the office this morning, we were inundated with calls from members of the community asking about this," Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said yesterday. "It became clear to me that we needed to look at this further to see if a criminal investigation is warranted."
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday on behalf of Harriton High School student Blake Robbins, claims that an assistant principal reprimanded the 15-year-old for "improper behavior in his home" that was captured by the embedded camera on Robbins' school-issued Apple MacBook.
Robbins told reporters outside his house last night that the improper behavior he was cited for was eating Mike & Ike candies, which he said the school mistook for illegal pills.
District spokesman Doug Young acknowledged yesterday that officials had remotely activated computer webcams 42 times, but only in an attempt to recover missing or stolen laptops, and never to spy on students. He said families had not been notified about the possibility that the cameras on the 2,300 laptops could be activated in their homes without their permission.
Yesterday, the Robbinses attorney, Mark Haltzman, filed an emergency motion in federal court demanding that the district halt the use of "peeping-tom technology," preserve all electronic files related to the webcams, and not attempt to confiscate the laptops.
"They think they're like the police," Haltzman said last night. "Lower Merion is not the police, they're not there to enforce anything other than what goes on in school, not what happens in people's homes. That's what parents are for."
Haltzman also questioned why officials would place the incident on Robbins' school record if the webcams were activated only to recover missing laptops.
"It's getting pretty intense," said Tom Halpern, 15, a Harriton High sophomore from Wynnewood whose "LMSD Is Watching You" Facebook page was already nearing 800 members by last night.
"The first time I heard it, I just couldn't believe it," he said. "It's just so beyond anything I would have imagined happening so close to home."
Lower Merion School District Superintendent Christopher McGinley said in a letter to parents that the "security feature," which enabled the webcams to take still photos if they were reported stolen, has been disabled in the wake of the lawsuit and subsequent uproar from parents and students.
"Privacy is a basic right in our society and a matter we take very seriously," McGinley wrote. "We believe that a good job can always be done better."
David Kairys, a Temple University law professor who specializes in civil rights and constitutional law, described the policy as Orwellian. He said it appears to be a "very clear civil-rights violation."
"It's pretty outrageous," Kairys said. "It's sort of beyond belief that they wouldn't say, 'This is going too far.' "
Robbins told reporters outside his house last night that the improper behavior he was cited for was eating Mike & Ike candies, which he said the school mistook for illegal pills.
They are doomed
and like the current administration in DC, they need to be put behind bars....
The convicted should be swinging from the end of a rope at the edge of town for two years when this is done.
Here’s a good article on a related matter “Photo Cop”:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2006/050406Cop.htm
But just keep in mind that the accused in the L. Merion case are not even cops, they are school officials.
I think KD sums this up well, as usual:
I wonder if any of this “checking” was a private excuse for “peeping” at undressed teens?
It will be a miracle if anyone is charged, much less tried and convicted. After all, these are teachers and administrators in a public school. They’re union members. They meant no harm. It was done to protect the taxpayers. It’s for the chilllldren. Good intentions. Just a mistake. No real harm done.
All that good old Democratic immunity.
You have to ask, how many morons in that chain of command actually sat down and thought “hey, this is a good idea.”
“The convicted should be swinging from the end of a rope at the edge of town for two years when this is done.”
No no no, the corpse would fall apart at the neck after about a month.
Impaling leads to a much longer lasting lesson.
| Name | MATSKO, LYNN |
| County | Montgomery |
| District | Lower Merion SD |
| Year | 2006 |
| Assignment 1 | Assistant/Vice Secondary Principal |
| Assignment 2 |
|
| Assignment 3 |
|
| Salary | $115,514 |
| Fulltime Equivalent | 100 (out of 100) |
| Total Years of Service | 30 |
| District Years of Service | 25 |
| Education Level | Master's Degree |
| Leave Type |
|
| Position Code 1 | Assistant Secondary Principal |
A couple of years ago I would have said a female with thirty years of service ... No way.
But now who knows
I think that is the problem . The people teaching our children who don't think
And people think government run health care is a good idea? How much more spying would that bring down on us?
The whole premise of government schools is complete defecation on the Constitution. How much of my hard earned money is someone else’s fair share?
Send your kids to government schools? This is what you should expect.
Can someone help me out here. If a webcam can be activated remotely, anyone can do it, yes?
There is a more serious angle to this as well. If the cameras were activated at a time when any minor in the room was in a state of undress, the person activating that camera would be guilty of transmitting child pornography.
It would be normal for most kids to have their laptop open in a bedroom on their desk. It is also reasonable to assume that people frequently remove some or all of their clothing in their bedrooms. It wouldn’t be hard to guess what time of day this might be happening. It can’t be too much of a stretch to believe that someone in the school administration would use this information and the available technology to spy on the kids for reasons that have nothing to do with finding stolen laptops.
Hmmm. The latest trick seems to be that when you are caught doing something wrong is to state categorically and vigorously how wrong it is.
Do so with righteous indignation, with a strongly assertive voice, as if somebody else were caught doing it.
This will make it all go away.
Ah, good thinking.
A federal invasion-of-privacy lawsuit ... isn't that ironic.
And at any time they choose if the computer is on or plugged in maybe??
I’ve conjectured elsewhere that a search warrant executed on the school district computers would probably yield a many-count indictment for kiddie porn.
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