Good question. That would depend a lot on the rules and regs that District has set up governing technology use. They do not make all of the forms available online, so it is hard to tell.
I do know that illegal items "found" on laptops can, and has, landed folks in jail or the unemployment line. We had a staff member a couple years before I started here, that turned in a laptop for service. There was an extensive amount of porn on it, some of it possibly kiddy porn.
Not sure if they handed the matter over to the cops, but I do know he doesn't work here any more.
Does the District deserve a "legal spanking" for that as well? Or is there no expectation of privacy on a PUBLICALLY owned resource?
Also a good question.
In honest answer, I can only reply....yes.
The difference between the two is that the staff member used the laptop for an illicit purpose, where the student's 'improper' act occurred without interacting with the laptop itself.
To allow a political entity of the State to cancel an enumerated right of the people 'to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures' is a due process violation of the Constitution's 4th Amendment. [Or a violation of US Code, Title 18, Section 242 - Deprivation of rights under color of law]
Had the school contacted police, reported the equipment as stolen, and obtained a warrant BEFORE activating the camera, they would have a legal leg to stand on.
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"Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual."
-- Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819.
There should be for something FORCED on the students.
These kids didn't have a choice about taking the laptops.