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Posted on 04/19/2010 2:35:49 PM PDT by Kid Shelleen
Lower Merion School District employees activated the web cameras and tracking software on laptops they gave to high school students about 80 times in the past two school years, snapping nearly 56,000 images that included photos of students, pictures inside their homes and copies of the programs or files running on their screens, district investigators have concluded. In most of the cases, technicians turned on the system after a student or staffer reported a laptop missing and turned it off when the machine was found, the investigators determined.
But in at least five instances, school employees let the Web cams keep clicking for days
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
I love the smell of web cams in the morning, they smell like ... LAWSUIT !!!
This is getting worse and worse.
56,000 images?!?! Wow...they must have had a lot of stolen laptops. That was their original explanation, right?
So how many computers did they lose and find? How did they find them? "We have a picture of a furry butt and a tail, and the word processor's screen shows many variations on gjjjjjjjjjjjgggggggggggjjjjjjjjkkkkkkkkk. Have you checked under your cat?" "Well, there it is. Bad kitty!"
The only hope for the school district is to blame it on the IT guys. They've tried, but the involvement of the assistant principal makes THAT unlikely.
The fact that parents have petitioned to stop the lawsuit (they are worried about their already bloated tax bills going up) means that liability is almost certain.
Only question is damages (and that's why the parents are worried).
I think Big Brother is a pedophile. Not surprising really considering 0bama’s Safe Schools Czar is a pedophile.
YARTHS - Yet Another Reason To Home School
FOX and FRiends on this story in the coming segment.
Here's the latest news in the spycam saga.
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Wouldn’t the school system have liability insurance for this sort of thing? Same as if one of their staff did something inappropriate with a student?
Actual criminal acts are usually not covered. And it depends on whether it's merely a teacher or employee, or an administrator, involved. And the district's liability may depend on whether higher-ups knew about the conduct, condoned it, or participated.
Plus there's the issue of governmental immunity, and the related issue of derivative or official immunity. That law also varies from state to state.
But if the insurer is filing a dec. action, they should have a reasonable belief that coverage may be in question. In this state, an insurer who files a false or groundless dec. action or denies coverage in bad faith gets hit for bad faith penalties and attorney fees. In Georgia, it's a percentage of the value of the claim, as high as 50%, plus attorney fees and expenses. Plus they can be smacked again on appeal for 10% of the money judgment and those attorney fees again.
It's not something insurers do lightly. Although we are seeing more of it these days because insurers are trying to cut costs, plus they are making coverage decisions in house instead of referring them to a lawyer who knows what he or she is doing.
The insurance company for the school district has filed a "dec. action" -- a declaratory judgment action seeking a declaration of no liability under the insurance policy.
Haven't seen the pleadings, but I'm sure it's a criminal act/ intentional act exclusion. In other words, if you commit a crime, there is no coverage. The analogy on your homeowner's liability policy would be if you shot somebody dead or burned your neighbor's house down in a fit of pique. No coverage, the underwriters calculate for accident or negligence, not deliberate crimes.
Good point—I just figured the individual would have no coverage as charges would be filed with them, but the district might be covered. This is very scary stuff—my daughter’s school loans them computers, so I am watching this case very carefully.
A piece of black electrical tape over the camera lens ought to solve the photo problem nicely . . . . although apparently the district was taking remote screen captures, and that’s another story.
They photographed kids in varying degrees of dress. Everybody involved should be brought up on child porn charges and labeled as a sex offenders for life.
Not that that would keep them from a job in most school districts.
FYI, here’s another update on the webcam story.
Nothing to see here.
Move along, move along...
All the public school defenders have their work cut out for them. I wonder how they’ll spin this one.
Besides, *It’s the parents fault for not monitoring their children closely enough*?
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