Feds Won't Bring Charges Against School District Officials In Webcam Spying
from the criminal-intent dept
There have been a couple of new developments in the saga of the suburban Philadelphia school district, the Lower Merion School District, that was sued by a student, after that student was disciplined (supposedly for eating candy) using photos taken by secretly installed and used webcam spying software. The school initially claimed that it only used the software 42 times, but an investigation founded 58,000 photos were taken -- including hundreds of another student, who has now also sued.As stories came out about administrators enjoying spying on students -- referring to it as a window into their own "little... soap opera," the FBI got involved. However, the prosecutors are now saying that they won't bring charges, because there is no evidence of criminal intent. That shouldn't impact the various civil lawsuits, of course.
At the same time, Julian Sanchez points us to the news that after all of this, the school district has finally put in place new policies designed "to govern the use and tracking of student laptops and other technology." Seems like, perhaps, that should have been in place a wee bit earlier.
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Filed Under: feds, high school, investigation, webcam
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Or, are you saying the school employees should be sued, but not the school district?
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Sue the employees and maybe (just maybe) these types of people will learn to curb their sociopathic tendencies. Ok, that probably wont happen, but perhaps the victims' families might get some solace from a court victory over the perverts.
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Of course, they are partially to blame for letting such corrupt people in their schools and doing nothing about it.
You know what, I like your approach.
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It seems like the school district cost of dealing with this issue has gone past the $1 million mark. That alone may be reason enough for the parents to take action to replace the school board -- with people who are willing to replace the school staff involved in this incident.
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The School district has the money.
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Good luck with that now that the feds have effectively declared that what they did was perfectly legal.
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They are probably just planning for the future and are expecting that there may be a time in which they will want to remotely activate a webcam in a criminal investigation. At some point, this may become a new form of wire tapping and they do not want to interfere with it being recognized as legal.
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Is it legal to photograph someone inside their private residence without their permission (if you are not a police officer with a warrant or similar)?
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The fact that this was a webcam on a computer is questionable. The computer is the property of the school, so they have the right to operate it as they see fit. This is new ground and they may have decided to not prosecute the case for a lot of reasons, but they probably either did not want t prevent themselves from doing this in the future, or they did not want to lose this case and set a precedent that prevents them from prosecuting a real predator that hacks into webcams to take pornographic pictures of kids.
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In any case, we're not talking about law enforcement officials here. They are merely school employees. Using a webcam to photograph naked minors over the internet does not magically make it not a crime.
You just try (as a citizen) to photograph another citizen in their private residence and see what happens.
Plus, if case-history has taught us anything, all the webcam/internet thing will do is lead the judge to the usual "computers are involved -> hacking was perpetrated" conclusion.
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It's my understanding that public school employees are agents of the government just like the police are--the same search and seizure rules apply.
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I would think that if this happened, we would see references to child porn etc.
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then all these guys and gals in jail for just haveing child porn, are innocent?? since they had no criminal intent?????
are you really saying that??????
sounds like a prosecutor was in on the this school districts child porn ring
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Taking a picture of someone's kids from across the street with the intent of taking their picture is illegal. Taking a picture of someone's house and accidentally getting a picture of their child through the window is not.
The prosecutor in this case (not that I agree) is saying that the web cam pictures taken were either done so by accident (which is possibly the case if they left the program active accidentally) or were not taken for the purposes of photographing the child - say the purpose of determining where the laptop is.
I do not necessarily agree (I do not have all the details of the case), but it is certainly possible that it would be a stretch to apply criminal liability here.
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But still accidental, which was the excuse claimed in the comment.
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From reading the actual complaints in this case(s) whether there is Indecent Imaging should not be first chargeable anyway instead trespass should be.
The allegation is that the school KNOWINGLY allowed a device to enter PRIVATE premises, with the ability to RECORD images (and maybe audio which is an entirely other problem) WITHOUT CONSENT of the owners of those premises.
The owners of the premises had an absolute expectation of privacy. The pictures were taken. The pictures were viewed & therefore published (even if only to a few). The pictures were archived for future perusal
Though some states in the USA have a two party system for recording of visual/audio. Meaning all parties to a recording have to agree, most states are on the standard One party system (only the person recording needs to be in attendance). These don't even come under that system since they were done remotely.. That is trespass at least.. Espionage at worst (maybe one of the parents had a job with the DoD or DoE and had secret clearance.. could be an interesting spin on that). Also there was an absolute expectation of privacy.
The taking of these pictures cannot be confused with the rule that anyone on public property can take pictures of anything/anyone seen from that public property , unless they are being used for lewd purposes, due to all of the above facts.
If it was myself as one of the parents involved in this debacle, I would seriously talk to some lawyers about a charge of misprision on the actual DA/FBI themselves now. But hey.. thats me
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No it is not...
As long as I am in a publicly accessible area I can take any picture I would like. You might be thinking of publicity rights but this did not happen in California.
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sue the govt too
guess hollywood govt wants to spy on you
guess why
they dont care about kids
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The good thing is that it proves that people can be monitored remotely by simple electronic devices pervasive in our lifes, the laptop's are just one example, but I don't doubt that cellphones are capable of transmitting sound and video also, maybe people should put those in a box for charging also.
Right now the laws don't make distinctions of what is allowed or not and I don't think it is a good idea to give or take any thing with laws until we understand what the consequences really are.
Cars have cameras today, if you are backing up your car and you get somebody undressing that would be criminal? anybody knows what the law says? should people enact laws against recording someone those instances could be used to criminalize others? right now is not just the government that could get in trouble with such things.
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If this was the case, you could assist the prosecution of the person getting undressed. The cameras are mounted low in the rear of vehicles. If you caught someone naked on it, they would be outside in public behind your car. I do not believe the focal length of the lens is such that you could see anything more than a few feet away clearly.
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How do we do smart choices if we don't know how things work and their consequences?
I'm outraged by the spying thing too, but I don't want more laws or lawsuits, I want sanity back inside society, the good old discrimination works for me in this case.
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Like most (all?) it's a fish eye lens so what it's really good for is detecting motion and approximate size rather than seeing license plates or anything like that and the closer you get to the edges of the camera field the more distorted everything becomes. I also have sensors in the rear to back up the camera which are often more useful than the camera is.
So for seeing someone undressing in the middle of the road all I'd likely see is skin tones rather than a person and if they're in sensor field the truck will start beeping like crazy in the cab to tell me some idiot, potential Darwin Award prize winner, is behind me.
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No "Right to Privacy"
These children were spied upon. Their privacy was invaded.
We would hope that somewhere there is a concept of privacy that was illegally broken.
But there is no right to privacy.
Many cases brought to the state and federal courts try to make the case that there is a right to privacy.
But strict constitutional judges have found no right to privacy.
Some states have created laws that make it a crime to invade one's privacy. (Remember the landlord who installed spy cameras in the apartment he rented to a family. They had to figure out a law that he had broken. And only added a privacy law after the fact.)
So, for everyone who thinks you have a "right to privacy." You don't.
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Re: No "Right to Privacy"
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Or even worse... Child pornography?
How about illegally hacking across state lines? I'm quite sure they did not have expressed permission to activate the webcams at any time. If that transmission went from the webcam to a server outside of the state, to my knowledge, it is a federal crime.
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There was no child pornography. If you believe otherwise, link it.
There also was no 'hacking.' This is software that was installed on computers that the school owns, not the children, thus there can be no charges of illegal access against the school.
Invasion of privacy /might/ be a possibility, but guess what? There was no intent to such an invasion, and the prosecutor isn't pursuing what likely would be a very weak case, anyways.
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As for the most serious of crimes. If in their attempt to watch their own personal soap opera, if they even viewed the children dressing or undressing in the privacy of their own room, weather or not they saved the pics, that is most definitely child porn.
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Spying isn't criminal...
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By that logic, I have a gun and the right to operate it as I see fit.. I doubt it.
I have a AV system on the top of my bike helmet, I have the right to operate it as I see fit... a bunch of 90 IQ police officers and DAs in Maryland disagree..
I have a tape recorder, I have the right to operate it as I see fit.. I don't believe that current laws in most states agree...
The school gives me a text book with a tracking device.. I don't think that gives them the right to track my coming and goings.
The Michaels of the world with voting rights scare me.
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i am surprised the feds did not prosecute
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Yeah, they're too busy killing innocent civilians and trying to cover it up by going after Wikileaks.
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Good news, everyone! LM has revised their webcam rules!
Instead of clearing out of any future hot water and ditching the whole spy thing altogether.
GPS isn't enough to track a lost or stolen laptop?
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The school wants that capability.
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but what about..
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New rules?
Such as don't turn the tracking crud ON until the laptop is reported as stolen?
Oh, common sense. That's surgically removed from bureaucrats at birth. Sorry.
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Re: New rules?
I cut our costs, I eat my lunch,/ I go to the WC/On Wednesdays I go and watch Fox and Glee.
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Fed Connection?
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Sue sue sue!
But they can sue the school system and the employees that did it, which is another way to say "sue the school's insurance company and the liability insurance companies of the employees." Parts of the suit are bound to be thrown out, but the ones that stick will put the fear into the rest. I'm sure that the parents are not having problems finding attorneys who want a piece of this!
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Told Ya
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fud
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