<p>“The press noted how calm and collected the boy was relative to the clearly nervous and fiddly school official.”</p>
<p>Spare me. The kid was clearly reading a text prepared by his lawyer. (Even got the name of the AP wrong). More generally, I am struck by the lack of concern of most posters here about the torrent of abuse to which the AP on her family have been subjected based upon thus-far unsubstantiated allegations and driven by sensationalized and grotesquely biased media coverage.</p>
<p>I’ve also noted a lot of loose invocation of the 4th Amendment, as if it is a slam dunk. There are a lot of issues here, but on the core point, the proper legal analysis, based on discussions with two criminal law teacher, neither of whom could be described as conservative in any sense and one of whom is a former judge who has dealt with many search and seizure cases, is as follows:</p>
<p>The Fourth Amendment prohibits only UNREASONABLE searches and seizures. The question is whether the actions of the school district were unreasonable, and the only action that they took was turning on the camera. The reasonableness of that action must be determined at the time that the action itself was taken. So the question is whether it is unreasonable as a matter of constitutional law for a school district to turn on the camera in an effort to locate a missing computer because of the simple possibility that the camera might take a photo of someone in their house.</p>
<p>Both faculty members were extremely skeptical about the merits of the claim.</p>
<p>This is my last post on this thread. Y’all in the lynch mob have fun.</p>
<p>Just to prove I am not a total whitewasher, let me say that I disagree with EMM1’s Fourth Amendment analysis. </p>
<p>(1) Absent exigent circumstances – not present here – you really need a warrant to search someone’s home. OK, they didn’t know that they would be searching someone’s home until they turned the webcam on, but that’s a pretty lame excuse. They knew there was a good risk they would be searching someone’s home. (2) Reasonableness requires consideration of less restrictive alternatives. Identifying the location of the computer from its IP address was a less restrictive alternative, with no constitutional problems at all. And furnished the basis for a warrant if need be. (3) Schools have a lot of extra power, but not when the kids are at home.</p>
<p>I think if a court does not really break new Fourth Amendment ground here, the district is going to lose on this. It really is a Fourth Amendment violation.</p>
<p>(It doesn’t surprise me that a judge who has dealt with many search and seizure cases disagrees. You wouldn’t believe what gets a pass in many state courts.)</p>
<p>That’s probably the way it will be remembered. I doubt though, the case will ever reach the Supreme Court as it is pretty clear cut. It will be settled well before then. I believe it will lead neverthelsess to fundamental changes in how students are treated by schools. The "in loco parentis’’ policy was already starting to wane but this will put a nail in the coffin of overzealous school administrators.</p>
<p>We live in a district demographically very similar to Merion and I see a similar pattern of near Orwellian control of the students by the school. High schools are turning into heavily policed environments where every move is scrutinized, every absence noted, where actions outside of school are reported, facebook pages scrutinized. Eighteen year olds can go to war and get killed but they can’t be trusted to do their homework!</p>
<p>JHS, I shouldn’t have characterized your views, so my apologies.</p>
<p>I also note that Dr. McGinley is new to LMSD, so perhaps he inherited this without knowledge. I am very curious to understand how this spyware program got authorized/implemented.</p>
<p>I do hope that this plays out as Keystone Kops and does not turn into a horror film …</p>
<p>There’s a lot to be said for a simple, direct statement that Dr. McGinley could make, “LMSD is proud to be a leading edge school district that provides computer laptops to all high school students. But, sometimes we let technology get further ahead than we’re prepared for, and this was one of those cases. Since these computers were a major investment for the district, we wanted to make sure that if they were lost or stolen we could track them down. We didn’t think through the implications of the software option we chose for that, and didn’t think about the privacy implications of being able to take photographs when the student or student’s family might not be aware of that possibility. That is my fault, and I accept responsibility. While this software was intended to track the location of lost or stolen equipment, we now understand that there are better means to do so that do not invade the privacy of our students or families. We also agree that students and families are right to be upset at the knowledge that our technicians had the capability to take remote images even if the computer wasn’t lost or stolen, and we regret both the taking of images and our use of such an image as information in a disciplinary meeting with a student. As administrators, we should have recognized that obtaining or using such information was wrong, and I am sorry that we did not realize that at the time. We have asked the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group which is very involved in maintaining privacy rights in an increasingly electronic world, to evaluate our system and how it was used, and produce a public report with recommendations which we will do our utmost to implement. I would also ask your support of the student and family who brought this situation to our attention. While it is never enjoyable to be in this kind of spotlight, they did us all a favor in bringing to light an unacceptable situation, and allowing us to fix it. I will also note that a number of other school districts around the country have learned from our experience, and have taken similar steps to disable this type of software. We teach students about civics, the rule of law, and the Bill of Rights, and it is embarrassing to realize that while we taught about these concepts, we weren’t as good at ensuring that we lived up to these ideals. We must do better, and I can promise you that we will do better. Thank you.”</p>
<p>^ Toblin, I disagree. I think Arabrab is on the right path, although LMSD probably doesn’t have all the facts yet, but a conciliatory tone is the key.</p>
<p>But the best way for LMSD to get control of this is to eat some crow and accept responsibility for its failure. In other words, stop digging the hole.</p>
<p>Too late for no liability, yeah, but not too late to minimize the costs/damages it is ringing up.</p>
<p>Cluelessdad: What damages, exactly? Unless there has been some actual peeping here, damages seem pretty minimal. Actual damages are nonexistant, and punitives seem wrong, both in terms of what the district’s intent was, and in terms of charging the taxpayers for this. I don’t think there is going to be more than symbolic damages paid. And attorney’s fees, of course.</p>
<p>Something along the lines of Arabrab’s statement is exactly what the school officials need to do now… publicly admit what they did, admit it was wrong, apologize and describe the efforts that will be taken moving forward to make sure it, or something similar, will never happen again. Case closed.</p>
<p>That would set a great example for the students–whether the officials have professionalism to admit they screwed up remains to be seen. </p>
<p>The district admits the covert surveillance system existed and was installed in secret…</p>
<p>…they admit it was used</p>
<p>…they they say it was only turned on to recover equipment removed inappropriately, but a district IT official (Perbix) was uncovered in a video from months prior talking about how sometimes they conducted covert surveillance on equipment thought to be lost/stolen only to discover after the fact that the equipment was not inappropriately removed and the children they secretly photographed were innocent</p>
<p>…the AP makes a ridiculous public statement that weaves in and out of the issues, and the truth of what she really did, like an olympic slalom course… she angrily refuses that she ORDERED the surveillance or DISCIPLINED the student but refused to comment on what she was charged with doing… namely possessing secretly recorded image(s) of a child in his bedroom and using said images to confront a student</p>
<p>The identity of the person who really did order the surveillance and the process by which the AP managed to come into possession of secret images recorded in a child’s bedroom are still very important, and potentially criminal, matters that the FBI/DA/US Attorney continue to investigate–and that many delay things a bit. </p>
<p>However, the boy was quite right to come out yesterday with his statement (yes surely crafted by lwayers) that basically tells the school district to stop the legal weaseling and get on with it</p>
<p>^^^Lawyers for the family have just released more info about the case. They say the thing that pushed the family over the edge into filing the case was that they later found out the school took the results of the covert surveillance operation and put the information in the student’s permeant file. The good news is that if that’s true then that file exists somewhere.</p>
<p>And the Philadelphia Inquirer also did a story making public what everybody knew: that the Robbinses have a long, long history of involvement with the court system. At one point or another, everyone has found it necessary to sue them: the township, the state, the IRS, a private school, their synagogue (!), their lawyer (!!), their homebuilder, and all major utilities. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they waive their constitutional rights. It does mean that anything the parents recover here may be liened by various creditors, including LM township itself, but then that will give them an incentive to direct any settlement to the boy, who appears to be debt-free for now.</p>
<p>Yes, the parents’ credit history is irrelevant. Except that it makes them look like such . . . nice people. They certainly know a thing or two about overstepping bounds.</p>
<p>One other tantalizing detail emerged yesterday. It was apparently not just the picture with the Mike & Ikes that induced the AP’s intervention. It was the combination of the picture and something the kid was writing on the screen at the time. I’m not sure at all that it’s relevant to the Fourth Amendment issue, but I would love to understand exactly why the AP felt she should intervene here, what she was trying to accomplish, and what this stuff is about the kid’s permanent record.</p>
<p>If a tech happened to take a webcam shot and it showed a kid preparing to commit suicide, you wouldn’t expect the tech and the AP to say, “Oh, we have obtained this information illegally! It is sad that this kid will die, but that’s better than if we pervert our security system and use it for spying! We will do nothing!” (Nor do you want them to say, “Let’s increase the shot frequency to every 10 seconds so that we don’t miss any of the good parts.”) You want them to intervene to stop the suicide. I would like to know how close to that situation this one was.</p>
<p>“Nice people” are not the only ones with rights.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wow, so not only snapping secret pictures, but the thought police were simultaneously gazing across the ethernet to see what he was writing at the time. Nice. Keep digging that hole, AP. This makes her little spot of performance art the other day even more disgusting.</p>
<p>The question here is: Under which authority was the tech taking webcam shots in the first place?</p>
<p>I can see that the Robbins are not Congeniality family; but their motives for suing have become irrelevant, as has the motive for the AP’s intervention (I am willing to grant that she had the best interests of the student in mind). The issue is one of invasion of privacy and that is what is turning this local affair into “webcamgate” to quote a tech blog.</p>
<p>JHS, you asked about damages. (I’m not going to engage in the blame the victim game.)</p>
<p>BTW, they brought it as a class, so the family passed on going for a personal jackpot as the lead plaintiff must act for the entire class and can’t disproportionately benefit.</p>
<p>But trying to take this in a positive path, how about if LMSD turns this into a lasting educational opportunity? Set up an annual essay contest, $1,000 prize for the best essay on personal liberties … establish and support a personal liberties clearinghouse in the shool library … a design competition for a sculpture or memorial dedicated to the theme of individial rights … I hope other posters will come up with compelling positive remedy ideas.</p>
<p>This all assumes it remains in the realm of Keystone Kops … if the Peeping Tom stuff gets ugly, they deserve all the circles of hades that descend …</p>
<p>I’ve also seen the stories that look into the background of the family, but as you point out it’s irrelevant to the case in so far as the charges put forth. Furthermore, previous financial issues were with the parents… it’s the child that is the plaintiff in this case not the parents. </p>
<p>
That may or may not be the case, but again it’s irrelevant here. Based on the facts that have come out this case is hardly frivolous. </p>
<p>
This issue of the school officials potentially believing that the student was in immediate physical danger (eg trying to commit suicide) is a valid hypothesis and one that couldn’t be excluded on the facts known thus far. However, the facts of the case also demonstrate that even if something like that had happened their actions were still grossly inappropriate and an egregious violation of the US Constitution. </p>
<p>For starters, the case is not only about the AP’s use of images obtained via their covert image collection program, but the very fact that any school official (AP or otherwise) had collected and/or was in possession of spycam images secretly recorded from within a child’s bedroom–regardless of the reasons why or what the image showed. </p>
<p>Furthermore, the student was confronted in person after the fact. It’s not like they were watching live, saw the images, saw a student with a gun to his head, called the police and the case being about “why did the police just show up at our house claiming our child is currently upstairs doing something he shouldn’t.”</p>
<p>Actually, I believe the motive for the AP’s intervention is interesting and potentially legally relevant. This is a longstanding interest of mine – years ago, I tried, and failed, to write a law review article on the Constitutional law of crisis, relating it to “mini-crises” like Fourth Amendment stop-and-frisk cases. I think there are gray zones where we tolerate temporary rights violations for some purposes and not for others. I also think there is a dynamic range of sanctions for rights violations, and it isn’t the case that rights violations are an all-or-nothing proposition. We could (and do) apply the exclusionary rule to prevent evidence obtained in an unconstitutional manner being used to convict someone, without necessarily imposing imprisonment or monetary damages on the people who collected the evidence improperly (although sometimes we do).</p>
<p>This is the “24” problem – we DO want Jack Bauer to torture the bad guy if it will get him the information RIGHT NOW he needs to foil the terrorist plot to blow up Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Rocketman, I agree with you that this was not the suicide hypothetical. That was in response to all the sanctimonious statements yesterday to the effect that it was the AP’s use of the webcam shot for some purpose other than locating the machine that converted a security system into a spy system. At one level, that’s right, but to me it looks like she acted because she thought the kid was in danger (albeit not imminent danger), and I don’t have much interest in condemning that.</p>
<p>^^ Yes Rocket, JHS’s hypothetical is silly. You don’t wait and call the kid into the office for the “gotcha” moment if you think there is imminent harm at risk. </p>
<p>And how would this be leaked? I smell LMSD determined to pursue a path of self-immolation.</p>
<p>And JHS, you seem to have quite detailed insider information on this matter – any tie to the case we should know about?</p>
<p>What you are saying has legal truth (not on the ‘torture’ bit but on the should Jack break into a warehouse bit) in so far as law enforcement personnel and what the courts can/can’t authorize. It does NOT apply to private citizens. </p>
<p>I can’t secretly break into you house to snoop around and then claim it was OK only because I thought my stolen item was inside and also that your child might be doing drugs and in danger of harming themselves. That decision to assess the facts and make a determination of the appropriateness of entering/monitoring/searching/observing within private premises without the owner’s permission is something that can only be undertaken by officials and bodies specifically authorized by the law to do so. The AP, IT Guy or anyone else at the school is not one of those officials. Period. </p>
<p>It’s the very actions of the administration in so far as granting themselves powers and decision making capabilities that the law specifically reserves for law enforcement and the courts that got them into this mess in the first place.</p>
<p>No, we DON’T. And I hate that that show even exists; like Dragnet of old, its purpose is to lull the poluation into believing the outrageous is justifiable.</p>
<p>So now LMSD is appointed a junior deputy dawg of Homeland Security, snooping out terrorists in the student body??? Keep digging that hole …</p>
<p>clueless – Most of the details of this have been “leaked” by the plaintiff’s lawyer, in his own statements and in the statement he had the kid read. It made clear that the AP wanted to talk to the kid about BOTH the picture and a simultaneous screen shot, that he had been “writing something” relevant. The plaintiff’s lawyer (and the kid and his mom) have also told the story about how the Mike & Ikes were mistaken for pills; the school has never said anything like that. (And, as I have asked before: What popular dangerous pharmaceuticals look like Mike & Ikes?)</p>
<p>The school has been pretty appropriate about not disclosing any details of this, although the kids in the district seem willing to speculate away – often inaccurately – on what it may have been.</p>
<p>And just to be clear to the Manichaeans among you: I am not arguing that discovering that a kid was in danger would justify the district’s illegal search. I am arguing that there are different consequences for using the fruits of an illegal search to save a life, vs. auctioning them to the highest bidder. And, in the event that the initial search WASN’T illegal – because that’s not clear, even though I think it probably should be – it makes a big difference when you are effectively arguing that subsequent use of search materials for a different purpose taints an otherwise lawful search retroactively.</p>