<p>But what would the surveillance have been on other than the student or someone else in the room? The camera can’t take a picture of the computer unless a mirror happens to be located in just the right place. They could conceptually have taken pictures of many people besides the student, none of whom would have had any reason to believe that they were potentially going to be secretly video recorded or photographed.</p>
<p>
Many security experts have already thoroughly trashed the school’s claims that the pictures were a necessary and effective aspect of a proper laptop security program.</p>
<p>I have been reading this thread from the sidelines, and decided that I should state my position–in one post–to let other posters know where I stand:</p>
<p>For an employee of a school district to activate a camera remotely, on a computer that students are required to use at home, is wrong. It is a clear violation of the right to privacy. The fact that it was possible to activate the camera remotely while making it appear to the user that the camera was off (apparently this was the case) makes it worse, although it was already plenty bad enough. </p>
<p>I would have relocated from a district that prohibited students from using their own computers to do school work. </p>
<p>The personal characteristics of the family that is suing–whether awful or saintlike–are irrelevant to a violation of rights.</p>
<p>SANITY CHECK!! </p>
<p>It is a Federal felony offense if for any individual or private organization or government organization to surreptitiously place or cause to be surreptitiously placed any kind of spy type listening or recording device in a private home WITHOUT a court order. </p>
<p>The law mentions no exceptions for good intentions. (And rightly so.)</p>
<p>"It is a Federal felony offense if for any individual or private organization or government organization to surreptitiously place or cause to be surreptitiously placed any kind of spy type listening or recording device in a private home WITHOUT a court order. </p>
<p>The law mentions no exceptions for good intentions. (And rightly so.)" </p>
<p>I personally hope that if in fact a felony offense (or offenses) has been committed by the school district and/or personnel directly involved in the commission of said felony offense, that they be prosecuted and punished to the full extent of the law. Ignorance is also not an excuse for a violation of the law.</p>
<p>Toblin, I think we have seen clearly 4th amendment violation and PA felony offense (if prosecuted, depending on knowledge/involvement in planting the spyware), but I remain confused about the scope of federal criminal law. There have been a number of posts stating that the federal wiretap statutes may not extend to images.</p>
<p>Are you referring to federal wiretap statutes or is there some other federal criminal statute that applies? I would like to know more about the current state of federal law.</p>
<p>OK, I’ll play. Are you saying/questioning that because only images and not sounds were recorded that no federal anti wiretapping laws were violated? It would take a red faced Judge to maintain that. </p>
<p>You’re a lawyer, I"m not. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.</p>
<p>I asked some people I know from this school district their thoughts on this and I heard pretty much exactly the same as reported by JHS. I was pretty surprised by the vehemence of their defense of the school board AND their denigration of the plaintiffs (whom they didn’t know personally). They were all eager to dismiss the spyware as “no big deal”. A couple of them are lawyers, to boot. I am scratching my head. There is clearly some circling of wagons and scapegoating going on here – reminds me a little of that story, The Lottery. It’s as if the plaintiffs, in bringing this to light, have become the substitute sacrificial lamb to atone for the sins of the school board. The other thing I noticed was how eagerly the others (who were present at this conversation who, like me, were from elsewhere) were to believe this version of the story. It made no sense to me at all. These are all parents who would argue any Supreme Court case to death. So, what’s going on here?</p>
<p>Toblin, I’m not trying to be disingenuous. What the law “should be” and what it “is” can be different things. Like you, I would be surprised if the federal wiretap or computer intrusion statutes fell short. But I just haven’t seen a clear explication in this thread or elsewhere.</p>
<p>Mousegray, I am really not surprised in the least by the community reaction; I am also certain that it is not universal, and there is much churning below the apparently calm surface. LMSD would be making a huge mistake to think they want to go to a jury based on these surface reactions.</p>
<p>Denial is a huge factor. I have a teenage daughter; thankfully I do not live in LMSD so I don’t have to deal with this on an intensely personal level. Yet even I am not sure I would “want to know” if my D was peeped upon. So much easier to dismiss the possibility that something so offensive could have happened.</p>
<p>There is also local pride and identity in play: to attack the school is to attack “us” (witness JHS’ “anti-social” and innuendo gossip cheap shot posts); humans do tend to be tribal, and what is more tribal than the school colors?</p>
<p>None of which takes away from the horror of the issue; one can only hope it gets resolved sooner rather than later so the healing can begin, but that can’t happen until the wound is cleaned. </p>
<p>It was in LMSD’s power to prevent the injury; it remains in LMSD’s power to begin the healing.</p>
<p>I, for one, am glad this family brought the issue to court, whether they are antisocial meanies with acne and BO or not. It will certainly cause other school districts and companies who were toying with similar surveillance policies to rapidly back away from the idea of activating spycams in private homes. Yes, the people in that school district will have some of their tax dollars going to the trial, no doubt. “Freedom isn’t free” has a broader meaning than “soldiers die sometimes.”</p>
<p>I’m not terribly surprised that there are some LMSD families out there expressing anger at the case. </p>
<p>Their arguments make zero sense and honestly in many ways only make the community look even worse, as if they care more about image than the egregious offenses at play in the case, but I’m not surprised some follow that path.</p>
<p>Between the warrant-less covert surveillance case and the racial profiling case this district has gone from being widely praised as one of the best in the country to being the subject of nationwide, and even international, ridicule. No doubt that many families have experienced conversations with friends in recent weeks where instead of friends saying “oh wow your kids go to LMSD I hear it’s excellent” to “oh dear, your kids go to THAT school district. geesh!” For many parents that’s too much to take.</p>
<p>For the foreseeable future LMSD will be labeled as ‘THAT’ school district. Even just the other day a construction worker was hurt on district property and, although this had nothing to do with any of the school officials’ legal troubles, almost all the articles reporting the event made it clear that yes this was indeed ‘THAT’ district. </p>
<p>Is that fair? Probably not. </p>
<p>Has the quality of education from LMSD changed? No. </p>
<p>But do some members of the community look silly for seemingly caring more about their taxes and image than the egregious violations at play here? Absolutely.</p>
<p>OK, the more I read about the remote camera capacities, the more worrisome it gets. There is an issue separate from LANrev, and it goes to whether the faculty had the ability to monitor student’s laptops during the school day (arguably a legitimate purpose). The key questions are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Are or were the district laptops configured with the “Apple Remote Console” (or any similar software) that allow teachers, in the classroom, to see the student’s desktop and/or examine the file(s) and device(s) on the machine while in class?</p></li>
<li><p>Are or were the laptops configured with any form of VPN (virtual private network) that attempts to connect back to the district when not physically on campus?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If the answers to the two questions above are “yes”, then apparently any teacher could access the webcams (and iChat, and any keystrokes) at any time, during school hours or at home.</p>
<p>It is my deepest hope those answers are “no”; but they are questions that need to be answered. I do know that they have been asked without response by LMSD.</p>
<p>^ You can google “market ticker” and “LMSD” for a disturbing discussion of the above.</p>
<p>Even if what was done was a felony under the law, I predict that nobody is going to be prosecuted for it unless they find out that somebody was using the tech to peep at unclad students or something like that. It will all end with some kind of agreement.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I totally agree that if all that happened is what the case alleges then, even though the law was broken, it’s unlikely any school officials will be spending time behind bars. However, I think it’s equally very unlikely that nobody is held accountable.</p>
<p>I going to go out on a limb and predict that in a few weeks this thing comes to some sort of conclusion… we find out a bit more about how this whole mess came to exist in the first place… and one or more district employees will retire early to “spend more time with their family.”</p>
<p>^^ Yes Hunt, draconian criminal prosecutions are reserved for teenagers who iphone racy pics of themselves to each other.</p>
<p>I don’t think anybody will lose a job, either–unless somebody blatantly lied. I don’t think the plaintiffs will get any money (are they seeking money?), but I do think the end result will be a curtailment of surveillance devices, which is a good thing.</p>
<p>There aren’t too many candidates for retiring early to spend more time with their families here. The superintendent just started this fall; I have the impression the tech is not old. The person who actually acquired the system already retired, at the end of last year.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine how this could get resolved in a few weeks. Absolutely nothing is going to happen in the civil case as long as the criminal investigations are pending, except for maybe some wrangling about class certification and definition. (But even that is pretty dependent on the facts. Class certification looks different if there was widespread spying than if not.) Neither prosecutor is going to want to do anything until he or she has all the facts, because whatever gets done is going to be heavily second-guessed. And there’s no chance, zilch, that a prosecutor walks away from this without charging someone, or accepting a low-value guilty plea, without being absolutely, positively sure that nothing will come out later to make him look like a patsy. </p>
<p>The only quick-resolution scenario here would be a couple of quick guilty pleas, followed by a deal with the plaintiffs. But given the uncertainty in the law, there would have to be a pretty sweet deal for someone to plead guilty here.</p>
<p>JHS - I think folks are being too hard on you. The community reaction - while I don’t agree with it - is not surprising. There is a lot of psychology involved here. Parents tend to become emotionally involved in their child’s school and they don’t want to think that the teachers/staff/administration are guilty of wrongdoing.
I saw this first hand in a neighboring district when a middle school teacher was arrested for sexual assaulting (he actually had a relationship and affair) with a 12 year old girl. All the allegations were indeed true - he is in prison - but the community did not stand by the girl and her family. They did not want to believe this popular teacher/football coach was capable.</p>
<p>I did go back and read some of the news coverage of this case. My oh my. The family does seem a tad dysfunctional. But that is irrelevant. I completely understand the concern of the community that this family will win a sizeable judgement to pay their outstanding bills on the back of the taxpayers.<br>
I won’t assume that any staff member was actually “spying” although- but if anyone - the tech guy appears to be a bit creepy.</p>
<p>This is what I don’t get - surely there was discussion on the webcam and how they were to be used. I would like to think so anyway. These are intelligent people - it is beyond me that no one was concerned about the ability to spy. Other school district considered this security feature and then rejected it based on the concerns. Or maybe they are just making that claim in hindsight?</p>
<p>LMSD appears to be a community in crisis, between this and their controversial redistricting plan which looks like it is headed to court.</p>
<p>JHS - right - no one will “retire early”. They would have to be bought out of their contracts. In PA you just can’t fire your Superintendent. It costs money and plenty of it. I would say that in the absence of criminal charges, jobs are intact. The district doesn’t seem to be able to afford otherwise.</p>