<p>Or, there’s another interpretation possible: The statute is ambiguous as applied to this situation, and it’s up to the courts to say what it means. That’s not a “game”, that’s a pretty fair description of the one critical set of issues.</p>
<p>Just exactly what part of</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>is “ambiguous” in terms of whether or not a government entity can search your private property without a warrant?</p>
<p>If they had a warrant from the police to perform the covert surveillance then wave them around and everyone can go home. If they don’t, as appears to be the case, then they’ve got a big problem on their hands. As we’re now seeing it’s a case of who was in charge. The IT folks admit to taking the images but deny ‘being in charge.’ </p>
<p>JHS: I do of course acknowledge that there’s a difference between the civil/civil rights/constitutional issue and the issue of pressing criminal charges against school officials and these lawyers are in the tricky situation of dealing with both at the moment.</p>
<p>rocketman08, I applaud your opening of post #602.
I think your wording in the second paragraph was a little unclear, though–any warrant would come from a judge, and not from the police, and with good reason.</p>
<p>^ Quant, that is a key and little noticed point. The POLICE, without court-issued warrants, were monitoring direct spycam feeds?</p>
<p>Misery loves company, and lots of knives in the air now in the knife-catching contest.</p>
<p>Update:
[District</a> hires firm to probe computer camera use | Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/09/2010](<a href=“http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20100309_District_hires_firm_to_probe_computer_camera_use.html]District”>http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20100309_District_hires_firm_to_probe_computer_camera_use.html)</p>
<p>This is encouraging, noting the tone of the board statement and that the report will be made public. This is the first point I’ve felt LMSD is getting ahead of the curve instead of digging deeper.</p>
<p>An interesting development although it also represents some significant backpedaling by the district based on their earlier firm assertions. </p>
<p>The district was quick to insist that the secret surveillance system was only activated 42 times and that this was only ever done so when they suspected a laptop might be stolen. </p>
<p>Now they’re backing off that statement saying they need to investigate to figure out how many times it really was activated and figure out what it was really being used for. </p>
<p>At best this means they had grossly inadequate systems for logging use of the system and ensuring that nobody could bypass the ‘procedures’ for activating it according to ‘policy.’ </p>
<p>(Setting aside for a moment the fact that these policies represent a significant legal problem on their own.)</p>
<p>^ I’d rather see backpedaling than stonewalling. It’s a basic human instinct to deny mistakes/wrongdoing, so I don’t really fault early statements that may have amounted to wishful thinking (if they did). My concern was that those early statements indicated a denial/cover-up mentality, so cautiously optimistic that the approach has changed.</p>
<p>Rocket, I agree there remains a huge legal problem here, but “what is the right remedy” is an interesting question. I think LMSD (if it does) acknowledging shortcomings and showing commitment to fixing it goes a long way.</p>
<p>Here’s a hypothetical: flash ahead 2-3 years and you are Blake Robbins advisor on college applications. How do you suggest he handle his brush with fame/infamy here?</p>
<p>He’ll be submitting applications less than 22 months from now. The case may very well still be live.</p>
<p>Anyway, my first instinct would be to tell him to change his name and to get emancipated, to stay a million miles away from the case, and to have his attorney get an agreement from the district (and a court order) that no reference to the suit will be made on his transcript or in any of his letters of recommendation. It’s hard to imagine something that would be more poisonous to your chance of admission than having sued your school without any kind of attempt to work things out nonjudicially. He could try to cast himself as Rosa Parks or a Freedom Rider, but I think it’s unlikely anyone will buy it, unless maybe cluelessdad and ClarkAlum are working in the admissions department.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I think people will recognize that none of this is his fault, in any way. He shouldn’t be hurt by it unless colleges are afraid admitting him would be asking for trouble from the dad. None of it is really to his credit, either, unless he learns something wonderful from it that he can turn into a college essay. But ultimately he’s going to have to stand on his own two feet as a person, not a Test Case, and he ought to make certain he is presenting himself as a person, not a Test Case.</p>
<p>
Yes, this is certainly a positive sign. They’re at least starting to come around to, potentially, admitting that they messed up.</p>
<p>
I don’t really think it counts for or against him. </p>
<p>
I think this has been harped upon countless times already, but any suggestion that this was the first time anyone ever raised concerns to the district on this issue is just flatly wrong. Concerns were raised and the district did nothing… until they got sued… which, rather ironically, is what their own internal documents stated it would take to get them to change practices they knew were illegal (re: the racial profiling case)</p>
<p>I just turned on our local news (NBC), and there was a commercial for the Dr. Phil show that will be airing tomorrow (Wed). He’ll be addressing “the use of Webcams to spy on students”. The title of the show is What’s Wrong With People? Part 2. On the commercial, he was interviewing a family including a teenage girl about her activities in front of her computer.</p>
<p>rocketman, your use of “racial profiling” is galling! There is nothing remotely resembling “racial profiling” at issue in that case. It’s absolutely clear you know lots about computer security and nothing about Lower Merion, or school districts in general.</p>
<p>Since (1) Robbins’ family didn’t seem to know about any of the prior concerns raised about the system, (2) the people (students) who raised those concerns made a decision not to pursue them because they were apparently satisfied with the responses they got, and (3) the district terminated the program immediately upon being served with a complaint, it’s kind of hard to give Robbins a whole lot of credit for deciding that a suit was necessary. </p>
<p>No one with a choice wants to do business with someone who is likely to sue them, or likely to force them to sue him. That’s just a fact of life. I am aware of a number of situations where people filed litigation with perfectly good justification, and won, and still suffered consequences from that for years with employers and lenders, and even more situations where people refuse to do business with other people who look like they have to be sued to get them to comply with their obligations. Of course, you can give lengthy explanations of either situation, and sometimes that will mitigate the bad reaction. But it’s a big burden to carry, and a bigger one if after all the explanation it’s not clear that you behaved honorably.</p>
<p>
??? They’re accused of using the color of ones skin as a determining factor in deciding where they should go to school. I’m not sure what your definition of racial profiling is, but it doesn’t get more clear cut than that. </p>
<p>Unsealed court documents have since shown that they indeed discussed this as method of deciding which students should go where, knew it was illegal, but commented internally (quoting their own documents):</p>
<p>**“The Supreme Court technically means, that we have to disregard race in our redistricting . . . but of course this only is an issue if someone sues the district, and I can’t really think of a circumstance in which a citizen of the district would sue.”<a href=“ooops…%20%20turns%20out%20citizens%20would%20sue%20in%20regards%20to%20the%20redistricting%20so%20now%20they’ve%20been%20dealing%20with%20that%20mess%20too”>/b</a></p>
<p>
I don’t think anyone is giving them ‘credit’ for anything. However you continue to insist that they’ve somehow done something wrong by filing this suit. If a parent catches someone snooping in on their kid in their bedroom should they a) call a pow-wow and talk it out with the perpetrator or b) pull-out all the stops and throw the book at them?</p>
<p>You may choose option ‘a’, but I think many would choose ‘b’ and regardless I certainly wouldn’t look poorly upon them for doing so. </p>
<p>
I agree that fair or unfair there could be impacts for the child down the line. For his part, he stated to the press that his lawyers were clear about warning him of the potential downsides and that he was aware of them before deciding to push ahead. Perhaps he’s not old enough to really understand what that all involves, but it’s all water under the now and has no bearing on the crux of the case.</p>
<p>I think “racial profiling” means using race as a proxy for other factors – such when black people driving in a white neighborhood are stopped and searched for drugs or burglary tools, or Hispanic people are asked to document their citizenship while others are not, or Arabs are subjected to strip-searches whenever they board a plane.</p>
<p>As for the LM case, I haven’t looked at school desegregation cases in a loooong time, but the absolute quality of the statement in the memo you quote sounds wrong to me as a matter of law, i.e., it is NOT correct to say that the district was required to disregard race entirely in drawing its lines. That’s what will be at issue in the suit, I guess. I was not following it closely at the time at all, but it seemed completely clear to me that race (or economic status, which in context was a close proxy for race) WAS being used, and there was a great deal of contemporaneous public debate about all aspects of the issue. </p>
<p>For a whole variety of perfectly valid reasons, the school district had to redirect about 40 kids per class from one high school to another. (Not current students at the school, but future students who would naturally expect to go to school A, but who were going to be told to go to school B instead.) There wasn’t any way to do that without making 40 students per class unhappy – the district had been trying various means to get students to choose the less popular school for 20 years, with highly ironic effect because it meant the district was showering expensive goodies on its richer, whiter, more privileged students, and was probably afraid that it was going to get sued for that. Because the neighborhoods in the district have very different population density, there was no way to equalize the population of the schools without splitting up some reasonably coherent neighborhood(s) that was closer to and naturally fed into the more popular school. The neighborhood that was bisected for school assignment purposes was a lower-income neighborhood with a relatively high minority population, which responded to the fact that the less-popular high school was often criticized for not having a critical mass of minority students. No one was completely happy about that, but the alternative was to have a school that was virtually segregated, by race and by economic class.</p>
<p>JHS is right that Robbins would want me on the admissions committee – depending on his overall record otherwise, of course.</p>
<p>So much trashing of this family. Volunteering yourself as a class representative is not a cash-in strategy: as lead plaintiff, you cannot beenfit disporportionately to the class, and your specific harms will generally be traded off for a lesser class-wide settlement.</p>
<p>If reported accurately, the LMSD administration was quite arrogant in asserting their continued right to spycam. At that point it became a matter of preserving evidence before the IT data got wiped.</p>
<p>This community of sheep kept saying “bbbaaaaa” to violations of fundamental constitutional rights. The community owes thanks to someone who – knowing they would get trashed as is proving out now – had the guts to stand up and say: NO.</p>
<p>And while I’m at it, how about all those student “leaders” that cared more about preserving their college admissions chances than saying NO to the school administration? They do not want me on their admissions committee.</p>
<p>I repeat–is it in fact true that the Robbins family sued without approaching the school first?</p>
<p>^ I don’t believe we know the exact facts. I believe the school has stated the suit was a surprise that they learned about in the press, so accepting that statement probably a fair assumption that no notice of intent to sue or demand letter was first sent.</p>
<p>
I don’t think there has been any evidence to support this statement. The school stated they were unaware of the suit until it was filed, but that doesn’t mean the family didn’t previously express their grievances with the district.</p>
<p>“hard to imagine something that would be more poisonous to your chance of admission than having sued your school without any kind of attempt to work things out nonjudicially. He could try to cast himself as Rosa Parks or a Freedom Rider, but I think it’s unlikely anyone will buy it, unless maybe cluelessdad and ClarkAlum are working in the admissions department”</p>
<p>A cheap shot by JHS who appears to have a dog in this hunt that he has not disclosed. First he stated that he did not know anyone involved in the case. Then he admitted having relationships with board members and/or their associates. He continues to trash the Robbins family based on hearsay and inuendo. Me thinks JHS has more connections to this case than he has revealed. How about the whole truth for staters, JHS? Hopefully that’s what the investigation will uncover.</p>
<p>JHS has a point. Any group of school board members or administrators who would stoop, (if the allegations are true), to illegally spying on students would also be willing to extract revenge on any student who complains. And that threat includes sabotaging any college aspirations that student may have. This can be construed as warning to all LMSD students and parents not to join the lawsuit.</p>