Suit: Pa. school spied on students via laptops (MERGED THREAD)

Parents Forum
621

<p>I know, I said I wouldn’t post any more, but in the immortal words of Popeye the Sailor, enough is too much.</p>

<p>“He continues to trash the Robbins family based on hearsay and inuendo.”</p>

<p>Like this rumor and innuendo perhaps</p>

<p>[Philly.com</a> : Laptop family is no stranger to legal disputes](<a href=“Inquirer.com: Philadelphia local news, sports, jobs, cars, homes”>Inquirer.com: Philadelphia local news, sports, jobs, cars, homes)</p>

<p>Yeah, I know cluelessdad, they are frickin’ humanitarians who are in it to protect our civil lliberties. Thanks for giving my best laugh of the day by talking about how selfless the Robbins’s were being by trying to become representatives of the class.</p>

<p>And by the way, rocketman, next time you describe the “unambiguous” text of the Fourth Amendment, you might actually try to get it right. The text does not bar searches of houses without warrants; rather it bars “unreasonable” searches and, separately describes the circumstances under which warrants can be issued. Under the caselaw, warrants are indeed very important but trying to talk to amateurs about the subtleties of search and seizure law is a useless waste of time.</p>

<p>Finally, given the litigeous history of the family I really would advise a counselor asked to write a college reference for Blake Robbins to write the following:</p>

<p>“Blake Robbins will graduate from Harriton High School. On advice of counsel, I cannot say any more.”</p>

<p>Y’all in the lynch mob keep having fun talking to each other and pretending that you actually understand the legal issues in the case.</p>

622

<p>EMM, I’m sure JHS is honored to count you as his legal equal in elevating the argumentive technique of cheap attacks on this thread. And I think even JHS would concede tenure track to you as a professor of gibberish.</p>

623

<p>EMM, this question was asked of JHS before and now I ask it of you: </p>

<p>as someone who has posted on CC as hailing from the Philly area, and whose kids attended “one of the best school districts in the state” do you have any ties to LMSD that you would like to share with the class?</p>

<p>One of those high-income taxpayers, insulted by uppity “lowlifes” perhaps?</p>

624

<p>Full disclosure, I know one school board member well and used to have children in LMSD.</p>

<p>That having been said, Clarkalum has this completely wrong. The idea that working class families and African Americans generally care about the Robbins is completely ridiculous. They live in a tony area of the district, and to me their attitude typifies the worst kind of behavior that I have seen from the “entitled” students in the district and their parents.</p>

<p>And what did I say that is gibberish? Rocketman is wrong about the text of the Fourth Amendment. My reading of the relevant statutes is confirmed by a number of experts, although some disagree with me on the appropriate resolution of the Fourth Amendment claim. I think they’re wrong those who disagree with me are wrong on the Fourth Amendment issue but talking to someone like Rocketman about this is a complete waste of time. The litigiousness of the Robbins family is well documented; the idea that they and their lawyers are in this for the good of the community is absurd on its face.</p>

<p>As for rumor and innuendo, most of the people on this thread are willing to hang the AP and the rest of the officials in the district based on the thus far unsubstantiated allegations of a child who is clearly an interested party.</p>

625

<p>Thanks, good to know. I figured something had to be driving the level of heat coming from JHS and you on this thread.</p>

626

<p>Cluelessdad, the only heat driving me is bemusement at the constant braying for the scalps of all of the board members and administrators in the district, and the constant “big lie” technique of repeating “spying! spying! spying! surveillance! surveillance! surveillance!” (Or “racial profiling! racial profiling!”) By and large, these are people like you and me; they deserve some respect and consideration.</p>

<p>I’m sorry that you don’t like my legal reasoning. I did OK with it in law school, and thereafter.</p>

<p>ClarkAlum, this is beginning to get tiresome. Let me repeat: I have no connection to anyone involved in this case, except for being friends with a bunch of families with kids in the school district, and knowing a couple of people on the board in a distant, professional kind of way. I haven’t discussed this with anyone in a position of more authority than being a parent or student currently at the district. My views are entirely my own (except when I report what I hear those parents and students saying).</p>

<p>Do you really think I am advancing someone’s agenda here? No one in real life cares what, I, you, cluelessdad, or rocketman thinks.</p>

<p>By the way, the notion that administrators at the school district would deliberately torpedo Blake Robbins’ college applications over this is absolutely abhorrent. They will do no such thing. The problem – if any – will come from the completely normal human response not to do business with famously litigious people. No one at his school is going to punish him for this, and it disgusts me that people assume they would. I don’t want to live wherever it is you live, with your privacy, your sanctimony, and your dark, dark view of the world.</p>

627

<p>^ I actually have a lot of respect for your legal reasoning (zero for EMMs). But you spend a lot of time on THIS thread engaging in cheap attacks and, frankly, from everything else I’ve seen on this site, you are really a much better person than that.</p>

<p>Here’s one for your legal reasoning: given your connection to LMSD board members as “friends” or now “knowing a couple of people on the board in a distant, professional kind of way” would you be removable for cause from a jury pool?</p>

<p>The bias runs deep for both you and EMM here and I’m surprised you can’t see it in your own posts. I think if you revisit this thread years from now it will jump out at you.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>As does the Robbins family. As do we all – not to have spycams invading our children’s bedrooms, subject to abuse or hacking whether from teachers, techs or malicious porn merchants from Eastern Europe (and it you think hacking isn’t in play here, google stryde hax and think about those blinking webcam lights reports for a minute).</p>

628

<p>With regard to the Fourth Amendment, and the argument made by EMM1 in post #624, I believe that the “reasonableness” of a search is established by the ability of the police to obtain a warrant for the search. I think that Supreme Court case law is very clear on this point with respect to private homes.</p>

<p>I am not a lawyer. I think there might be an exception in the case of a police officer in “hot pursuit” of a suspect, but that would begin with an observation of an event, where the observation is permitted under the Constitution, and not assisted by an in-home surreptitiously placed spycam.</p>

<p>Count me among the people who would welcome Blake Robbins to my university.</p>

629

<p>Take a look at Mapp v. Ohio. 367 U.S. 643 (1961).</p>

630

<p>

EMM, if your idea of a defense is trying to suggest that government officials placing secret cameras in kids bedrooms is in fact “reasonable” I’ll cede that point to you… but good luck to the district trying to get very far with that in the real world</p>

631

<p>I fully understand why the Robbins’ family would not be well-respected nor well-liked in the LMSD community. I get that. However, kids are not responsible for their parents. They don’t get to choose them nor do they (often) get to choose the decisions they make.</p>

<p>Ask yourselves, if this incident happened to the class president whose parents brought suit, many folks would have a different opinion.
I do think that EMM1 and JHS are a little “too close” to this to be objective. You need to take a step back and ask yourself what your opinion would be if you read about the case but the location was changed to a suburb of Atlanta or Dallas. (No offense to the good folks in greater Atlanta or Dallas is intended).</p>

<p>Fortunately, our legal system strives to be objective. Hopefully, this case will prove that to be true.</p>

<p>Hunt - The chronology is unclear. One article states that the mother brought suit after she was told the photo would become a part of her son’s “permanent record”.
I can’t imagine she would tell an administrator she was filing suit before she actually filed. If she did tell them - as in “Remove the photo from my son’s permanent record or I will sue you!” - this most likely would have been viewed as a veiled threat.</p>

632

<p>“I actually have a lot of respect for your legal reasoning (zero for EMMs).”</p>

<p>Gee, you don’t know how sad that makes me clueless. I’ve had my legal reasoning criticized by better than you. In any event, the only detailed legal argument that I recall making had to do with the Pennsylvania statute. And if you don’t believe me, perhaps you’ll believe Orin Kerr, construing identical language in the federal statute.</p>

<p>“The federal Wiretap Act cause of action doesn’t work. The computers allegedly took still images of the student, but the Wiretap Act doesn’t apply to video images. The Wiretap Act applies to bugging audio equipment (“oral communications”), intercepting phone calls (“wire communications”) and intercepting computer communications (“electronic communications.”). But the alleged interception here is of a video image without sound, and the Wiretap Act doesn’t apply. See, e.g., United States v. Koyomejian, 970 F.2d 536, 539 (9th Cir.1992); United States v. Torres, 751 F.2d 875, 880 (7th Cir.1984).”</p>

<p>To be fair, Kerr does disagree with me on the Fourth Amendment issue. But again, discussing that issue with amateurs whose legal knowledge comes from Law and Order is useless. I did note that when rocketman made an appeal to the text in the midst of his many rants, he got the text wrong. This is his post</p>

<p>"Just exactly what part of</p>

<p>Quote:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
is “ambiguous” in terms of whether or not a government entity can search your private property without a warrant?</p>

<p>Is ambiguous in terms of whether or not a government entity can search your private property without a warrant?"</p>

<p>I pointed out (correctly) that the text does not prohibit searches without warrants but only unreasonable searches. If you can’t even read the text right…</p>

<p>Otherwise, although we disagree about some things in the case, I associate myself generally with comments of JHS.</p>

633

<p>You may want to revisit the gibberish you wrote regarding the PA statute, which expressly covers images.</p>

<p>And 4th amendment > sec. 1983 not a slam dunk? </p>

<p>So I join my betters in going to <em>ignore</em> on your legal views. Perhaps we can chalk it up to loyalty to a personal relationship (or your local tax rate).</p>

634

<p>

</p>

<p>EMM, you continue to harp on an earlier statement of mine that you’ve taken grossly out of context. My comments were explicitly made in reference to actions of the school officials. </p>

<p>Of course there are situations where a search can in theory be conducted without a warrant… but we’re not talking about a police officer who enters a private home in hot pursuit of a criminal. We are talking about school officials conducting covert surveillance inside private homes. That may or may not have been what they intended to do, but that’s what they did.</p>

<p>If you can show some precedent in case law where it was determined that a school official covertly observing activities taking place inside someone’s private home is “reasonable” then you might have some ground to stand on… otherwise you’re just blowing hot air. …and as you’ve already pointed out yourself there is little support for your line of reasoning.</p>

635

<p>Ok, one more time on the statute in words of one syllable or less so that (maybe) you can understand it.</p>

<p>The statute prohibits the interception of images that are being transmitted electronically. The only image that was “intercepted” was a LIVE image. That image was admittedly then transmitted by the school district, but the school district did not intercept that transmission.</p>

<p>And BTW, the federal statute has a similar definition. In case you might want actually find out what the law is, you can read United States v. Koyomejian,</p>

<p>[970</a> F2d 536 United States v. Koyomejian | Open Jurist](<a href=“http://openjurist.org/970/f2d/536/united-states-v-koyomejian]970”>970 F2d 536 United States v. Koyomejian | OpenJurist)</p>

636

<p>JustAMom: Your question is a fair one. I like to believe that my Establishment bias would remain constant, so that if I read about something like this occurring in Atlanta or Dallas I would have the same general reaction. But there’s no question that I trust the Lower Merion school board and administrators more than I would trust their equivalents elsewhere (especially the South), not because I know them so well, because I don’t, but because I know enough to know that they share essential values with me. As do the parents in the district, whose reaction is much more like mine than like cluelessdad’s or rocketman’s, at least the ones with whom I have discussed it.</p>

<p>As for what I would have thought if the class president had brought the suit – that’s an easy one! You have no idea the contempt I hold for class presidents! Seriously, though, I have already apologized several times for repeating kid-sourced rumors about the boy, which I did in this thread’s first 24 hours. The people who criticized that were right: I had no basis to judge veracity, and it was basically irrelevant. I haven’t repeated such rumors since. </p>

<p>I do think the parents’ litigiousness is fair game, because it goes to what I continue to believe is their anti-social approach to filing suit without trying to resolve it as a serious privacy issue first. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but the people from the district have said that repeatedly, and the plaintiffs haven’t contradicted them at all. And I am heartily confused about this “permanent record” stuff. The complaint does not allege that Blake was disciplined at all on the basis of the picture, and does not allege anything about a January conversation. That’s all been the attorney talking to the press. The school district has barely addressed it, because it has been very careful to avoid saying anything about the boy that might be construed as negative, something I respect. It doesn’t sound right that this was going to be part of Blake’s record with no other action taken. There’s probably a lot more to that story, but I hope it gets worked out not in public.</p>

<p>In the real world, in general, before people file suit they usually make at least two serious attempts to negotiate a resolution – usually involving first a strongly-worded letter from an attorney demanding appropriate resolution, and then a copy of the complaint about to be filed with a statement of intent to file it if there is no satisfactory response. In this situation, also, the school board holds regular public meetings, and residents can attend and get their concerns on the agenda. Someone might have tried that, too. Yes, kids got brushed off and placated by the school principal, but I think it’s obvious that any kind of well-reasoned presentation about these webcams and the privacy concerns they raised would have gotten the board’s attention very quickly. My sense is not that the board and senior administrators ignored privacy concerns here so much as that they failed to notice them, and no one brought the concerns to their attention until the suit was filed. No one gets any gold stars for failing to spot a big fat issue like this, but I think they would have done the right thing much earlier had someone raised it with them responsibly rather than ambushed them with a lawsuit. (But . . . let me acknowledge that the people who praise the good object lesson this suit has given other school districts and their suppliers have a good point. I would be furious if someone did to me what the Robbinses did to the school board, but from the standpoint of the legal system it is fine.)</p>

<p>As for hacking – I have been raising that as a serious concern since Day 1, too. I believe that the district and school administration was not spying on students in any systematic way, and didn’t intend to spy on them at all. But I wish (and they probably wish, too) it were clear that they had appropriate safeguards in place to prevent other people, including hackers and possible rogue employees, from appropriating the system’s powerful capabilities to spy, or worse.</p>

637

<p>Video versus audio surveillance is a distinction without a difference. There is no lower threshold for video surveillance that would somehow make its use more acceptable than audio surveillance. </p>

<p>While it may be true that video surveillance may not be subject to Title III, it is subject to the same constitutional standards defined under Title III. All Federal Circuits, including the 3rd Circuit (covering Pennsylvania) , require a warrant before its use. In order for such warrant to be issued by a judge, the government has to provide in addition to probable cause of a Federal Crime:</p>

<p>(1) a factual statement that alternative investigative methods have been tried and failed or reasonably appear to be unlikely to succeed if tried or would be too dangerous; </p>

<p>(2) a statement of the steps to be taken to assure that the surveillance will be minimized to effectuate only the purposes for which the order is issued; </p>

<p>(3) a particularized description of the premises to be surveilled; </p>

<p>(4) a statement of the duration of the order, which shall not be longer than is necessary to achieve the objective of the authorization nor, in any event, longer than 30 days, measured from the date of the order (without any 10-day grace period to begin interception, but with 30-day extension periods possible); and </p>

<p>(5) the names of the persons to be surveilled, if known.</p>

<p>If anything, most Federal Courts would consider video surveillance a GREATER intrusion on privacy than audio surveillance and judges are much less likely to issue a warrant for video surveillance than audio surveillance. Warrants for video surveillance in the home are virtually unheard of. One of the few cases where its was use was considered appropriate was in the surveillance of safe houses suspected of harboring terrorists in bomb making (US vs Torres).</p>

<p>The Supreme Court in Torres stated:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>If video surveillance in the home WITH a warrant is essentially out of bounds except for the most extreme national security type cases, video surveillance in the home WITHOUT a warrant is NEVER an acceptable option under any circumstance.</p>

638

<p>JHS continues to take ad hominem cheap shots at every opportunity. I believe he is being less than honest about his connections to this case. I have posted less than a dozen times here since the thread began. JHS has posted approximately 60 times, approximately one tenth of all of the posts on this thread. He has continued to bash the Robbins boy and his family, first for being low lifes, then for being “anti-social,” finally for being “litigious” (ironic in that JHS appears to be an attorney). </p>

<p>JHS also must have a LOT of free time on his hands. Over 6000 posts since 2006 with an average of more than 4 posts per day on the CC site. I have wondered about those posters who seem to have made CC their “home” (senior members), often having opinons and/or self-purported knowledge about everything under the sun. </p>

<p>My biggest concern about JHS’s continued trashing of the Robbins family is that he suggests they should have settled this matter quietly with the school district. I ask, “why?” If LMSD engaged in criminal activity (and it remains to be seen if this is the case), and if my Constitutional rights were violated, why would I assume the School District to be forthcoming and interested in exposing the truth? The civil suit opened the door for the criminal investigation by the FBI and US Attorney. Investigations like this don’t occur just because some low life files suit.</p>

<p>JHS has a BIG dog in this hunt in my opinion. No doubt in my mind.</p>

639

<p>

</p>

<p>JHS, this is really irrelevant to case but you and a few others continue to leverage this accusation (on their ‘litigiousness’) against the family so I’m curious… what is your evidence for this?</p>

<p>I’m well aware the family has financial issues, and a search of public records in the area around where they live (its a public database anyone can search for free) does indeed reveal that they’ve been party to many lawsuits… BUT I only see them listed as defendants not plaintiffs (except in the case of appeals). </p>

<p>Further to the point these ‘cases’ are mostly just basic liens. </p>

<p>Your and others’ innuendo have painted this family as the type that sues people left and right to collect cash… I haven’t seen any evidence of that nor has the press reported any such cases. </p>

<p>Do you have your own actual evidence to support the picture you’re painting or are you just spreading rumor and innuendo like many residents of the district seem to do when it comes to the plaintiffs? </p>

<p>Again, it’s irrelevant to the case at hand and I only ask because you continue to bring this up.</p>

640

<p>No, I mean that the family seems not to pay bills unless they are sued. That counts as litigiousness in my book. Yes, there are multiple filings by tax authorities, but there are more suits by others than most people have. </p>

<p>I’m sorry, but getting sued by your synagogue is very unusual. People have payment problems all the time, but they get worked out; synagogues don’t jump up and sue people at the drop of a hat. Their synagogue is huge, probably the largest in the area, and it has sued three people in the past 6 years. That has a huge effect on my thinking, I’ll admit it.</p>

<p>ClarkAlum, do you really mean to be calling me a bald-faced liar? Because that’s what you are doing, and it is pretty irksome. If you really have “no doubt in your mind” about this, you probably ought to be careful about your instincts, because you are dead wrong.</p>