<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.”</p>
<p>JHS–I mean to say that you keep changing your story. That, along with your barrage of posts on this thread (one tenth of all of the posts on this thread), staunch defense of the LMSD, and relentless ad hominem attacks on the Robbins family, raises considerable doubts about your veracity. </p>
<p>The fact that a synagogue is a creditor and filed suit against the Robbins is irrelevant. Synagogues and churches run like businesses, too. My wife and I had a run-in with a local church a few years ago and were prepared to file suit because of their unreasonableness. We tried to settle our dispute quietly and “socially.” That was a civit matter, not a potential criminal matter like the LMSD case. Sometimes the only thing bad actors understand is a lawsuit or the threat of one. You’re an attorney–you should know better. But then again maybe it explains a lot.</p>
<p>Take a step back - what I think you all may be missing is that the issue of the Robbins family and the issue of the school district’s conduct are two completely different issues. It matters not a bit to me about anything the Robbins family has in their background. The only reason they have any role in this at all is because they brought the use of web cams to light. Beyond that, they mean nothing and their own case will play itself out however it may. The bigger issue, I believe, is the school district’s conduct. That is far more troubling. What we know is that they used a web cam to try to track stolen or lost laptops. That makes no sense to me whatsoever - what are the chances you are going to turn the web cam on and recognize the person sitting there? A lojack system that returns an IP address that can be turned over to authorities makes much more sense for this purpose. So why were they using it for that purpose, other than ignorance? Then it appears that they took the use of the webcam one step way too far by using it to confront a student about his conduct. Now I am very willing to assume that they had only his best interests at heart but it is still troubling. I wonder what I would do if I was an administrator and had that picture and really thought a kid might be at risk? Most likely everyone in this district is above board and without any ill intent. But here’s the problem - it only takes ONE sicko, especially one who doesn’t look like a sicko, to start looking at kids in their own bedrooms and that is why the webcam should never have been used to track lost or stolen laptops. Bottom line, the authorities will have to get to the bottom of why the webcams were used to track computers and how they were in fact used. Assuming it is just ignorance on the district’s part and no sicko exists I would imagine some major policies need to be enacted so that nothing like this ever happens again. Maybe LMSD is just on the cutting edge of a new technological age, but that needs to be determined and the proper steps need to be in place to make sure this never happens again. So the isssue of the Robbins is really very small in the overall picture here. Also the kid himself should never be made to be accountable in terms of a college app for any of this.</p>
<p>Very well put, collegemom–it’s the issues themselves, not the particular circumstances of their coming to light, that is important. And I for one am glad that they did come to light–I think it’s bringing out some important and under-addressed privacy issues nationally.</p>
<p>ClarkAlum – I haven’t changed my “story” a whit, not that there is any story. You are generating wild fantasies out of nothing. And I completely deny taking ad hominem shots at the Robbinses. I don’t like their public track record, and I don’t like the way they have acted in this matter, and that’s all I have said about them. I haven’t suggested that their background invalidates their claims, and I continue to maintain that the way they chose to pursue their claims is a legitimate topic of discussion, separate and apart from all of the issues about what the school district did.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in the department of ad hominem attacks, maybe you had ought to read a few of your own posts. I have not sued you, or questioned your good faith (except, perhaps, now), or really done anything other than disagree with you on a topic of general social interest. Yet you feel perfectly free to accuse me of lying and deception, and to embarrass me with my embarrassing number of posts here.</p>
<p>You win. I’m done. I agree almost completely with collegemomof2’s summary above, by the way.</p>
<p>“ClarkAlum – I haven’t changed my “story” a whit”</p>
<p>I’m afraid you HAVE changed your story, and more than a “whit.” It’s in black and white and easily exposed by reading all of your posts on this thread, all 60+ of them! And you HAVE taken ad hominem potshots at the Robbins and also at others, including me, who have disagreed with you on this thread.</p>
<p>The legitimate topic on this thread IS about the potential criminal activity of the LMSD in its use of remotely controlled cameras on school-issued laptops to its students. You, and a few others, have chosen to make an issue of the Robbins’ personal character and of their method of filing suit. Many here disagree with you about these being legitimate issues for discussion. I frankly believe they are irrelevant.</p>
<p>You have a lot of nerve–you have engaged in embarassing insults aimed at me and others on this thread. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.</p>
<p>And frankly, I sincerely doubt that you’re “done.”</p>
<p>re LMSD’s “values”—that no one seemed to find webcam spyware extremely troubling says a lot about the insularity of their world, and that’s being kind. It is such a repulsive idea, completely apart from privacy issues, that it makes me wonder what kind of world they live in.</p>
<p>I was moved to get involved in this thread again by the glorification of the Robbins family and the indiscriminate bashing of JHS and the school district administrators, but I should have considered the sources. But before I go, I want to reiterate a couple of points.</p>
<p>First, its important to distinguish between the technical legal issues in this case and the question of who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. While I steadfastly refuse to discuss the Fourth Amendment issue with this group in detail, I would simply observe that it takes a lot more than waving your hands and screaming about the Fourth Amendment in general terms and the dangers of covert surveillance to properly analyze a case where there is a possibility Blake Robbins took the computer without authorization and then brought it to his house without the permission or knowledge of the school authorities–a point that is completely ignored by the posters here.</p>
<p>On the question of good guys and bad guys, I actually think that having some knowledge of the players is a good thing. Against that background, I find the attempt to link the Robbins and the redistricting case particularly inappropriate. In my view, although LMSD authorities were trying to do the politically correct thing by giving the white students at Harriton the perceived benefits of an integrated education, what they in fact did was stupid, wrong in principle and almost certainly illegal. One big difference is that the law suit was filed only after the plaintiffs tried to have their concerns addressed by the relevant district authorities. Moreover, they would have almost certainly dropped their suit if the district had given them the kind of relief that has already been given to the Robbins.</p>
<p>The district also pretty clearly used bad judgment in not informing the parents formally about the use of the cameras. It might even have been wrong to install the relevant feature at all (although I am less certain about this than other posters). But my understanding is that the officials who are responsible for that judgment are gone. Now, the Robbins have a perfect right to continue their law suit it they wish to do so. But it is also clear that this decision is based upon some combination of a desire for a) money b) publicity and/or c) leverage on some other issue (here the reference to Blake’s permanent record raises some interesting questions. there is NO indication that they are in this for public good.</p>
<p>If it is in fact largely about leverage, unlike JHS I hope everything comes out. It that means that Blake suffers some permanent damage to his college prospects–Boo Hoo, I’m so sad. It comes under the Super Chicken rule–they knew the job was dangerous when they took it.</p>
<p>Which leads me to my suggestion for the counselor’s recommendation. Rather than punishment per se as JHS intimates it is nothing more that prudence, given the behavior of the family in this and other contexts.</p>
<p>So rant on Clarkalum, rocketman and Clueless. I’m sure that you are enjoying demonstrating your moral superiority to people like me and JHS (not to mention the brilliance of your legal analysis).</p>
<p>re: mousegray’s comment - I am willing to be kind and think that the reason they thought the use of a webcam was a good idea to track stolen or lost computers is that they thought the majority of the time they would most likely find that the laptops were actually somewhere right within their building. I know at one point I remember reading that one of the tech people said he once couldn’t find a laptop and turned the web cam on only to find it was in an empty classroom. Now this is NOT to say that this was well thought out in any way - in fact it was just plain dumb. But it might explain whey they thought a web cam was a good way to track these laptops. The real problem I believe is that no one in the LMSD took a step back and looked at the big picture and the ramificiations of using a web cam for this reason. In the end, using it as they did is just plain creepy.</p>
<p>The link to the re-districting case goes to contempt for the law: the top officer of LMSD consciously dismissed clear Supreme Court rulings outlawing racial factoring, because it was somehow OK it if LMSD did not get caught doing it. </p>
<p>The re-districting merits are not the topic of this thread; but LMSD’s practice of acting as a kingdom above the law is telling.</p>
<p>It would be nice if we could get the signal to noise ratio back to a positive reading on the merits of the thread.</p>
<p>EMM1, technical analysis has clearly shown that school officials had every means available to determine that the laptop was on private premises before they decided to conduct surveillance. The idea that they had no way of knowing they were about to conduct surveillance on private premises is simply false. </p>
<p>Also, you have continuously tried to make the 4th amendment issue far more complicated than it really is. Whether the laptop was stolen/lost/misplaced/abducted by aliens is really irrelevant when it comes to using a video camera to secretly record the inside of someone’s house. </p>
<p>Did they conduct such due diligence before turning on the cameras? We don’t know that (although the Perbix videos show district officials clearly knew how to do this), but that’s a secondary factor anyway. Either they conducted surveillance on private property out of gross negligence or did it knowingly… either way they did it.</p>
<p>The district has already admitted to doing the fundamental thing they were accused of doing–namely conducting covert surveillance on private property without explicit permission of the property owner (yes the laptop is their properly, but what the laptop’s camera sees is not). </p>
<p>The questions have really evolved into uncovering the true intent of the officials, whether they knew what they were doing was illegal, and what the pictures were actually used for. It basically boils down to determining if the officials were just incredibly naive and negligent or if they acted in a ‘criminal’ manner.</p>
<p>That’s one of the primary reasons why we see all the current eDiscovery processes underway. The district’s admitted to doing what it was accused of doing… it’s now a question of who knew what and when to decide what should happen next.</p>
<p>“So rant on Clarkalum, rocketman and Clueless. I’m sure that you are enjoying demonstrating your moral superiority to people like me and JHS (not to mention the brilliance of your legal analysis).”</p>
<p>EMM1–I would hardly characterize my dozen relatively short posts on this thread as being “rants.” If anyone were in a ranting contest based on length of and sheer numbers of posts, JHS and you would be on the podium. </p>
<p>I have never claimed moral superiority. I do believe that JHS and you have some kind of personal connection to this case that has significantly biased your opinions. I also believe that the character of the Robbins family is irrelevant to the issues raised in this thread. However, JHS and you have continued to focus on this. Climbing the inference ladder several rungs at a time about the Robbins’ motivation in filing suit is not particularly helpful.</p>
<p>And I have never offered any legal analysis. I am not an attorney. Thank God about that. I find the legal discussions very interesting. I do have an opinion based on all of the available information to date. My opinion is that individuals connected to the LMSD did engage in criminal activity. This will be determined, hopefully, by a thorough and impartial investigation.</p>
<p>I turned on the Dr. Phil show to watch the segment about webcams on school laptops, and the first story is about Amy Bishop from the U of Alabama shooting. Maybe Dr. Phil is cruising CC for his stories?</p>
<p>Anita Ramasastry, a Processor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law and Director of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce & Technology briefly wrote about this case and made some interesting comments. </p>
<p>In particular she states that even if the school district had explicitly stated they had the covert video surveillance ability they would have still have been in the wrong since a government entity can’t force one to give up their constitutional rights as a condition of accepting what amounted to mandatory school equipment. </p>
You are probably right, coronax. We should all get royalties.</p>
<p>Fascinating which threads go south, or turn into personal challenges. Now, I have no dog in this fight, and am only at measly post # 3 here, but since I am already procrasstinating, I decided to do a little review of the “data” presented here. Here is the list of the posters participating in this thread and the # of posts each have (though the last 1 or 2 posts might have posted after I copied the list from the screen):
So while yes, JHS has 64, his posts are trumped by rocketman and cluelessdad. In fact, clueless dad has about twice as many posts as JHS, and BCEagle is quickly gaining on JHS So why rag on JHS for his post count here? He started at the outset of the thread-- post #4 I believe. Clarkalum joined in the conversation about a week later, a third of the way into the thread as it currently stands ( at post # 227 of of 655, unless I missed an earlier post- if so, apologies). So, JHS has about 9.7% of all the posts, since he started early in the thread, and ClarkAlum has about 3.5% of the posts that have posted since he joined in. Neither of these scream out as a preponderance of the posts here. JMO. </p>
<p>If a topic is of interest to any poster for watever reason, they tend to follow the thread more closely, and may post more frequently. Does that mean they have some vested interested in the topic or some ulterior motive? Who knows. Maybe, maybe not. My suggestion-- stick to the topic, not the posters. If it feels personal, report the post(s) to the mods. That said, cc has been awfully tame lately. Nice to see a little animated affect to pique one’s interest.</p>
<p>OK- back to topic and back to work for me, for now.</p>
<p>“So why rag on JHS for his post count here? He started at the outset of the thread-- post #4 I believe. Clarkalum joined in the conversation about a week later, a third of the way into the thread as it currently stands ( at post # 227 of of 655, unless I missed an earlier post- if so, apologies). So, JHS has about 9.7% of all the posts, since he started early in the thread, and ClarkAlum has about 3.5%”</p>
<p>Just a caveat that 5 of my posts on this thread have been in the last 2 days. 3.5 percent of all posts (with one third of them in the last 2 days) is one quarter of the total posts by JHS. What difference does it make when I decided to first post? JHS is definitely on the podium in the rant contest. And I’ll bet a nickel he’ll be posting again on this thread at some point. He can’t help himself.</p>
<p>I’ve been ragging on JHS because he has an admitted connection to people involved in this case which he did not initially disclose. He has chosen to focus on trashing the family that filed suit rather than the real issue here—did LMSD engage in unlawful activity? His relentless trashing of the boy and his family smack of the type of Main Line elitism that I detest. It’s also a typical attorney maneuver–assassinate the “messenger” to deflect attention from the crime.</p>