Well, either that or someone overseeing the program is a peeping tom (for lack of a better term) and decided to just go for it.

If there is even one picture of a teenager naked or changing, then every adult who saw it or knew about it and did nothing to stop it should be charged with child pornography.  Even if that wasn’t their intent, their predatory violation of students’ privacy makes this serious enough.

But I doubt that will ever happen because it’s for the good of the children!!! and they’ll claim they just made a mistake out of good intentions because they care soooo much about the welfare of the students.

When teens get in trouble for “sexting”, and we have a moral panic about “rainbow parties” and 18 year-olds get on the sex offender registry for life for having sex with 17 year-olds, this just really shows an outrageous double standard.  When adults do something far worse than any of things, they’ll probably get away with it.  Apparently it’s ok for adults to sexualize teenagers but it’s not ok for teenagers to explore their own sexuality.

I actually think it’d be a combination. Someone overseeing the program wanted to get some pix of the hawt cheerleader or quarterback, and other pix were taken trying to catch the campus rebel doing something unseemly.

And if they’ve tried to delete any pictures, the cops will find them easy.

I’m not necessarily expecting jail time for the administrators, but I do think there are probably quite a few who are about to get barred from schools for a few decades…

You libruls are always looking for a privacy clause in The Constitution of These United States, but it’s not there.  All you want it for anyway is just to get abortions and have sex with no consequences, just like those hippies in the ‘60’s.  If those kids got laptops, the school should be able to look at them anytime it wants to.

I can’t say any more, cause I gotta go to the Tea Party rally in Washington where we’re going to protest Government Intrusion by the Census and the IRS, intrusive firearms waiting periods, and Nobama’s lack of support for continuous wiretapping of all suspicious people in America, especially libruls…

When teens get in trouble for “sexting”, and we have a moral panic about “rainbow parties” and 18 year-olds get on the sex offender registry for life for having sex with 17 year-olds, this just really shows an outrageous double standard.

Those shameful altar boys seduced those innocent priests. No one can resist those saucy altar-boy robe-dress-whatchamacallems!

If there is even one picture of a teenager naked or changing, then every adult who saw it or knew about it and did nothing to stop it should be charged with child pornography.  Even if that wasn’t their intent, their predatory violation of students’ privacy makes this serious enough.

That’s the kind of reasoning that prosecutors have used when going after teens for sexting, only it actually works this way, because there’s actual predation by adults going on here as opposed to questionable judgment by some teens.

Fuck, I now have one giant case of the jimjams.

“Last time I checked, 99% of home computers are occasionally used in the service of self-relief.”

Even in the questionable event that students weren’t so using a school-issued computer that they knew might be monitored for or able to block adult content, if the Holiday Snaps McGee laptop was clicking away in the same room while the students were sleeping, changing clothes, etc., it seems fairly likely to have been clicking away in the same room while the students were masturbating or engaging in partnered sexual activity.

Really, I would just say no to a laptop with a camera. I could even theoretically use one in my job for teleconferencing, but the idea that it could be turned on surreptitiously, snap photos, and send them back to a remote server is pretty freaky. Even if you pass a law that a school district/employer can’t do that shit, it doesn’t mean someone can’t write a virus.

Ultimately, you could just have a “security post-it note” that you put over the camera eye.

The worst part is that back in the day when I was doing help desk, we used to be able to send messages to people’s computers and once in a while my boss would send something like “I SAW THAT” just to fuck with the users’ heads. They’ve ruined that joke now because your boss really *could* be using the computer’s camera to spy on you. Ruined, I say!

One thing I have always wondered. If the school was so concerned about loosing laptops (which as they purchased them is not an unreasonable idea), why not install some kind of GPS tracking program instead? It seems like it would be a far more effective way to recover stolen merchandize. Then they could say “the laptop is within 30 ft of location X” and that information would likely be enough to get a warrant, instead of “we wirelessly activated the webcam and now know that the stolen laptop is facing a white wall with a window in it.” Yes, if they do it often enough they’ll probably get a picture of the person using it, but still that’s more hoops to jump through as they’ll have to find out who she/he is, find out where they live, and THEN try and recover the laptop.

There were so many better security measures the school could have used. The fact that they did not, and that no one else mentioned that this might be a tiny <sarcasm> invasion of privacy leads me to think that the school’s intention was to use it to surreptiously monitor students. I highly doubt that the program captured no pictures of students disrobed/indecent/getting it on, but I’m not going to label the entire school board child pornographers. I think they’re motivations were more a long the line of what brought this whole thing to light: disciplining students for activities that take place outside of their presence. Which is a pretty scary thought. If the pictures were to be used for child pornography why would the school have revealed what was going on by disciplining that one student.

I don’t know what they could be held with criminally: being a peeping tom is like a what, Class I Misdeaminor? But I hope they are collectively shamed and have the pants sued off them.

The program was started to find missing laptops.  And then maybe an incident here or there caused the school district to expand the parameters of what that meant—-for instance, they flipped on the camera for a kid who didn’t pay the $55 insurance fee.  And their internal limits on what was an acceptable reason to flip on the camera expanded over time.  And now some of the reasons they thought sounded so reasonable internally seem kind of awful now, so they aren’t talking to the investigators.

From Yahoo News:

According to Haltzman, technology coordinator Carol Cafiero refused to answer his questions at a recent deposition, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. She and technician Michael Perbix were the only employees authorized to activate the webcams. Perbix did not fight the deposition.

Haltzman called Cafiero a possible “voyeur” and wants access to her personal computer to see if she downloaded any student images. To support the charge, he cited her response to an e-mail from a colleague who said viewing the webcam pictures was like watching “a little LMSD soap opera.”

“I know, I love it!” Cafiero allegedly replied.

My emphasis. H/t Ed Brayton

One thing I have always wondered. If the school was so concerned about loosing laptops (which as they purchased them is not an unreasonable idea), why not install some kind of GPS tracking program instead? It seems like it would be a far more effective way to recover stolen merchandize.

It’s a hardware issue - for some reason in this day and age you can get stock, off-the-shelf laptops with the necessary hardware for taking pictures built-in, but not with the necessary hardware for a GPS fix built in.  (Lower Merion is loaded as school districts go, but not loaded enough to get some manufacturer to do a special run just for them)

Yes, it should in theory be within our society’s technical grasp to do such a thing (after all, my phone can take pictures, browse the web, and get a GPS fix) but that doesn’t mean it was technologically feasible for LMSD.

Also, if you can’t get the GPS signal to be accurate to the confines of a single property (an accurate GPS fix often requires that the device move around a bit while active), that alone is unlikely to get you a warrant.

There is definitely more to this story. So far, things seem to be zeroing in on Cafiero, one of the two IT people who (supposedly) had access to the system; this is also the one person in the case who has taken the Fifth. But the AP comes up with this:

Haltzman called Cafiero a possible “voyeur” and wants access to her personal computer to see if she downloaded any student images. To support the charge, he cited her response to an e-mail from a colleague who said viewing the webcam pictures was like watching “a little LMSD soap opera.”

“I know, I love it!” Cafiero allegedly replied.

The ever-incurious AP doesn’t say anything to clear up who Cafiero is emailing with, and I haven’t read anything anywhere about there being any other persons of interest. But this is bigger than one person who went out of control. The family is trying to subpoena her home computer for a forensic search.

@Scott #3:

I’m not necessarily expecting jail time for the administrators, but I do think there are probably quite a few who are about to get barred from schools for a few decades…

You’ve highlighted a serious problem in the way schools are run: this pervasive assumption that offenses committed against teen students per se are not that serious. If (and we don’t actually know this, but if) the school administration is shooting nekkid pictures of underage students, that’s child pornography. If they’re shooting nekkid pictures of anyone without consent, that’s peepingtomism.

The former is a felony everywhere, the latter might be a misdemeanor. They are crimes. They don’t suddenly become not-crimes in the context of a school/student relationship, as much as the school authorities would like that to be the case.

Hell, this is the reasoning that’s keeping hundreds of priests out of jail right now.

Ditto the classification of assault and battery (crimes) as mere “bullying” when it happens to a teen.

I knew Michael Perbix years and years ago (> 15 years ago) when he worked at Wissahickon.  I can imagine him going for the authoritarian mindset and freely agreeing to use the cameras to recover stuff that was stolen.  Sure, fifteen years can change people, but I cannot imagine him sliding down the slippery slope into spying just for kicks.

I can however imagine him failing to stand up to superiors who were sliding down that slope.

@humanadverb #15: Okay, so they’re admitting that they watched the webcams without any probable cause or even a suggestion of policy violation.

You know what’s weird?  I didn’t even make the priest abuse connection until you guys pointed it out, but it really proves my point even further.  Our society cracks down hard on any hint of sexuality that teenagers display, but then looks the other way when adults sexually abuse teenagers.

But seriously, it’s not the crime so much as the cover-up.

I disagree because I think they are both equally bad.  Teenagers already have far less power to attain privacy than adults, and they often need that privacy far more than adults do.  If teenagers can’t feel comfortable changing clothes in their own bedroom, then where can they ever feel comfortable to do so?  It’s really not even just the nudity, but the general self-consciousness that teens face.  When I was a teenager I would have been horrified at the idea of anyone besides my parents seeing me without my make-up and hair done.  If I thought that someone might see me while I was sleeping, I would have never been able to relax and just look like myself.

hp—then I would suggest a little electrical tape, properly applied (maybe with a little bit of paper to protect the lens itself from sticky) is what is required here.

Oh, Dunc beat me to it at #12—good one, Dunc!

It is easy to see the assistant principal saying he was unaware of the policy, didn’t know just how extensively Cafiero was using the system, etc… school administrators are, in my experience, willfully ignorant of far too much. But this email thing seems like it is going to be key to the whole story… I figured they were just targeting “bad kids” at first, but clearly some people (plural) were using it for entertainment.

OK, so most likely they’ll have to remove the most obvious surveillance devices within the school. But you ju-u-ust know there’s going to be two way telescreens hidden elsewhere. Does anyone know if they delivered the confession in Newspeak?

“If the pictures were to be used for child pornography why would the school have revealed what was going on by disciplining that one student. “

I don’t think that anyone’s seriously alleging that the entire administrative wing responsible for this is staffed with professional child-pornographers and their abettors.  It’s enough that the district was engaging in espionage against its own students and their families.  One of the questions it does raise, however, is precisely what sort of additional criminal behavior was given cover by the school district’s practices.

Mighty Ponygirl,
I know you’re trying to be helpful, but I don’t think that your idea is a good solution.  Why shouldn’t the students have webcams and be able to use them?  Why should the students suspect that someone was spying on them with the webcams?  Why should it be the students’ responsibility to cover the cam to make sure that someone else doesn’t commit a crime against them?  If a student normally covers it with a sticky note, but then uses the webcam for a legitimate reason and simply forgets to recover one time and then administrators snap some nude photos, that seems like a pretty harsh punishment for simply being forgetful.  I understand what you’re thinking, but it sort of shifts the burden of responsibility to the students.  It is actually good advice for people who have a reason to be suspicious of whoever game them the laptop, but in this case the damage is already done and I just don’t think it’s helpful to imply what the students should/could have done differently to prevent this.

Reading early stories about this, it sounded like the students were pretty aware of what was going on, seeing the light on their webcams click on and off randomly, and many of them responded with post-in notes. The school is now in lockdown, CYA mode, and I haven’t seen any interviews with students trying to get more on this angle, but I’d be surprised if the prevailing attitude wasn’t that the school could use school laptops however they wanted.

I’m sure no one would have imagined that predators were working at the school. I’m sure Cafiero didn’t even see herself that way. But that’s exactly what it was.

@catgirl - I don’t think MP was suggesting what the *students* should have done. I think she was offering advice for people reading who have/receive a computer with a webcam.

jalmondale,
I know that she intended it that way, but this just seems a little too much like those rape prevention tips that are told to potential victims.  It’s not victim-blaming and I’m sure it’s well-intentioned, but I think it takes the focus off of the responsibility of the actual criminals.  And for anyone else who receives a webcam, why should they have to make sure that someone else doesn’t commit a crime against them?

Catgirl, it’s also worth pointing out (again) that even if we put heavy consequences on schools and corporations (which can be monitored and called out for this bullshit), it doesn’t prevent malware from doing the same thing. Even if you bought and paid for your laptop with your own money, an installed webcam is a big risk. You can sue a school or a corporation for spying on you. When the culprit is some hacker in South Korea or Russia, you don’t have quite as many options for redress.

The school was using the same gotcha tactic that abusive cops and security guards and other adults in power use with scared teens, prostitutes, anyone they catch doing something “wrong”:  if you keep your mouth shut about my misdeeds, I won’t prosecute you for yours.

Like the guy who catches teens shoplifting and frisks them to get a sexual thrill, knowing they won’t want to tell their parents because then they’d have to admit to the shoplifting.

They didn’t count on this student and his family looking objectively at the evidence and deciding it’s worth fighting back.

Hey, does anybody know MikeEss personally?  Please check on him.  I think he’s been kidnapped and his computer sold to a Teabagger.

Otherwise - damn good, Mike.

Cloudy scotch tape will also significantly obscure a webcam lens and be somewhat less obvious, if that is a concern. That’s what I use on the camera in the laptop I got from my university.

I’m with catgirl on this one.  Just not the hair and makeup, but all that other stuff that we may do when we let our hair down behind closed doors - yeaha, yeah, admit it, who hasn’t ever sat in front of their laptop or a book or mirror and
a) picked their nose or teeth or toes
b) flexed their muscles in the mirror
c) pulled old teddy bear off the shelf and slept with it
d) eaten milk and cookies of potato chips or ...? in bed

I think most of those things might be MORE harmful than nekkidness to many.

catgirl and phylospher, I agree, it’s not just nakedness.  There’s crying over something supposedly silly.  Making out with someone not your steady, or someone who’s not “cool.”  Playing with some toy you’re “too old” for.  Wearing clothes others consider odd or that are gendered opposite from your apparent gender.  Singing out of tune.  Praying.  Cursing.

There’s a million things that are embarrassing for teens, hell, for adults, and these fucking cameras could see any of them.

Why should the students suspect that someone was spying on them with the webcams?

Because they’re not their computers. When you have a school or corporate laptop you are relying on the good graces and ethical integrity of the admins not to spy on you… or, as is usually the case, the fact that your life is boring as shit and the admins have better things to do with their time like watch porn.

This is an important lesson in distrust of authority for the kids. Actually spying on them is, however, probably not the best way to impart that knowledge.

Not physical nakedness, spiritual nakeness. Being yourself. Which especially as a teenager is something you don’t let others see.

I’m entirely on the banality-of-evil tip for this one. You activate it for thefts (the same software that activates the camera also has IP-tracking that can quickly give you a geographic location, especially if you contact the local ISP), find stuff you enjoy watching, then activate it for insurance violations, then sometimes there’s a bug that activates it randomly…

I find it ironic that most posters are equally defending children for purposely posting naked photos of themselves and sending them off and then lambasting admins for unethical spying that may result in the same thing.  If we measure both acts on their initial goals then who is really the sexual offender and who is the simply misguided? 

Calling children children at 15+ is a bit much.  Most are post-pubescent and know exactly what they’re doing by “sexting” they stupidly don’t care about the consequences because they’re young (or atleast I try to blame that reasoning, it probably has more to do with their parent’s wealth and status.)  Charging them with sexual offending crimes is a legal requirement by our state because once you give a whole class of people the authority to disregard the laws that opens up the door to cruel & unusual punishment overturning all sex offender laws.  Lessening it with a second law to a misdemeanor is realistic but turning a blind eye to the act is just foolish.  Sorry to find myself so off-topic, I just get riled by the fact people are going “kids will be kids!” at the same attacking a school district not on the invasion of privacy but hoping they have nude pictures to blame them for child pornography though it is fairly clear that was a limited aspect if at all a part of their goals. 

If they do find nude pictures (56,000 and not one disrobed seems highly unlikely unless taken during the day.)  Then by all means charge everybody with the power and authority to have the cameras turned on with sexual deviancy but otherwise I am more so willing to blame them for invasion of privacy laws.  Unless the contracts for the laptops explicitly gave them the right to invade the cameras could NEVER be activated legally, regardless of “lost” or “stolen” status.  The police would have to get a warrant to activate the cameras to recover the laptops (which would be fairly easy.)  So this school district is facing a litany of charges because I highly suspect they never got children to agree to the spying measures placed on the computers regardless of actual pictures taken. 

As for the GPS feature, I know my aging dell laptop (I plan to replace this fall) has built-in GPS features and most any newer laptop with a blue-tooth enabled feature has a hidden GPS feature due to the fact that blue-tooth runs on cellular technology.  I keep my blue-tooth of completely because somebody with the right tracking software can pickup the signal or have it sent through the internet if a trojan was installed.  Lo-Jack for laptops works in a similar way.

Xeranar:

Individual choice. Autonomy.

Gosh.

The thing about embarrassing things that could get caught. I have low heat tolerance and ADD. I dealt with these things by sitting around in my underwear doing homework and listening to the radio, and getting up to dance every time a good song came on. I would probably have died of embarrassment if word leaked of that.

I’m glad neither of my computers has a webcam.  And, trust me, riiiiight at the moment you lot should be too…

While your concerns regarding the unexplained cases are valid, it is also possible that the software they’re running just has issues.  How many times does your computer develop inexplicable behavior over time?  Software systems are complicated these days and even well written ones will have issues.  It is not unreasonable that someone did a bad job with this one and the program produces unexpected results from time to time.  Of course, that is another reason to be concerned, but it is a different possible explanation.

“Hey, does anybody know MikeEss personally?  Please check on him.  I think he’s been kidnapped and his computer sold to a Teabagger. “

If only we could turn on its webcam and find out!!!!

Xeranar, I’m with Paul.  At least in sexting the teens are in charge of what’s going on, choosing to snap pix of themselves and send them (or not).  There is agency and self-expression going on, same as there would be if it were adults doing it.  Having a 3rd party sneaking snaps of you to hold against you, whether you’re 15 or 55, is an entirely different matter.

And, BTW, I had a long serious comment written here.  And then Wordpress ateit.  ARGHHH!!

While your concerns regarding the unexplained cases are valid, it is also possible that the software they’re running just has issues.  How many times does your computer develop inexplicable behavior over time?  Software systems are complicated these days and even well written ones will have issues.  It is not unreasonable that someone did a bad job with this one and the program produces unexpected results from time to time.  Of course, that is another reason to be concerned, but it is a different possible explanation.
Comment #43: mpowell on 04/20 at 03:36 PM

And then the software keeps sending pictures to the school mothership and no one notices?  Or they notice but they don’t notify the students like IMMEDIATELY that there’s a bug in the software that’s sending pictures all the time? 

That would still obviously be wrong.

Oh gaaawwwwwddd.  Ok, cover your keyboards - any body else ever (yeah, I’m having a regress to teenager hood, even though the experience was older) 

Under deadline, lengthy article due, took laptop into bathroom to continue typing while… yep, using the throne. 

I’m not sure if I hope or fear some asshat spying on a teen got a “load” of that.

PIATOR, we will just have to make do with the photos of you imitating an elephant, with the help of a sock.  Those have quite a bit of, er, gravity.

Why no naked pictures?  Because generally you’re naked a tiny portion of the day.  A random split-second of the day is more likely to get pretty much nothing.

They probably ended up with the photos because no one was monitoring the system.  It probably sent them to some central computer, where they were stored, and unless the computer was stolen, no one was looking at them.  Until someone was looking to clear out the megs of useless data and… Hey, what’s this file?

Tho, it is pretty creepy.

Xeranar: Calling children children at 15+ is a bit much.  Most are post-pubescent and know exactly what they’re doing by “sexting” they stupidly don’t care about the consequences because they’re young (or atleast I try to blame that reasoning, it probably has more to do with their parent’s wealth and status.)

It’s well documented that adolescent brains are not fully developed.  Regions that process planning, reasoning and impulse control just are not as mature as in adult brains.  The reason that minors are treated differently in law and in society is because grown-ups have known for millennia that kids are irresponsible.

Hooray for you if you were able to take perfectly good care of yourself at age 15.  Most people can’t.

To note, there are 86,400 seconds in the day.  A photograph is a small part of a second.  A random picture taken may be limited to ‘while the laptop is open’ - and admittedly, who closes a PC laptop? - but the odds of getting something salacious in that time is remote.  Not that it couldn’t happen, just that during the vast majority of time a PC laptop is open it is going to see pretty much nothing.

“I find it ironic that most posters are equally defending children for purposely posting naked photos of themselves and sending them off and then lambasting admins for unethical spying that may result in the same thing.”

Amen to that.  Consent is, like, the most ironic thing ever.

I’m more concerned with the fact they are using the cameras to spy on people, without a warrant, in their own homes, than I am about whatever they might see.

Why are they even looking? They’re just 21st century Peeping Toms!

When this story first broke, it was due, in part, to the school trying to be helpful, to do good.  Someone saw a student doing something stupid or typing something stupid, about drugs if I remember correctly, and notified his parents.  They really believed that they were doing the right thing!

Crissa wrote:

To note, there are 86,400 seconds in the day.  A photograph is a small part of a second.  A random picture taken may be limited to ‘while the laptop is open’ - and admittedly, who closes a PC laptop? - but the odds of getting something salacious in that time is remote.  Not that it couldn’t happen, just that during the vast majority of time a PC laptop is open it is going to see pretty much nothing.

Perhaps so, but when they admit to having 56,000 pics, the odds start to change.

It hasn’t been revealed yet, but once those 56,000 pics are examined if there is a considerable disparity between the male-female ratio of the pictures and the male-female ratio of the student body—pun intended—you’ll have something that will be considered real evidence of wrongful intent.

Wasn’t Lower Merion where those black kids weren’t allowed to use the whites-only swimming pool?

And if they’ve tried to delete any pictures, the cops will find them easy.
Comment 3—Scott

But why should they? The administrators were just doing their jobs. The kids are clearly up to no good; otherwise they’d be adults.

I dealt with these things by sitting around in my underwear doing homework and listening to the radio, and getting up to dance every time a good song came on. I would probably have died of embarrassment if word leaked of that.
Comment 40—Samantha Vimes

Yabbut now you’ve said it on the Internet.

Someone saw a student doing something stupid or typing something stupid, about drugs if I remember correctly, and notified his parents.

Why not use teh Google, the Pope hasn’t banned it yet:

The teen who’s at the center of a lawsuit claiming that his school spied on him at home via a webcam says he’s still using the school-issued notebook computer and just hopes “that they’re not watching” him.

Blake Robbins, a Harriton High School sophomore, says Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko confronted him in Nov. 2009 for engaging in “improper behavior” at his home.

The 16-year-old from Penn Valley, Pa. claims Matsko showed him photos remotely taken with the built-in webcam on his MacBook, according to the suit.

In the photos, the teen was allegedly holding two pill-shaped objects, says Robbins’ attorney Mark Haltzman. School officials believed they were drugs, while the family maintains they were simply Mike-N-Ike candy.
“They were trying to allege that….......those were pills and somehow he was involved in selling drugs,” Halzman said Friday.

When the family protested the webcam use as an invasion of privacy, the district claimed they had the right to “24/7 access” to the systems, the suit says.

Link

Monitoring the students for their behavior wasn’t the rationale for having the webcams on the computers in the first place, it was suppose to be for tracking any computer that was stolen from the student who checked it out in the first place.

NO Dana, there is evidence NOW!  Any time someone can come into my home, unbidden and unwarranted, there is malicious intent.  It robs me of privacy in my own home.

And duh, Dana, pedophiles aren’t limited to a gendered sexual oreintation - it’s children they molest.  Like former RCC Father Kiesle, the Priestly Pied piper of Pedophiles.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100410/ap_on_re_us/us_pope_church_abuse

PIATOR, we will just have to make do with the photos of you imitating an elephant, with the help of a sock.  Those have quite a bit of, er, gravity.

A stockING, dear.  A loooong one.

That’s my story and, in the absence of webcam images to the contrary, I’m sticking to it.  And I thank God that the eyewitnesses don’t read this group.

And on a serious note:

And their internal limits on what was an acceptable reason to flip on the camera expanded over time.

That happens whenever people are in a position to exercise power in secret WITHOUT a bright and clear line being drawn.  And I mean anyone - them, me, you.  Unless there’s something clearly set out covering what is unacceptable, people’s consciences will slip over time. 

In NZ we have a Privacy Act covering dealing with people’s private information (like me); it serves not just to protect the public by holding us accountable, it also serves to protect us by giving us a line we cannot justify crossing.

“Dealing with THOSE WHO HAVE ACCESS to people’s private information”

“and admittedly, who closes a PC laptop?”
Other people *don’t* close theirs?

Traditionally, PC laptops have trouble sleeping or waking on short notice.

Have you been watching “It’s Complicated” by any chance?

Traditionally, PC laptops have trouble sleeping or waking on short notice.

Don’t we all?

The school district cannot exempt itself from child pornography laws on the strength of a contract provision explicitly stating that the cameras can be used at any time, for any reason.  Such an agreement cannot be enforced in court because it would be an agreement to violate the law.  Further, it’s highly questionable whether such an agreement could defend against other invasions of privacy since intentionally spying on kids when they sleep is not likely to be considered to have been done in good faith, nor would within the realm of the kids reasonable expectations of the contract, despite the presence of such a grant.  Finally, it isn’t clear that the parents would be able to grant the school district such rights, and the students themselves are (mostly) minors.

You straw man attacked something I wasn’t even trying to point out.  I was stating that they couldn’t even have the webcam program on the PCs at all without the contract allowing them to.  Even then it would be need to be outlined as to when and where it could be used.  You can sign away a certain amount of privacy but no it doesn’t make them immune to child pornography.  It can’t, contracts cannot excuse you from criminal acts. 

To go back to the “sexting” thing that everybody suddenly got riled about.  If you were 15 and got naked and took pictures what are you doing?  You’ve made child pornography.  Ignorance of the law is no excuse.  I advocate the creation of a misdemeanor to remove sexting from the child pornography laws but until they do you need to charge them regardless of their ignorance because then the state is creating a cruel & unusual clause case for all pedophiles because you’re giving a class of individuals free reign to create child pornography as they wish. 

The recognition of their acts needs to be done.  Regardless of how one wants to express their agency once you record it and distribute it they have committed a crime.  Give them a misdemeanor to let them off easy but otherwise these few ignorant children will need to be charged.

To go back to the “sexting” thing that everybody suddenly got riled about.  If you were 15 and got naked and took pictures what are you doing?  You’ve made child pornography.  Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

I’d beat my head against a wall, but Xeranar would try to have me arrested for assault…

From this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

Filing states student broke rules and had no expectation of privacy
Blake Robbins should not have brought home the laptop that took his picture, the L. Merion district official said.
By Derrick Nunnally, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

Blake Robbins should have known better.

So says the official who ran the Lower Merion School District’s controversial computer security system when it snapped Robbins’ picture in his home and led to his invasion-of-privacy suit against the district.

Even in his own home, the Harriton High School sophomore had “no legitimate expectation of privacy” from the camera on his school-issued laptop, information systems coordinator Carol Cafiero contended in a court filing on Tuesday.

Cafiero - who is on paid leave while the district investigates the laptop controversy - claimed Robbins lost any legal protection from the Web-camera security system when he took a school laptop home without permission.

Robbins had previously broken “at least two” school computers and did not pay the insurance fee required to get permission to take home the Apple MacBook that later snapped his pictures, Cafiero’s attorney, Charles Mandracchia, wrote in the filing.

“When you’re in the home, you should have a legitimate expectation of privacy,” Mandracchia said in an interview. “But if you’re taking something without permission, how can you cry foul when you shouldn’t have it anyway?”

There’s more at the link.  Remember, this is the legal filing of one of the respondents.

Hershele:  No, it was not Lower Merion School District in which the African American students were not allowed to swim the pool.  That happened in a different area, northeast Philly.

Dana:  But they didn’t snap the picture and then come after him for stealing the laptop.  They snapped the picture and then came after him for “drug dealing.”  They didn’t use the webcam for their own stated intent.  They are grasping at straws.  And I’m sorry, but the presumption of privacy in your home trumps the webcam issue.  Otherwise, all anybody has to do is get you to take something home with you that has an embedded camera and they can secretly take pictures of you.

Do you really want to live in a Big Brother world?

Wait.  I forgot who I was talking to.

I’d beat my head against a wall, but Xeranar would try to have me arrested for assault…

No, because that isn’t a crime.  Getting naked with one and other isn’t a crime.  Recording it and then sending it is the crime.  Like I have said numerous times simply making it a misdemeanor separate from child pornography would save the courts a great deal of trouble.  But as it stands if you take pictures of a person under the age of 18 naked you will have created child pornography.  Last I heard most of the DAs were trying to excuse the kids with excused sentences but because of the amber’s law they have to get marked for life. 

I have repeated this and nobody wants to really contemplate it because it does delve into the technicalities of the law but once you excuse a class of people from a law you set up a cruel & unusual punishment defense for child pornographers.  Simply not charging the kids would give defenders ammo to eventually have the rules overturned.

Ironically I guess this goes into some of the libertarian arguments some of you rally so hard against.  The idea of I can do whatever I want and it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t effect anybody else.  But that isn’t what I am arguing for or against.  I’m merely pointing out the law has no excuse for children photographing themselves naked and distributing it.  If and when they do make a new law covering it I will gladly stop pointing this out. 

To step back to an earlier point I wanted to hit, during my undergrad I had several education classes and child psych classes.  I know that children aren’t fully developed and I expect them to do something stupid.  The law doesn’t necessarily flex the right way for them though and in most cases of simple assault or larceny they can be plea bargained out with a small fine and maybe some community service that doesn’t hurt them for life.  But the law hasn’t evolved yet to deal with sexting so thus the DA has to serve the public and treat these cases with the most leniency they can manage.  But sex offender crimes really have no leniency in them, so what can they do?

But as it stands if you take pictures of a person under the age of 18 naked you will have created child pornography. 
Comment #71: Xeranar on 04/21 at 12:13 PM

I don’t think so. 

http://www.cpiu.us/child-porno/

What defines child pornography? Here is the United States Law

Introduction

Producing, possessing or distributing images of minors (anyone under the age of 18) engaged in sexual conduct is illegal. Some states in the United States and many countries allow sexual conduct and marriage between adults and minors, but visual depictions of that conduct are prohibited in the United States by federal law. Similarly, sexual conduct between minors or by a minor is often tolerated but visual depictions of that conduct are also prohibited….

Sexually Explicit Conduct

18 U.S.C. § 2252 prohibits the production, transportation, or knowing receipt or distribution of any visual depiction “of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct.” For the purposes of Title 18, 18 U.S.C. § 2256 defines a “minor” as any person under the age of eighteen years, and “sexually explicit conduct” as actual or simulated:

  * “(A) sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex;
  * (B) bestiality;
  * (C) masturbation;
  * (D) sadistic or masochistic abuse; or
  * (E) lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person”

“When you’re in the home, you should have a legitimate expectation of privacy,” Mandracchia said in an interview. “But if you’re taking something without permission, how can you cry foul when you shouldn’t have it anyway?”

Isn’t it amazing how we have the Fourth Amendment for that sort of thing?

““When you’re in the home, you should have a legitimate expectation of privacy,” Mandracchia said in an interview. “But if you’re taking something without permission, how can you cry foul when you shouldn’t have it anyway?””

Ah, it’s the old criminals-don’t-have-rights philosophy.  I guess if we catch this joker speeding we can totally take his car away, because he was doing something wrong.