harikari.com

School districts across the country are supplying students with laptops for students to use both at school and home.

Unfortunately, one school district has decided to use the laptops as a means of invading the privacy of the students and their families.  It is alleged that the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania , used the embedded camera as a way to monitor the behavior and activities of students.

According to TechNewsWorld:

What sparked the discovery was Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko’s assertion in early November that Harriton High School student Blake Robbins had been “engaging in improper behavior in his home,” the filing explains. Matsko allegedly used as evidence of that behavior a photograph taken by the webcam in Robbins’ computer.

Robbins’ father then confirmed with the school that the district had the ability to remotely activate the webcams in the laptops it gives its students. Documentation accompanying the laptops, the family charged, made no reference to that ability.

“As the laptops at issue were routinely used by students and family members while at home, it is believed and therefore averred that many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various stages of dress or undress,” the filing states.

The functionality to monitor computer use as discussed in this article is not unusual, and is well known to those who use their employer’s computers.  What makes unusual is the use of the webcam to capture images of the user, without prior notice,  whether or not the user is at the keyboard.

As I write this I keep looking at my own webcam staring at me.  I never use it, but can’t help but think what it could capture if someone had control over it…

Duh…

The A.P. Reports:

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a school’s strip search of an Arizona teenage girl accused of having prescription-strength ibuprofen was illegal.

In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said school officials violated the law with their search of Savana Redding in the rural eastern Arizona town of Safford.

Redding, who now attends college, was 13 when officials at Safford Middle School ordered her to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear because they were looking for pills – the equivalent of two Advils. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the school was acting on a tip from another student.

“What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear,” Justice David Souter wrote in the majority opinion. “We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.”

And you may ask yourself:  Why wasn’t this a 9-0 ruling?  Who was the lone dissenter?

If you guessed Justice pubic-hair-on-a-Coke-can Thomas, you were right!

In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas found the search legal and said the court previously had given school officials “considerable leeway” under the Fourth Amendment in school settings.

…

Thomas warned that the majority’s decision could backfire. “Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments,” he said. “Nor will she be the last after today’s decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school.”

So will Safford Middle School or Vice Principal Kerry Wilson be held liable for conducting the illegal search? 

The court also ruled the officials cannot be held liable in a lawsuit for the search. Different judges around the nation have come to different conclusions about immunity for school officials in strip searches, which leads the Supreme Court to “counsel doubt that we were sufficiently clear in the prior statement of law,” Souter said.

“We think these differences of opinion from our own are substantial enough to require immunity for the school officials in this case,” Souter said.

The justices also said the lower courts would have to determine whether the Safford United School District No. 1 could be held liable.

There seems to be a whole lot of immunity being granted these days.  Everyone seems to be following the examples set by the lawless members of the Bush Administration who, except for Scooter Libby, have not been held accountable for anything.

More about the SCOTUS decision here.

Why is it that a petite librarian has the conviction to stand up for your rights than gigantic telecom corporations with armies of lawyers?

Read:

Children’s librarian Judith Flint was getting ready for the monthly book discussion group for 8- and 9-year-olds on “Love That Dog” when police showed up.

They weren’t kidding around: Five state police detectives wanted to seize Kimball Public Library’s public access computers as they frantically searched for a 12-year-old girl, acting on a tip that she sometimes used the terminals.

…

“What I observed when I came in were a bunch of very tall men encircling a very small woman,” said the library’s director, Amy Grasmick, who held fast to the need for a warrant after coming to the rescue of the 4-foot-10 Flint.

…

Flint was firm in her confrontation with the police.

“The lead detective said to me that they need to take the public computers and I said `OK, show me your warrant and that will be that,’” said Flint, 56. “He did say he didn’t need any paper. I said `You do.’ He said `I’m just trying to save a 12-year-old girl,’ and I told him `Show me the paper.‘”

Cybersecurity expert Fred H. Cate, a law professor at Indiana University, said the librarians acted appropriately.

“If you’ve told all your patrons `We won’t hand over your records unless we’re ordered to by a court,’ and then you turn them over voluntarily, you’re liable for anything that goes wrong,” he said.

Well unless you are a telecom company because, if anything goes wrong, you can count on a fascist president and a craven congress to change the law so that whatever it was that might have gone wrong just doesn’t matter anymore.

Well the librarian didn’t buy into that.  When the Feds screamed “Warrant?  Warrant?!  We don’t need no stinking paper!”  Flint didn’t flinch.  She protected the privacy of the patrons of the library.

Maybe the good citizens of this country will take notice and demand the same from the keepers of their personal records and information.

We’ll have to wait and see.