Florida Passes Plan For Racially-Based Academic Goals

Permalink Reply by 18watt_fan on October 14, 2012 at 6:04pm

Lakeland Mom said:

Actually, many will hate this, but I do like the tracking ID's while at school. I do not think you have the right to an expectation of privacy when you are in a Public building, except in the bathrooms, or locker rooms.

I am sure students will think of something if they want to get around it though.

Oh, they have all that covered also, don't you worry:

School sued over hidden cameras

Associated Press July 2, 2003

A TENNESSEE school allowed security cameras to film children undressing in locker rooms and then stored the images on a computer accessible through the Internet, according to a lawsuit filed by a group of angry parents.

The lawsuit filed last week in the federal court in Nashville seeks $US4.2 million in damages.

The parents contend the school system violated students' rights by putting hidden cameras in boys and girls locker rooms at Livingston Middle School. The cameras reportedly captured students, aged between 10-14, in various stages of undress.

"The parents have been devastated by the conduct of the school officials, by the videotaping and by the breach of trust," attorney Mark Chalos, who represents the parents of 16 girls and one boy, said.

Chuck Cagle, lawyer for Overton County Schools, said he would not comment because he had not read the lawsuit.

EduTech Inc, the company that installed the surveillance cameras in several Overton County schools, also was named in the lawsuit. Officials with the company had no comment.

Parents learned of the cameras when a student reported a suspicious device in the school at Livingston, about 130km east of Nashville.

The lawsuit contends that images, captured by the cameras and stored on a hard drive in the office of the assistant principal, could be accessed from remote computers by the Internet. It claims the computer's password security had not been changed from the factory default setting.

The images were reportedly accessed 98 times between July 2002 and January 2003 - sometimes late at night and early in the morning - and through Internet providers in Tennessee and South Carolina.

William Needham, director of Overton County Schools, said the assistant principal has been transferred to another school in the system.

Chalos said he did not know if the cameras were still operating.

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Permalink Reply by 18watt_fan on October 14, 2012 at 6:06pm

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KWCH 12 Eyewitness News | December 14, 2005
By Kim Hynes

Witchita, KS - An East High freshman faces expulsion for something the district says never should have happened. Monday Charles Rogers discovered a camera in the foyer of the boy’s bathroom. "The camera there period surprised me. It was a little spy camera, I didn't think anything like that was in the bathroom. I didn't think it was the schools, I thought it was a perverted janitor," Charles said.

He took the camera. He says it was in a little hole in the ceiling tile. He also took the receiver which was in the schools auditorium. "It looked like an irregular setup. It wasn't in a security room," his mom Melinda Rogers said.

Mrs. Rogers says what her son did was wrong. But she wants to know why there was a hidden camera to begin with. Eyewitness News asked the district that question.

It says cameras were installed in two boy’s bathrooms at East High to see who was drawing graffiti. "The camera was outside the bathroom part, so nobody’s privacy was violated. It's just so they could monitor people going in and out," spokeswoman Susan Arensman said. She says East High is the only school that used them. "It was a mistake and we admit this was a mistake and it won't happen again," Arensman said.

Arensman says the school put up the cameras sometime this year without telling the district. She says the other camera has now been removed.

Rogers has also been removed from East High. Next week he has an expulsion hearing for stealing the camera. "I think he should be punished. But to be expelled for the rest of the year is kind of tough. As misguided as it was, he thought he was doing good in taking down a hidden camera," his mom said. The hearing is next Tuesday, we’ll keep you posted on what happens.

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Permalink Reply by 18watt_fan on October 14, 2012 at 6:13pm

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Here's the pdf of a lawsuit in another state where the school children had laptops equipped with cams of which school officials were SPYING ON THE KIDS AT HOME !!!!

http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/02/18/Eyes.pdf

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Permalink Reply by 18watt_fan on October 14, 2012 at 7:36pm

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Lower Merion School District and Blake Robbins Reach a Settlement in Spycamgate

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2010/10/11/lower-merion-sch...

One of the alleged Webcamgate photos of Blake Robbins

When a Pennsylvania school went a little crazy with its ability to monitor Apple laptops on loan to students by activating their built-in cameras remotely, it was big news.

High schooler Blake Robbins filed an invasion of privacy lawsuit against his school, alleging that the Lower Merion School District had taken hundreds of secret photos of him over a two-week period. His family discovered this when a teacher accused Robbins of dealing drugs based on one of the photos. (He claimed, though, that he was popping Mike & Ikes, not pills.)

Robbins expressed anguish in his lawsuit against the school, though he now makes light of the incident on his Facebook profile, where he’s a member of the groups, “I feel so safe in my room with a computer LOL. jk… I’m from Lower M... and Keep your pants on, Lower Merion is watching you!.

The school denied any active spying, saying that security software activated for laptops suspected of being stolen kicked in automatically, and took photos every 15 minutes. That defense, while reasonable, was made shaky by the school’s possession of over 56,000 Webcam shots. Now the school will shell out six figures to settle the case:

The district is settling lawsuits filed this year by Lower Merion High School student Blake Robbins and a second student… District officials say they voted Monday night to pay Robbins $175,000 and his lawyer, Mark Haltzman, $425,000 for his work on the case. A second student will get $10,000.

via Pa. school settles 2 webcam spy lawsuits for $610K – Nation – TheSt....

That’s a nice start to a college fund for Robbins. Though, as PogoWasRight points out, it’s an even nicer fund for Robbins’s lawyer.

A lesson for others from all this: One of the biggest problems for Lower Merion was that school administrators did not disclose from the beginning to students and their parents that the school could remotely activate the laptop cameras and take photos. If they had, they likely would not have gotten into so much legal trouble of the civil variety. (They were fine on the criminal front — prosecutors declined to pursue a case against the district.)

Transparency pays off. Lower Merion’s lack of transparency now means it has to pay off.

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Florida Passes Plan For Racially-Based Academic Goals

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