Lawyer: Laptops took thousands of images (Lower Merion saga)

Violating a school policy about bringing a laptop home is several orders of magnitude below violating a person's right to privacy. Taking 400 pictures is going to cost that school district a lot of money. Quite frankly, whoever signed off on the policy should be fired. I'm not that concerned about the criminality, but the incompetence displayed most likely transcends most of their decision making.

There are many ways you could deal with a family that wasn't playing by the school rules without breaking the law. You could use the tags that retail stores use to stop theft. The administrators could load a program that curtails internet use after school hours. I used to run a small military LAN and had software to monitor internet use. Back in the days of Napster I had the ability to remotely kick a user off his workstation, even if I was at home.

I imagine this kid was using his computer at home logged in to his home wi-fi. Why not lock down the networking on the laptop and make it useless to take home, if those are the rules?

The school claims that they were entitled to monitor students who failed to pay a $55 insurance fee.

Since the school district has changed their story, I only have one question I'd like to hear the answer to on the stand:

"Were you lying then, or are you lying now?"

This is sickening. There are countless ways of tracking "stolen" laptops that don't require taking photos. GPS, IP traces all sorts of methods. There was another agenda in this effort. I'm not going to claim it is perversion, but ... something.

Before anyone defends this atrocity (again) they need to step back from the keyboard, try to reduce the head butting instinct, and think this over.

The very thought of these perverts spying on my children in my home makes me ill. There is no excuse for their spying on all those kids all those times.

How creepy.

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