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<p>It is far more difficult and expensive and lengthy a process to fire a public employee than it is to imprison one. A fact that made this situation all the more possible.</p>
<p>OH man, Toblin. That’s just one of those insights that is true but I hate to think that it is true.</p>
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No way it’s illegal if the computer is actually stolen.</p>
<p>I predict nobody will go to jail for this unless an employee collected revealing photos. I predict some employees will be “disciplined” and “reassigned.”</p>
<p>I"m unclear on your first point, Hunt. If the police kicked down your door and searched your house without a warrant, but turned up evidence of a crime, would that then make the search legal??? I’m thinking not.</p>
<p>I tried to do rocketman08’s math, too. His numbers are a little off.</p>
<p>Based on the latest info, there were 80 times when the offending software was turned on – roughly half last year and half this year before it was abandoned. (That makes sense, because the program doubled in size from last year to this, going from one high school to two.) When the software was turned on, it would take a photo and a screen shot automatically every fifteen minutes if the computer was on, and send that back to district headquarters. So there were up to four photos per hour. It seems unlikely that anyone ever looked at most of them, at least until now. As someone else has noted, many of them would probably show nothing but being in a dark room at night.</p>
<p>Out of the 56,000 photos received by the district, 38,500 related to six computers that were in fact stolen, were missing for three months (with the software turned on the whole time), and were ultimately recovered by police in Australia (or someplace abroad). So that leaves 17,500 over 74 computers. Some other significant slug (I think 3,000 or so) related to 5 computers where the software was activated when the computer was reported lost or stolen, but was not turned off for a week or more after the computer was recovered, apparently (but who knows?) from inadvertence. That leaves about 14,500 pictures from 69 computers, or a little more than 200 average per computer. In that regard, the fact that there were 400+ pictures of Robbins puts him on the high side (and also serves as a reminder that there were probably some computers where the software was turned on and only a few pictures ever got taken).</p>
<p>In 15 cases out of 80, there is no documentation about why the software was turned on. That’s pretty high – 20% – but given that “documentation” means an e-mail or jotting down a memo that someone asked for it and why, or maybe a memo that the computer was recovered (which meant that it had been lost or stolen before), it’s far from clear that these 15 cases were any less justified than the other 65. (“Justified” being a funny word, since everyone agrees now that none of the cases was justified.)</p>
<p>One other interesting thing has emerged: There was only one case in the current school year when the software was turned on for a computer that had been removed from school grounds without the user paying the insurance fee. And we think we know which case that was, since that appears to be why the software on the plaintiff’s computer was turned on.</p>
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<p>JHS, I was only referencing cases where they conducted successful surveillance operations. The reports say they recovered images from 48 occasions… not 80… 6 of those were the laptops known to be stolen from the school so hence how I got to the number 42 for the remaining images. </p>
<p>They attempted many more operations but did not get any images. There are a variety of technical reasons why that could have happened. </p>
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Um… we do have this little thing called the constitution that says otherwise. Just because a crime has occurred certainly doesn’t mean one can embark on whatever willy nilly surveillance operation or other illegal behavior just because it might possibly help solve said crime.</p>
<p>You need a court warrant to conduct such activities… something the school didn’t have. </p>
<p>Yes you could perform some basic functions like pinging the computer to finds it’s IP address location, but when you start secretly recording images from the camera (which may or may not record anything to do with those responsible for the crime) you enter a whole different territory. </p>
<p>To quote the former Lower Merion police chief:</p>
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<p>The local police department was working right along side the school district and knew all about this. The school was misguided (very) , but clearly never thought they were doing anything illegal. Rocketman, what Daly actually said was this:</p>
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<p>Where did you see the part about recovering images from 48 occasions? I haven’t seen that anywhere, and I just checked all of the Inquirer stories in the last week and didn’t see it. Although a story posted today now says that the software was activated 146 times, not 80, and that’s all out of the blue, too.</p>
<p>This review, however, told me I was wrong on one of my numbers. The 5 left-it-on-too-long cases generated 13,000 images, not 3,000. So 11 cases were responsible for more than 90% of the images, and the average for the other cases was either ~60 (based on 80) or ~130 (based on 48) or ~33 (based on 146) . . . which means that the 400+ pictures taken of Blake Robbins is even more extreme in context.</p>
<p>If you own a computer, and it disappears, I don’t think you are violating any law by activating a remote camera in it to find out where it is. That’s true even if you are the government. It’s like activating the Lojack in your car if it disappears. You wouldn’t need a warrant for this–it wouldn’t even make any sense, since you don’t even know where the computer is.
In other words, a real thief would have nothing to complain about in this case. The problem here is that the situation of the computer the plaintiff had was a bit murky–and that the software was activated for other kids, too.</p>
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<p>Garland, you are absolutely correct. This very scenario happened in my city in the 80s . . . Police suspected a family (many of whom had previous convictions) of having stolen goods in their house. The police entered the house without permission and without a warrant. They did indeed find stolen goods. </p>
<p>And NOTHING happened to the family because the evidence was illegally obtained, and therefore useless.</p>
<p>What differentiates this situation from the classic illegal search that Garland and Naturally describe is that here it’s the stolen goods themselves that are performing the search, and presumably someone with some degree of culpability is bringing the surveillance device into the house. I don’t think there’s a lot of clear precedent on this. I think the school district would/will ultimately lose if it doesn’t settle (which it absolutely will do), but it’s nowhere near as clear a case as some here think.</p>
<p>The police can’t break into your home and shoot a paint ball at you, either, just because they think you may have committed a crime like bank robbery. But there’s no question they can rig a packet of currency with a paint bomb, and if it goes off in your home and covers you with paint, hurrah for it!</p>
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<p>The issue with the webcam is not one of “activating” or “talking to” a potentially stolen device that belongs to you… it’s what that device does that makes all the difference. </p>
<p>The issue with a camera or other recording device is that it tells you not just about the device itself but also things wholly unrelated to the device. You have a right to know whats going on with your stolen device. You don’t have a right (without a warrant) to know what’s going on in front of or near your device. </p>
<p>If you lose your computer and use GPS to find where it is the only information you get is the location of your computer, which you own and hence there’s no legal issues. </p>
<p>However, if you lose a computer and then secretly start recording people using its camera then you’ve got some big issues on your hands. You have a right to know where your computer is. You do not have a right to secretly record other people with the camera just because it is suspected to be stolen. Covert video surveillance requires a warrant… if the video equipment in question was suspected as stolen then that’s not a valid reason to conduct covert surveillance anyway without a warrant. </p>
<p>A court could grant you that permission, but the courts have been very unwilling to grant warrants for secret recording of images within private property. Phone taps are one thing but trying to get a warrant to secretly record images inside someone’s home is next to impossible. </p>
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<p>The Inquirer said yesterday that:</p>
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<p>I was just going to say the same thing. A lojack sending a signal is not a search; a camera snapping pictures is.</p>
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<p>All of that is perfectly good argument, but nowhere near settled law. I think it’s correct argument, but there’s another side. If, in this situation, the rules had been clearly communicated to the kids and their parents – that the software would be turned on if a computer were reported lost or stolen, or was removed from school grounds without authorization – I doubt that any federal court would hold that a constitutional violation, but the law would not let the government make traditional searches, wiretapping, video surveillance on a contractual basis like that. This is just a much weirder case than you admit.</p>
<p>As for the Inquirer article – they changed it a lot from its first version! It’s written horribly, too.</p>
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<p>If it took pictures of kids undressed there would be a problem.</p>
<p>You could not possibly get permission from everyone that could possibly have their pictures taken.</p>
<p>I don’t think you would necessarily need permission from everyone that could possibly have their pictures taken. You would just need a clear understanding among computer users that if the computer was in a house without authorization, and was in use, it would be taking pictures. If that were in place, I don’t think a court would entertain the families’ privacy claims, and I don’t think courts would exclude the evidence if pictures were taken of thieves.</p>
<p>But . . . I don’t want to make too much of that position, because ultimately I disagree with it. I do think this is a constitutional violation, and that consent wouldn’t be effective. I’m just not confident that the current federal courts would agree – certainly not the current Supreme Court. </p>
<p>In a sense, it’s great that the issue is coming up this way, because there’s a chance that it will establish a precedent that this is unconstitutional. If there had been some reasonable level of disclosure and procedures, and the issue came up when someone who was being prosecuted for theft tried to suppress the evidence, there would likely have been some really awful law made.</p>
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<p>As you point out the whole issue about ‘permission slips’ or ‘waivers’ is moot anyway because the school is a government body and the laptops were mandatory school equipment. </p>
<p>A government body can’t force anyone to waive their constitutional rights… and asking people to say “ok, I acknowledge that if you think the computer is stolen you’ll be conducting some covert surveillance without a warrant” would be asking them to waive their 4th amendment rights. </p>
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I’ve noticed a lot of newspapers seem to edit their online articles without indicating as such–you’d only notice if you had viewed both versions. Sometimes they’re good and include an editors note at the bottom of the page pointing out changes and the reason for making them… but not always.</p>
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<p>Unbelievable.</p>
<p>So then it’s OK for someone to surreptitiously take only “nice” pictures of you and your children within the confines of your home? </p>
<p>Are you drunk?</p>
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<p>You err in your logic.</p>
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<p>If you have evidence to indicate it so, please present it. Unless you are drunk of course. I don’t drink.</p>
<p>I think the question of the legality of activating a camera in a computer that is suspected to be stolen is being muddied by the involvement of students, notification, etc.
Take this simple hypothetical: a laptop computer disappears from a police patrol car while the officer steps away from the car. The police activate a camera in the computer, and find it. Can you really suggest that they should have obtained a warrant before doing this, or that the person who took the computer would have a defense?</p>