Thursday, April 22, 2010

Filing states student broke rules and had no expectation of privacy | Philadelphia Inquirer | 04/21/2010

Filing states student broke rules and had no expectation of privacy | Philadelphia Inquirer | 04/21/2010

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.

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?"
Mandracchia's court filing and comments came on the heels of the district's latest disclosures about the volume of photos and "screen shots" taken over two years by the high-tech security system that was designed to track lost or stolen laptops.
District officials said Monday that the built-in cameras on students' laptops had been switched on 146 times, taking 56,000 pictures in the process. District lawyer Henry E. Hockeimer said none of the photos appeared to be


Monica Yant Kinney: A musical score for a city school

Oh, to be one of the lucky ducks spending 45 minutes a week in Room 212 at John Welsh Elementary School, where music teacher Maura DiBerardinis has everything a K-8 kid could want to blow, bang, shake, tap, and ogle.

High turnout in many N.J. school races

In the one of the most contentious contests of its kind, tough campaigning led some schools budgets to hard-won victories while others may face even deeper cuts in defeat, according to early returns Tuesday night.

City students campaign against school violence

Jamar Phillips, a senior at Carver High School of Engineering and Science, was firm. "We will not stand for violence in our schools," said Phillips, one of 100 Philadelphia School District students who gathered in Rittenhouse Square Tuesday to draw attention to a youth campaign against school violence.