Double standards, a game you can't play

[unixronin]

C|Net is reporting that Lower Merion School District will face no charges whatsoever for covertly photographing underage students using laptop webcams, allegedly including photos of students "partly dressed or sleeping" — because "federal and local prosecutors looking into the incident were unable to prove criminal intent on the part of school employees".  (Emphasis mine.)

Now, if a private individual not associated with the school district was found to be in possession of 56,000 photos of sometimes-partly-dressed high school students, without their knowledge, criminal intent wouldn't have even been on the table.  Mere possession of the photos would have been enough to nail the coffin shut on kiddie-porn charges, because if you're a private individual, possession is enough to damn you.  Even if the US Postmaster sent you a package as part of a sting operation and you never even opened it or knew what it was.

(There's plenty of cases on record of innocent people who have had their lives ruined that way in kiddie-porn witch hunts.  You want to nail someone on kiddie porn charges, but you don't have any actual or even circumstantial evidence that he has, or ever had, any in his possession, and can't find any grounds that a judge will buy into for a search warrant?  No problem, just mail him some, then arrest him for possessing it the moment he takes the package out of the mailbox, while he's still looking at the package in confusion because he hasn't ordered anything.)

But because this is a school district doing it, they got a free walk.

Double standards, anyone...?

Comments

[milktree.livejournal.com]

One difference that I think is important (but not important enough to save those goons from getting fired at the very least) is that the school *did* have a plausible reason for doing what they did.

They screwed up, hard, no doubt.

On the other hand, I'd like to hear a plausible, non-criminal reason for an individual to have the same pictures, or to set up the same spyware software.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

One difference that I think is important (but not important enough to save those goons from getting fired at the very least) is that the school *did* have a plausible reason for doing what they did.

True, though that doesn't explain away the comments that have been previously reported about some of the staff calling it "our little private cinema" or something like that. (I forget the exact words used.) The Feds may not be able to "prove criminal intent", but there seems to be clear evidence that school staff knew students were being spied on without their knowledge for no sufficient reason, there's documented evidence that students' perfectly legal personal behavior at home was being used against them in school, and the staff involved pretty clearly weren't the least bit concerned about it until it blew up in their faces. It's being whitewashed now as "just an innocent mistake", but as they say down South, "that dog don't hunt." They knew perfectly well what they were doing.