Slashdot Mirror
School Spying Scandal Gets Even More Bizarre
Several sources following the recent school webcam spying debacle are reporting that an even stranger twist has surfaced. The student in question that was disciplined for an "improper act" was apparently accused of either drug use or drug selling. Turns out he was eating Mike & Ike candy, not popping pills. While there is probably more to this story than has made it to the general public, the officials involved have done a particularly bad job of actually managing the events.
Yeah...because Mike & Ikes look just like illicit drugs. Completely ignoring the privacy aspect of this story, a school official mistaking freakin' Mike & Ikes for drugs is beyond comprehension.
http://www.illinoisnut.com/products/mainLarge_1028200752854pm.jpg
That looks quite unlike any drug I've ever heard of or seen.
Living With a Nerd
To be fair, the "Mike & Ike" claim was made by the kid. And he might be lying.
But the entire "what exactly was the kid doing" tangent is really just an attempt to justify the school's bad behavior.
The news just keeps on getting better and better. The more absurd this story gets, the more it will stand out as an example of why this sort of behaviour is unacceptable.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I still can't believe anybody but the IT department had access to this, and better yet no one in the IT department thought this might be a bad idea...
Really doesn't make much difference. The school shouldn't be punishing kids for taking drugs at home even if they really were doing that. If they came by the information legitimately then their choices are bringing the matter to the attention of the parents, the police, social services or some combination of those. If the information was acquired illegitimately then the choice gets a little harder but I can still see an argument for "we shouldn't know this but we really should let the parents know anyway and fire whoever got us into this mess". \deciding to discipline the student for a non-school related incident though is just completely the wrong move to make.
Wait, I thought the school made a statement saying they never ever used the laptop "security feature" for anything besides recovering lost and/or stolen equipment.
How is snapping a picture of a student, with _no_ stolen laptop, following in line with their stated security policy?
Ya, we didn't use it for its intended purpose. Ya, we did snoop around to satisfy our curiosity, but.. but.. BUT.. LOOK AT THE DRUGS!
*Facts presented so far in this case are less than facts until a court rules. I don't claim to know what happened, I'm just a sheep parroting the hearsay I come across.
“If you give me a 640x480 JPEG of the most honest of men, I will find something in it which will hang him”
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
While off topic, your quote makes me weep for that school system. Take a Assistant Principle who can't follow the rules of the school, let alone the law, and put her in a position to _teach_ the kids.
Not only was that disgusting, the "punishment" is frikkin' SCARY.
Hint: Drugs do not come in big candy colored shapes.
I'm guessing you didn't attend a lot of Grateful Dead shows....
Apparently you don't know what it was like being a kid in the 80s and 90s. Prescription pills are the drugs of choice by most these days, easier to get by with in plain sight, generally easy to come up with an excuse for having on you or taking, only illegal if you don't have a prescription ... which you don't typically carry around with you.
and ...
Even less noticeable when you carry them around in a candy box and act completely normal with them.
You clearly were not part of the crowd who 'did drugs in school', thats probably a good thing, just stop pretending to know what goes on with the kids who do. If you have kids, I suggest you ask them about the drugs in their school rather than telling them about drugs, they'll probably already know more.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
holey crap, for a school that's only been around for 20 years, they've got a remarkable number of fucked up incidents
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I hope the ending of your story is something like "And then I beat that snitch's ass after class that day"...
What are the chances Mr. Schooladministrator will be asked, "Why did you watch Billy Beatnick supposedly taking drugs for 30 seconds and then watch Chelsea Cheerleader for the next 3 hours?"
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Yep went to the Supreme Court. The scary thing is a few of the justices sided with the school
Some comments:
1) I wouldn't do any of these things to anyone, who bought a computer from me.
2) If the state offered me a trillon dollars to build laptops with software like this I would not do it.
(Even if they sent me to prison.)
There are plenty of ways to retrieve a stolen laptop without pictures or this kind of control, which is entirely not required.
3) It is a sad day when nobody even bothers remembering what tyranny was, and so how unsurprising it begins with scum bags like this to spy on our children just to start with.
I am getting the names of these guys in the area because they won't ever be working for my company.
I will also object to working with these scum bags on any technology project or new business I get. If the customer doesn't know what they are doing or why I object I will make sure to educate them.
People like this are a danger to our constitution, and should be pitied, and black balled.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
What are the odds that they took one picture and it just happened to be of a kid doing drugs? Zero. The big question: how many pictures would you have to take in order to guarantee a picture of a kid doing drugs? Hundreds? Thousands? That's the crime here, all the pics they took where someone was NOT doing drugs.
stuff |
Glad to see that they know how to hand out punishment!
If I pulled a stunt like that at a business (inspecting female employee undergarments to ensure compliance with corporate dress code) you can bet that I wouldn't be facing a demotion to a job that pays a professional wage. I'd be lucky not to end up in prison, or with $30M in lawsuits, and I'd almost certainly never get a corporate job anytime in the next three lifetimes.
These days, some "school resource officer" (yes, schools today have actual full-time cops on duty) would probably have you in handcuffs and standing before a judge for that. The other day I read about an 11-year-old girl who got arrested by her SRO for writing on her desk with a marker. Hire a cop and he has to justify his job, after all.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Except in this case if Rx drug abuse was the claim, the school wouldn't have any idea if the pills were legit or not.
As someone pointed out on another site, there are two big problems with the school's position:
1.) Just because they told the kids that they might activate the web cam to find it doesn't give them the right to do so. If the activity is illegal, telling someone you are going to do it beforehand doesn't make it legal. IANAL, but this one sounds pretty shaky.
2.)Even if they had the legitimate authority to use the web cam, once they realized that the laptop was in the hands of the right person, they would have been legally obliged to stop spying. Any information they gleaned from that spying would have been inadmissible in court.
From the posting at that link it looks like the school is on a serious freakout powertrip. Requiring the students to have one of these computers, requiring them to use them to the exclusion of all others and then spying on them periodically even if there was no report of the laptop being stolen.
The school board and school administration of that town should be burned to the ground with metaphorical salt sown in their professional fields.
Zero tolerance is not an understandable policy. It's an excuse for unhooking the brain of those in authority, an excuse for punishing kids equally for bringing a loaded automatic rifle and a keychain-sized toy gun to school, and an excuse for rampant power trips.
Hey, pervs gotta work, too. And rarely do they need a justification for their actions.
It's a school not a court.
"I think he did it" is good enough in that environment.
Holy crap, from the wiki:
# 2 Controversies
* 2.1 Broomstick incident
* 2.2 Underwear incident
* 2.3 Noose incident
* 2.4 Hacking incident
Sounds like the school, and possibly the school district needs all new management.
Also, if we think an administrator was inappropriately inspecting minor's underwear, how does making them a teacher solve a damn thing?
Obviously 'Mike Perbix' was upset that a student was eating/using 'Mike And Ikes' and Mr. Perbix was not getting a fair licensing deal for using his name sake.
This should be resolved as soon as the likeness licensing is settled. I predict a large payout for Mr. Perbix.
dosing someone with LSD is one of the most fucked things you can do (despite the fact that it was one of the CIA's favorite pastimes for a while).
Congrats on being a big fucking asshole with your asshole friends.
I understand the whole zero-tolerance policy of not bringing in any medication
Can you explain it to me then? The world is full of shades of gray. How are we doing children a favor by pretending it isn't? If you want kids to respect authority, it has to behave in a way that's respectable. It cannot be arbitrary and capricious.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That would be good ole Clarence Thomas:
"Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter. "Judges are not qualified to second-guess the best manner for maintaining quiet and order in the school environment," he wrote. "
That's a complete and utter lie, told to scare parents to allow increasingly strict rule by schools. See also, "rainbow parties", those gel bracelets, etc.etc. These lies get told in every generation. Don't be so gullible.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I don't understand why we're even talking about what the kid did or did not do at his home.
School officials have no fucking business sniffing around in other peoples houses. This is just outrageously wrong and illegal. Even if he was taking drugs, the video should not be accepted by any court as prove. Not even the police is allowed to film you in your own home without previous reason.
Public schools don't want to kick students out. Federal funding is determined in part by the number of students enrolled, thus more students equals more funding. That's why they want your kids to go to school regardless of health on the "federal counting days". From what I've seen, they're more interested in passing kids along regardless of performance than kicking kids out (this from a father with two in school right now...)
in order to bring about the glorious christian theocracy of north america:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html
of course, jesus' greatest message was tolerance. yet his most vocal advocates today only seem to advance the cause of "christianity" by extending the bounds of intolerance
I don't think you understand what tolerance is. If you think Jesus' message was about tolerance, then completely missed his point. Tolerance implies looking down on other people, put up with their flaws and feel sorry for them. Jesus' message called for Christians to not look down on the world but rather to love unconditionally. Loving does not mean that you have to accept the negative behavior of others while accepting the people themselves. This emulates how Jesus embraced a group of 12 flawed human beings and made them his disciples.
Christians are called to change the world and right wrongs rather than just sit there smugly "tolerating" others.
Tolerance is the lazy man's way because you are not helping others reach their true potential.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Alcohol is dangerous if you drink and drive, but it's legal above a certain age, certainly once they realize that trying to ban it was causing more harm than the substance itself. Contrast to marijuana...
Agreed. When the laws surrounding a substance are more harmful than the substance itself (marijuana being the current best example), there is a serious problem.
Living With a Nerd
And yet, many of you wonder why some people choose to homeschool!
Tell that to Rush Limbaugh. The dirtbag got caught coming back from the Dominican Republic (home of a huge child prostitute industry) with a bottle of someone else's Viagra. While on probation. Without telling his probation officer he was going out of town. Since he's a right-wing-nut nothing happened of course, but you and I would have been in jail for a long time.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Stop using "tiny URLs" on slashdot! They are pointless here, a little disrespectful of the readers because they hide the link, and a security risk. STOP! Read how to link using HTML tags, please.
*cough cough*
No matter what the kid was or was not doing in the privacy of HIS OWN HOME, legal or not, it is HIS BUSINESS, and the business of his family. Unless a judge granted a warrant to keep the kids under surveillance 24/7 the school is 100% in the wrong. No matter how crazy kids get, if they are behind closed doors, they are good to go. Believe me - my boys did some wild crap when they were younger. Actually - they still do, sadly.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Now, consider that you're talking about high-school students -- almost all of whom are going to be under the age of 18. All of a sudden, you're out of the realm of a simple class action lawsuit, and looking at a charges of 'Creation, Possession, and possibly even distribution, of Kiddie Porn'. . . .
Now, that may not do much more than garner some more interesting headlines, but if you throw in counseling charges against the high-level managers who concieved of, OKed or mandated this stupid idea, I expect that anyplace where a similar plan is in place, the programs will be suddenly stopped. -- and to be honest, I'm more interested in getting this stupidity shut down now than I am in starting a witch-hunt against stupid school administrators.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Why is a school buying laptops for every student? We can't afford to keep the teachers we do have, class sizes are increasing, many teachers have to buy school supplies out of their own pocket, and yet this school manages to find the funds to buy an expensive web-cam enabled laptop for every student? Most tech companies don't even buy laptops for every worker, it's too expensive. And this is a public school, not even a rich private one.
Since he's a right-wing-nut nothing happened of course, but you and I would have been in jail for a long time.
What are you talking about? Conservatives are always consistent in their morals and values. That's why they overwhelmingly voted for McCain over Bush in 2000, since they made it clear in 1992 how much they valued military service and despised draft dodgers. And why Mark Sanford was promptly impeached by the Republican legislature of South Carolina, as Sanford voted for Clinton's impeachment in 1998.