Lower Merion School District Update

Mike_EE_U_of_I and jargon82 were among a number of readers who sent an update on the Lower Merion School District webcam spying case (see Related Stories for our discussions of the affair over the last couple of months). The school had originally stated that capturing laptop photos in students' homes had only happened 42 times. It turns out what they meant was that there were 42 instances when they began intensive surveillance on the suspected stolen computers. This consisted of (among other things) transmitting a picture from the laptop's webcam every 15 minutes. This may have gone on for weeks. In total, it appears that there were thousands of photos. One of the key administrators involved has been answering all questions about the program by invoking the Fifth Amendment.

Comments

Re:Fifth Amendement Right

[mooingyak]

Anyone can invoke the 5th amendment if they believe that answering the question will incriminate them. It doesn't matter if they are on trial or not. If you were accused of murder, and I saw you do it while I was across the street robbing a convenience store, I might choose to invoke the 5th rather than explain what I was doing while I saw you commit your act.