High schooler Blake Robbins filed an invasion of privacy lawsuit against his school, alleging that the Lower Merion School District had taken hundreds of secret photos of him over a two-week period. His family discovered this when a teacher accused Robbins of dealing drugs based on one of the photos. Forbes (see link).
My first question is, does this school district teach George Orwell's "1984"? What do they teach about it? What do they tell students about sick, totalitarian, repressive, intrusive, voyeuristic minds that have nothing but contempt for the privacy rights of any individual?
How the hell does this not result in criminal action? Because the school district's asserted intent was "good"? How the hell does this not result in a police investigation in which it is determined which individual employee or group of employees at the school board decided to secretly spy on their own students, in their bedrooms, and retain the obtained images. How the hell did these people not get arrested?
A student named Blake Robbins was sphotographed "dealing drugs". He says he was sharing candies, not pills, and the police never charged him, but Mr. Robbins wondered why the police ever thought he was dealing drugs. Well, they had a photo, which the school district had given them, showing Mr. Robbins "dealing".
The school denied any active spying, saying that security software activated for laptops suspected of being stolen kicked in automatically, and took photos every 15 minutes. That defense, while reasonable, was made shaky by the school’s possession of over 56,000 Webcam shots. Forbes (see link).
Forbes points out that the school district's biggest mistake was not telling the students that the school district would be spying on them and taking photos of them in their bedrooms. Forbes says, "if they had, they likely would not have gotten into so much legal trouble of the civil variety", while point out, again, that there was no criminal charges filed. The prosecutors "declined" to press charges.
You would think the school district had shot some people with a licensed gun: recklessly, with negligence, or in sheer stupidity-- it doesn't matter: they would be immune because Americans believe that of all the things in the world you could be liablie for in terms of causing death, destruction, or mayhem, one of them is not ever going to be a gun.
Robbins successfully sued the school board. He won $600,000. Then his lawyer took $425,000 of that-- the cost of seeing justice done.
How the hell, was this lawyer not also arrested?