Filing states student broke rules and had no expectation of privacy

[Hannah Bell]

....claimed Robbins lost any legal protection from the Web-camera security system when he took a school laptop home without permission.... Cafiero's attorney, Charles Mandracchia, wrote in the filing...It was not immediately clear if the school district agreed with any of the arguments...

Interviewed by the federal agent in Mandracchia's Skippack law office, Cafiero told of activating students' laptop cameras three times, by request, in the 2008-09 school year - and once last fall to track down a student teacher's lost computer, her attorney said. "She had nothing at all to do with Blake Robbins..."

He said Cafiero did not invoke her Fifth Amendment protections...in response to any of the FBI agent's questions, though she had done so earlier when the Robbinses' lawyer, Mark S. Haltzman, sought to question her...for the family's civil suit. A "baseless fishing expedition" was how Mandracchia described Haltzman's formal request...Mandracchia also railed against Haltzman's claim, in an earlier filing, that Cafiero "may be a voyeur" who sent pictures to her home computer... in essence labeling her a sexual deviant...false, outrageous and without any basis," Mandracchia wrote...

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/education/20100421_Filing_states_student_broke_rules_and_had_no_expectation_of_privacy.html

[Toucano]

1. Kick n-t

[Fumesucker]

2. I don't understand your apparent total about face of your usual skepticism of goverment in this case

I'm really puzzled as to your motivation for defending what seems to me to be indefensible actions on the part of a branch of government, you normally seem very concerned with individual civil liberties and against authoritarians.

Why the dramatic change of what I perceive as your normal stance for this particular case?

[Hannah Bell]

3. dupe

dup[e

[Hannah Bell]

4. i'm really puzzled as to why you (and others):

1) read "school district" as "a branch of government"
2) read "not joining in a witch-hunt on the basis of one party's court filing" as a lack of support for civil liberties
3) read one party's court filing as a verdict demonstrating "indefensibility".
4) try to make it about "me".
5) have no response to the information in this article.

[Hannah Bell]

5. ...or the other one i posted. which is here:

in fact, i'm mystified as to why the folks talking it up on the other thread about this case are so studiously ignoring these two.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8200651

[Hannah Bell]

6. k

[Caretha]

7. Do you dispute

Blake Robbins' claim that Cafiero confronted him in her office and accused him of being in possession of illegal drugs, and showed him a picture that captured him in his bedroom holding something in his hand?

If she was tracking a "stolen laptop", as the school claimed, why didn't she confiscate the laptop? Or as the school said they had done in the past, why wasn't law enforcement called and charges for theft filed?

The school has also claimed that the Robbins' hadn't paid the insurance for the laptop, that doesn't mean they didn't know who had it, so why track it if the problem was not who possessed it, but because a bill hadn't been paid?

There are a lot of things that don't add up here. Lawyers are going to have a lot of the same questions and many more. In the end it really boils down to illegal intrusion into people's homes, and the school board is tap dancing as fast as they can with their mea culpas and trying to assure parents & students that it will do better in the future.

Being as politically savvy as you are Hannah, you know it's not always the crime that "does the culprit in", it's the lies and CYA mantras that follow that hangs 'em.

I used to always look forward to reading your OP's and would always click on them, I'm not much of a poster, more of a reader, but now I bypass all your other posts. Your abrasiveness and inability to be balanced on this subject has tainted my perception that you are someone to be taken credibly.

[hobbit709]

8. +1

[PCIntern]

9. Fuck the lawsuit..

stop with the lawsuit already...it's irrelevant. Camera was there inappropriately, the district said so.