Ghosts of Lost Liberties

Principalities & Power looks at the increasing intersection between modern electronic media and the limits on the government's power to carry out "reasonable" search and seizure. Not surprisingly, even in our "hip", progressive era, the government takes as expansive view of its power as possible to overcome the reasonable expectation of privacy: No Reasonable Expectation Of Privacy

The assault on our constitutional rights continues, with ever more egregious incursions by over reaching government agencies. We have watched with alarm as the Brits have allowed their own ancient rights to dissolve before the relentless bullying of the once-soft, blob-like socialist nanny state harden into a coercive police state overseeing the most minute aspects of citizen's lives, down to and including what they put in the trash, how they "manage" their left-overs, and how they rear their children.

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This is our patrimony too; and similarly, we are seeing governments at all levels, ostensibly under our control, return the relation of citizen and state to the world historical norm of oppressive authorities and cowed citizenries.

P&P looks at efforts to access email and cell phone signals, but most surprising is this story about a Pennsylvania school district that used web cams to spy on high school students - at home: FBI Probing PA School webcam Spy Case

Pennsylvania school district accused of secretly switching on laptop computer webcams inside students' homes is under investigation by federal authorities, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case told The Associated Press.

The FBI will look into whether any federal wiretap or computer-intrusion laws were violated by Lower Merion School District officials, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the investigation, told the AP on Friday.

Days after a student filed suit over the practice, Lower Merion officials acknowledged Friday that they remotely activated webcams 42 times in the past 14 months, but only to find missing student laptops. They insist they never did so to spy on students, as the student's family claimed in the federal lawsuit.

Families were not informed of the possibility the webcams might be activated in their homes without their permission in the paperwork students sign when they get the computers, district spokesman Doug Young said

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Lower Merion, an affluent district in Philadelphia's suburbs, issues Apple laptops to all 2,300 students at its two high schools. Only two employees in the technology department were authorized to activate the cameras — and only to locate missing laptops, Young said. The remote activations captured images but never recorded sound, he said.

It all began innocently enough. Who wouldn't want a free computer? But, as it turned out, the computers weren't free at all

The suit accuses the school of turning on Blake's webcam while the computer was inside his Penn Valley home, allegedly violating wiretap laws and his right to privacy.

Blake Robbins told KYW-TV on Friday that a school official described him in his room and mistook a piece of candy for a pill.

"She described what I was doing," he said. "She said she thought I had pills and said she thought that I was selling drugs."

Robbins said he was holding a Mike and Ike candy, not pills.

Holly Robbins said a school official told her that she had a picture of Blake holding up what she thought were pills.

Pretty unbelievable stuff. If the concern is for stolen laptops, what about a GPS or some such?

No, the school wanted to be able to turn on those cameras because they just can't accept that they can't have any control over the kids in their charge, even when those kids are safe at home. No word on what caused the school to turn on this particular kid's camera, but it sounds like the school had a pre-conceived notion of what he was up to (the dread "drug abuse"). And, just for fun, I will note that public schools, even in affluent Philadelphia suburbs, are hardly hotbeds of Ashcroft acolytes.

It is certainly one of the mysteries of the age that the same people who condemned Bush-era efforts to spy on foreign elements in the Islamist world would go out of their way to increase the surveillance of American citizens.