*nomex underwear ON*
Problem is, I don't think they did anything illegal. Reprehensible, yes, but not illegal.
If the equipment was owned and managed by the school, laws have recognized the owner/manager of equipment's rights to monitor that equipment. Same laws that allow your employer to monitor your web surfing.
Just another example of laws not keeping up with technology, I am afraid.
Yes, they did do many illegal things. They acted without a) permission from the parents and b) informed consent. Consent is not enough, if they were intentionally misleading or not extremely explicit in their consent agreement. I don't know about fed law, but they violated the hell out of state law. This is Pennsylvania. Not the Soviet Union, not China, not New Jersey, not Cuba. We have the strictest wiretap laws in the country. Even our LE are very, very limited in what they are allowed to record without notification.
And I quote Pa.C.S.A. § 5703 "Interception, disclosure or use of wire, electronic or oral communications" (Part of the Pennsylvania Wiretap Act)
Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, a person is guilty of a felony of the third degree if he:
(1) intentionally intercepts, endeavors to intercept, or procures any other person to intercept or endeavor to intercept any wire, electronic or oral communication;
(2) intentionally discloses or endeavors to disclose to any other person the contents of any wire, electronic or oral communication, or evidence derived therefrom, knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained through the interception of a wire, electronic or oral communication; or
(3) intentionally uses or endeavors to use the contents of any wire, electronic or oral communication, or evidence derived therefrom, knowing or having reason to know, that the information was obtained through the interception of a wire, electronic or oral communication.
Now a person might say, well, does "electronic communications" include webcams? Why, I'm glad you asked.
"Electronic communication." Any transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data or intelligence of any nature transmitted in whole or in part by a wire, radio, electromagnetic, photoelectronic or photo-optical system
A webcam is a photo-optical system that transfers images. Ergo, the school has committed a felony of the third degree if a single photo was taken inside the person's residence without their consent. For any purpose, unless a court order has been issued. Folks don't need to be sued. They need to go to jail. For a very long time. If a government employee conducts illegal wiretapping of citizens of MY state, they are felons, a danger to our citizenry and need to be treated as the criminals they are. In addition, they need to be nailed to the wall as sex offenders if they took a single revealing photo of a minor. Which apparently, they did.
They were kind enough to confess to these crimes as well. Hence why I am so pissed at the feds for covering for them. We had them dead to rights.
The problem with tape is that they said something in one of the articles about doing that as a direct violation of attempting to bypass their "security" check.
More systemic solutions are being rolled out. Mainly, countermeasures in case other schools are doing the same thing. Not just to block photos from being taken, but to prove criminal behavior if it occurs. Again, the only solution to this is to jail the appropriate parties if they violate the law.