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Tinfoil Hats Off
This just in: Yesterday, a federal court judge struck down what we can only presume to be an ancient state law that forbids people from opening businesses with names containing [w]ords that constitute blasphemy, profane cursing or swearing or that profane the Lords name.
This was, until June 30, an actual law, that was actually enforced by the Pennsylvania Department of State Corporation Bureau as recently as 2007, when the bureau denied Downington filmmaker George Kalman's request to name his company "I Choose Hell Productions LLC," on account of it making Jesus cry or whatever.
I'm reading through the 67-page judgment now. Will update later. In the meantime, read for yourself here, courtesy of the local ACLU.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by megkem. megkem said: RT @leahhowse: Hah! "Good news, Pennsylvanians: You may now legally blaspheme the Lord with your business name." http://ow.ly/260tF [...]
I didn't make Harriton High assistant principal Lindy Matkso's press conference/statement reading this morning, on account of the endless, degenerating hours of meetings that consume my Wednesdays, but from the Inky's account, it seems Matsko who, according to the lawsuit filed by Blake Robbins last week, allegedly obtained a picture of Robbins supposedly involved in some sort of illicit act (later, we heard it was pill-popping, or maybe candy-eating) from the Webcam of the laptop the district issues students simply, and vehemently, denied any wrongdoing, adding that she would never spy on students or punish them for stuff they did off school grounds. She took no questions.
In a voice that swelled and quavered with apparent anger, Harriton High School Assistant Vice Principal Lindy Matsko this morning decried the "many falsehoods and misperceptions" about her role in the Lower Merion school's webcam tumult sparked by a student's lawsuit.
"At no time have I ever monitored a student via a laptop webcam," said Matsko, who is in her 25th year working for Lower Merion School District, "nor have I ever authorized the monitoring of a student via a laptop webcam, either at school or in the home. And I never would."
Matsko, who was speaking for the first time since the suit was filed last week, did not take questions after the six-minute statement she delivered in the Center City office of her attorney, Dennis Abramson.
She said she has been the recipient of "numerous" mean and threatening emails.
Reading from a sheet of paper that shook in her hands, Matsko said allegations she participated in monitoring Harriton sophomore Blake Robbins in his home via the camera of his school-issued MacBook were "offensive, abhorrent and outrageous," her volume rising after every word.
OK, I understand that she can't answer questions. There is, indeed, a federal lawsuit. But her statement, like the one the school district itself issued Feb. 18, the day the lawsuit went public, raises more questions than it answers: Clearly, the school district had a system that allowed it to remotely activate a Webcam and snap a picture. The district has said it used such a device 42 times in 14 months, to catch laptop thieves. The district has also said that it made a mistake by not alerting parents about their ability to do so.
And at some point, Blake Robbins found out about this. He says it was when Matsko tried to punish him for allegedly popping pills at home, which he says were candies. According to the district, the only way it would have used its remote activated doohickey was if Blake's computer was reported stolen. That leaves, to my mind, three possibilities: 1.) Robbins' computer was reported stolen by someone, although the lawsuit says the computer in question was his, and the district has never alleged otherwise. 2.) There is no picture of Robbins, he made the whole thing up, and he and his family and their lawyers uncovered this Webcam thing through some other means, though one would presume that school district would have mentioned something about this in the last week. 3.) Robbins' computer wasn't reported stolen, the district took his picture anyway, and everything alleged in the lawsuit is basically true.
Am I missing something? I mean, I think the district needs to answer one question (among a great many, but for starters): Did it, in fact, have a picture of Blake engaged in some sort of wrongdoing, no matter how that image was obtained?
Matsko may well be scapegoated here; I don't mean to imply that she did something shady, because I really have no idea what's going on. I mean, seriously: No school official could be cavalier or dumb enough to think they could spy on kids and no one would ever be the wiser, right? I doubt it. But these stories aren't adding up. If the school district can come out and say that Blake Robbins is lying, why hasn't it done so? In lawsuits, people categorically deny charges all the time; it's not unusual or improper.
That leads me to believe there's an element of truth in what he's saying.
Anybody seeing this tale spin a different way? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
She says she didn't do anything wrong. There are a lot of others who quite possible could have. Read this for some intersting theories of what might have happened: http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-high.html "The primary piece of evidence, already being reported on by a Fox affiliate, is this amazing promotional webcast for a remote monitoring product named LANRev. In it, Mike Perbix identifies himself as a high school network tech, and then speaks at length about using the track-and-monitor features of LanRev to take surreptitious remote pictures through a high school laptop webcam. A note of particular pride is evident in his voice when he talks about finding a way outside of LANRev to enable "curtain mode", a special remote administration mode that makes remote control of a laptop invisible to the victim. Listen at 35:47, when he says: "you're controlling someone's machine, you don't want them to know what you're doing" -Mike Perbix It isn't until 37 minutes into the video till Perbix begins talking about the Theft Tracking feature, which causes the laptop to go into a mode where it beacons its location and silent webcam screenshots out to an Internet server controlled by the school." If the someone at the school thought the kid was doing something wrong (selling drugs) I have no doubt they would have used any means they though necessary to protect their student body no matter how wrong it might have been. They took a chance and got burned. I'm curious whether the laptops "stolen" from school were never reported to police.
Yes, I can think of some other spins. How about the kid's own Facebook page, which I saw, that showed him smoking weed and drinking beer? Maybe someone saw that. You didn't need 'spy" software. How about the enormous debt this family--who lives in a $900 thousand+ house--owes to PECO, their snyagogue, dentist, the state, the feds, and the very township they are suing? They don't pay their bills. They owed 30K to PECO alone. How come their power wasn't turned off? By the way, their legal issues are all documented in an Inquirer story today. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20100225_Laptop_family_is_no_stranger_to_legal_disputes.html How come this lawyer--who once represented another party in a suit against the Robbinses--is representing them now? If the family was so concerned about this privacy issue, why didn't they go to the police? FBI? Warn any other families? And how come NOT ONE OTHER FAMILY has come forward to say their kid was spied on too?
If I'm not mistaken, it has been reported that his parents did not pay the $55.00 Insurance fee required to take the laptop off school grounds. If he did have it at home, it was against school policy and could certainly been considered at least "missing"
GetReal, I haven't seen that, but it's entirely possible I just missed it. That would make sense, in at least justifying why they took the picture. I'll poke around and see if I can find it.
Pleashttp://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20100225_Laptop_family_is_no_stranger_to_legal_disputes.htmle look at the Inquirer story on this family at
[...] Laptop family lives in Main Line mansion, doesnt like to pay the power bill RELATED: So, um, did the kid make it up? RELATED: Breaking: Lower Merion School District admits it's used Webcam "security feature" more [...]
Or the student took a picture of himself on the laptop and put it on facebook or it came up on the school server or when it synched with the school network.
Oh please....the kid probably have issues (and parents definitiely do) but that does not negate the issues with lower merion school district. Once they admitted they did that, they were done. Upper Merion also could have gotten the remote spying webcam/microphone software but their attorney said they would open up a world of problems if they did. But between evil spying laptops, students doe vs. lmsd, older issues of racism and inequality, why doesn't fast eddie order the state to take over the school district? For more of their shenanigans from the cheerleaders check out these other blog post someone sent: http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/node/4267 http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/node/4269 http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/node/4266 http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/node/4260
Editor's note: Yesterday marked the first hearing in that bizarre Lower Merion Webcam-gate lawsuit. Intern Christine Adkins was there, and files this report:
The Lower Merion School Board fiasco continued Monday when attorneys met with US District Court Judge Jan E. DuBios to work out a temporary restraining order in the potentially class-action case filed by the parents of 16-year-old Blake Robbins, whose privacy was allegedly invaded by school district officials.
The first 45 minutes of the hearing featured school district attorney Arthur Makadon and Mark Haltzman, the Robbinses' attorney, going through a stream of objections as to the specific wording of the would-be restraining order to prevent the district from essentially deleting data that may be of use to the plaintiffs as the case moves forward. The image-conscious district didnt like the word injunction; Haltzman wanted to use prohibited. Though in the judicial world, wording is everything, one would assume that practicing attorneys could agree to a few vocabulary terms in under an hour. Not so. And as you sit there, taking this all in, suddenly you find yourself wondering if you will be found tomorrow in the same courtroom, roused by a security officer, comatose and mumbling SAT vocabulary lists.
The ACLU of Pennsylvania filed an amicus brief in support of Robbins' case. However, an ACLU attorney, who had conference called-in for the hearing, said the civil rights group didn't intend to actively participate in the suit.
The event concluded two and half hours after this allegedly short hearing began, revised order agreed upon, signed and entered into record. The new order, which does not use the words restraining order, forces the participants to select a mutual forensic experts for analyzing and copying Robbins laptop, prohibits district Webcams from being remotely activated, forbids the school district from contacting members of Robbins class concerning the lawsuit, and prevents the district from providing updates to parents without the consent of Robbins counsel at least six hours prior.
Exciting stuff, really.
Friend of the Clog Brian James Kirk is running an interesting series over on ex-Inky columnist Tom Ferrick's Metropolis Web site this week, looking at the widespread use of surveillance video cameras by Philadelphia police. Check out part one here, and part two here. Part three, Brian tells me, should be up later today.
In any event, here's a sample:
When it comes to fighting crime, Philadelphia is undergoing a video revolution. Within a few short years, the city is likely to be blanketed by a network of more than a thousand state-of-the-art, high resolution cameras, scanning high-crime areas, critical structures such as the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, SEPTA stops and inner city streets.
The sweeping program had a modest beginning. In 2007, Mayor John Street and the Philadelphia Police Department announced a $10 million initiative to install 250 surveillance cameras around the city. These are high resolution Unisys digital video cameras that, if perched on a street light, can pan, tilt and zoom into details, such as a person's face or a license plate number, from a full city block away.
Today, 117 of the planned 250 cameras are in operation, perched above streets with their tell-tale blue lights blinking. Another 76 are covered by plastic bags awaiting network configuration.
But this is only the beginning. The number of cameras on the network is expected to expand exponentially in the near future. City officials are working on ways to link their Police Department operation with surveillance cameras used by such parties as SEPTA, local universities and private businesses to create a super-network of public space surveillance that can feed images back to the video monitoring room at Police Headquarters at Eighth and Race Sts.
These cameras, Brian writes, allow cops to zoom in on things like faces and license plates from up to a block away. Go take a read, it's worth a few minutes of your time. While you're at it, bear in mind that while the cops love taking pictures of you, they may well arrest you for reciprocating.
The sad part is they don't act as a good deterrent from crime, nor does it work too well in terms of getting criminals in some studies I've seen of the camera systems in England. It's almost like a giant expensive security blanket to some degree. I'd rather just have more well-trained officers on street.
NBC 10 got an interview with the kid (and his lawyer) at the center of the Lower Merion School District scandal. According to their story, we now know the supposed inappropriate behavior that the School District snapped a photo of, via Blake's Web cam: The district thought they caught him popping pills. Blake Robbins says they were Mike-N-Ike's candies.
The 16-year-old from Penn Valley, Pa. claims Matsko showed him photos remotely taken with the built-in webcam on his MacBook, according to the suit.
In the photos, the teen was allegedly holding two pill-shaped objects, says Robbins' attorney Mark Haltzman. School officials believed they were drugs, while the family maintains they were simply Mike-N-Ike candy.
"They were trying to allege thatâ¦those were pills and somehow he was involved in selling drugs," Halzman said Friday.
Of course, the district told us yesterday, in so many words, that Blake's computer had to have been reported stolen, or else they wouldn't have activated the security contraption on his MacBook. The AP has reported that district officials have said that only two tech department folks had the authority to activate that security feature, which, of course, raises the question: How the hell did a Harriton High assistant principal get her hands on a photo of Blake eating candy, or whatever? Also, as Holly reported yesterday, the district has done this before, though how often remains unclear. From the NBC story:
If the allegations of spying prove to be true, Blake may not be the only victim. Other students claim they've seen their webcam go live while off school grounds and worry they've been spied on too.
âOccasionally a green light would go on, on your computer which would kind of give you the feeling that somebody's watching you,â Harriton High School student Drew Scheier told NBC Philadelphia Thursday.
The FBI is reportedly investigating, as is the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office; the Inky is reporting that federal prosecutors have issued subpoenas. Buckle yourselves in, folks: this thing's gonna get a whole lot weirder before it's over.
[...] For readers just tuning in, here the background: In February the Robbins family of Penn Valley sued the Lower Merion School District after it discovered MacBooks issued to all 2,620 students in the district were equipped with Web cams that could be turned on remotely by school officials. How did they found out? Because the Robbins’ 15-year-old son Blake was called into a meeting with the school vice principal, during which he was (they say) shown an image of himself at home working on his school supplied laptop, and questioned about possible inappropriate behavior. According to one report, the school apparently thought Blake was popping pills when he was really just eating candy. [...]
[...] According to one report, the school apparently thought Blake was popping pills when he was really just eating candy [...]
"Hey Blake ask your dad what your Grandmother SELMA found in his closet? When he was your around your age." - hey smitty, she found what your grandma put in there
Hey Blake ask your dad what your Grandmother SELMA found in his closet? When he was your around your age.
There is no indication that the school ever thought the laptop had been stolen. No one even claims that. This reeks too much of Big Brother. This is an Orwellian nightmare come true. We all know what kids with raging hormones do in their rooms. To know that a high school administrator might be watching would scare the hell out of me! If I discovered one of them watching my son or daughter in his/her room I would scream and, you can rest assured, sue them beyond avarice!
Meanwhile, there's an ad for Nana's Naughty Knickers at the top of the page of this blog.
It amazes me that these administrators had the gall to do this and were so stupid they admitted it to Blake. These people make hefty salaries...why? The are obviously too dumb to be working at any school.
I go to lower merion
[...] High School Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko to confront him in the first place. No surprise: It's hilarious. School officials thought they had captured an image of Robbins holding illicit pills, plotting to [...]
how is it the school district's responsibility to investigate supposed drug use in a child's home? how is it o.k. for them to spy on a child in his home?
[...] A picture of some candy, if they are to believed. Great. Some IT technician, proud of his leet skilz, spots a Mike and Ike candy and reports the student to the vice[principal for drug dealing. [...]
Really, we have to start testing teachers compentency,and discontinue any education for profit. Civics is no longer taught or understood.
gk-"Really, we have to start testing teachers compentency,and discontinue any education for profit." Really, you are writing this at 4am? Maybe you should get some more of that FREE education so you can either get a better job, or a job at all! For-profit educators are held to much higher standards and rarely have UNIONS keeping their sorry asses in the system for decades. If they dont perform, they are simply GONE!
Really, was my previous comment too much for the City Paper to handle? Too conservative for a liberal, union loving,rag and their apparently idiotic, know nothing followers. I would have thought otherwise by the tone of this article, but I guess I was wrong to attack stupidity. I'll watch to see how long this one stands and post it on my blog.
How long has it been since Halloween ?? NOBODY buys Mike and Ike candies. You only get them from folks who don't want you back trick or treating next year. All the Mike and Ikes have been eaten already. You won;t see them again until next November.
[...] the school district be able to protect their investment? Well, the reason this all came up was that a kid in the district was caught eating Mike-n-Ikes at home. The principal called him in for eating candy and, presumably, this school watching this [...]
Before everyone starts jumping on the school for spying, how bout this kid taking responsibility for "STEALING" the computer which is why the camera was activated, and has anyone seen the footage, because I have a real hard time believing that any principle, vice principle, tech person etc... wouldn't be able to tell a mike and ike from a pill. Something tells me that this kid did in fact have drugs. The proof is in the footage. And wtf is up with parents, what, anytime anything happens now they have to run off and sue? Their kid is a douche and so are they, and we wonder why kids aren't learning anymore.
This is why we are choosing to home school our child. Teachers are people too, and it seems like everyone is going postal to their own varying degree. Expect more parents to home school because of increased insane incidents like this one.
How stupid can the kids be? I thought that all of the younger generation was supposed to be technologically savvy? Apparently not. Yay, free computer! Uh huh. You know that the school district makes the kids sign user agreements, agreements amongst which are warnings about appropriate usage. If a student gets caught messing up, it is that little moron's own fault. Duh.
[...] the school district be able to protect their investment? Well, the reason this all came up was that a kid in the district was caught eating Mike-n-Ikes at home. The principal called him in for eating candy and, presumably, this school watching this [...]
Many people are insinuating that the claim that only IT people could use the system was a falsehood. This may or may not be the case. That aside, the laptop belonged to the student. The school has some reserve laptops for students who can't afford to pay whatever is involved in owning one; however, Blake's laptop is apparently his. When asked if Blake's laptop was reported missing, school officials declined to comment. Additionally, Blake is still using the laptop today(now that school officials have deactivated the spyware). This all seems strong evidence that he owned the laptop. I think you might sue if this happened to you. The laptops were given as a gift, essentially. they were free to the students except for some insurance and other fees. But they were trojan horses! They took pictures of students in their bedrooms. This is serious for god's sake. The computers were not stolen. I think YOU, sir, need to consider the fact that the news is...dun dun dun....ACCURATE.
something
So you are saying that the kid OWNED the laptop ? That they are GIFTS?? I do not think that is at all accurate, my friend.
Yes, Mike and Ikes are available all year long. We have several stores here that have them, and they're also sold in concessions at the movie theater. It's not a huge shock to me that he might have been eating them. My husband and son love them, and we get large bags of the candies at warehouse stores. A 6 pound bag can last the good part of a year. That said, a 1.3 megapixel video camera on a laptop, and no, macbook webcams are NOT better than that, can't identify clearly what the child has in his hand. It would be thrown out as evidence in a court of law. That said, children don't have rights in this country, do they? I recall being a kid, and pretty much being told that until I was legally an adult and able to vote, I wasn't even a human being. This country continues to support the idea that kids are pets. When will it stop? And how far will we allow the government and schools to take all parental rights? Might as well ship them directly from the hospital to training camps if we're going to allow them to punish kids for activities not taking place during school or on school grounds.
The teachers and staff are going to learn a very, very tough lesson, in federal prison. How about that? :)
[...] Blake Robbins' crime? Popping Mike-and-Ike's, he says. [...]
[...] Webcam on the 16 year old’s free Mac laptop caught him in February, popping what he says were Mike and Ike’s candie. (Fruit-flavored little sugar bombs shaped like pills and made in the [...]
[...] Matsko thought Blake was popping pills. According to Robbins, he was merely eating candy: Mike-N-Ikes. (A classic gateway drug — before you know it, he’ll be deep into Good-N-Plenty and [...]
The laptop was stolen he did not pay the insurance fee to have it. If there are picture of any other kid who did pay the fee to have the computer. The kid who paid to have the computer may have a case if they weren't notified of the ability of the school to activate the webcam. But the kid who didn't pay the fee's to have it really stole it. Therefore he does not need to be notified, he shouldn't have had it.
So ... Now the school admits to taking over 58,000 images. And can't figure out why it took some of them. Or who ordered it. And it also triggered the spying on 10 teachers. Creepy.
On Feb.11, a student filed a class-action lawsuit against the Lower Merion School District alleging "invasion of Plaintiffs' privacy, theft of Plaintiffs' private information and unlawful interception and access to acquired and exported data and other stored electronic communications ⦠"
Basically, the gist of the complaint is this: The school district issues each of its students a laptop computer to take home (which is actually pretty cool). These laptops contain webcams. According to the suit, "Defendants [that is, the school district] have been spying on Plaintiffs ⦠by Defendants' indiscriminate use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students by the School District."
Lead plaintiff Blake Robbins, a student at Harriton High School, learned about all of this on Nov. 11, 2009, the suit says, when assistant principal Lindy Matsko "informed [Robbins] that the School District was of the belief that [Robbins] was engaged in improper behavior in his home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in [Robbins'] personal laptop issued by the School District. ⦠[T]he School District, in fact, has the ability to remotely activate the webcam contained in a student's personal laptop computer ⦠at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam ⦠."
The nature of Robbins' alleged misbehavior isn't clear from the lawsuit; we're going to dig into this story a bit more in the near future. (I may have missed something, but so far the only media attention this story has gotten, that I've seen, anyway, came from BoingBoing. You can read the lawsuit yourself here, or the DailyKossacks' reaction to the BoingBoing story here.) We'll be trying to get comments from Robbins and/or the School District up here today. But if this story is at all true ⦠holy shit. Spying on kids, in their bedrooms? What if they, you know, decide to change clothing? It's one thing to track how students use school district property â if they're visiting hardcore porn sites or whatever â it's quite another to use a webcam to monitor and capture their daily activities, outside of school, in the supposed privacy of their own homes.
Again, with the caveat that what is alleged above actually happened, and with the risk of rushing to judgment, Matsko and every single member of the Lower Merion School District who signed off on this scheme needs to be sacked, yesterday. I can't imagine a more asinine invasion of students' privacy. George Orwell would be proud.
We'll update as updates come in.
UPDATE: The Inky and DN both have their stories up. (Not for nothing, but we beat them by a good hour. Ha!) And while the school district has yet to return our calls â though they promised to, soon â a spokesman told the Inquirer:
"This is the first we have heard of this lawsuit being filed and the plaintiff's allegations," he said today. "However, we can categorically state that we are - and have always been - committed to protecting the privacy of our students."
"Our district was one of the first to provide free laptops to all of our high school students," Young said. "This initiative has been incredibly successful and well received in our school community."
"We have referred this matter to our attorneys for appropriate legal action and plan to communicate with parents and students with more information as it becomes available."
We have calls out to the kid's attorneys, too. If they tell us anything useful, we'll post.
putting the loco in in loco parentis
Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by citypaper: CLOG DEPT. O'HOLY SHIT: Class-action suit alleges Lower Merion is spying on kids via webcams in school-issued laptops. http://tr.im/spycamz...
I live in Lower Merion and will not be able to afford the school taxes after this thing is over. It's time to set a precedent so no one else will ever try this again. I see jail time for all involved and if there are any compromising shots of anyone under 18, the whole bunch of them should be put on the national sex preditor's list for life. That will stop it.
The City of Big Brotherly Love. These kids are learning a valuable lesson at school today.
(Not for nothing, they beat you to every other story imaginable by more than good hours.)
After further investigation on the School District website, it appears this story is a gross distortion and misrepresentation. The webcam security feature was activated only once at the request of the student who owned the laptop, which had been stolen. The webcam image was used to identify the thief and now the parents of the thief are trying to evade the theft charges with a frivolous lawsuit. American legal system hijacked again with the help of sloppy reporting...
I saw nothing on the school district website outside of an explanation of the intended use of the webcam system. If it is true that the kid is a thief than a judge should throw this out of court and the parents should be ashamed. However if there is proof the administrators were breaking the law somehow, in lieu of a civil action lawsuit, why isn't this being pursued one way or the other by a prosecutor for a crime being committed, either by the student or by the school administrators...or both. It in no way should be a class action suit against a school district.
MayDay82, where on the school district Website are you seeing that "the webcam security feature was activated only once at the request of the student who owned the laptop" and that the plaintiff is actually the person who stole the laptop? I don't see anything corroborating that claim on the school district Website. Do you have a link?
This story made http://detentionslip.org ! Check it out for all the crazy headlines from our schools.
Mayday82 is an astroturfer who has posted that exact same comment on dozens of websites running this story. Boing Boing recently tossed his/her ass out onto the street. I suggest you delete the post and/or mock that idiot and/or both, accordingly
MNM is an even stupider astroturfer who didn't realize the first dumbshit astroturfer had already posted that dumb-as-fuck message on this blog.
[...] story is everywhere (Huffington Post, Boing Boing, New Zealand Herald, CNET, Philadelphia City Paper etc). A school district is being sued for spying on its 2300 students (and their families) at home [...]
http://citypaper.net/blogs/clog/2010/02/19/lower-merion-school-district-issues-response-to-webcam-spying-charges/ it was stolen and the parents filing a suit are pointing to a red herring
Even if the kid stole this laptop, or reported it stolen, the correct thing for the school to do would be to contact the police and file a report and let the police investigate and get a warrant to turn the camera on as part of the investigation or simply use a lojack feature to locate the stolen lap top. If your car was stolen, you would not be able to confront the thief yourself no matter how much "proof" you had, you would still need to go through legal channels or face charges yourself.
Lower Merion School District needs to get this lawsuit to a federal court mediator yesterday, settle and cut their loses. Their liability ins will cover it. Then they need to fire whoever allowed this to happen. If their Board atty approved the webcam policy then fire the firm and sue them for malpractice!
[...] http://citypaper.net/blogs/clog/2010/02/18/dept-of-holy-shit-big-brother-is-watching-kids/ [...]
This would be funny if it weren't the saddest, most frustrating, most infuriating thing I've ever seen. A reporter wanders the grounds of the 9/12 Tea Party protests in Washington D.C. and mostly lets these outraged citizens hang on their own words.
Best footage I've seen of the insanity yet.
We need Obama to find a way to ban this kind of thing. Maybe it can be regulated as a safety concern, or an environmental thing. And don't give me that "free speech" bs - there need to be limits. This is just insane. People shouldn't be allowed to do this sort of thing.
And to think these people have the intelligence to sort through the issues and actually vote. It is important to allow for free speech and I can't say that stopping this is a) leagl or b) would change anything. The best thing for the Administration is to let these good people speak their mind to reinforce why the "moral majority" must be kept from ru(i)nning our country.
In all fairness, I too have laid awake at night wondering who all these "czars" report to, and how much money they make. But, mostly, I wonder where the f**k they buy those awesome hats. And for that matter, is Jason Kay from Jamiroquai in fact a czar? So many questions. I'm going to need a bigger sign.
Fuckin kommies, eat shit and die! When you were throwing your feces all over W and that pallin dudette and basically at whoever tried to talk some sense into you, it was OK, it was freedom of speech. Now, when your opposition reacts to your bullshit, you suddenly want a BAN on these kind of protests. Why don't you scum-vermin-subhuman-good-for-nothing-parasitic-tapeworms go fuck yourselves and fuckin' die, ha?
FUCK ALL YOU HIPPIES GO HUG A TREE AND KILL YOUR SLUTTY FRIENDS BABY.
^LOL^
xxx and MALTA, your guy lost. Obama is president now and even though he has a lot of Bush's mess to clean up, he's still trying to make things right for the poor who have been short-changed for too long. Hopefully he will give illegals a quick path to citizenship and lock in a democratic majority for good. It looks like the game is about to CHANGE - get used to it.
Republicans or conservatives pride themselves on getting higher education and thus deserving to keep the money that the earned through their education. However this video makes me ashamed to associate myself with the likes of these people. In a word: IGNORANT. . . OK 2 words: IGNORANT & SHAMEFUL... may I also add selfish and greedy too?
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