Bill O'Rights

<b>Parents sue school over secret cameras</b>

<i> NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A Tennessee middle school allowed security cameras to film children undressing in locker rooms and then stored the images on a computer accessible through the Internet, according to a lawsuit filed by a group of angry parents.

The lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Nashville seeks $4.2 million in damages.

The parents contend the school system violated students' rights by putting hidden cameras in boys and girls locker rooms at Livingston Middle School. The cameras reportedly captured students, ages 10 to 14, in various stages of undress.

EduTech Inc., the company that installed the surveillance cameras in several Overton County schools, also was named in the lawsuit.

Parents learned of the cameras when a student reported a suspicious device in the school at Livingston, about 80 miles east of Nashville.

The lawsuit contends that images captured by the cameras were stored on a hard drive in the office of the assistant principal that could be accessed from remote computers by the Internet. It claims the computer's password security had not been changed from the factory default setting.

The images were reportedly accessed 98 times between July 2002 and January 2003 - sometimes late at night and early in the morning - through Internet providers in Tennessee and South Carolina.

William Needham, director of Overton County Schools, said the assistant principal has been transferred to another school in the system. </i>


Wtf is going on here? It's bad enough that these images <b>could</b> have been accessed...they <b>were</b> accessed. I have a feeling this goes a hell of a lot deeper, and involves a lot more people than that which the article aludes.

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Cubby

That is just sad. To tell you the truth I don't mind them putting cameras in the changerooms if there is a reason (I wonder what the reason here was?) But there should be double/triple/quadruple/etc locks on the images from those cameras and they should only be able to be looked at if a serious (and I don't mean a simple theft) crime has been committed and even then only by the police/investigators. They should never have been available over the internet/intranet/network.

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butthead

how rowdy do the fights in middle school lockerrooms get?

but seriously, does anyone know probable reasons for the cameras installation?

Cynthetiq

besides peeping? security for lockers? runts getting shoved into lockers?

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Psivage

Sounds like the assistant principal was into child porn. I don't know alot about computers, so how hard would it be to track down who access the pictures?

spectre

That is beyond fucked up. Why the hell would they need to put cameras in the locker rooms? Even if they suspected anything serious was going on in there, that was a really fucked up way of handling it.

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juanvaldes

yeah. there is a reason camera almost NEVER go into locker/bathrooms. And having the images be public WTF?! I'm not surprised in the least that they never changed the password off default though.

The_Dude

we know what the security guards were doing at night........



sry, sick joke, couldnt help it

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YourNeverThere

i hate this, cameras are everywhere and soon there wont be anywhere left, damn you Gorage Orwell and your correct vision of the futre. also damn you for you ablity to spell, unlike me

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GakFace

(just) screwed up. I'm curious as to what happens next in this story. Need to find who ordered 'em to be installed and why. I might not be a Rocket Scientist.. but something about only being accessed in the late night and early morning tells me it wasn't actually work related...

Dunno what else to say... just.. ugh....

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Charlatan

Another example of cost cutting... instead of having actual teachers supervising let's put in cameras...

I agree with YourNeverThere, Orwell is rolling over in his grave.

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oblar

ack.. that is just spooky.. Considering I am from that area originally and now live in South Carolina..

I don't htink cameras should be put in a locker room unless there are some severe reasons to do so (people being hospitalized, etc), but in those cases, why not just have one of the athletic teachers (same sex) stand near the door or right inside within earshot.

if it gets to the point that cameras seem to be needed, WHY have them available over the internet?! They should be saved at most to a computer only accessible to the police and retrieved only when an incident occurs.

this just makes me sick.

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papermachesatan

hmm.. I wonder what the reasons were for putting them up..

Did you post the entire story Bill 'o' Rights?

Sun Tzu

THey would have gotten something good when I was back in jr.high I got into one of the worst fights of my life after football practice in the locker room.

Such misplaced weirdness is just asking for trouble. I'd be pissed. Maybe appropriate areas, if repeated security has been an issue, but not this. Columbine had cameras up with footage that still hasnt been released to the public.

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MSD

There was something in my high school locker room that I thought was a hidden camera. It was a junction box on the concrete ceiling with a hole and something that looked like a lens in an inch or so. I jabbed it with a fencing foil a few times, and sure enough, glass fell out. I probably shouldn't have done it, but it's illegal to have cameras above toilets and changing areas, so nothing ever happened.

Cameras in changing areas or bathrooms should not be allowed. Live supervision is sufficient if there are problems.

cowudders14

Sick, Just, sick. (shudder).

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MacGnG

yea it does sound like they aint tellin us a lot of things

CmC918

That is just wrong, that should never happen.

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