4 results for month: 05/2010
Sexting Student Sues School
The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit today against Pennsylvania school district for searching a student's confiscated cell phone without probable cause and punishing her for storing semi-nude pictures of herself on the device. The school subsequently turned her phone over to George Skumanick Jr., at the time the Wyoming County district attorney, who threatened to file felony child pornography charges against the girl unless she took a class on sexual violence.
The Third Circuit recently threw out the prosecutor's case.
"Students do not lose their privacy rights at the schoolhouse door," said Witold Walczak, the ACLU of Pennsylvania's Legal Director and ...
International Adoption Law Update: L.M.B. v. E.R.J.
This unusual international adoption case, which was recently decided by New York's highest court, has far-reaching implications for current and future best-practices as well as important policy implications. In L.M.B. v. E.R.J., 2010 NY Slip Op 1345; 14 N.Y.3d 100 (February 16, 2010), the New York Court of Appeals was called upon to untangle a New York adoption by ERJ (mother) and a Cambodian adoption by LMB (father). Each adoptive parent, who were never married to one another, claimed to be the child's only legal parent.
The child, Doe, was found abandoned in Cambodia and brought to New York by ERJ for medical treatment. Subsequently ERJ and her ...
Wikipedia’s Porn Promoting Purgatory
Sometimes one thing leads to another and then another and then ultimately purgatory. That's exactly where Wikipedia is finding itself after a tip on ChildLaw blog led to this FoxNews.com story which led to action by Congress and now this.
According to FoxNews.com:
The parent company of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is rapidly purging thousands of explicit pornographic images from its websites as it prepares to announce a new policy regarding sexually explicit content in response to reporting by FoxNews.com.
The move came as FoxNews.com was in the process of asking dozens of companies that have donated to Wikimedia Foundation -- the umbrella ...
See no evil . . .
A report issued yesterday by attorneys hired by the Lower Merion School District found that the collection of images stemmed not from an effort to spy on students but from "the district's failure to implement policies, procedures and recordkeeping requirements and the overzealous and questionable use of technology by IS personnel without any apparent regard for privacy considerations or sufficient consultation with administrators."
The report also criticized leaders and several members of the IS department as "not forthcoming with the Board, administrators and students about what TheftTrack could do and how they used it," citing incidents demonstra...