 "Photo: GINA FERAZZI LOS ANGELES TIMES / MCT")
Student surveillance, by administrators, via webcams
PHILADELPHIA — At Harrington High School, to “ensure that all students have 24/7 access to school-based resources,” each of its 1,800 students are given an Apple MacBook equipped with a webcam.
The school failed to mention, however, that it would secretly monitor the webcams to spy on students at home, according to a federal class-action lawsuit filed last week.
Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa., who filed the complaint on behalf of their son and all the school district’s students, seek unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and an end to the monitoring.
The lawsuit alleges that the images the webcams captured could contain “compromising or embarrassing material,” among other situations unrelated to a student’s online activity, violating the Fourth Amendment – which protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures” – as well as wiretapping, electronic communications and computer fraud laws.
(Philadelphia Daily News, via MCT)
Injecting a new business model into narcotics
LOS ANGELES — Getting paid $1,000 per week as a delivery driver could be a rewarding career, as long as you’re fine with a potent type of heroin as your product and addicts as your customers.
Across America, even in small towns whose citizens had never heard of this semiprocessed black-tar heroin, narcotics investigators are seeing what they consider one of the most lucrative drug businesses in history continue to expand.
Immigrants from Xalisco, Mexico, began to traffic the opiate, which is cheaper than typical Colombian heroin, to America in the mid-1990s with a desire to distinguish themselves from the larger, more risky cartels. By catering to a “safer and more profitable clientèle” of middle-class whites, their customer service-oriented pizza-delivery method of distributing the drug quickly became popular among independent traffickers and consumers alike.
No official figures for these networks’ profits exist, but narcotics agents have reported that a daily-operating “cell” can gross up to $80,000 a week.
(Los Angeles Times, via MCT)
Keeping troops in the closet
WASHINGTON — The possibility of dissent between top military officials on the issue of allowing gays to serve openly became a reality during a Congressional hearing Tuesday.
Countering Adm. Michael G. Mullen’s advocation of the issue last month, Army Gen. George W. Casey and Air Force Gen. Norton A. Schwartz told Congress that they support the Pentagon’s yearlong plan to study a change in the policy that allows gays to serve only if they keep their sexual orientation hidden, their chief concern being that a hasty revision would disrupt deployed armed forces in the midst of two wars.
Since the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was enacted in 1993, more than 14,000 service members have been discharged after being accused of being or saying they were gay.
(Tribune Washington Bureau, via MCT)
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