I Do Not Know How to Respond to This

Two female Bul­gar­i­an stu­dents vis­it­ing the Unit­ed States for the sum­mer found hid­den cam­eras hid­den in their Flori­da apart­ment this week and fear they may have been video­taped through­out their three-month stay.

If true, this is a seri­ous vio­la­tion of the pri­va­cy of the vic­tims. I do not doubt for a minute that there are peo­ple out there who would com­mit such a vio­la­tion. I hope the crooks are caught and prop­er­ly pun­ished. I espe­cial­ly hope that what­ev­er pic­tures and/​or video that exist of the vic­tims (naked or clothed) nev­er make it on to the inter­net. Real­ly, the whole thing is disgusting.

OR

As I read the arti­cle, I can not help but feel a bit of cyn­i­cism. Was some­one spy­ing on these girls, or were they spy­ing on them­selves? Is the whole thing a set up to pro­mote their soon to be unveiled web site? If this is the case, then they are going to be in trou­ble (right­ly so) for false report­ing of a crime.

OR

The cam­era and equip­ment were left over from some pre­vi­ous use (which may or may not have been crim­i­nal) and were nev­er acti­vat­ed since the two girls moved in.

I find all three sce­nar­ios equal­ly plau­si­ble and I do not want to jump to con­clu­sions. I won­der if we will ever know.

Some Thought Must Have Been Involved

The ques­tion often aris­es “What were they think­ing?!” Or, more often, in my own mind “What was I think­ing!?” In my expe­ri­ence the answer to such ques­tions (expe­cial­ly the lat­ter) is invari­ably “Think­ing? There was no think­ing involved.”

But there must have been some thought involved at the Low­er Meri­on School Dis­trict in a Philadel­phia sub­urb. They man­aged to enable them­selves to spy on the stu­dents, even when the stu­dents were at home, through the lap­top web­cams. This did not just happen.

This leads to the ques­tion “How did these peo­ple come to be in charge of edu­cat­ing our children?”

Noth­ing leads a child down the straight and nar­row like the feel­ing of not being trust­ed, right?