Privacy - My Time to Waste

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.

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.

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.

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?

Tag: Privacy

I Do Not Know How to Respond to This

Some Thought Must Have Been Involved