You may recall the news story from last year about some teenaged girls in Pennsylvania who were being threatened with child porn charges, after taking "nude and semi-nude" photos of themselves on a mobile phone during a party, and sending them to others. The judge halted the potential lawsuit, noting that the nude photos didn't appear to depict any sexual acts (as per the law), but the local prosecutor still wanted to file charges. As more and more details came out, the whole thing got increasingly ridiculous. Apparently, the girls in question were given a choice to either take a "re-education" class, or face charges.

And now, reader Pickle Monger points out that one of the girls, along with the ACLU, is suing the school district itself, claiming that it violated the girl's privacy. Apparently, the way the school found out about the photos was that it had confiscated her mobile phone, after she was caught making a phone call on school grounds, against school rules. There's no problem with confiscating the phone, of course, but then the school searched through the phone and found those photos. It's the search that the ACLU and the student are questioning. The school had no reason to search through the phone, or to look at the photos stored on the phone after it had confiscated it.

On the flip side though, there have been a number of cases of genuine paedophiles being caught because they took a PC in to be repaired and a nosey member of staff went exploring on the hard drive.

On the flip side though, there have been a number of cases of genuine paedophiles being caught because they took a PC in to be repaired and a nosey member of staff went exploring on the hard drive.

Yes but these were pictures of the girls being taken by the girls themselves no one else was involved.

I can't believe that people are still silly enough to take pictures like these and send them to others....eventually they're bound to be passed around and then they're out there for the world to see, or on Facebook, 4chan, etc.

Rightly or wrongly that's still an invasion of privacy.

Mark

I can't believe that people are still silly enough to take pictures like these and send them to others....eventually they're bound to be passed around and then they're out there for the world to see, or on Facebook, 4chan, etc.

it's something most people have done isn't it?

There's no problem with confiscating the phone, of course, but then the school searched through the phone and found those photos. It's the search that the ACLU and the student are questioning. The school had no reason to search through the phone, or to look at the photos stored on the phone after it had confiscated it.