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Comment by JunkDNA | Hacker News Reader

Found a PDF of the filing itself:

It's hard for me to imagine how anyone could think this was an OK idea.

This reminds me of the strip search story from a few months ago. A young girl was searched by school officials. As it turned out, she was only carrying prescription drugs.

While the Supreme Court found that the search had been illegal (amazingly, only by an 8-1 majority) they also ruled that the officials concerned could not be held personally liable. This was because it supposedly wasn't obvious to the officials at the time whether what they were doing was illegal or improper.

Now, while I can understand that as a matter of law any court can only rule on the specific details of a particular case in context and they have to worry about a suitable burden of proof, I have to wonder how anyone could think it was OK to strip search a 13-year-old on some vague suspicion about carrying drugs.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/25/national/main51125...

More disturbing about that is this: I face serious consequences for all sorts of things, many of which I don't know are illegal. Some of those things I don't know the legalities of are related to my profession. Yet, while being tried, if I put up a "I didn't know it was illegal" defense, I would be laughed at, found guilty and fined/jailed/etc. Why do the school officials get out of liability for not knowing that their actions were illegal?

IIRC, the point was that it wasn't entirely that the officials' actions were illegal. There were some earlier rulings and issues of being in loco parentis that clouded the issue sufficiently that the Supreme Court's hands were effectively tied. Of course, now that the Supreme Court has given an explicit ruling in this case, it would be pretty difficult for anyone to pull that defence in future.

None of this means the actions weren't grossly disproportionate, unreasonable, and abusive in the eyes of any sane, independent observer, but unfortunately that isn't what court rulings are based on.

Even worse actually. If the mandatory reporters at the school heard about this girl being strip searched by mom & dad for drugs, they would, without a second thought, report the parents to some authority. But when they do it in loco parentis the same behavior is OK?

The idea is that, when the search took place, jurisprudence didn't make it clear such searches are illegal. If the legal system is not sure whether something is a crime or not, then it isn't. In theory, anyway.

Power hungry bureaucrats who have an end justifies the means philosophy -- who don't understand that their job is to serve and not to control.

I've always been paranoid that the people I work for would turn on the video camera on my laptop and just observe me work...

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