Every new article I see about this story appears to have more and more pointers towards a child porn investigation. I hope someone sensible thinks very seriously before deciding to do that...
Save your objections for the actual abuses, lest you dilute your argument. (Assuming that is what you are trying to imply. Which isn't clear, though I'm not sure what else you could mean.)
(Edit: In other posts you talk about intent. As I argued above, if intent had been pure the program would have shut down at the first sign of trouble. I do not have problem imputing bad intent to these actors, again, given the truth of the accusations. If they wished the benefit of the doubt, there were actions they can and should (in every sense of the term) have taken, which they did not.)
But still I'd prefer to see other, more applicable, laws used.
Proving somebody saw these nude images (if there are any) is going to be a huge legal minefield. And even then classing it as child pornography is difficult for a variety of reasons.
When I talk about intent I mean the intent to see it as sexual content. Clearly the proper thing to do is delete any inappropriate images - and in this respect there may be some indecency laws that apply. But CP is about the sexual abuse of children and the use of indecent material in a sexual context. This has already been watered down here in the UK to the point of making a conviction barely an inconvenience to them.
I'm not sure if the state this is in has Voyeurism laws but that is a good place to start. Then you have unlawful recording, various surveillance laws and lots of privacy law violations.
Of course if this woman has taken the images with a sexual intent (or used them with a sexual intent) then totally; throw the book at her :)
However, from what I have read (and based on my experience) this does not fit any of the profiles of an child pornography case.
It is actually damaging to other cases if this is prosecuted badly.
I think it would be hard to show though that there could be a different intent though for surreptitiously taking photos of teens at random times.
There could be a very "innocent" reason; the sysadmin could be simply obbsessed or interested in individuals lives (it's actually not an uncommon problem) and not even consider that something indecent might appear on screen. She might not find it sexually interesting etc.
If the intent really was to photograph nude children then I'd fully expect there to be lots and lots of evidence showing this (particularly in terms of other indecent material on her computers).
Well pretty much what I listed here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1292998
> What about the administration of the school
Yeh, that's a complicated one - I hope they don't get off the hook or anything silly. But I don't see how CP laws could apply to them in any way.
I presume they will get them under negligence / malicious neglect laws.
Yeah, I wasn't thinking along those lines either way. But negligence sounds pretty good.
If it was taken as part of the process (i.e. had not been specially taken, has not been copied elsewhere, taken home etc.) then proving intent is difficult.