NEW JERSEY: Plea Deal For Student Involved In Tyler Clementi Case

One of the Rutgers students involved in the Tyler Clementi case has accepted a plea deal in return for agreeing to testify against Clementi's roommate.

Part of the deal requires Molly Wei, 19, of West Windsor to testify against Dharun Rhavi, the roommate of Tyler Clementi [left] who leaped off the George Washington Bridge last fall after learning he had been spied upon. Clementi, 18, was a Rutgers freshman and promising violinist. Wei pleaded not guilty in Middlesex County Superior Court on Friday to watching the webcast with Ravi and a judge accepted her application into a pretrial intervention program that could drop the two counts of invasion of privacy against her. In exchange for dismissing the charges, Wei must testify against Ravi, complete 300 hours of community service, undergo counseling on cyberbullying and take classes on dealing with people of alternative lifestyles.

Clementi's family approved of the plea arrangement, saying: "Actions have consequences. We wish Ms. Wei will become a person who will make better decisions, will help people and show kindness to those she comes in contact with."

Facebook Vs. Wikileaks

(Source)

What Clint McCance Learned This Week

Also learned by a certain Senate staffer.

(Source)

Pennsylvania School District Settles Webcams Spying Lawsuit For $610K

Remember the Pennsylvania school district that issued its students laptops and then remotely activated the machines' webcams to spy on its students in their homes? They've agreed to settle one student's lawsuit for $610,000.

The tracking software came to light when Robbins, a student at the high school, was allegedly called into the assistant principal's office and accused of taking drugs. The evidence was reportedly screen shots of Robbins from the school-issued laptop that appeared to show him taking pills. Robbins said he was actually eating candy. His parents filed suit against the school district in February. Several months later, Hassan was informed that the software on his computer had also been activated, capturing 469 pictures from the webcam and 543 screen shots over the course of several months. Since he was 18, Hassan then filed his own lawsuit. The $610,000 deal includes $10,000 for Hassan and a $175,000 payout that will be placed in a trust for Robbins. The district will also pay $425,000 in legal fees.

No charges were filed against the school district after prosecutors concluded there had been no "criminal intent."

(Tipped by JMG reader Paul)

NEW JERSEY: Rutgers Students Charged Over Suicide Of Gay Man After Secretly Live-Streaming Dorm Sex

Two Rutgers University students have been charged with invasion of privacy after secretly live-streaming video of a gay student having sex with a man in his dorm room. Reportedly the gay student then committed suicide.

Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, both 18, were charged with two counts of invasion of privacy after allegedly putting a camera in a fellow student’s room and transmitting a sexual encounter over the internet. Prosecutors said Ravi of Plainsboro tried to do the same thing to yet another classmate just days after the first incident. Wei, of Princeton, turned herself in Monday. Ravi was picked up Tuesday and released on $25,000 bail. Rutgers would not comment, but issued a statement saying: “The University takes this matter seriously and has policies in place to deal with this type of student behavior.”

CBS 2′s John Metaxas spoke with students on the Rutgers campus who used terms like “disgusting” and “extremely inappropriate” to describe the alleged spying. “I mean we all live in such close conditions with each other, it’s like breach of privacy…I think it’s gross,” Kate Perkowski said. “Extremely rude and it’s really obscene. I just can’t imagine someone would do that,” Preston Chang said. Under New Jersey’s privacy law it is a crime to transmit or even view images that depict nudity or sexual contact with an individual without that person’s consent. Possible penalties include a prison term of up to five years. Students on campus were upset and said the incident was a tremendous violation of privacy. “Let them know that you shouldn’t play around with that. That’s serious. That’s someones privacy right there,” Jovanny Hernandez said.

The name of the dead student has not been revealed. Last week his car was found near the George Washington Bridge, but a body has not been recovered.

XY Magazine To Destroy Subscriber Info

Last month the Federal Trade Commission issued an unprecedented warning to the owners of the defunct XY Magazine, telling them that a plan to sell its massive subscriber list could endanger some of the title's former readers who still lived with their parents. JMG reader Band tips us today that the magazine's publisher has agreed to destroy those records.

The agreement highlights an important issue that sits below the surface of the digital economy. As companies close and buy and sell to one another, the fate of the valuable user data everyone holds becomes an issue. Most privacy policies are unclear about this issue or do allow for transfer of personal information to new owners. But as the tracking and ad targeting technologies online become more sophisticated, user profiles will be come denser and more valuable.

At its peak, XY Magazine and its companion gay youth dating site may have had as many as one million subscribers.

May 31st: Quit Facebook Day

If you're one of the folks upset with Facebook's privacy standards, one group is calling for a mass exodus from the site on May 31st.

As controversy swells around Facebook's latest changes to its privacy policy--which is now longer than the Constitution and offers some 50 settings and over 170 options--users' interest in deleting their Facebook accounts has soared. A group of dissatisfied Facebook users have teamed up in an effort to organize a mass, coordinated exodus from Facebook--and they're using social networks to do it. Their site, QuitFacebookDay.com, asks users to "commit to quit" Facebook on May 31 by signing their name or Twitter handle to the list of pledges. The cause has attracted several hundred pledges--about 780 at the time of writing.

I love that there's a Facebook page for Quit Facebook Day.

Democrats Push For Biometric ID Card

Despite the public outcry about the new law in Arizona, Democrats are pushing to force all Americans to carry a biometric ID card. From their immigration reform bill:

The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment. It would require all workers across the nation to carry a card with a digital encryption key that would have to match work authorization databases. “The cardholder’s identity will be verified by matching the biometric identifier stored within the microprocessing chip on the card to the identifier provided by the cardholder that shall be read by the scanner used by the employer,” states the Democratic legislative proposal. The American Civil Liberties Union, a civil liberties defender often aligned with the Democratic Party, wasted no time in blasting the plan.

John Cole at Balloon Juice:

Polls pretty clearly demonstrate that half the country has no problem with the Arizona bill because it will not affect them- it only is an inconvenience for “others” (meaning brown people). But start talking about a national id with biometric data that everyone has to be issued, and you will think the death panels and health care reform debate were a walk in the park. And I’m not even talking about the actual merits and downsides to the id card. I’m talking about the freak-out that will be inevitable, some of which I will probably even agree with. This is just stunningly tone deaf.

The ACLU can't believe it either.

“Creating a biometric national ID will not only be astronomically expensive, it will usher government into the very center of our lives. Every worker in America will need a government permission slip in order to work. And all of this will come with a new federal bureaucracy — one that combines the worst elements of the DMV and the TSA,” said Christopher Calabrese, ACLU legislative counsel. “America’s broken immigration system needs real, workable reform, but it cannot come at the expense of privacy and individual freedoms,” Calabrese added.

(Tipped by JMG reader Aaron)