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Illinois prosecutors have charged a 13-year-old student with felony eavesdropping for recording his conversation with two school administrators. Should he be found guilty and sentenced, a conviction could land him a minimum of one year in prison. According to TechDirt:
The [Illinois] law forbids recordings without all parties' consent. It would seem that the school officials' refusal to discuss anything further once they were informed they were being recorded should have been enough. The conversation was ended, along with the recording. If they were concerned they said something they shouldn't have during the previous ten minutes, maybe should have restrained themselves during the argument, rather than ruin a 13-year-old's life with a bad law Illinois legislators refuse to rewrite. Given how often this law is used to protect the powerful, it's hardly surprising legislators haven't expressed a serious interest in fixing it.
Everyone from the administrators to the prosecutors and those in between had a lot of discretion available to stop the chain of events, but all chose not to stop it.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Monday July 02 2018, @05:56PM (2 children)
I rather suspect he had been to that principal's office before, and this time he thought he would get all the threats down in audio.
The fact that he was arguing for 10 minutes about refusing to show up for detention says this 13 year old already has little respect for authority.
(I know one phone call from the school to my father about EITHER arguing or skipping detention would have me double grounded for a month and apologizing personally, publicly, and sincerely to the principal and the detention monitor and having to face my dad's withering glare for weeks.)
OTOH:
The fact that the administrators decided to shut up and terminate the meeting, and then call the cops suggests they knew
they had already stepped over the line, and there would be actionable words on that recording.
So they charge the kid with a crime in order to prevent the recording being used in court.
The Police also get to seize the phone as evidence.
My guess is the charging wasn't done out of malice. It was done out of fear of the contents of the recording.
Prediction: The phone will be erased or destroyed in police custody. (And kid already has the recording in the cloud somewhere).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by sjames on Monday July 02 2018, @06:50PM (1 child)
Given the way the administration has behaved here, perhaps they are the reason the kid doesn't respect their authority. Act like a jackass, get treated like a jackass. It may be that the administrator has also lost the respect of the parents for the same reason.
Were that not the case, we would probably not be reading the non-news non-story about a 13 year old getting suspended for persistent discipline problems.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 02 2018, @09:19PM
We certainly wouldn't be reading about a court case where the 13 year old is facing prison time for said non-story. Someone is doing it wrong, even if we don't know how.