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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: 4, Insightful) by AlwaysNever on Monday July 02 2018, @06:19PM (1 child)
This kid will learn. Learn the proper procedure.
The proper procedure is: 1) you record the conversation secretly, 2) you file in the police station a declaration that someone has stollen your phone, 3) you upload the recorded conversation to the cloud using some proxy, 4) you win.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:10AM
Except, if (1) is the crime, then that the recording exists at all is pretty damning evidence against you. And (2) and (3) will do nothing to protect you, but will likely make you guilty of perjury.