A suburban Philadelphia school district that paid more than $600,000 to settle allegations it used laptop webcams to spy on students is being sued by the sister of the original plaintiff.
Nineteen-year-old Paige Robbins filed a federal lawsuit against the Lower Merion School District on Thursday. She says the district secretly captured embarrassing images of her at home through her school-issued laptop’s webcam.
Her brother, Blake Robbins, sued the district last year over software that allowed school employees to remotely activate the webcams to track missing computers.
Blake Robbins received $175,000 of a $600,000 settlement. Paige Robbins’ lawyer, Mary Elizabeth Bogan, says her client’s rights weren’t addressed in that case.
District spokesman Doug Young calls the new lawsuit “an attempted money-grab.” He says an investigation recovered no images of Paige Robbins.
The National Intelligence Service (EYP) eavesdropped on almost 1,400 people this year but this played a significant role in tackling organized crime and domestic terrorism, Citizens Protection Minister Christos Papoutsis told Parliament on Friday.
Papoutsis said EYP had bugged 778 people in 2010 and 1,392 this year. He added that another 500 wiretapping operations were currently being carried out by secret service agents. Papoutsis defended the operations, saying EYP had helped in numerous cases.
I believe that thanks to EYPs involvement, along with the setting up of the financial police and the continuing work of the electronic crimes squad, we have managed to trace a number of organized crime and terrorist gangs.
Responding to questions about EYPs procedure for eavesdropping, the minister said that agents obtain permission from both the judiciary and the privacy watchdog before listening in on conversations.
Tottenham have been accused of spying on London Olympic officials in the latest twist to the saga surrounding the main stadium for next year’s Games.
A 29-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of fraud after Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) chairwoman Baroness Ford said the north London football club had private investigators tail all 14 members of her board.
With the future of the STG500 ($A780m) showpiece venue up in the air following the collapse of the West Ham deal, the suspect was questioned on Tuesday as officers conducted searches in London, including Westminster, and southern England.
Baroness Ford is in charge of the OPLC – the body formed to secure the Olympic Park’s legacy.
‘The thing that I have learned in the last 12 months is that there has been all kinds of behaviour,’ she told the London Assembly.
‘There has been legal challenges and people have stood behind it anonymously – all kinds of things have happened.
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A French court has fined energy giant EDF 1.5 million euros (£1.3 million) and sent two of its staff to jail for spying on Greenpeace campaigners.
The company is hoping to build four nuclear reactors in the UK.
A court in Nanterre, near Paris, found that EDF employed security firm Kargus to spy on Greenpeace as it campaigned against new reactors in France.
The court also sent two Kargus employees to jail and handed Greenpeace 500,000 euros (£428,000) in damages.
Greenpeace’s campaign targeted in particular the new reactor being built at Flammanville on the Normandy coast, one of the European Pressurised Water Reactors (EPRs) that EDF hopes to bring to the UK.
Adelaide Colin, communications director for Greenpeace in France, said the decision “sends a strong signal to the nuclear industry: no-one is above the law”.
The court heard that in 2006 Kargus Consultants, then run by a former member of the French foreign secret service, compiled a dossier on Greenpeace via means that included hacking into a computer belonging to former campaigns head Yannick Jadot.
EDF maintained that it had just asked Kargus to monitor the activists, and that the consultants had exceeded their remit.
But justice Isabelle Prevost-Desprez disagreed, handing three-year sentences to Pascal Durieux and Pierre-Paul Francois, head and deputy head of EDF’s nuclear security operation.
Thierry Lorho, then head of Kargus, also received three years, and information specialist Alain Quiros two.
All also have to pay compensation to Greenpeace.
EDF did not return calls from BBC News, but its lawyer told Reuters news agency in Paris that the company would appeal against the decision.
Rainbow echoes
Through its ownership of British Energy, EDF runs eight nuclear stations in the UK and plans to build four new reactors, two each at Sizewell in Suffolk and Hinkley Point in Somerset.
The case has brought back memories of the sinking of Rainbow Warrior in 1985
These will probably be EPRs.
Although EDF and the constructors Areva laud the EPR’s substantial power and safety features, the two in construction at Flammanville and Olkiluoto in Finland are both behind schedule and over budget.
Tom Burke, formerly head of Friends of the Earth UK and a visiting professor at Imperial and University Colleges in London, said the spying case showed EDF was desperate to negate criticism of nuclear power.
“What this judgement reveals is that EDF, and the French government which owns it, are prepared to go to any lengths, including breaking the law, in order to defeat opposition to more nuclear power,” he told BBC News.
“The whole future of the French plan to sell more nuclear power to the world depends on getting the British consumer to pay to build new nuclear reactors in Britain.
“I would advise every critic of the French drive to expand nuclear power in Britain to be very vigilant in ensuring they are not themselves victims of EDF dirty tricks.”
Greenpeace has said in the past that it suspected EDF of using “dirty tricks” against it in the UK as well as in France – a charge that the company has denied.
In the wake of the French verdict, Greenpeace has asked the company to “come clean”.
For some, this episode evokes memories of the Rainbow Warrior sinking in New Zealand in 1985.
Then, with French government backing, foreign intelligence service personnel mined and sank the Greenpeace vessel in a bid to prevent it interfering with nuclear testing in the Pacific.
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On Sunday, President Bush signed a law that expands the government’s surveillance abilities on foreign terrorist suspects. The new law is an expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and allows the government to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a warrant.
The surveillance can be approved by either the attorney general or the director of national intelligence.
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