Slashdot Mirror

Many hours? Maybe 2 hours of staring at a little bar to reach one side of the screen, but total bullshit nonetheless. Did they write down all the binary of the image and tap it in bit by bit?

Can a student use their laptop computer over the summer?
No. All laptops will be collected at the end of the school year for general maintenance, cleaning, and software installation purposes. The Apple One-to-One initiative allows for all operating system and software upgrades in order to stay current with the latest software offerings.

In meetings with students over the last several days, the Berks County, Pa., juvenile probation office has quietly offered the students a deal in which all charges would be dropped in exchange for 15 hours of community service, a letter of apology, a class on personal responsibility, and a few months of probation.

"The probation department realizes this is small potatoes," said William Bispels, an attorney representing nearly half the accused students.

The 13 initially were charged with computer trespass and computer theft, both felonies, and could have faced a wide range of sanctions, including juvenile detention.

The Kutztown Area School District said it reported the students to police only after detentions, suspensions, and other punishments failed to deter them from breaking school rules governing computer usage. (See "Felony charges for computer-abusing kids.")

But the students, their families, and outraged supporters around the nation said that authorities overreacted, punishing the kids not for any horrible behavior but because they outsmarted the district's technology workers.

The trouble began last fall after the school district issued some 600 Apple iBook laptops to every student at the high school, about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

Students easily breached security and began downloading forbidden internet programs, such as the popular iChat instant-messaging tool. Some students also turned off a remote monitoring function that let administrators see what students were viewing on their screens--or used the monitoring function to view administrators' own computer screens.

School district officials and prosecutors did not return phone messages left Aug. 25 and had not been heard from by press time.

In legal terms, the students have been offered an "informal adjustment"--the least severe form of punishment.

Bispels said a few students are thinking about refusing the deal because they don't feel they have broken any laws. "A lot of these parents would like to fight this on principle, but it's hard to put the kids at risk on principle," he said.

Mike Boland, who represents one student, said his client likely will accept the offer. "It doesn't require my client to acknowledge he is guilty of anything," he said.

"It's about as mild as you can go," agreed James Shrawder, whose 15-year-old nephew was among those offered the deal. "It's more of a face-saving measure."

One student who has had prior dealings with the juvenile probation office was not offered a deal. That case is expected to proceed.

Links:

Students' web site
  http://www.cutusabreak.org

Kutztown Area School District's response
  http://www.kasd.org/districtinfo/kasdPressrelease. htm

They've got great photos of the teachers too...

Borough of Kutztown:
45 Railroad St.
Kutztown, PA 19530
(610) 683-6131
fax (610) 683-6729

Kutztown Area School District: District Administration
50 Trexler Ave.
Kutztown, PA 19530
(610) 683-7361
fax (610) 683-7230
more addresses and phone numbers for the District

I find the quote "We are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom." at the bottom of the Borough's webpage inappropriate for this town.

Borough of Kutztown:
45 Railroad St.
Kutztown, PA 19530
(610) 683-6131
fax (610) 683-6729

Kutztown Area School District: District Administration
50 Trexler Ave.
Kutztown, PA 19530
(610) 683-7361
fax (610) 683-7230
more addresses and phone numbers for the District

I find the quote "We are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom." at the bottom of the Borough's webpage inappropriate for this town.

Let's get that phone number, I've got time to remind them that they're responsible to me, the taxpayer.

Even more fun would be if the article had given a link to the school website. That would learn 'em.

http://www.kasd.org/~highschool/ HTH

The password was widely known and easy, it's not the kids fault

Riiiighht. And If you leave your window open or door unlocked then everyone has the right to walk into your house and do whatever they feel like? Or maybe it's YOUR fault that you didn't put a strong enough lock on the door.

They all knew that "hacking" their computers and downloading music and porn was wrong.

Here's the FAQ with the exact figures:
The laptop cost would be $1385.00 with a 4 year parts and labor warranty.
The cost of the software installed on the laptop computer exceeds $1800.00 per unit.
The cost of the padded sleeve is ~$20.00
The cost of a 4 year software upgrade protection plan is $135.00
The cost of tech support is $45.00 and up per hour.

The cost exceeds $3360 per unit - exclusive of any tech support.

For that price they could buy a decent PC laptop every year for four years and just GIVE it permanently to the students. And that's assuming you'd actually give a freshman a second and third and fourth computer at the start of 10th 11th and 12th grades.

-

In the FAQs you can find the rules that were "broken". But you can also find this incredibly helpful Q and A.

What about computer viruses?
A virus that is written for the Windows Operating System (Win98, 2000, XP) cannot infect the Macintosh Operating system.

I just wish the next one was:

What about hackers?
People don't try to hack Macs. Ever.

Yeah, that point is kind of interesting. I haven't seen any other comment mentioning this bit of the Kutztown Area High School laptop usage FAQ yet:

Q: What if a student already has another model or brand of laptop computer?

A: Students will be required to use the school district issued laptop for school purposes. This is necessary to ensure that students have a computer that gives them network capability and the ability to run the software that students will need in their classes. For these reasons, other computers will not be used on the Kutztown Area School District network.

So... they want to claim that the students can't do anything "unauthorised" on the laptops because they belong to the school, but they won't allow the students to use their own damn laptops? Riiiight.

Heh, I don't know why the kids wouldn't just grab a LiveCD and boot with that, thus gaining full rights and access to the laptop hardware (well all right, on second thoughts I recall that Linux doesn't support Mac laptop wireless ethernet, so that might not work so well if they're using wireless networking :)). With a USB key (or just a loopback filesystem (possibly even encrypted if they wanted to be paranoid) stored on the Mac OS X filesystem) for storing the data you want to keep private, you're laughing.

And if there were one or more bits of software that they had to use during their classes, no problem. Reboot, remove CD.

When will people learn... you can't lock down a machine when people have full, unsupervised, physical access to that machine! *roll of eyes*

From the faq:

What if a student already has another model or brand of laptop computer?

Students will be required to use the school district issued laptop for school purposes. This is necessary to ensure that the principal has the ability to spy on the students. We'll also quote: students have a computer that gives them network capability and the ability to run the software that students will need in their classes. For these reasons, other computers will not be used on the Kutztown Area School District network. but that's really not true. See, we're lying, we really need the ability to spy on the students because every principal believes they have that right and every central school district will back us up. Even though just about any other laptop out there can be configured for the network capability and software necessary for classes, we'll still stick to our guns so that we maintain the ability to be able to spy on our students. But we'll avoid telling you that. Instead we'll write the TOS in such a manner as to fool a parent into thinking that an infraction of the TOS will only result in normal school discipline such as detention or a reprimand, instead of a felony charge which will ruin your son or daughter's chances in higher education, job applications, legal firearms possession for hunting/collecting/defense of business/home, employment in the judicial field, public service employment, fireman/policeman/mass transit divisions/federal jobs including post office, and more.

See, we'd rather retain the ability to spy on your son/daughter, than to have you object to the laptop program which is making the school administration look so good.

Now that the cat's out of the bag, wait till you see how many parents opt out next year. And if Drudge gets a hold of this story, let's see how long the school board hold onto their jobs vs. the principal getting replaced.

Contact the district and let them know what you think. Of course, being polite and giving sources to any facts would be great for karma.

Will students be able to install software on the laptop? No, students installing software on school owned computers is a direct violation of the KASD Computer Policy. Students who violate the policy will be disciplined. All of the software necessary to integrate the laptop technology into the curriculum will be installed when the laptop is issued to the student. Security monitoring software will be used on all of the computers to assure that software is not loaded on the laptops. See the "Software" webpage in regards to the software installed on each laptop.

Will students be able to email, chat, and play games on their laptops? Chat, IM, games, and email software will be removed from all computers. Student use of email, chatting, IM, and game playing is a direct violation of the KASD computer policy. Students who violate the computer policy will be disciplined.

What about computer viruses? A virus that is written for the Windows Operating System (Win98, 2000, XP) cannot infect the Macintosh Operating system.

You probably aren't in school anymore. Most usage policies that I've seen explicitly state something along the lines of 'criminal computer damage' or 'charges may be filed'.

You apparently didn't read the District's Usage Policy. In fact, I know you didn't or you wouldn't have questioned me. Let me help you:

From their FAQ which was linked in the Slashdot blurb.

Will students be able to install software on the laptop?
No, students installing software on school owned computers is a direct violation of the KASD Computer Policy. Students who violate the policy will be disciplined. All of the software necessary to integrate the laptop technology into the curriculum will be installed when the laptop is issued to the student. Security monitoring software will be used on all of the computers to assure that software is not loaded on the laptops. See the "Software" webpage in regards to the software installed on each laptop.

Will students be able to email, chat, and play games on their laptops?
Chat, IM, games, and email software will be removed from all computers. Student use of email, chatting, IM, and game playing is a direct violation of the KASD computer policy. Students who violate the computer policy will be disciplined.

What will the school do to help prevent students from going to inappropriate sites?
The KASD has a software/hardware product which is designed to help monitor all Internet sites that students attempt to access. This software/hardware blocks inappropriate sites and also logs a history of every site that each user opens. Students who attempt to find inappropriate sites will be disciplined. The current KASD content filter meets CIPA guidelines.

Just to be sure that I didn't miss anything I read it twice. Nothing in there about filing criminal charges.

Obviously I don't need to be in school anymore as I can read *and* comprehend.