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Student Suspended For Taking Teacher's Challenge
CygnusTM writes: "The Seattle Times has a story about a high-school student who has been suspended for cracking a school computer after being challenged to do so by a teacher. The teacher says he wasn't serious. Raw deal." Aaron Lutes apparently got tripped up for what should have perhaps gotten him extra credit. The article notes: "The Lutes family and the district also acknowledge that Lutes' computer-science teacher, Giovanni Colombo, told students they'd get a reward from the software company if they cracked the security system and that Colombo wanted a 10% cut of that reward." Welcome to school, take a seat.
Brutal analogy.
A closer one would be if this was a lock-smithing class and he was told he would get a reward if he could pick the front door lock to the school, went ahead and did it - after hours when the school door is actually locked - then got busted for letting them know that he did it. A student makes little distinction among the authority figures in his school, so ends up being perceived as more than a little deceptive, and of course, completely unfair.
The teacher obviously didn't believe any of his students could pull off the crack, and is too spineless to step up for his students when one of them gets into trouble as a direct result of his teaching. The example this teacher is presenting for his students is appalling. What ever happened to integrity?
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
You misspelled "possessive".
(Incorrect Grammar During Dictionary Flame, -3)
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
My eigth grade year in middle school, I was in a computer class where we did stuff with Hypercard. I did the normal assignments and used the rest of the time to program stuff that was more interesting. Because I had figured out some simple ways to bypass the security, the computer lab teacher was deathly afraid of me.
Some kind of rumor got started that I was working on a disk that could be inserted into any of the school computers and would then bring the entire district network down. The first I heard of it was when I was summoned to talk to the principal (and all the administrators who had also gathered in the office specifically to discipline me). My computer priveleges were revoked for a month because they didn't want to "take chances".
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
The story says the kid was in trouble last year for bringing up innapropriate web sites. I'm trying to paint a MO here, just a theory..
/..'rs should do the same. I had teachers fuck with me because I was too smart in school. It's nothing but peasant mentality on the part of the school district. Then again, I've been to washington, back in the 80's when I listened to the cure and dressed funny, I remember kids from my cousins HS in their farmer overalls asking me, "What are you some kind of faggot?" I guess things haven't changed much.
A few years back Mr Columbo recomends site blocking software A. Kid breaks through software. Mr Columbo looks like an ass because some 14 year old kid comprimised his recomended security. Rather than be a professional about it and say "gee ok maybe I should ask this kid what we should use" He probably spent his time thinkin of ways to get back at him.
Over the course of the next year, Mr Columbo does his best to alienate this kid from the rest of the population. Prolly embarasses him in front of the class, continually tries to opress his free though.
Eventually the kid gets to a state where no matter what he tries, he knows Mr Columbo (god i love saying that) does not like him, he wants to do good in school so he's willing to do whatever it takes to get back in his good graces.
Mr Columbo makes a joke, telling the students to crack the file security system. Kid is so desperate to get on his good side he takes it literally, so he begins his work.
After comprimising system, kid goes back to Mr Columbo hoping he will acknowledge his work. Mr Columbo acknowledges it, then turns around and reports to the school "hey this kid is a 3v1l h4ck3r" to get the kid who made him look bad a year ago out of his hair.
The whole thing smells like entrapment if you ask me. Just like the corporate world except if a job is this bad, at least you can quit.
I'm willing to donate $100 bucks to this kids legal defense fund. It's not much, but its all I can offer right now. Let me know where to send the check, maybe the rest of us
--Toq
I think there is more to this then we're allowing. Many of us have raised Cain about the fact that we "leave our rights at the door" when we (as students) enter a public school. This is because the school takes on the role of the guardian from the moment the student walks in the door to the moment the student gets home. While certain legal parentheticals exist in this, thereby creating minor exceptions to this rule (corporal punishment for example) the vast majority of the schools authority derives from this basic assumption
The teacher is an employee of the school and the school system. His role is also that of a guardian. While there are examples of teachers smoking up with their students and numerous other breaches of protocol within nations schools, these are pretty universaly reguarded as a "Bad Thing"(tm).
All in all, the teacher does assume responcibility for the control he has over his students and for the instructions he gives to his students. High School students are (for the most part) under the age of 18. Consequently we do not expect them to have as sophisticated a sence of right and wrong as we expect from adults. Hence we try them as minors, not adults, in a court of law. The same applies here, the teacher does, to a certain degree, set down the moral standards. This is doubly so in a moral question as complicated as computer security (we all agree that murder is, no pun intended, pretty cut and dry?).
Lastly, we must take into account the legalities of the entire question. Did the student do any damage? No. Did the student access any files he was not supposed to read or in any way breach confidentiality? No. Is legal action being pressed against the student? Not as far as we know. All that's happened is the kid is suspended. In short, the school is enforcing its rules and regulations on a student. However, the student was told, by a representitive of the school, that his actions were within the scope of his course and were not condemned by the school.
How is this different than a store owner saying "Oh, you can have that, its free" and then calling the cops as soon as you walk out the door with it, accusing you of shoplifting?
Bottom line, the teacher screwed up. His actions were totaly unprofessional and demonstrate a real lack of forthought. He should be fired immediately. The student's suspension should be revoked without further delay, and the school should issue a formal appology, both to the student and the student body as a whole.
When the system values itself above the needs and rights of those it serves it is corrupt and earns the distrust and contempt of its masters.
Yea my spelling is wretched. Deal with it.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
'sounds to me like you may still have some learning to do.
Yes, it's great to be smug about how much money you're making, but did you ever stop to consider that you're really not worth that? I mean, "to society". Your inflated wage is a product of market dynamics, skilled computer workers are in short supply, so basically, if a person can turn on a computer, they can have a job. The supply of people who are skilled such as you (and I'm not disputing your skill/talent/intelligence - whatever), is much smaller than the demand.
This is the same exact reason why the RIAA can charge 20 fucking bucks for a CD that costs 50 cents to manufacture. (only they artificially constrain the supply). Perhaps the supply of skilled workers is somewhat artificially constrained (although I'm a vocal opponent of increasing H1-B visas). But in that analogy, that makes you no better as a net admin than n*sync is as musicians.
If the market changes, without a HS diploma, you are well and truly fucked. Supply does seem to be guaranteed to be short, even with the corporate lapdog congress increasing H1-B caps - but you don't know for a fact that *demand* is going to stay high.
There is a buttload of EXPERIENCED sysadmins out there, with decades of Unix experience, engineering degrees, etc. Right now, you're taking advantage of a system that permits a company to exist on a rediculously inflated market cap from a starry-eyed stock market. With lots of market cap, they can get lots of credit to buy fancy web servers, and hire high school dropouts for six figures. But as the economy slows, (debatable) and their market cap drops (that's indisputable, have you checked NASDAQ lately?), it's going to be harder for banks to justify credit to these companies, and as they default when they have no revenue to show for it, their payroll will be scrutinized.
In other words, to quote Vader "don't be too proud of this technological marvel you've created - the power to destroy a planet pales in comparison to the Force" (that is, market Force).
You are wise to "grab your share" before the market drops out - but make sure you arrange things so that you can KEEP it. And stop spending your nights at raves, because you just may find that someday, you're looking for the same job as a college graduate. Finish school and get that degree.
What has education become? A pile of shit. I do not dispute that. Don't you know that it has always been that? But at the top of that pile of shit is a piece of paper - which comes in handy when you need to wipe your ass.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I am a comp.sci teacher, and you just cannot cut today's students short. After a few months of intensive class, I had students sniffing my POP mail and cracking my SMB password with l0pht. Maybe not the most challenging tasks, but it just goes to prove that us teachers should "put our money where our mouth is".
As a teacher, if I dare my students, I should be able to live up to the consequences.
Well, this now proves that most teachers do not know the full potential of their students, if this was a decent comp. teacher he would of noticed the tell tale signs of a hacker, you know, the backwards cap, baggy clothes, copy of 2600, skating around on rollerblades with a microcassete redbox, always talking about his date with acid burn.
Obviously, this is another example of a teacher feeling dumb when proven wrong. Even if the teacher was joking this implanted the idea in the students heads. I think if the student is to be reprimanded the teacher should be also. The student should get an automatic A for the semester and start teaching the course himself.
If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't working hard enough.
Unfortunately, most high school teachers and staff do not understand when they have bright kids who know what they want to do in life and do it. Often times they tend to punish them for it.
However gloating about your success in your career doesn't mean anything above them. And if you are talking about college teachers I know one who would put you to shame (He's in a special niche, played his cards right and owns a lotus and a ferrari.)
The ironic thing, in my school everytime I rooted the servers they just asked me how I did it so they could patch it and let me on my way -- I earned a lot of respect from the computer department in my high school because of my maturity through everything. Maybe you should look at the actions of you - an aid is nothing, they mean jack. You should take the responsibility to talk to admins about it, as they are the final word.
You were not authorized to gain that access from someone who was capable of authorizing you -- therefor you were punished accordingly. Don't bitch about how unfair the system is if you aren't being fair with it.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
- The teacher was in class giving this challenge.
- The teacher was seen by the student as being a voice of authority and acting as a representative of the school.
- Other students in the class heard what the teacher had said and interpreted it in exactly the same way as the student in question.
Given these three points, the student should be walking away scot-free. Here's an appropriate analogy. A bank manager is giving a seminar about the security of his bank and during this seminar, he says that the alarm company servicing that bank is so confident in their security that it will reward anyone who can disable the alarm system from inside the bank. He further challenges the seminar attendees to do just that and says that he wants a cut of the reward if they can do it, but that he doubts anyone can. Then, when someone who attended the seminar actually does what he chellenged them to do, he says that he was just kidding about the whole thingThe problem in the story is that the representative of the bank is acting in an official capacity as a bank official, and it could be fairly and successfully argued that anything he ways about his bank is said with the full weight and authority of his position. The same principle works for the school teacher. When a teacher speaks, it is with the full authority of the school, and the school district. That's how they can at least attempt to keep discipline, set grades, and make standards for the grades they do give, set curricula, etc.
AFAIK, the teacher screwed the pooch here by making a challenge to his students without the authority to follow-through correctly. It's not the students' fault if the teacher overstepped his bounds. They had no way of knowing he wasn't serious, and that he could keep them immune from harm, as he seems to have implied in his challenge (i.e. you'll get a reward and extra credit. That's a reward, not a punishment.).
That's my take on it, anyhow.
-Jimmie
Something eerily similar happened to me once, actually. A teachers aide knew I was somewhat knowledgable about their network, and asked me if I thought a determined student could reak havoc on their systems. I told him I could demonstrate just the kind of havoc he could expect, and he asked me to show him. Using a silly NT4 bug that l0pht exploited and publicized, I gained rwx access on all the shares drives in the district (they were all using the same ancient domain controller). Long story short, it set off some serious flags with the admins, and although I didn't modify or destroy any data, I was brought in front of the ruling principal on charges of "Violating the student handbook's computer code and willfully gaining access to unauthorized resources". Even with the testimony of the teacher and teacher's aide, who confirmed I was performing a responsible security audit, I was convicted and sentanced to a two day term out-of-school. That was about the time I realized how much I hated the school system. I dropped out of high-school about a year later (and I'm making more money now as a 17 year old Sysadmin than any of my teachers ever have or will).
# wrote sig.txt, 23 lines, 31337 chars
The same principle applies though. The teacher was in a position of authority over the student. The teacher works for the local government (unless it was a private school). The teacher basically lied to a group of students and challenged them to do something. The students had no reason to believe that he didn't have the authority to let them do it. Then, when one does it, the teacher turns him in to the police for it. Sounds like entrapment to me.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If the student committed a crime, then the teacher, and the software company incited the commission of a crime. If the teacher asked the students to commit a crime, could it not be conspiracy?
Now, on the other hand, since the teacher is an employee of the school the student was authorized by the school. The student may have believed that the teacher had the authority, maybe he is due the money from the school system.
An interesting can of worms.
Fight Spammers!
During my sophomore year of HS i bypassed security on our school's Novell Netware network so I could install Dune II and play it from any location. A (former) friend was playing and got caught, instantly screaming "DEREK DID IT!" to our librarian.
I got 2 days suspension and computer privilages revoked for the rest of the year, and thought I was being sh1t on. (I was told I was being made an example off) If this had happened today, I'd have been arrested for the computer equivilent of sneaking a gameboy into class.
It just goes to show the power of ignorance and how easily fear can induce witchhunts.
It's our job to help educate people if we ever want this to change. It can be done, and we can help by easing fears by becoming part of the defense. I did exactly that as part of my "plea-bargian", and the following 2 years I was hired to help manage the ever-increasing district computer network.
http://kered.org
> "He gave them a challenge, probably thinking they couldn't do it and didn't think of the ramifications of what might happen if they did do it."
Reminds me of last weeks South Park. Kyle wanted to go to a concert, but was told he'd have to clean his room, shovel the driveway, and end Communism in Cuba. When Castro announced that a little boy in South Park convinced him to end communism, his parents said he still couldn't go to the concert.
I think the kid should not only have the suspension lifted, I also think the teacher should pay the kid the reward that he was promised.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
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further info from the website (may be old):
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