Felony Charges For H.S. Hacking

jayrtfm writes "Last year the Kurtztown Area High School approved a program which gave every student an iBook. Now 13 students face felony charges for violating the district's usage policy." From the article: "Shrawder said the secret password '50Trexler,' was widely-known among the student body and distributed early in the school year. It allowed between 80 and 100 students to reconfigure their laptops, he said. The more computer-savvy students began to disable the administrations' ability to spy on the students' computer use. For others, it became a game, trying to outsmart the administration and compete with fellow students who held the secret, Shrawder said."

Comments

Lets get the facts straight

[LogicX]

This news was also reported in the Reading Eagle/Reading Times.

In that article, it was said that the students were accessing porn sites, and HAD infact hacked the administrative network.

However, living in this area, I feel it necessary to point out that the papers around here can't handle technical articles, and and usually get the facts wrong. For all we know, they got the admin pass, and disabled the proxy (which was likely the n2h2 Bess Proxy), and all of this is being blown out of proportion.
Once more facts become clear, maybe we'll learn why the rest of the 80-100 students weren't charged.

I attended and worked IT for Conrad Weiser Area School District which is about 20 minutes away from Kutztown, where we had the BCIU come in to do a lot of work on machines. The BCIU is clueless, and security is their lowest priority. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the BCIU worked with Kutztown High to setup this network, making it all the easier for these kids.
Also, here are the nyud mirrors of the links:
FAQ
Kutztown Area Patriot Article
Laptop Initiative

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

As a high-school senior who's managed to avoid getting in trouble for computer stuff, I'd like to share my experience.

If you want to bypass any restrictions, find out if the teachers mind. Many times they won't. (I was once asked to send an e-mail from school, and our school filters block all webmail..or at least they think they do.)

If you end up doing something that you think they won't mind but they do, as soon as they say something, apologize, and stop doing that. And it helps to show yourself as a white hat ahead of time, so they know you're not solely trying to break their security.

If you're doing something that you know they mind, reconsider why. Is this something you can't do more safely from home, or from a public library or Internet café?

If you're looking up porn from school, you're a ****ing idiot. Same goes if you're breaking into important stuff for the fun of it.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Curtman]

"Apparently they are relying on the fact of the lack of (not the 'inability to create') viruses for the Mac OS as their safe guard against this problem..."

This was likely told to them by the sales rep. I worked at a school division here which will remain nameless, and this was widely believed to be true. I spent hours upon hours attempting to convince our admin of this, but alas I was just a junior.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[nkh]

If you want to bypass any restrictions, find out if the teachers mind. Many times they won't.

And they won't mind either if they don't understand what you want to do. The problem comes when they understand what you told them and it's too late. You'll be the only one who "touched the computer", you're the only one who "knows how it works": you're responsible. I suggest that you ask for some kind of paper signed by a teacher before doing anything. I know I'm too much paranoid but it's always safe when you have a physical proof to show when something bad happens.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem comes when they understand what you told them and it's too late. You'll be the only one who "touched the computer", you're the only one who "knows how it works": you're responsible.

That happens in the corporate world as well. As the network engineer at my previous job, I pointed out an issue with Outlook and Exchange or just about any mail system for that matter but the problem is compounded by Outlook using friendly names and not showing the header, how easy it was to send a email as anyone to anyone and how Outlook masked the true email address by only showing the nice name in the from field (Doe, John instead of jdoe@company.com or even worse how it would show Doe, John but had a real address of not_really_jdoe@somewebmail.com). See, many people there thought the only way that was possible was via the send on behalf of option that Exchange has. Well, SMTP is SMTP regardless of MS's implementation on top of that for sending on behalf of permissions. Anyway... We had an incedent of that exact thing and I was called to the table to "re explain" how that could happen but the questions were geared toward ME and the content of the offending mail from and to someone that I had no knowledge of at all, not the general technical aspects of how that was possible. Bottom line, I was the major suspect.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Durandal64]

Back in my senior year of high school (wow, 4 years already), we were doing a stock market competition in my government class. We used some sort of website portal, and my partner and I were actually doing fairly well. This was at a time when nVidia stock was shooting way up, so we were buying it. But we both forgot the password to our account over Christmas break and wanted to get in.

So I got wise and spoofed an e-mail to the administrator of the system (can't remember how I got the guy's e-mail address), forging the header to look like it was from my teacher. I (posing as the teacher) told him that a couple students had lost their password, and I needed it e-mailed to a hotmail account I'd set up. I put in some excuse about how I was going to be on the road and unable to check my regular e-mail address. This was actually true. My teacher told us he wouldn't be able to check his e-mails during the break because he was going to Colorado or something.

The guy bought it. He sent my password to the Hotmail account I'd set up. Not only had he sent my password, though. He'd sent everyone else's too. And to make matters worse, he'd CC'ed it to the teacher's real account ... with the quoted text from my forged e-mail. Wonderful. I was in deep shit.

So there was no way out. My name was on the original e-mail, and it wouldn't take a genius to figure out what happened. So I copped to it. I e-mailed my teacher, explaining the whole thing, and waited the entire break. I got to class, and my teacher just told me, "Got your e-mail. It's cool." And that was it.

I risked a whole hell of a lot to save some time for a stupid game. And I got lucky that my teacher was merciful. The worst part is that I was so set on going the 1337 route that I never considered that, with the administrator's e-mail, I could've just requested my password as myself!

So I got a free lesson there. In short, I agree with you. Teenagers don't listen to this kind of stuff though, because of course, it'll never happen to them. And if it does, they'll get lucky like me. Good thing the law doesn't hold minors accountable for their decisions.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Anonymous Coward]

HIgh school student, asking a teacher to sign something that gives them permission bypass? This is going to happen anywhere, ever?

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

As sibling AC mentioned, of course nobody's going to sign for me to go against the official rules. That's why I'm always sure to do whatever I do in the lab of a teacher who knows me and knows that I'm white hat (and knows enough about computers to understand the gist of what I'm doing), and I always prevent too much evidence from leaving the lab to the hands of someone who doesn't know me.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Austerity Empowers]

You can be more rebellious, doubly so since you're a senior.

Altering the OS of your school provided laptop is probably not illegal, depending on what exactly you do. Unless you're unleashing a virus or destroying hardware, I really doubt anything will stick. I'm guessing this is the kind of thing the ACLU would help you with if you actually got in trouble.

Accessing material over the internet by using existing holes in school firewalls/proxies is NOT illegal. Most of us do it all the time at work because our IT departments are insane (but leave port 80 open with a proxy to censor us...may as well just leave them all wide open). Anyway unless you are attacking their network (router, firewall, proxy) in some way, it's not illegal or even immoral.

Now hacking in to their network, changing grades, destroying machines, altering network configurations, that's all illegal, immoral and just plain mean spirited. As with any other crime however, you should absolutely not admit to anyone what you've done without the counsel of a lawyer. This goes for any crime, even a speeding ticket. You have the right to remain silent, use it. Even if they promise to let you off, bring in a lawyer. Never play around with such things, I know some honest people who thought they were doing the right thing and got it handed to them. The right thing is to remain silent.

The more money it costs to enforce idiotic network policies and excess legal entanglements, the less likely anyone is going to want to be involved with it. If it isn't actively hurting someone, then I think after this neo-fascist insanity passes, people will ignore it.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[jbplou]

Your points are well and good except for that fact there is no way your driving from Conrad Weiser highschool to Kutztown highschool in 20 minutes, there on opposite sides of Reading.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

...it's not illegal or even immoral.

They make us and our parents sign an acceptable use policy or somesuch saying that we won't so much as breathe on their routers after eating onions. I think this is enforceable as a contract since my parents signed it and the entire minor-immunity thing doesn't apply to them.

you should absolutely not admit to anyone what you've done without the counsel of a lawyer.

In one particular case a month or two ago, it didn't help much: I used the unblocked Windows file sharing to help a user edit her files from outside the computer lab. Of course she went to the teacher's classroom and explained what we did well before I got there (I had thought the teacher wouldn't mind), so pleading the fifth wasn't a viable option.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[mrjackson2000]

I've been in a similar situation, and i'll say this. If you have a few teachers on your side and maybe a friend w/ a parent on the school board you will be fine.
Almost all the stuff that i did was white hat, reinstalling windows, fixing drivers, but i knew more than the admin and that made them fear me. after everything blew over i went right back to doing that stuff for one of the labs.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Mulletproof]

Signed?! LOL! Nothing like throwing up a red flag that you're not only doing something you KNOW you shouldn't be doing, but letting the teacher know that you're looking for his ass to get nailed if it hits the fan, not yours.

I mean come on... The instant a student asks you to sign ANYTHING, loud sirens with piercing wails and flashing red lights oughta be going off in your head...Not for the fact that he's doing something wrong, but you'll be the one taking the inevitable fall.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[SpaceLifeForm]

That is a great teacher.

Thanks for sharing the story.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[robertjw]

Of course she went to the teacher's classroom and explained what we did well before I got there

Hope she made it worth your while...

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[suwain_2]

You can be more rebellious, doubly so since you're a senior.

OTOH, if you're a senior, you'd better be damned careful to not blow four years of work a few weeks before you graduate.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Caseyscrib]

Accessing material over the internet by using existing holes in school firewalls/proxies is NOT illegal. Most of us do it all the time at work because our IT departments are insane (but leave port 80 open with a proxy to censor us...may as well just leave them all wide open). Anyway unless you are attacking their network (router, firewall, proxy) in some way, it's not illegal or even immoral.

I think most schools/workplaces setup firewalls to protect themselves from idiots who open everything arriving in their inbox. If you are smart enough to know how to exploit holes in your firewall, I think you're smart enough to not open viruses. The problem is not really you, but more-so the people you show your tricks to. For example...

If Mr. Elite Hacker finds an exploit in his company's firewall and uses it, no problem. Chances are he knew what he was doing to get there. But what happens when he shows Newbie Hacker how to accomplish the same thing? Maybe Newbie sort of knows what he's doing, but he doesn't have enough knowledge of everything and could seriously screw something up. Then if Newbie shows John Doe his trick, thats where the problems begin because John Doe doesn't have a clue what he's doing, and he's the reason the company set up security to begin with.

Now lets say a virus gets loose because of Elite's trick and John's carelessness, and the company has to shut down for the day costing them $100k. Who's fault is it? Here's a sort-of example of what I mean.

I can understand why the school would want to prevent students from hacking their laptops, but felony charges is not the way to do it. In fact, I bet if you pulled every student that hacked his own notebook aside and commended them on their l33t skillz (while explaining the seriousness of what they did), they wouldn't share their secrets, or at least be more respectful of school property. But seriously, WTF kind of policy is "don't install AIM on your computer." Use the computer for what it was made for!

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Grym]

Altering the OS of your school provided laptop is probably not illegal, depending on what exactly you do. Unless you're unleashing a virus or destroying hardware, I really doubt anything will stick. I'm guessing this is the kind of thing the ACLU would help you with if you actually got in trouble.

Exactly. Unless you actually stole/damaged things--they'd be hard-pressed actually go through the trouble of ruining your life. It's this very fact that saved me back in the day.

Back when I was a senior in highschool (Class of '02), there was a computer-geek rebellion which I, by some strange twist of fate, found myself leading. It all started when the county bought some really nice computers for the fiber optic computer lab. Some of us got the bright idea to bring in cracked copies of Quake 2, Tribes 2, Unreal Tournament, and a bunch of other games to play during lulls in the classes. Most of the teachers didn't care. In fact, one of them even used "game time" as an incentive to get his lackadaisical senior students to do their assignments--with a lot of success I might add.

Then one of the hard-nosed teachers found out and made a habit of deleting the games. Of course, this was easily overcome by making copies of the game files locally and adding a few ifexist lines to the autoexec.bat of every machine to recreate the game should it be deleted. This worked for awhile until the county computer techs were called in to "See what was wrong."

Hoping to keep games off the computers, the county bought Clean Slate, a program used to lock down pre-XP computers. On the surface, the program seemed pretty tough. *All* changes/files created were removed every time the computer was restarted and only authorized programs were allowed to run. Of course, the BIOS was set as HD first to prevent bootdisking. The program was a huge hassle to both students and teachers alike.

This was first overcome by: 1) corrupting/resetting the BIOS 2)bootdisking in 3) REMing out the relevant lines in the autoexec and windows startup files. This entire process took approximately 20 seconds once you got good at it. And we did get good at it--there were over 300 computers in the school and every computer was unlocked (oftentimes the same day it was locked down). Unlocked computers were set with a blue background to indicate that they were fixed.

Eventually we wised up and just installed a keylogger on one of the computers scheduled to be locked down. Sure enough, you had to type in the password every time you installed the software. With the password (which worked throughout the school), many people actually used Clean Slate to protect the games from being deleted--which was just beautiful.

Figuring out what we were doing, they started to Norton Ghost the computers so that a direct install and password entry was not required. They also correctly configured Clean Slate so the BIOS couldn't be so easily corrupted. This too was eventually circumvented when we found out that Clean Slate is unable to apply its file protections to Novell Netware shared drives. If worse came to worse, and you had enough alone-time with the computer, you could always remove the case and reset the BIOS password with the pin.

Throughout this whole process, there was one rule among those involved: DO NOT DAMAGE THE COMPUTERS. Do not delete the Clean Slate files--only disable them. Do not put porn, ect. on the computers.

This turned out to be our saving grace. Eventually the computer technicians got fed up with our school. The network usage for our school was something like 30 times other schools in the county. Of course, all of this was occurring when the county was assuring the state that its computers would be ready for the new computer-based Standard of Learning (SOLs) tests. Bad timing. Entire meetings of the county school board were apparently based upon the

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[LogicX]

You're probably right -- my estimating is a bit off, because in my mind I was thinking 20 minutes from my home, which is in Conrad Weiser's district, but closer to KU.

Anyway -- Mapquest says 36 minutes, which would be a little shorter if you took backroads to get on 222 instead of going through Sinking Spring/Wyomissing.

Finally you can take Park Rd before you get into the traffic jam right there before 222 intersects with 73, hop back onto 222 at/after 73 (I suggest Schaffer Rd) -- saving yourself yet another 5 minutes or more.

Give it a try!

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Austerity Empowers]

Well don't mess with their routers, even without eating onions. Routers and their configurations are really their property, tampering, even to help them should only be done with permission. You should never need to mess with such things however. If you can get web access, there is a way to get full internet access without hacking anything. I've never been stopped and I'm not much of an IT person.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[ComputerSlicer23]

Quick lesson in how the law works.

You can't commit a felony by breaking a contract. You can be found in breach of contract in a civil court for breaking a contract. You go to court to have a them help figure out what the restitution for failure to comply with the contract. A lot of the times, the penalites are spelled out in the contract.

So, being charged with a felony has absolutely nothing to do with any type of paperwork you or your parents signed. In order to be charged with a crime, you have to violate a criminal law.

There are so many silly laws about computers, that I won't be shocked to find out that there is some law that could be used against someone who isn't supposed to gains administrative access to a computer.

Kirby

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Austerity Empowers]

This one is as old as the hills.

"Do you know how fast you were going?"
"Yes officer, of course."

"How fast were you going?"
(infinite viable responses)
My fav: "I was going the correct speed for the conditions."
Backup: "How fast WAS I going officer?"

Or you can stay quiet, I don't recommend that though. They seem to be able to ignore the constant stream of bullshit excuses they hear all day, but attitude may set them off. They don't want to be doing traffic duty, but they don't have the correct credentials to be stopping real crime so they're stuck on shit work.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[mpe]

Altering the OS of your school provided laptop is probably not illegal, depending on what exactly you do.

The relevent factor here is who owns the laptop. If it actually belongs to the student they can do what they like to it. Several sections of the FAQ, such as requiring to pay for insurance as a pre-condition of taking the computer off site, requring a protective bag and enforced collection at certain times of the year imply that these are not the property of the students. Instead they are school property being loaned to students. No different from text books, if you want a textbook you can deface you can buy your own. Ditto with laptops.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Irashtar]

Your argument is screwy. From the FAQ.

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

See? nothing to worry about!

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Austerity Empowers]

I think I did not attend my last 3 months of high school, totally flaked on 2 "required' projects and basically disappeared (I was hand coding the mandelbrot set in assembly using some VESA book I found. It was quite hard to get info about the FPU so it was sorta trial and error). I may have showed up once or twice I can't recall, it was a busy period.

So my GPA went from 4.0 to 3.65 or some nonsense (Amazing how 8 Fs in the last quarter can really make a difference!). Didn't seem to affect anything, it's expensive for colleges to refuse admission they already gave you (it's hard for them to go as people they've already rejected), and high schools can't really hold you back. All those lame threats they make are really just that. Anyway no one checks, it goes right in there with your permanent record.

I'd be more concerned about getting stuck with criminal charges right as you turn 18. That's nasty and really can affect you even if it doesn't stick.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Austerity Empowers]

There are arguments about people who install linux on such equipment qualifies for "defacement" of property. I've worked at two companies where some IT manager tried that. I don't think anyone wants to try to make that case.

If you break hardware then they can argue you've hurt them. If you modify software, it's hard for them to show damages. They're going to have to wipe and ghost the system anyhow for the next user. What have you done that has hurt their ability to re-use the system?

Same with insurance, it'd be really hard to get away with that for long although in that case they have YOUR money, so you have to go fight to get it back. Still, class action suits have a way of happening and people have no patience with schools acting aggressively.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Anamanaman]

Ummm.. Laptops are fundamentally different than books. You can easily reinstall a laptop OS to like new state (just put in the manufacturer restore CD).

If the retards at the school board didnt want kids to explore and learn about how systems work, why would they give them laptops?

If kids were opening up the laptop and drawing on pieces of hardware, I'd tend to agree that they should probably pay for them.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[KidHash]

Not at all

I've got signed permission from my teacher before performing any pen-testing. Would you pentest at a company before signing a contract with them? No

What it means is that if something breaks, or you do find something, you've covered your back - if a teacher won't sign something, then it's because they don't have your back. If that's the case, don't do it...

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[cayenne8]

:And they won't mind either if they don't understand what you want to do. The problem comes when they understand what you told them and it's too late. You'll be the only one who "touched the computer", you're the only one who "knows how it works": you're responsible. I suggest that you ask for some kind of paper signed by a teacher before doing anything. I know I'm too much paranoid but it's always safe when you have a physical proof to show when something bad happens.

Thing is...these were HS student...if they were under 18.....how were they charged for a felony.? Hell, even if they were over 18...this is High School....they are kids just playing around like kids do. Do they deserver even being charged with a FELONY which will follow them and almost destroy their lives for the rest of their YOUNG lives.

Geez...this is young person stuff. Unless they do real harm....don't ruin their lives...

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[beren12]

I had a similar experience, back in '00. I was one of the few people who excelled at computers all throughout high school, and my teachers knew it. I was often helping them out of some jam or another.

The Library (hah) staff did not like me, because I wouldn't do their bidding. That's also where the main (Novell 4!) server was and things were stupidly locked down.

There were a few of us that made a website for the school (after I got bored of doing it myself). We knew the admin password for the network (admin). Damn, he was a really, really lousy admin. We helped keep things running a little smoother than he could.

Senior year, some other genius also guessed this amazingly secure password and started to have some fun. He made himself a few admin accounts, and played with teachers files...after he was bored of that, he decided to take down the network. He locked it so it would only boot from cd, and corrupted novell somehow, and it took the "admin" over a week to get it working correctly. I believe the kid was eventually suspended, or at least the next year he was 600 mi away living with his dad :-)

Because the staff feared people with more knowledge then they had, I was banned from using the library the last 3-4 months of my senior year of high school. This included the TV studio, where I would take refuge from bad sub teachers and work on electronics projects and watch TV. I was never charged with any wrongdoing, it was just because I had the ability to learn to do those things and I was in the library the day it went down (but hours after it was down!)

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[nuklearfusion]

HIgh school student, asking a teacher to sign something that gives them permission bypass? This is going to happen anywhere, ever?

although i did not get anything signed, my high school admin actually asked me to hack through the security (a couple of times, too.) imagine her surprise when i brought up the command prompt, regedit, and some others in an instant :) of course, i never abused my abilities and i did have the trust of the admins before hand.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[cayenne8]

"Oh man, I just had a revelation. When the cop asks you if you know what speed you were going, responding is effectively a confession."

I was talking to a lawyer the other day over a meal. Asking 'hypothetically', if you were pulled over, and you'd had a few to drink. What to do. He said, if you're really drunk...don't say a work. Just Hold your hands out for the cuffs. If you're plowed...they're gonna take you in no matter what. The 'tests' they give you...sobriety ones, are nothing more that a means to gather evidence against you. And also, this does depend on the law in your state.....refuse to take any breathalizer, or blood tests. Sure...depending on the laws of your state...you may get your license suspended for 6 mos to a year...but, at least you won't get a DWI. And hell...most of the time..you can get special permits to let you drive to/from work and grocery store on those 'convictions'.

Anyway, just an extreme example to let you know.....NEVER talk to the cops or submit to tests you do not need to without a lawyer. Use the 'right to remain silent'....it will generally help you in the long run on most any charge.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Skidge]

Wow, this is a good reason why they should limit the use of computers in schools. There's really no need to have a a bunch of networked computers in a high school that I can see. Is there much benefit that can outweigh the time, effort and money spent to deal with kids who flaunt network security like this? I'm sure they don't go to the trouble to give them all a "release of teenage angst."

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[russ_allegro]

I don't know if they really did look at porn or not. I remember back in my highschools days, a friend of mine and I were in a qbasic class, we went to the dos prompt and saw a novell network utility to echo to all the computers. My friend ran the utility saying something like "hello". Apprently they were very mad about that. He was accused of misusing the computers and looking at porn. We had no idea were they got the porn thing but they seemed to stick to their story.

It seems the more a administrator doesn't understand about something the bigger the punishment is. You can punch another student in the face and only be out of school for three days. Mess with a computer and you face a felony and expolsion.

A place that is meant for learning, when it comes to the computer the school doesn't want you to experiment(learn) anything. Only do what we tell you to and don't go trying to learn on your own. It is total BS and I hate to see it when things like this happen.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[flink]

You most certainly can get charged with a felony as a minor. Examples include possesion of drugs, gaffitti (no shit), fucking with mailboxes, etc. For the most part, you can get your record expunged when you turn 18. I have friends who've copped to the above and it didn't ruin their lives, they got a suspended sentence, paid some fines, maybe did some community service, and they're perfectly fine now. Of course, it's better if you don't get caught...

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[FredMenace]

Why lock the damn things down in the first place? The people who should be charged with a crime are the idiots trying to interfere with the kids learning constructive skills. Lock down the servers and administrative files, but let the kids do with the individual computers what they will, other than downloading/storing porn or illegal materials, launching cyberattacks, etc. So long as they still do all their schoolwork etc., what's the harm?

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[MPHellwig]

Well I am the network administrator on a high-school and the most effective solution to prevent damaging of the systems was to educate the *TEACHERS*.

Besides that, the student geeks on my school are mostly gamers and by allowing every 2 to 3 month a school-only lan party they are quit carefull these days on "their" hardware. Of course I get asked alot of times what the Administrator password is, I always respond that I would tell them what it was last week. To be honest I don't know the Administrator password, I blocked that account name ages ago....

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[balloonpup]

No such thing as swear words on Slashdot I don't think?

Sure there are. I can think of three: Goatse, Tubgirl and Lemonparty. They don't require you * them out, though. Simply not giving them an anchor is all they ask...

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Nogami_Saeko]

I suggest using "Deep Freeze" instead for locking-up lab computers so they reset-on-reboot. It's pretty solid software - and fairly difficult to remove afaik.

The network version also allows locking/unlocking/monitoring over the network, and you can generate 1-time codes for workstation access so people won't be able to unfreeze even if they snag the password with a keylogger of some sort.

I've heard that it does interesting things to the boot record so that if deep freeze doesn't boot the system (ie: you try and bypass with a floppy or other bootable media), the harddrives aren't readable (unconfirmed).

N.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Seigen]

Some admins at college are reasonable, and some well you just don't want to deal with and to be honest sometimes not dealing with certain types of people is the best way to get along.

Basically I never used a school computer other than to check my mail or do something I couldn't do easier at home. It wasn't worth the hassle and aggravation of dealing with systems that were put together so as not to be messed with. Also if you changed something in the one private lab I, in theory, worked in then you had to possibly deal with how that change would affect everyone else in the lab, and get it approved in triplicate, etc, etc.

I'd far rather be responsible for my own hardware whenever possible, even if that means buying my own, or dealing with substandard junk. That way all the IT guys need to do is register a MAC address. If they have a problem with that system well they can find the network jack.

Computers are reasonably cheap and getting cheaper. If you need a computer that does something your own doesn't use VNC or something to port your display to whatever machine your on. That way you don't need to install anything and you can just run a single exe file from the desktop. If the rare case where you have to print something, well if its linux you can print to a postscript file, convert to a pdf and ftp it wherever.

Note, I think VNC may have some security issues to be aware of so its probably better to have two applications. Putty to login to a linux box and start VNC only when its really needed, and of course VNC so you can get work done at a Windows PC. Of course, its possible that some computer admins would even consider that unnacceptable in which case well I've no clue.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[jwdb]

and HAD infact hacked the administrative network.

Sorry, but they hadn't. The article clearly stated that although they had the administrator password and had removed the access restrictions on their own computer, at no time was the central server in danger.

Jw

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Hobbes897]

My high school used Deep Freeze (back in '03) to keep the students from tampering with the machines too much. For the most part I didn't mind it (I lost several hundred words of homework because of crashes/reboots, but no biggie). It seemed like a reasonable balance between security and productivity. The physics teacher (it was a small school) had long ago put the quake II install files in a safe place for any student to access them and often used it as an incentive for us to finish our work in class instead of studying for some other subject. Then it was a quick reboot and the machine was ready for the next class.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[The Clockwork Troll]

You're full of crap. You totally sent that e-mail and you are SO fired.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[andreMA]

If you're at all representative of your age cohort, I weep for the future of America.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[sjames]

They make us and our parents sign an acceptable use policy or somesuch saying that we won't so much as breathe on their routers after eating onions. I think this is enforceable as a contract since my parents signed it and the entire minor-immunity thing doesn't apply to them.

That might not even be construed as a legal contract. What were you and your parents specifically promised in return for signing? Was it compulsory or framed as such?

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[raju1kabir]

Anyway, we were all learning to program and one of the more savvy programmers wrote a program to calculate PI and store the results to the HD. Once he finally got it working he wanted to try to run it on the server as a benchmark. Well, we were all new to programming and it turned out that the program used an infinite loop and wrote directly to the HD. Yes, that's right, it accessed the HD directly, on the hardware level.

I call BS. This is the most implausible story I've ever read in all my long years of reading people's stupid made-up stories on Slashdot.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Grym]

You didn't happen to go to TJHSST in Alexandria, Virginia...now did you? Maybe I'm seeing things cause it's early on a Saturday morning, but I'm Jefferson '03 and what you're describing sounds a hell of a lot like TJ (not to mention that VA SOL reference).

No. I went to Graham High School, a smaller highschool (~550 students) in Tazewell county in Southwestern Virginia.

But, interestingly enough, I do remember hearing about TJ's computer problems. The issue came up during a mock vote at the state-wide model general assembly. If I remember correctly the school gave out laptops to kids (elitest NOVA scum! =) and then was shocked that people disabled the security. Funny stuff--and very much like the article.

-Grym

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[stego]

if they were under 18.....how were they charged for a felony?

I worked in a classroom in a school system that provides iBooks to all middle and high school students. My students had no interest in really exploring their computers, to my dismay, but they did rack up a number felony charges for drugs, guns, and assault.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[CastrTroy]

What? I'm confused. How did the administrator know the passwords? Any password system worth its salt (pardon the pun) will never store passwords. If your account is used for something illegal, there's always reasonable doubt, because apparently someone else has access to the password, even if you try to keep it secret.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[dnoyeb]

As a parent, i know what kind of obstacles to throw in the way of my child. Im sure 'hacking' these laptops required research and work. What more could you ask for from high school students?

Why can't the teachers plan this sort of thing?

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[shaitand]

Your record is NEVER really expunged. If you ever find yourself in court again they will know about your previous record. The military also requires access to your minor record.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[aklix]

The students actually have to get a paper signed if they are going to work in the "tech support work study" or whatever it's called. It basically says you may not abuse your administrative privliges blah blah." My school is very illiterate with computers. You used to be able to netsend everyone in the network. Now if you do it they run in "OK who's computer X12." Of coarse most of the student body already knows how to change the computer name.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[agraupe]

Yeah, in exchange for signing it, you get to use the school computers. Theoretically, you *could* refuse to sign, but it would mean that you couldn't use the computers, which is an option most students aren't willing to take.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[ibennetch]

And let me just say that Bess is completely annoying. I went to ELCO (which is another 20 minutes away from Kutztown past the parent's alma mater of Conrad Weiser) and then did a little computer work there (at ELCO) for a few years and Bess was always a step ahead of actual genuine student research. Valid sites were blocked, while some porn sites were not. Very frustrating, even to the teachers in whose classes we were doing the reports (because we'd show them this useful and informative page located on a reputable server that was blocked). Hopefully it's improved since then.

Here's a Reading-Eagle article about this.

By the way, looking at porn while one is at school is just stupid. Unlocking a computer that you've been given for nine months...not so stupid. What's it matter to the school district, it's not like they had sensative files on the laptops...sure, keep the network secure, but if getting admin access to a laptop equals admin network access, they've got more problems. But yes, hacking the network and doing illegal things on the school network is dumb.

By the way, I'm a Kutztown University grad, not that it's really relevant to the story, but I did spend four years in town...it's weird to see such a small place make national news again. For the geeks: Kutztown Borough was the first community in PA to have fiber to the house. linky, another link, and Google Search.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[BitHive]

I wasn't so lucky, and I didn't even disable the Fortres software we had.

I was bored in the computer lab in high school one day so I fired up ResEdit and Photoshop 3.0 and modified the Netscape Navigator splash screen to read "Netscape Agitator". The clever lady that supervised the lab took screenshots over the network as I did this, and confronted me the next day with the evidence that I was "Hacking into Netscape." She banned me from the lab for the rest of the semester.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[stinerman]

Its always important to change the reply-to header when forging, so it goes back to you.
I've done it a few times to get back at a few people I didn't like (but always let them know it was as hoax afterwards).

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[sjames]

At the risk of being trite, IANL but:

If the use of the computers is an essential part of the provided education, then since the school is already obligated to provide it, it is not granting anything new to the parents, it is coercively threatening to renege it's existing obligation.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[hammeredpeon]

I almost got in trouble for that in high school. I was in a computer science class, and I sat at the same computer most of the time. One day, I'm pulled out of my history class to see the principal and the cs teacher. She accused me of "hacking the computer", because it wouldn't start up anymore.

I had to emphatically explain that I had no reason to do it, nobody gained anything, and that I never opened the computer, so I couldn't have fried the cpu. I got lucky, and eventually the thing blew over. Unfortunately, this shows how dumb most HS teachers/administrators are. If a computer breaks and you're in the room and you're known as a geek, you're probably fucked.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[psyon1]

*COUGH*BULLSHIT*COUGH*

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[emidln]

No worries. I was banned from my middle school computer lab my 8th grade year for managing to "hack the printer system" while I was 10 miles away attending zero-hour advanced algebra class. When they found out, they accused me of writing a virus, but since I didn't have a home computer and they logged all of their user sessions, their expert couldn't find any evidence.

I managed to get banned for something I didn't do. Well, at least I used it as motivation to learn how to "hack". Well, I've spent 6 years with Unix and now a year in embedded systems and am doing pretty well auditing code for automotive applications. The private school I work for shouldn't hope for any donations in 3 years when my salary spikes and I move from a co-op to an engineer.

Money talks, revenge with cash is loud and painful.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[mikael]

Why bother with trying to keep stuff secretly installed on the system hard disk drives? You should use an external USB 2.5" hard drive enclosure case with a good laptop drive. For around $80, you get 60 Gigabytes of portable storage you can take anywhere and plug into any Linux or Windows computer with a spare USB port.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha, I'm TJ '93, and I remember getting in trouble in the library when their stupid catalog system crashed and left me at the DOS prompt. I helpfully rebooted the system for them, and the librarian came down on me for "hacking their computer" (seeing a prompt and then a "suspiciously hasty" reboot when). Pissed me off, she was too dumb to even understand my explanation of what happened. Got off with a length lecture on not fooling around with their computers, and how "lenient" she was being in giving me a slap on the wrist.

Also caught once by Pete Morasca, dropping down to the prompt in the math labs when we were forbidden... happened to be grumbling about how obnoxious his policies were at the same time he walked up behind me... :)

A few minor incidents in the CS Lab with Don Hyatt, but most of my "hacking" incidents were on the TJ node of VaPEN, where we got our Usenet feed. It had some menu-driven system, but I'd escape out of it and fool around in Unix. They took that away, but I got around it by using vi and shelling out. Then one of my friends wrote some program which accidentally filled up their hard drive and they threatened to kick us both off, but I wrote an apology letter for him (better at smooth-talking) and we got off.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Lord Pillage]

We then had to chop up some firewood to get the one-room schoolhouse up to a comfy 20 degrees, Fahrenheit!

Don't you mean, "up to a comft dickety degrees, Fahrenheit!"

My story begins in Nineteen dickety two. We had to say "dickety" because the Kaiser had stolen our word for "twenty." I chased him down the road but gave up after dickety-six miles...

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[idonthack]

A couple guys in my Computer Science class late last year used a remote task-manager and the teacher's password (who also happened to be the Sysadmin) to install trojans on the rest of the computers in the lab, so whenever you started JCreator (the IDE we used) you'd get spiraling gay-porn popups. With sound effects.

Someone tipped off the teacher who it was. They were 17, and one of them was turning 18 over the summer.

They actually had police officers come in the classroom and arrest them (!) with handcuffs and everything. I wasn't there, so maybe it was a little exaggerated, but they weren't at school for the rest of the year.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Cylix]

Those are fine and dandy for you....

Here were mine during my HS days....

Touch every application on the network and see what it does. Also, don't tell anyone what you have figured out. Incidently, if something breaks... run far away.

Find as many logins as possible. Sit in different seats everyday. By the end of the week the teacher won't know who sat where and won't be able to match the logins to any particular person (at least the guilty person).

Find any and all inheirant weaknesses in the system and expose them for what they were. (I found several... though you never tell anyone as that would be admission of guilt... so they must be exploited repeatedly to be fixed)

Now at the time, we did not have interenet access. However, I did manage to find several riske articles in our CD-ROM based dictionary. Eventually, they decided they would have to block material they felt was too mature. (After I told 40 or so people). Jeez, 10 kids or so in each class each reading an article about vibrators and such is kinda hilarious now that I think about it.

All in all, I did some good work. Alas, I was not understood by my professors and eventually I was told to behave or my computer access would be taken away. They never did find out that I had found a minor hole in the system and was able to delete student accounts.

I look back on those days, knowing what I know now, and I think to myself; "Jesus, those guys were really shitty admin."

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[miskatonic alumnus]

If you're doing something that you know they mind, reconsider why. Is this something you can't do more safely from home, or from a public library or Internet café?

If you're looking up porn from school, you're a ****ing idiot. Same goes if you're breaking into important stuff for the fun of it.

Maybe. But I don't think that is the point. Is it reasonable and just to damage a child's future for a minor infraction? After all, children do not have all the rights, responsibilities, and protections of an adult. Childhood is the time for making (and learning from) mistakes. When are we going to get away from this puritanical witch-hunting mindset?!?

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[edwazere]

Only on Slashdot could that get a score 2.

Have you not actually met any kids, ever?
"So long as they still do all their schoolwork etc." how exactly are they going to do that after the kid in the class before completely fucked up the computer?

You think that they wouldn't? Then you're an idiot.

No one is "trying to interfere with the kids learning", we're (yes we, that's what I do) trying to provide them with the best possible LEARNING environment.

I've seen the devastation that a kid with a bit of knowledge but not a lot of sense can do to an unlocked computer.

We're there to provide computers for the kids to LEARN not to play the latest games, or surf for pr0n.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Peaceful_Patriot]

So please, if you're attending a school or a university, just remember we're trying to keep things running so you guys can learn something. It isn't a contest.

But it is a contest. Guess you've forgotten what it's like to be a kid. Unfortunately, your 'them against us' attitude is what makes it fun. I worked in the public schools and administered the computer lab for several years. I had the best luck by ignoring the harmless stuff, and recruiting the help of the geeks.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Durandal64]

I'm going on my fifth year at college. Perhaps I wasn't clear.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Durandal64]

I never said it was a good system. But the guy sent me a list of all usernames and their corresponding passwords, something I did not expect.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[llefler]

Amazing. At some time in our life, most of us have trumpeted computers in classrooms as teaching aids. It was bad enough that the result has been diversion of scarce tax dollars and distractions in the classroom. We've built a system of ignorant purchasing and a general lack of training for the teachers we supply these tools to. But now, we build an environment where we turn the students into criminals over juvenile jokes and 'inappropriate' curiosity.

If I were a parent in these school districts, I would refuse to allow my kids to have the school computers. And if there was ANY detrimental effect on their grades or education, I'd file a lawsuit. These heavy handed policies endanger the future of students in those districts.

If administators had been this ignorant when I was learning my skills, I wouldn't have worked with computers for the last 20 years. At a tech school I attended we used a system 34. I found out the hard way that you don't name a BASIC program Merge. It resulted in the system being frozen for hours while the history file filled and then printed. We also found that with the menuing tools and a set of manuals, we could get into functions we weren't intended to use. When the admin found out, instead of calling the cops he tightened security and the told us we weren't supposed to be using those functions and that he had locked us out.

When you give a child a learning tool, you don't punish them for exploring. The problem here isn't students hacking computers, it's the adults not properly supervising them. You wouldn't turn a bunch of HS students loose in the wood shop unsupervised.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[teknokracy]

Two friends of mine in high school messed about with the Novell network, giving themselves admin rights, etc etc etc. They were punished for it - their argument? They were conducting a security report for the school, which of course they were going to notify the school about AFTER the fact. I told them, if you want to help, TELL them you are going to break in, then tell the admins how you did it after the fact.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[toddestan]

If you reread his story, this was the era when Quake 2 and Unreal Tournament were the hot games, and the fastest computers came preloaded with Windows 9x. If the computers even had USB ports, they were certainly USB1.1 speeds and the OS may not of even had drivers. And 60GB drives didn't even exist.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[llefler]

If the computer is a shared resource (classroom computer), it should be reasonbly locked down to prevent one student from disrupting the education of others who need to use it. If they are personally assigned laptops, then they should be protected to reduce unnecessary tech support.

At the same time, those protections and punishments should be reasonable. If a child pulls the fire alarm to get out of a class they don't like, you don't drag them off in handcuffs.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[ScytheBlade1]

Bess....hasn't gotten much better (Stupid dog should have been a cow, hello...). It's also incredibly stupid, as 9 times out of 10, all you need is a proxy to bypass it.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[MntlChaos]

If a computer breaks and you're in the room and you're known as a geek, you're probably fucked.

Alternately, you get asked to fix it. It depends on if you're known as a white hat or a black hat.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[gmack]

I actually got banned from two of my HS computer labs for "hacking" It seems some crappy reseller who can't even be bothered to have a website. sold the school a bunch of substandard crap that just wouldn't keep it's BIOS settings.

As the most tech savy student in the school at the time the blame fell on me for removing the CMOS passwords.

I tried to explain that it was a hardware problem but they blamed me anyways.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[ibennetch]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that...for my first few years, all one had to do was disable the proxy and traffic would go our just fine. They eventually fixed that, much to the disappointment of students and faculty everywhere. I never bothered to try a different proxy server, that's an interesting idea. Have a good one

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[llefler]

If the retards at the school board didnt want kids to explore and learn about how systems work, why would they give them laptops?

Legislators and school administrators have bought into the computer industry's story that our kids won't be able to become functioning adults in today's society without computer skills, and that the only way they they can get them is to have a computer of their own. By giving students their own laptop, it somehow 'balances' the students' financial inequalities.

There is a lot of money involved. Computer manufacturers lobby hard to get money allocated to purchase their gear, schools plead poverty and parents pressure their elected officials to provide state and federal grants.

We have whole school districts that are having trouble teaching fundamentals, why are we surprised when they don't have coherent policies for managing computer technology?

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Digi-John]

This last year, I would run putty (couldn't download it, but I could run it) from my school account, log into the Linux server I had in the other room, and use smbclient to do netsend-type messages to people. I usually would set the "from" field to "God" and say something like "I know thy sins." I scared a friend of mine quite badly because she had just been discussing religion and didn't know what the message was :-). Getting around school regulations is fun!

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Digi-John]

Here's what I did last year when I needed to see something (a file or webpage) that my school's filtering software had blocked.

I have a shell account on a remote server. While at school, I would go to the putty website and click on putty.exe. I would choose to run it rather than save (which I wasn't allowed to do), then log into the remote server. I could then mirror the file or whatever onto my own personal webspace, which the school filters allowed. I used this method to watch Homestarrunner all the time, and I never got in trouble.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[civilizedINTENSITY]

violating a contract would be a civil matter, yes? what is being described is a felony...

"computer trespass"

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Seraphim_72]

a Virginian eh? I knew I liked you for a reason :)

Sera

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[extra88]

My high school used Deep Freeze (back in '03) to keep the students from tampering with the machines too much. For the most part I didn't mind it (I lost several hundred words of homework because of crashes/reboots, but no biggie).

The solution to that is to make the default saving location a thawed partition so the contents will survive reboots. The file permissions on the partition should be set to Deny Execute so it can be used for documents but not to run downloaded programs (games, keyloggers, etc.).

Since reboots won't delete the contents of the thawed partition, you need a script to run nightly to delete them, otherwise it gets to be a real mess over time.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Hobbes897]

That's a great solution, extra. However, what I found to cause the most trouble was the auto-recovery in microsoft word (I know, I've since swtiched to something more stable. Like notepad). Since we were instructed to use removable media (ie. a floppy) to save most of our data anyway this would only affect us when we failed to save every thirty seconds. Deep Freeze was not configured to leave the recovery files alone so when the systems crashed (and they did...frequently) we would be left staring at the frozen image of the work we were about to lose. The solution you propose probably could have been applied to the proper recovery files by our deputy network admin (a student, really nice guy, but overworked and not paid) but it never ended up happening.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[metamatic]

Well, I have a similar story that I can vouch for as true...

Using BBC Micro computers attached to an Amcom E-net, I discovered that it was possible to write just a few more bytes than I supposedly had allocated to me as space. My guess is that there was some sort of K=1000 vs K=1024 bug between the client and server. The interesting thing was that the free space reported for my user area on the server then wrapped around to a very large 4-byte integer (or a negative integer which was reported as a large positive one).

I was naturally curious as to whether I really now had that much disk space, so I decided to write a quick program to create a very large disk file. I ran it, and it verified that yes, I did indeed now have megabytes of disk space. (This was back in the days when a floppy disk held 100K.)

So, I deleted the file, cleaned up my disk space, and thought no more of it.

The next day I heard that the next few users' disk areas on the server had mysteriously been overwritten with random junk...

So the only major differences between my story and the one you find implausible are (a) it was a server writing directly to disk without bounds checking because of a bug; and (b) I wrote junk to the file rather than digits of pi.

Even as late as the 80s it wasn't all that uncommon for PC software to write directly to the hard disk for speed reasons. So I rate the original story "plausible".

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[ScytheBlade1]

Should that fail, just do a VPN over port 80. Works like a charm, and there's oh so little they can do about it.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Grym]

Yeah, I'm sure they were thrilled. It is nice you're wasting taxpayer's money like this. Utterly hilarioius.

Actually, I was told later by a couple of the techs that, in retrospect, they enjoyed the whole experience. It was really only the head IT administrator who was really peeved by it, and I suspect that much of that was due to the county board coming down on him. And no, he didn't lose his job.

Regardless, I never claimed that it was a responsible thing to do. I never claimed that it was the ethical thing to do (although I'm not conceding that it was unethical). It was really just an expression the natural rebellious phase that most teenagers go through. I can personally think of much worse ways that it can (and usually does) manifest itself, and do still maintain that a net good did result from the whole experience for all involved. The computers became more secure (I hear they're some of the most secure in the state school system now), (again) nobody got hurt, and those on both sides learned something. Even though I'm more mature now, if I had the chance to do it over again (knowing how it played out), I unquestionably would.

And if I were you, I wouldn't worry about the pittance lost from it either. If such a negligible amount upsets you so greatly, I suggest you take a trip to your local DMV--or any government institution, for that matter. Extra bandwidth costs and IT man-hours won't hold a candle to the level of waste that goes on with taxpayer money. I'm absolutely positive the amounts you speak of (assuming they exist--that techs weren't on salary and bandwidth wasn't a flat rate) weren't missed.

Still a piss poor excuse. You knew the right thing (not) to do, and you did it. I wouldn't let you work on ex-cons after (if) you graduate.

Then I suppose we should all be glad that a jaded malcontent such as yourself doesn't decide such things. Otherwise, I think we'd all be ex-cons. In which case, I guess I wouldn't have trouble finding work after all.

But I'd rather have that than the opposite: a world where nobody breaks any rule. What a terrible place, where nobody ever questions things (even if it turns out they're wrong) or explores their own bounds (even if it hurts the bottom-line); a place where nobody ever falters and everyone is born fully mature with a stick up their ass, for good measure.

-Grym

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[FredMenace]

If they choose to screw around rather than doing their homework, they're probably going to fail their classes, no? And if they're failing to do the required work, you focus on that. Say "do what else you want with your time, but do get your homework done." Some of them DID say that certain teachers used game playing etc. as a reward for finishing work, and that it was very effective.

Porn I can agree should be kept off those computers, and there would probably be some jousting between students and tech support over this, but the draconian lockdowns do NOTHING but taunt the kids into breaking the rules. (Even these kids were operating under self-imposed rules, such as not messing with the server, not deleting any programs, etc.)

It's the arrogance of "educators" that usually gets in the way. Once they start trying to prevent the kids from messing around a little, it can turn into a war (and a source of entertainment for the kids, as well as a distraction from their actual schoolwork), then the teachers/administrators can say "see, I told you so, they only want to fool around and distrupt things, they don't want to learn".

Regardless, I bet those kids learned more constructive skills during that schoolyear from the hacking and yes, from playing computer games (not to mention dealing with the stupidity and arrogance of the people in power), than they were likely to learn in their classes.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[jacquesm]

it was called acorn eco-net

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[metamatic]

No it wasn't. The Amcom Enet was a competitor to the Acorn Eco-net which offered superior functionality. Google for it if you don't believe me.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[mollymoo]

I though it may not be BS. People did do stuff kind of, almost, like that 15+ years ago. But then I saw the little twerp's web page. He's 16. So they must have been using a proper OS, not a BBC Micro with a 5MB hard drive. Hmm, writing your own device drivers when you're 13, 'new to programming' and can't spot an infinite loop? Bullshit.

You should check out the bullshitter's web page, make sure you follow the link to his 'myspace' to see just how cool he is. If you're too lazy here are some choice quotes:

I'm a ninja with 1337 skills. I hate hippies and liberals, except for the liberals I don't hate. Even though things like this (MySpace) are for moderately faggy people, I was persuaded to create one despite my lack of faggy-ness.

I am very picky when it comes to girls.

Status: Single

Your Fears: that i'll end up sucking at life

Ah well, I guess he's still got time...

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Woody77]

A LOT of academic networks (even lab networks at universities) want to have the plaintext of each user's passwords accessible to the admins. I think because A) they think it's "more secure" for them, and B) they don't know how to setup admin access for those that need it to have full access to all of the account space.

My problem with it was that it required me to come up with a disposable password, which was hard to keep track of vs. my normal password set.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Splintax]

Alright, let's see here. Time for me to tell my story. :) I attend a reasonably big and very expensive private school in Australia. We supposedly have one of the biggest computer networks in this city (which is not really that big), and in my second year of high school I discovered (with the help of some friends) a really easy-to-use exploit on the system. Basically, we all had custom Start menus (the network runs on Windows) and the Run command was disabled. Notepad wasn't one of the programs we had access to but we found a way into it; using "View Source" in IE. (Our school is still using that browser and the exploit is still possible, IIRC.) We deleted all the HTML from the window and wrote this (extremely) basic batch script, which infact is pretty useless :P @echo off echo Loading MS-DOS... cmd So it loads up cmd for you when you save it as a .bat and we basically had full command-line access. This allowed us to use NET commands and spam other people's PCs with pop-ups from the Messenger service, but later we discovered that we could telnet into the mail server. IIRC the address for the mail server was mx1.school.**.edu.au. (mx1 I think was Mail eXchange 1, the other servers were all named after Star Trek ships according to a friend (not a Trekkie myself)). We worked out the syntax for using SMTP over telnet and discovered that when using MAIL and inserting someone else's email address, the server would somehow translate that into that person's name (not familiar with mail servers, this may be related to Exchange?) and to the average user who did not have access to the headers, etc. this was indistinguishable from a legit email. Being 13 years old or around that we sent the usual emails from some strange kid to some other kid soliciting some 'fun' and all that. Unfortunately the admins somehow discovered us (don't know how really) and made us read out the somewhat obscene messages to the year co-ordinator :( The punishment we received, fortunately, wasn't a criminal conviction unlike what TFA appears to state, but I'm pretty sure the seriousness of what happened wasn't that different. We did however have a seven-hour weekend detention and I had to do about 30 hours of community service at a school for the disabled over the semester..

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Splintax]

God dammit should have previewed that. There were supposed to be breaks somewhere there. :( Fucking in-between post wait.. *sigh*

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Nyder]

you are just jealous because a teenager is smarter then you, the Network Admin.

life sucks, eh?

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[glitch0]

Ok, first of all, as I stated, it wasn't me that did this. My friend Saagar, who is now a Junior at Carnegie-Mellon University did.

His AIM screen name is saagar734, feel free to IM him and ask him if this story is true, he's the one who told me about it.

He told me this story, ask him about it. It might be bullshit for all I know, maybe he told me as a joke or something, but I have heard it from more people than just him at my school.

Also, who said he was writing device drivers? Who said he was using a proper OS, and not one that one of the very talented programming teachers at our school wrote?

As further proof that he exists and that he is also a very talented programmer, here's a website listing winners of a programming competition that he competed in during his attendance at my high school: link. Check out spring and fall of 2002 and look for Saagar Patel.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[edwazere]

Looks like I'm fighting a losing battle here with the moderators here, but I'm afraid you've not met any of the students that I have.

"draconian lockdowns do NOTHING but taunt the kids into breaking the rules."
Absolute bollocks I'm afraid. I've seen computer suites without locked down systems, they get trashed. Since then the same computers now have "draconian lockdowns" on them, and the only time we get problems in rooms is when we get hardware failure.

So the "NOTHING" that you talk of is actually making the computers usable for school work?

If you want to screw around on a computer, do it on your own one, not one that's paid for by tax payers and maintained by (usually) overworked and underpaid staff.

You don't seem to understand the simple premise that the teacher in the class expects the students to be doing their work, not turning all the colours in the windows settings to black, or indeed playing a game, no matter how educational YOU judge it to be. It's massively disruptive to have even one student doing something like that.

Plain and simple, (at least at the school I work at) by and large the students do not respect the equipment. That applies if the computer is locked down or not. That applies to chairs, tables, lockers, doors, partition walls, anything breakable at all.

We used to use cheap 2 quid mice, which were shite, and were more often than not smashed up very quickly. So I started using MS optical intellimice, and they're lovely - does that stop them getting smashed up? not a chance - they're harder to break so they get the wire pulled so hard that it breaks.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[agraupe]

Hmmm, that actually makes a lot of sense... I'll have to try that if I get caught playing games again and they threaten me (I don't care if YANAL).

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[sjames]

Hmmm, that actually makes a lot of sense... I'll have to try that if I get caught playing games again and they threaten me (I don't care if YANAL).

Just keep in mind, all that means is that neither you or your parents would be in breach of contract. They can still set and enforce school rules including that old favorite, "alternative instruction".

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[myov]

I'll second that as a former tech for a secondary school. Half the students at my school fit the demographic for a hacker (14-18 year old male), and teachers really didn't understand what that meant.

I had teachers login on student machines or allow students to login on staff machines (allowing keystroke loggers), teachers who couldn't remember passwords (so much for my 30 day change/3 attempt lockout policy), etc. Even with the head of IT explaining things at a staff meeting, it didn't help much.

Some of the techs didn't help either. I refused to do an admin login unless it was just imaged with a clean image. If I didn't want to reimage, I had several accounts that looked like student logins. I rotated admin access and passwords on those daily. Other techs logged in directly.

One student lost computer access for the year due to abuse and a history of problems. Administration re-instated it, however I'm not sure they completely knew the situation. I'm sure there was pressure from the parents too.

I was stuck with W98 though. If they had gone with 2K I could have recommended group policies to IT (which would have ignored them though)

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[rtb61]

It would be very doubtful that they could be charged. The were given use of the computer and they are to young to be covered by any contracts that could restrict use/abuse, as any contract could only bind the cosigner (the parent). So unless they hacked the school network they should be free and clear (and there was no physical damage done to the computer).

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Hehe, I do the same; I have sshd running on this computer at home so I can get to it from outside. If I need something, I use that method; I've just never needed stuff badly enough to bother grabbing the entire website (images and links and...).

I could set up a proxy or something, but I'm worried that they'll catch on to me and block either the putty website or (worse) my home IP. I use my home computer for transferring files and such, so I can't risk it too much.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[smyle]

I had the best luck by ignoring the harmless stuff, and recruiting the help of the geeks.

As a former school tech director myself, I agree. My first year, I used one of the school's new labs to host a LAN party on a weekend. With the geeks on my side, I doubt there was anything happening on "my network" that I didn't know about.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[jacquesm]

cool, learn a new thing every day !

I believe you, no need to drag out google.

The name was so close I'm surprised they didn't have a trademark conflict. I used to be pretty active in the BBC scene and I thought I had a good bead on all the different hardware add ons that were on the market at the time.

That was one hell of a machine, pretty much the ideal learning computer. I'm thinking (and have done some work) of building a bbc simulator under linux, but it would be pretty hard to revive the community that came with it.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Tassach]

If I were a parent in these school districts, I would refuse to allow my kids to have the school computers. And if there was ANY detrimental effect on their grades or education, I'd file a lawsuit. These heavy handed policies endanger the future of students in those districts.

I have to agree with you 100% on that.

Actually, if shit like this were happening at my son's school, I'd pull him out of there and homeschool him.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Tassach]

I've gotten around web filters by running squid on my ssh server, and then tunneling the squid port (3128, IIRC) to localhost on the filtered machine. Then, all I have to do is change the browser's proxy settings to point to localhost:3128. It's a little slow, but you can surf with near-total anonymity.

Of course if you can't change browser proxy settings, this technique won't work for you.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Golias]

Even so, anyone who signs up for the military NOW is a damn fool, and deserves what they get.

You spelled "hero" wrong, and the end of your sentence appears to be saying the wrong thing. Here, let me fix it for you.

"Even so, anyone who signs up for the military NOW is a damn hero, and deserves our gratitude and respect."

Much better.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Greedo]

I assume the teacher signed with their own pen, which had been previously tested.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Near-total anonymity? Even if you run SSH, it's still blazingly obvious that you're holding an ssh connection to your home IP address. If they see the pattern too much and they're afraid -- or if a teacher or tattletale reports you -- they'll block your home IP.

SSH is great, but most of the time my worry is not so much anonymity (hiding what I'm doing with this connection) as saving the ability to make the connection itself.

Re:Lets get the facts straight

[qw(name)]

Nice correction.

Inept school officials

[panxerox]

I guess not only information wants to be free, students do as well. What a bitch for the tyrannical albeit wussie school officials who need cops and judges to enforce school rules that they cant. Unfortunalty things have gone so far in this country that they probably will be charged and therefore destroyed.

Re:Inept school officials

[Pxtl]

I know. The school could have had just as good an effect by suspending those involved briefly and billing their parents for the board tech's time required to re-image the ibooks. Instead, they decide to jump on the "Cybercrime is teh evil!" bandwagon and go apeshit.

Re:Inept school officials

[NoImNotNineVolt]

destroyed? i've been charged with a felony as a minor and now i'm working for nasa :P

Re:Inept school officials

[Transcendent]

Same thing happened to me in HS.

Fortunately, I scared them off with a lawyer and charges were dropped.... so I ended up with a 30 day vacation from school, and still finished my senior year with a 4.5/4.0 GPA along with getting AP credit for Calc (but I didn't get to go to Florida with the FIRST team, ah well). And yes, there was an incompetent administrator of the entire district's (Novel ::shudder::) network... in which her stupidity not only let me do what I did, but further made ME look bad because the unknowing school officials believed her word.

Unfortunately for the kids in thie story, I doubt the school can be scared off at this point.

Re:Inept school officials

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Charged but not convicted I'd assume.

Felons are forbidden by law from:

Voting (in many states. In 14, including mine, Nevada, one is forever forbidden from voting. In Florida, another such state, I believe it is case law that a juvenile convicted of a felony loses the right the vote before he or she gains it - he or she is barred by law from ever gaining the right to vote - cruel, unusual and unconstitutional but still considered the law).
Holding office
Working in anyway for the government, local, state or Federal. If you run a company of your own and are a felon - your company is ineligible to bid on any project or supply any goods or services.
Owning a gun - 10 year sentence if one even tries to. 18 USC 922(g) makes it illegal and 18 USC 924(a)(2) sets the penalty.
Being bonded
Getting a good job - anyone that hires a felon can have a judgement for monetary damages against them for "negligent hiring" - the courts will then take possibly all their assets and garishee their wages for life if the judgement is big enough - yeah the person would have to harm someone - but what employer will hire a felon knowing the courts could de facto bankrupt them for life if the person who committed a (possibly minor) (possibly as a juvenile) felony kills or rapes someone.
Keeping a job - "negligent retention" law prescribes the above for failing to fire a felon.
Travel - Canada PROHIBITS felons from entering - and they are supposed to be a reasonable country. Heck, Canada forbids DUI offenders from entering. Heck, George W. Bush, sitting President of the US, is technically barred for that. Not that they'd ever enforce it in his case. (Yes, Bush's was a misdemeanor - but Canada still bars people for it, perhaps Canada was a bad example, perhaps Bush was a bad example because someone might start an off topic Bush sucks/Bush rules flamewar)
In Utah - they are forbidden from working in any operational capacity for a Certificate Authority - this will mean if a felon owns a company it can't be a CA.

I might be wrong - I hope I am - but I fear my list is incomplete, not incorrect.

Re:Inept school officials

[IdleTime]

All of what you say just underlines the fact tha USA is far from the land of "freedom". I've never heard of such additional lifetime punishments as you outline here. Where I come from, there is no "felony". Crimes are not rated and when you have served your sentence you have paid your dues and are once again a full member of society with all the rights and obligations everyne else have. What a bunch of bullshit this is.

Re:Inept school officials

[Curtman]

"What a bunch of bullshit this is."

Especially since the "purpose" of prison is supposed to be to reform the offender. Kind of puts that in perspective.

Re:Inept school officials

[NoImNotNineVolt]

indeed, i was charged with a misdemeanor (possession cds 50g, nj) and a felony (burglary in the 3rd degree, nj, originally trespassing, but when i said "i didn't see a no trespassing sign" the response i got back was "ok, cuff the lawyer. how's burglary then?"). i plea bargained down to possession and trespassing, and got off with a deferred adjudication, serving my year of probation after which the charges 'went away'. although after further legal counsel i'm told i'd still need to invest in an expungement if i wanted to 'really' get it off my record. and while even applicants for supermarket cashiering positions have to answer "have you ever been convicted of a felony" on their application, nasa posed no such question (as far as i can remember).

Re:Inept school officials

[shawn(at)fsu]

or the students could have paid by the rulz. I have no putty for people who comit a crime and don't bother to at least check to see what the punishment is. It's like darwinism of the hacker world.

Re:Inept school officials

[rilian4]

"The school could have had just as good an effect by suspending those involved briefly"

You obviously haven't spent much time w/ teenagers. I work in a high school doing IT. There are, of course, many kids in high school who would be affected by a suspension but there are more who aren't. Many many teens see a suspension as a vacation. Many times they are left home by working parents and play video games all day during the suspension. Other times, fishing trips and other outings substitute. I speak from experience.

"billing their parents for the board tech's time required to re-image the ibooks"

Now if only school administrations only had the guts to do this. This is a MUCH better idea than a felony charge for these kids. However, I have found very few school administrations willing to follow up on consequences such as this. More than likely, the kids won't end up getting charged w/ a felony but end up w/ some kind of suspension. -rilian

Re:Inept school officials

[MoneyT]

Not at all. The purpose of prison is punishment. It's getting the criminal out of society and forcing them to pay their debt to society.

Re:Inept school officials

[rbarreira]

What do you mean by "being bonded"? Can you clarify on that please?

Re:Inept school officials

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

The scary thing is they can add punishments after one commits the crime!

That is technically an "ex post facto" (adding punishment after the fact) law, which is illegal, but they weasel out of it by saying it isn't punishment, it is just aiding "public safety" by restricting "privileges" of persons with a "felony status", not punishment for a crime.

Just as if the DMV takes your license away in an administrative hearing for DUI even if you are acquitted in criminal court! What about double jeapordy? Well the admin. hearing is not "punishment".

Oh, certain sex offenders are forbidden from living within X number of feet of a school. This restriction was added retroactively. In some cases these sex offender's offenses WOULD NOT BE A CRIME IN CERTAIN OTHER STATES WITH A LOWER AGE OF CONSENT - we aren't talking offenses which are universally considered crimes - i.e. they are being told they can't live somewhere after serving their sentence whereas in certain states they couldn't get in any (legal) trouble whatsoever. People who rape 9 year old girls should be locked up forever and ever and then some - but even then - the rule of law should hold - the rule of law is need to protect us all - make true perverts get life without parole sentences - I'm against the death penalty because I don't trust the government to use it fairly - Texas loves killing people and Nevada loved killing children until the Supreme Court stopped them.

Oh, the above rules don't protect kids - even sickos can take buses, trains, cars, planes, horses or walk to the school.

Also, this sets a precedent that the gov't can say where you live, and not as punishment for a crime - it can be done "ex post facto".

Also this precedent can be extended to any crime.

Think I'm crazy, think I'm paranoid. Well...

Clark County, NV has an "order out corridor" for people convicted of drugs and prostitution!

Clark County Code 12.05.020 (drugs) and 12.08.035 (prostitution). The "Las Vegas" Strip is in Clark County but not in the City of Las Vegas, btw.

Not just for where you can live, but where you can travel to or through!

Have a speeding ticket? Lots of car crashes in your town? How about a public safety rule that says you can't live within one mile of a freeway? Passed after your conviction? Justified by saying it is too tempting to have an opportunity for severe speeding so close by.

Re:Inept school officials

[Curtman]

"Not at all. The purpose of prison is punishment. It's getting the criminal out of society and forcing them to pay their debt to society."

So revenge is the goal? Yikes. No wonder your prisons are overflowing.

Re:Inept school officials

[Kell_pt]

You comment reads like "I am American and under 16".

You see, all these troubles start at an early age. Isn't country-wide brainwashing beautiful? :)

Re:Inept school officials

[belmolis]

Bonding in this sense refers to an employer taking out insurance against the malfeasance of an employee. There are some jobs for which the ability to be bonded is a requirement. People like bank tellers and cashiers in businesses that deal with large amounts of cash are likely to be bonded. If, for instance, a bank teller steals money from the bank, the insurer who issued the bond pays compensation.

Sometimes a third party requires that certain types of employee be bonded. For instance, a company's principal insurer may require that the bank obtain bonds (from another insurer) for all of its tellers.

Re:Inept school officials

[BinaryOpty]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surety_bond

Re:Inept school officials

[b17bmbr]

cruel, unusual and unconstitutional but still considered the law.

how exactly? if you read the constitution, the "times, manners, and places" are to be determined by the states.

here's part of the 14th ammendment:

Section 2....But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

15th ammendment

Section. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

it is entirely legal and constitutional to deny voting to felons. in fact, there are many disqualifying factors. now, if you think that we've felonized damn near every crime imaginable, then I agree. that's a bigger issue, but not related to voting.

Re:Inept school officials

[BackInIraq]

Felons are forbidden by law from:

Just for sake of completeness, you'll find it extremely difficult to join the military with any felony conviction on your record. Waivers are required, and it pretty much depends if your recruiter feels you're worth spending the extra time on, and still no guarantee they'll take you. More than one and I believe it is actually impossible.

Granted, nowadays most students probably wouldn't see this as a *bad* thing, but once upon a time this was a viable option for pursuing one's future :).

And yes, I'm quite sure the list is (still) incomplete, especially if you add more state laws. Having a felony (conviction) on your record is like starting your life at the bottom of a 20-foot-deep hole with nothing but a shovel to get out. At least from what I've heard.

Re:Inept school officials

[st0rmshad0w]

That would explain a few things....

Re:Inept school officials

[Associate]

Yet, if you so much as scratch the cover or lightly mark the page of a 20+ year old textbook, you get fined enough to replace it with a brand new book. And they can withhold your diploma until you pay.

Re:Inept school officials

[SpaceLifeForm]

That's in octal I hope.

Re:Inept school officials

[ColaMan]

I have no putty for people who comit a crime

You heartless person! Criminals sometimes have to deal with broken windows,just like everyone else. Have some pity and lend them putty.

Re:Inept school officials

[AuMatar]

In school suspension plus detention. Bore them out of their minds, give em extra work, and make them stay late. Works like a charm.

Re:Inept school officials

[Bishop]

That is fucked. The law is setup to force a person convicted of a felon to a life of crime. How else are they supposed to survive?

Re:Inept school officials

[jcr]

Our prisons are overflowing because of the War on Some Drugs. It's stupid, it's evil, and the feds don't even care that the voters are sick of it.

-jcr

Re:Inept school officials

[cayenne8]

" In school suspension plus detention. Bore them out of their minds, give em extra work, and make them stay late. Works like a charm.

Sarcasm noted.

:-)

However, this does bring up something that has been bothering me. Maybe we need to make education something akin to how people describe driving. Make it a 'privilege' and not a right. So far, in schools, we seem to be driving it down to the lowest level, so that the lowest skilled, and least motivated students are the baseline for the level of education in a class. Can't have anyone's self esteem wrecked can we? We have kids disrupting classes...and can spank/punish them?

Why not give everyone like 3 strikes a year to a point....and if they don't behave, channel them towards some kind of vocational program...to teach them a skill. If they blow that...well, put them into public service, with an 'out' if they change their mind and work and test out of it. The world needs its ditch diggers too....lets at least train them and get them working and earning, and not hold back those students that are able and willing to learn and exceed.

Re:Inept school officials

[mpe]

The school could have had just as good an effect by suspending those involved briefly and billing their parents for the board tech's time required to re-image the ibooks.

Assuming they could be persuaded to pay.

Instead, they decide to jump on the "Cybercrime is teh evil!" bandwagon and go apeshit.

Without inside information it's hard to know if this is the first or last approach taken. Maybe something like this did happen to the majority of the offenders, but the minority said "no way, do your worst"...

Re:Inept school officials

[Ohreally_factor]

I putty anyone less than two feet tall.

Re:Inept school officials

[Curtman]

"Our prisons are overflowing because of the War on Some Drugs."

I can see how that fits in to the category of revenge too. It is prohibition that brought about the flourishing illicit drug trade, and the ignorance of its causes don't help things. Now its become a matter of us-vs-them, and people have an attitude of wanting to punish its victims. Very evil and sad indeed.

Re:Inept school officials

[raju1kabir]

You can stuff your pity putty in the potty, Patty. Oh Lord, what have I come to?

Re:Inept school officials

[sjames]

I might be wrong - I hope I am - but I fear my list is incomplete, not incorrect.

All part of the mindlessness of 'getting tough on crime'. All it really means is that in those states, a convicted felon might as well re-offend once they get out since there's little to no chance of them becoming a productive member of society or even of making a legal living. You can't rationally cast someone out of society AND expect them to act as if they are a part of it. Any rational human being in that situation will turn to crime.

A ration al society will do its best to make sure that the penelties are somehow constructive. They should be appropriate to the crime, they should serve a restorative function for the victims of the crime. They should at least attempt to show the offender the value of living within society's laws and force them to reflect upon the harm they have done. Once over, it must be truly over and the offender should be given a chance to put what they have learned into practice by becomming once again a full member of society.

Simple warehousing away from the general population for a time and then designating them as second class citizens is hardly productive. If we truly believed that prisons were in any way corrective, we would feel no need to proactively restrict the rights of a paroled felon. As it stands, the term 'corectional facillity' is a big fat lie. Such things should be a last resort for cases where we cannot get through to a repeat offender. It should also be viewed as a failure on society's part.

Re:Inept school officials

[raju1kabir]

The world needs its ditch diggers too....

But the world doesn't need too many ditch diggers who can't balance a checkbook or read the instructions on a can of peaches.

This ain't nucular physics they's teaching in high school. This is the basic stuff you need to retain - at least some of - in order to function in most roles in society. Some people can/will learn it other ways without the benefit of school, but we can't assume these are the same people who fail to behave in the classroom.

Re:Inept school officials

[CastrTroy]

In my grade 8 class we had this big week long field trip at the end of the year. We had a points system where we each got 10 points at the start of the week, and each time we misbehaved, we lost one. If you didn't have enough points saved up by the end of the year, you didn't get to go on the trip. There was 3 or 4 students out of about 30 who didn't get to go. Students who had some high number of points got a free lunch on the teachers. This worked pretty good for the most part, and showed that good behaviour is rewarded, and that, when teachers say something, they mean business.

Re:Inept school officials

[Registered Coward v2]

Voting (in many states. In 14, including mine, Nevada, one is forever forbidden from voting. In Florida, another such state, I believe it is case law that a juvenile convicted of a felony loses the right the vote before he or she gains it - he or she is barred by law from ever gaining the right to vote - cruel, unusual and unconstitutional but still considered the law).

Actually, it is perfectly constitutional - first of all, it is not "cruel and unusual"; it's and, not or in the 7th;

plus the 14th amendment lets voting rights be curtailed because "for participation in rebellion , or other crime,".

Re:Inept school officials

[shawn(at)fsu]

Yeah I forgot to proof what I wrote.

But your right and I've changed, from now on if I have putty and I know a criminal that needs it I'll always give it out.

Re:Inept school officials

[MSZ]

They aren't. Ruling class needs only obedient sheeple.

Re:Inept school officials

[llefler]

This ain't nucular physics they's teaching in high school.

Now George, you know you aren't supposed to be posting on Slashdot. You have countries to invade. I hear Iran is still working on their nuclear weapons.

Re:Inept school officials

[raju1kabir]

Now George, you know you aren't supposed to be posting on Slashdot. You have countries to invade. I hear Iran is still working on their nuclear weapons.

Oh, those? I'm cool with them. That's why I haven't made a move on North Korea. Heck, we got a million of 'em here. It's the nucular ones that give me the heebie-jeebies.

Re:Inept school officials

[jcr]

Instead, they decide to jump on the "Cybercrime is teh evil!" bandwagon and go apeshit.

It's just one more symptom of the epidemic of Zero Common Sense in school administration. They call it "Zero Tolerance". It's the same kind of idiocy that gets kids suspended from school for having over-the-counter drugs in their posession, or expelled for pointing a finger at another kid an yelling "bang".

The only remedy is home schooling, and that's pretty damned hard for a lot of people to do.

-jcr

Re:Inept school officials

[Jerivix]

Our prisons aren't there to reform, they're there to deterr. Revenge is just a bonus. We made a choice that we'd rather try to prevent crime before it happens than stop repeat offenders, and the system shows that.

Re:Inept school officials

[Curtman]

"We made a choice that we'd rather try to prevent crime before it happens than stop repeat offenders, and the system shows that."

If anything the system shows that the system is broken. With the second highest rates of incarceration in the world, and shameful rates of recidivism, I can't imagine why you would be happy with the status quo, other than jealous pride.

Re:Inept school officials

[Jerivix]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not proud of it. Let's just be honest about the system's goals.

Of course, I have a feeling that with a bit of change to our drug laws, we'd look a lot better statistically.

Re:Inept school officials

[Curtman]

"with a bit of change to our drug laws, we'd look a lot better statistically."

Its not so much about the statistics. It's the problems that prohibition creates.

If marijuana alone was legal to grow in your own home, and severe penalties introduced for bringing it outside of your house, there would be a HUGE dent in the drug trade. People who think the drug laws keep pot out of the hands of children should visit any high school in North America, and witness the reality of the situation.

In a large part of Canada, alcohol is only sold in government run stores. When I was growing up, it was much, much more difficult to find someone to buy booze for us, than it was to walk to the smoking doors and buy some grass. A lot of the time, we would settle for the weed, because booze was so much harder to get. Many of my old friends have since moved on to harder drugs, and this is how they got drawn in to those circles.

Its a strange world we live in.

Re:Inept school officials

[SgtChaireBourne]

So revenge is the goal? Yikes. No wonder your prisons are overflowing.

They are also privatized. So profit motive is another factor in keeping the prisons over full capacity, and in making laws to ensure a steady supply of occupants.

It's stupid though. It's cheaper to send someone to a good college for a year than keep them in prison for a year, at least in the US. Yet, the taxpayers get to foot the bill for the latter and not the former which would probably improve not just the GNP, but quality of life for everyone else.

Re:Inept school officials

[xnot]

"Get tough on crime" is equivalent to desiring a mouse to get off a track, and accomplishing that end by forcing the track to move faster. What the mouse knows is how to move on the track, not how to be off the track. The mouse needs to not only be taught they how and why to be off the track, but the desire and habit needs to be created to align to that end. Otherwise the mouse is just going to climb right back on the track whenever it feels threatened.

Such is the same with any person and their habits, their unconscious mind, which is the real driver of all human activity. The unconscious doesn't understand right from wrong- it only understands what we focus on. Getting someone who committed a "crime" to do nothing but focus on their crime, and focus on their anger at being punished for their crime, is not a productive way of changing them so that they are unwilling to commit those crimes in the future. All that will happen is they will resent their fear of the law which oppresses them. It's like creating a society of a bunch of walking time bombs, ready at any moment to explode.

I just don't get it

[Pxtl]

What is it that causes legal-types to completely lose their marbles whenever anything high-tech happens? This seems roughly the equivalent of doodling in a textbook (in eraseable pencil) and sharing a Maxim magazine around in the halls. Hardly a felony.

Re:I just don't get it

[tolkienfan]

Unfortunately, under the law, accessing a computer system without authorization is a very serious crime.

And furthermore, the courts have decided that violating an acceptable use policy amounts to accessing the computer without authorization.

Worse, it is accepted within the courts that an existing "terms of use" or whatever does not have to have been read nor accepted for it to be enforceable.

It is presumed that such a policy exists, and it is the burden of the user to find and read it.

It sucks!
I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice

Re:I just don't get it

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

No, it is equivalent to physical trespass.

Physical trespass is a MISDEMEANOR.
Computer trespass is a FELONY.

Re:I just don't get it

[MillionthMonkey]

What is it that causes legal-types to completely lose their marbles whenever anything high-tech happens?

They don't know how to parlay the common sense they use in the real world to a virtual realm with which they are unfamiliar.

Plus, the professions they are in are usually dominated by "guardian" personality types. Such people tend to be comfortable with rigid interpretations of language and law, so if something falls under the rubric of "hacking" they will pigeonhole it as one specific type of behavior. Their reaction to it is determined not by the details of the behavior itself, which they may or may not understand, but the pigeonhole they have classified it into. Hacking is hacking. Hence the old saying that "the law is an ass."

When Mitnick was arrested the cops wouldn't let him have a phone. They thought he could launch nuclear missles by whistling into a phone at specific frequencies.

Re:I just don't get it

[anthony_dipierro]

This seems roughly the equivalent of doodling in a textbook (in eraseable pencil) and sharing a Maxim magazine around in the halls.

While we're making analogies, I'd say it's closer to removing a post-it note which covering up a woman's breasts in a biology textbook (in violation of school policy, of course).

Re:I just don't get it

[anthony_dipierro]

Physical trespass is a MISDEMEANOR.

Not necessarily even that. Simple trespass is a violation. Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor. Of course, breaking and entering (which is probably more analagous), is a felony.

Re:I just don't get it

[KlomDark]

Yes, it IS legal advice. Don't bullshit us, boy. You're going to jail, soon as I can get your school administrator to press charges. Don't leave town in the meantime.

Re:I just don't get it

[nomadic]

What is it that causes legal-types to completely lose their marbles whenever anything high-tech happens? This seems roughly the equivalent of doodling in a textbook (in eraseable pencil) and sharing a Maxim magazine around in the halls. Hardly a felony.

What legal types? It's the school administration that's going crazy. And it's the legislature that writes the law. If the judge doesn't toss it out, THEN you start blaming the legal people. Believe it or not lawyers aren't the cause of all society's ills.

Re:I just don't get it

[KlomDark]

Nah, it's a laptop which was specifically assigned to the student in question to be able to take home.

There's a big weird question there - Yes, it's the school's property, but it's been legally assigned to the student. (Yes, I'm sure there's a document somewhere that links the Serial Number of the laptop to the student in question.) Exactly what rights do you have or not have with a machine that you've been allowed to take home?

Instead of breaking and entering, it'd be more like entering your own legally-leased apartment through the window rather than the door. Sure, the apartment management may not like it, and may eventually kick you out (aka take away the laptop) if you keep that up, but there no way in hell you could be charged with breaking and entering into your own apartment.

Re:I just don't get it

[bladesjester]

Welcome to the fun that was unleashed by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (1986) among other pieces of legislation and hyped through the roof by the FBI and Secret Service in the late 80's and early 90's.

That sort of thing set all of the precidents for the insane rulings that you see for this now.

Re:I just don't get it

[noidentity]

Does this sort of thing apply even to WiFi clients? I was borrowing an iBook recently and to my surprise when I opened it up in my apartment I had a wireless internet connection with 500KB/sec bandwidth. Apparently this is how they're supposed to work, which is very convenient.

Re:I just don't get it

[anthony_dipierro]

Yes, it's the school's property, but it's been legally assigned to the student.

The title remains with the school, but possession is transferred to the student. It's a bailment.

Exactly what rights do you have or not have with a machine that you've been allowed to take home?

Well, you clearly only have the rights which were given to you under the terms of the agreement. But now that I think about it, one could probably argue that any violation of the agreement is not in fact a trespass but merely a breach of contract. Unfortunately, I think there is quite a bit of precedent with regard to computer trespass which would go against this, but most of it is probably related to situations where there is no actual transfer of possession.

Instead of breaking and entering, it'd be more like entering your own legally-leased apartment through the window rather than the door. Sure, the apartment management may not like it, and may eventually kick you out (aka take away the laptop) if you keep that up, but there no way in hell you could be charged with breaking and entering into your own apartment.

Well, yeah, but you wouldn't be charged with trespass either. I think there's an argument that what the students did was not computer trespass, but just a simple breach of contract, but if you're going to create an analogy between computer trespass and physical trespass, then entering a password would rise to the level of breaking and entering, in my opinion.

Re:I just don't get it

[st0rmshad0w]

Interesting, but I'd say more like a rental car, so just remember to pay for the extra insurance and total the bastard.

Re:I just don't get it

[Keith McClary]

Imagine if the laws governing apartment rentals worked like this.

They could throw you in jail for hanging your T-shirt to dry on the balcony (if that was prohibited by the fine print in your lease).

Re:I just don't get it

[st0rmshad0w]

Um, most legislatures are mostly comprised of lawyers. Just sayin...

Re:I just don't get it

[BillyBlaze]

You'll have to forgive my naive optimism, but there really ought to be a law (or rather, the lack of one). Penalties ought to correspond roughly to harm. In this case, the school let students borrow ~$1000 pieces of hardware. If a student drops his computer in a toilet, he should at worst be liable for $1000. If he scratches his name on the screen, at most $1000. If he fiddles the wrong bits on the hard drive, at the very most, $1000. Certainly jail time isn't called for, especially since it isn't in the other completely equivalent cases. I'm not saying nothing he does on the computer should be worthy of jail time (theft, fraud, kiddy porn, hacking CIA, launching nukes at Russia, etc.), but just installing software is simply causing inconvenience, and possibly breaking a contract, both of which ought to be civil offenses with liabilities limited to the cost of a new computer.

Re:I just don't get it

[QuickFox]

If that's true it makes spamming an extremely serious felony. Clearly invading people's computers with torrents of spam can never be presumed to agree with people's acceptable use policy. Every major spammer has millions of counts of felony.

Re:I just don't get it

[Kremmy]

Well, to further the line, I would think that "entering a password" to gain access is equivilent to having the key to the apartment you're entering. If you're entering a building you're not authorized to, but are doing so by unlocking the door with the key to the building, is it trespassing? Is it breaking and entering if you aren't *breaking* to enter?

Re:I just don't get it

[I_can_not_believe_I_]

This case actually has a couple of interesting points (as seen upthread), the kids are under 18, nad unable to enter into a legally binding contract, if the parents had agreed to the terms of service, they may be in trouble. This of course assumes that the parents in any way granted permission for the school to give their children laptops, access to school resources, etc. Also, as pointed out up-thread, illegal access of computers, and specifically the law they are possibly being charged under, would be very hard to apply in all but a few specific situations, assuming that no files were removed, no financial transation was impacted, and no physical damage was done.

Re:I just don't get it

[anthony_dipierro]

If you're entering a building you're not authorized to, but are doing so by unlocking the door with the key to the building, is it trespassing? Is it breaking and entering if you aren't *breaking* to enter?

Actually, yes, it is. In fact, it's breaking and entering even if the door is unlocked. Breaking and entering is "the criminal act of entering a residence or other enclosed property through the slightest amount of force (even pushing open a door), without authorization." The key is that it's an enclosed property, and it's obvious that you're not supposed to be inside it, as opposed to just cutting across someone's lawn, or swimming in a pool with a "no trespassing" sign.

Re:I just don't get it

[sjames]

When Mitnick was arrested the cops wouldn't let him have a phone. They thought he could launch nuclear missles by whistling into a phone at specific frequencies.

Unfortunatly, Such people shouldn't be allowed within a mile of law enforcement involving computers. I sincerely hope they are taunted by people whistling the theme to "Great White North" into payphones :-)

In-house punishments please!

[garcia]

"I knew it was against school policy," he said. "But I didn't know it was a felony."

Of course they didn't. You know why? Because, "Students who violate the computer policy will be disciplined" does not imply that criminal charges will be filed. It implies that the students could receive in-school sanction.

This is a bunch of hyped up and unnecessary bullshit. If you're going to give laptops out you better bet that they are going to be used for unintended purposes. By bringing criminal charges you are doing nothing but wasting even MORE of the taxpayers dollars for something dumb.

Discipline them in-house (like they did to us in high-school - made us sit in the hot school all summer doing NOTHING - it's worse than paying a fine and doing community service)

Re:In-house punishments please!

[FireballX301]

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'. As a matter of fact, we have a cop on campus at my high school explicitly to arrest people, whether it be for fights (assault), drugs (obvious), and yes, 'hacking' (cybercrime is the term used, I believe). Even for something so simple as getting on the teach's computer when he's not looking. Student discipline, sadly, has declined in public schools over the years, and punishments have adjusted accordingly.

Definitely not a felony though. Felony is defined typically as a heinous crime, and something simple as this should not be considered as such.

Re:In-house punishments please!

[bluenirve]

Discipline them in-house (like they did to us in high-school - made us sit in the hot school all summer doing NOTHING - it's worse than paying a fine and doing community service)

Oh, you didn't figure out that if you spoofed an email from the principal to whoever is in charge that they need to do x, you could just mess around on the computers all day? You are a shame to the nerd community.

Re: In-house punishments please!

[Black Parrot]

> Most usage policies that I've seen explicitly state something along the lines of 'criminal computer damage' or 'charges may be filed'.

So, does the state constitution allow school administrators to establish rules that would be a felony to violate?

Re:In-house punishments please!

[garcia]

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.

Re: In-house punishments please!

[Jamesday]

The state constitution and federal law almost certainly allow you to establish rules that it would be a felony to violate.

"You may use this computer for purposes A, B and C. All other uses are prohibited and not authorized."

Anyone knowingly exceeding the access you have permitted to that system is then potentially subject to felony computer trespass charges.

Re:In-house punishments please!

[KlomDark]

Oh shut the FUCK up you idiot.

No sympathy?

Basically figuring out the BIOS password and they are looking at class 3 felonies?

Worst thing that should happen is: Well, Johnny, you are apparently not responsible enough to have one of the school's laptops in your possession. You will no longer be allowed to use the schools laptops. End of story, not "You little conniving fucker, you are an evil evil EVIL hacker and now you're going to pound-you-in-the-ass prison."

The punishment's gotta fit the "crime" (if you can even call it that...), and this more like "Hey, you want a snack? Ok, let's drop this fucking elephant on your head, try eating that, beyotch!"

Re:In-house punishments please!

[Curtman]

"Funny thing is the same thing is said for violating a school's drug policy or violence policy. And I'd fully expect criminal charges in either of those cases."

They're kids. Man am I glad I wasn't born there. Am I the only one who had a very different outlook on life when I was a teenager? What is the purpose of scarring their permanent record or worse jail time? So that they can grow up to be professional criminals?

Re:In-house punishments please!

[st0rmshad0w]

Oh god just shutupshutupshutup!

Exactly WHY are these student's issued laptops anyway? These are teenagers. They do stupid crap like this. And because the school system chose the WRONG technology to put into their hands overseen by incompetants, little Johnny's life is over, they basicly put a loaded gun in their hands. 99% of H.S. education requires ZERO use of typical general purpose computers and frankly the fact that theadministation is idiotic is harming these kids.

I can't wait till one parent gets a clever lawyer and nails the school to the wall. Hey you can sue everyone involved with the gun used in a crime even if you ignore the criminal so why the hell not. H.S. kids do not need the internet, period.

Re:In-house punishments please!

[Soko]

Ummmmm... you're Canadian?

Soko

Re:In-house punishments please!

[FooAtWFU]

Is there an equivalent of Knoppix that you could run on these things, then?

Re:In-house punishments please!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Of course they didn't. You know why? Because, "Students who violate the computer policy will be disciplined" does not imply that criminal charges will be filed. It implies that the students could receive in-school sanction.

Clearly you have misread the warning, in truth it said, "Students who violate the computer policy will be ass-raped repeatedly." That does imply felony charges or possibly just forcing violators to join the school wrestling team.

Re:In-house punishments please!

[Zork the Almighty]

Why not just execute them all then, along with their parents ?

Re:In-house punishments please!

[MsGeek]

http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/5.04/

Look for the Live CD for PPC.

HTH

Re:In-house punishments please!

[PerlDudeXL]

With those rules, I wouldn't want to use such an laptop. Just for my own and their protection. I react allergic to rules. Especially in schools :)

I would say that too-tight computer rules will end up in hardware/software being manipulated by a skilled student to gain a bit more freedom with the provided hardware.

Re:In-house punishments please!

[name773]

if you get caught cheating (i think it has to be twice though), it goes on your permanent transcript, and some colleges won't accept you. although, i'm sure if you explain it and show that you've changed things will go pretty smoothly.

let's give it up for zero tolerance

the policies at the high school i attend (current theme seems to be that the administration goes on about all the crap they have to put up with from us kids as justification for another rule, which generally applies to too broad a group), the boring "clubs", the somewhat rigid band program, and the overall lack of intellectual stimuli (except for higher math courses & chem) are all reasons i just sort of coast through school and do more interesting things on my own time. school (beyond getting into college) really isn't worth much of a bother to me. i do more interesting and immediately useful things on my own time.
that is, of course, when i'm not posting on slashdot :)

Re:In-house punishments please!

[Curtman]

"that is, of course, when i'm not posting on slashdot :)"

Hahahah, I can relate. I just try to get things done while keeping tabs on Slashdot. Time for a 12 step program I think though.. I'm hooked damnit.

Re:In-house punishments please!

[anagama]

No shit. I got detention in 85 for not wearing socks. Kids these days don't know how easy they have it.

I'm not joking BTW. I really did get detention for not wearing socks.

Re:In-house punishments please!

[anagama]

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.

For cryin' out loud -- that covers about 90% of what computers are used for. Personally, I despise children, but even I wouldn't consider such restrictions. Giving a kid a laptop, and then saying "you can't use it" (for all intents and purposes), is like giving an 8 year old a bowl of ice cream and saying "you can only smell it." Neither rule will be followed. Anyone with a dog's IQ would know that.

Re:In-house punishments please!

[Xyrus]

With a number as low as yours, I would expect a response that was a little more mature.

"Oh shut the FUCK up you idiot."

Case and point.

"Basically figuring out the BIOS password and they are looking at class 3 felonies?"

The kids are under 18 years old, so a class 3 felony isn't going to amount to much. And most likely, they won't even be prosecuted.

But you miss the point. Just because someone CAN do something doesn't mean they SHOULD do something. I don't go around breaking into peoples' houses just because I can circumvent their locks.

"Worst thing that should happen is: Well, Johnny, you are apparently not responsible enough to have one of the school's laptops in your possession."

That probably will be the extent of it, and maybe a suspension. It will probably go on their school record as a disciplinary action.

"End of story, not 'You little conniving fucker, you are an evil evil EVIL hacker and now you're going to pound-you-in-the-ass prison.'"

And as I stated before, they are minors. They won't be going to any prison.

"The punishment's gotta fit the crime."

And it will.

"(if you can even call it that...)"

It was a crime. They broke the law. You may not agree with the law, but that's a different subject.

If someone leaves their front door unlocked and you go in and steal their TV, good luck finding a judge who will support your view of "but it's their fault they left the front door unlocked".

That is unless, you think they INDUCED you to commit a crime...

~X~

Re:In-house punishments please!

[Xyrus]

"They're kids."

That's right, they are. So in reality they won't see any jail time. In fact, they won't even be prosecuted. And even if they were, their records are "wiped clean" after they turn 18.

If anything, this will go down on their school records as a disciplinary action.

The fact that they're teenagers is irrelevant. Most teenagers have at least the basic idea of right and wrong. They were given state property with a set of retrictions and rules. They broke those rules, and there are consequences.

Whether you think those rules and consequences are wrong is another matter.

~X~

Re:In-house punishments please!

[fitten]

When did "will be disciplined" no longer include the execution of sentences in relation to being found guilty of criminal charges?

If you rob a store, are caught, and found guilty of the crime, your discipline/punishment is whatever the judge/jury decide.

Re:In-house punishments please!

[Curtman]

"And even if they were, their records are "wiped clean" after they turn 18."

For felony convictions as well? Aren't drug offenses a felony down there?

I honestly don't know, but I've heard that is the case. Thanks for correcting me if not.

Re:In-house punishments please!

[bladesjester]

Records for arrests, etc when you are under the age of 18 (assuming that you are not emancipated before that age or that you're not tried as an adult) are *supposed* to be either sealed or expunged after you reach adulthood.

Technically, the only people that should ever be able to see them after that point are the ones that issue Secret and higher security clearance.

In practice, however, that is often not the case because the court orders concerning the records are "forgotten about" or just plain not carried out.

Re:In-house punishments please!

[Curtman]

"Records for arrests, etc when you are under the age of 18 (assuming that you are not emancipated before that age or that you're not tried as an adult) are *supposed* to be either sealed or expunged after you reach adulthood."

Interesting.. I do know that a friend of mine was turned away at the border when we were heading south to do some shopping while our dollar was really low. This was because of a drug conviction that he suffered when he was 15.

We were under the impression that our records were destroyed when we turned 18. Apparently now a days the US gets access to those records, and we have to file a bunch of paperwork to have those records sealed down there as well. This was pre-9/11 too, so it's not some new anti terrorism deal, just an anti-tourism one. We were told that since marijuana possesion is a felony in the US, they didn't have to do it automatically, and there would likely be lawyer fees involved.

Being the jerks we are, and thirsty for cheap US booze, we shipped him back to Calgary on the bus. I haven't been back since though.

Re:In-house punishments please!

[Lucky_Norseman]

I eagerly await the first criminal charges brought for failing to to your homework and for chewing gum in class.

Re:In-house punishments please!

[Curtman]

"while our dollar was really low"

Ooops, 'high' (which I was yesterday) makes more sense. ;)

password

[bnitsua]

I hope they had the sense to change their password...

Re:password

[bnitsua]

let me guess... 52Trexler?

Re:password

[Elminst]

no, dumbass... it's now 5O7r3x13r.

oh, crap.

Re:password

[Kalten]

Don't count on it.

When I was incarcerated in... er, attending, yeah, that's the word, attending... high school, we got a number of Macs, which were set up with a fairly basic AppleTalk network.

The server password was "serVer". No, I am not joking.

My brother is almost 9 years younger than I am, and attended the same high school. I told him about that, and he checked. Not only was the password still "serVer", it was case-insensitive.

Mind you, that level of cluelessness doesn't surprise me; these are the same people who thought they could get away without having antivirus software. (I know this, because I inadvertently introduced the first virus to the network.)

Re:password

[stuuf]

49Trexler?

"Computer Trespass"

[Roguelazer]

It's "Computer Trespass" if a student breaks into the computer that they're being lent, but it's not if they're being monitored without their knowledge? Okay...

But seriously folks, don't get too worried about this. I mean, if they prosecuted people for this sort of stuff, half of us would already be in jail, and the other half on death row. It's all just hot air from the administrators.

Re:"Computer Trespass"

[TripMaster Monkey]

Hey! I'm posting this from Death Row, you insensitive clod!

Re:"Computer Trespass"

[FireballX301]

Of course it isn't.

The computer is OWNED under the auspices of the school, and thus it is their right to monitor it, in order to minimize liability. In fact, in most usage policies it's explicitly stated that 'you may be subject to monitoring'. And if you don't like it, well, you don't have to use a school computer.

Re:"Computer Trespass"

[stfvon007]

And if you don't like it, well, you don't have to use a school computer.

Yes they do.

From the FAQ:
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.

Re:"Computer Trespass"

[FireballX301]

Oh jesus, time for a little logic.

Students will be required to use the school district issued laptop for school purpose

That says that the only use for the laptops is for school purposes, does not say that the only computers allowed for the purpose of school work are the school issued computers. That's a reversal of the logic sequence. P -> Q != Q -> P.

And as for the other portion, of course they'll restrict access to their network. Basic security means you don't let unauthorized computers on the network.

The most software you'll need outside of school would be Word+Excel. They provide the laptops to ENSURE that you are capable of running them, aka covering their asses. And if you don't have an actual computer capable of running word or excel, well then you shouldn't be dicking around with admin on a school computer, eh?

Re:"Computer Trespass"

[Mac Degger]

"And if you don't like it, well, you don't have to use a school computer."

Unfortunately, it wouldn't work that way. It would be more like "you don't like it, so you buy a computer yourself. You then try to use this computer on the school network, only to find out that this is not allowed. The choice you have left is to either use a schoolcomputer and have your use of it monitored (ie no privacy; forget downloading porn, or writing scathing articles about the administration), or to use no computer at all. Too bad that you probably need to use a computer for certain school assignments...".

Re:"Computer Trespass"

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Get worried about it.

Felons lose the right to vote in many cases.

Permanently revoking the right to vote to felons means "troublemakers" will have no influence on elections - thus more elections will be won by those who are tightening the screws - since those opposed will lose more voters to felony disenfrachisment than those in support - it tips the playing field.

Many people will accept pleading guilty to a felony if they are told they only have to pay a fine, and do some community service. Then find out when they try to register to vote that they are refused by the Board of Elections - and find out what else the law says felons lose:

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=153861&c id=12906885

http://www.hrw.org/reports98/vote/

Re:"Computer Trespass"

[CrowScape]

So, are you saying that using a school computer somehow prevents you from using another, non-school owned computer, for personal use? So if I use one of these iBooks, my computer will stop working? Cause if not, then I can still download porn and write scathing articles about the administration, just not on that iBook. For some strange reason, I just don't see a problem with that.

Re:"Computer Trespass"

[rekenner]

At my school, we had the same program... A good friend of mine didn't get a laptop. She had no issue with not having one, as almost every other student did... Students would share if need be. Teachers also allowed students to do work that didn't require laptops.

The network admin at my school was cool and let students she trusted use their own computer on the network. They still had to fit certain security guidelines (programs installed, using the standard proxies, etc.)

Re:"Computer Trespass"

[rekenner]

Oh, and, teachers in my school actually HAD TO have alternate work to be done if a student chose not to get a laptop. This from the school administration.

Re:"Computer Trespass"

[bladesjester]

Oh jesus, time for a little logic.

Students will be required to use the school district issued laptop for school purpose

That says that the only use for the laptops is for school purposes, does not say that the only computers allowed for the purpose of school work are the school issued computers. That's a reversal of the logic sequence. P -> Q != Q -> P.

Actually, if you read it, it *does* say that the students are "required to use the school district issued laptop for school purpose". *you're* the one with the flawed logic.

In that sentence, it doesn't say that the laptop must be *only* used for school work. It says that it *must be used for school work* and then states things which it may *not* be used for.

Re:"Computer Trespass"

[markwalling]

it does say that you cannot use a personal laptop on the school network. (probably to prevent those darn windows viruses from running rampant)

Re:"Computer Trespass"

[einhverfr]

The computer is OWNED under the auspices of the school, and thus it is their right to monitor it, in order to minimize liability. In fact, in most usage policies it's explicitly stated that 'you may be subject to monitoring'. And if you don't like it, well, you don't have to use a school computer. Emplesis mine.

There are a few important points to note however... (IANAL, this is not legal advice, but more like thinking aloud.)

If a student doesn't accept the acceptable use policy, to what extent is he or she seriously disadvantages in his or her studies? I.e. if the curriculum was designed around the idea that every student in a class would have a school-issued laptop, is such a policy reasonably fair? I.e. does this amount to unreasonable intrusion on one's right to be secure in one's person, papers, etc. (I am assuming that this is a public school)? I.e. if a student is forced to use a computer and forced to accept the terms of surveilance, then the student is forced to accept electronic surveilance and this might be problematic.

I don't question the right of the school to take *reasonable* steps to limit their liability, but there needs to be some sort of a balanced framework.

FWIW, if my child is ever issued a laptop under such terms, I will tell the school "no thanks" and return it myself.

As I read the article...

[notsoanonymouscoward]

I just kept thinking "Enders Game" !!!

Re:As I read the article...

[AEton]

Funny - I was thinking "Kobayashi Maru".

Re:As I read the article...

[Luigi30]

Kobayashi Maru meets Ender's Game. You're being blown up by Klingons, but it's happening on the Z-axis.

Re:As I read the article...

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

The government needed Ender to win the war, so they couldn't discipline him for anything -- from hacking to murder. (Now of course the murder had the secondary benefit that they wanted him to be a cold-hearted killer, but that wasn't the only reason they let him get away with it.)

Re:As I read the article...

[pete-classic]

Wait, Klingon attacks usually happen in 3D, don't they?

How about, "You're getting blown up by Klingons, but you intentionally froze your legs first."?

-Peter

Re:As I read the article...

[Luigi30]

This is Star Trek, remember?

You're getting blown up by Klingons, but you exploded your warp engines first.

Re:As I read the article...

[pete-classic]

Man, you're making this tough on me.

Your being attacked by Klingons. You eject your warp core. While the Klingons gloat over their victory five guys swing out from behind the warp core on wires they stole from a restricted area.

-Peter

Re:As I read the article...

[loucura!]

Bean didn't steal the wires his 'toon used, Colonel Graff gave him access to the supply inventory with Captains Dimak and Dap there to explain what everything was, and more importantly to veto his requests.

Re:As I read the article...

[pete-classic]

Hmm. It's been a while since I read Ender's Game, but I though he got the wires by crawling through the ventilation system.

I gave my copy to my kid step-brother. Guess it's time to buy a new one.

-Peter

Re:As I read the article...

[Luigi30]

You ever think nobody with mod points ever reads these threads after a day or so? We're all still at 1.

Re:As I read the article...

[pete-classic]

The times I've been modded more than 18 hours after a story was posted, I'm pretty sure it was by someone who found my posts through my user page and had an axe to grind.

-Peter

Re:As I read the article...

[loucura!]

It was explained further in Ender's Shadow.

Dear Zonk.

[Rahga]

Dear Zonk,

Please, dear... It's "Cracking", not "Hacking"

Also, since when is passing the administrator's password around considered [Hacking|Cracking] anyway?

Re:Dear Zonk.

[LostCluster]

Also, since when is passing the administrator's password around considered [Hacking|Cracking] anyway?

Definitely part of the branch known as "social engineering".

Re:Dear Zonk.

[MochaMan]

Dear Rahga,
You've been around here long enough that you should know no matter how many times you try to convince people, it's a lost cause. And while I've been around long enough to know the difference, I have to admit, 'cracking' just sounds retarded. Sorry. Why not call it criminal computing or criminal hacking or something? Whether anyone likes it or not, that meaning of 'hacking' is here to stay.

It's the difference between prescriptive vs. descriptive points of view on language I guess.

Re:Dear Zonk.

[st0rmshad0w]

"Social engineering" implies a cleaver ruse, not merely shoulder-surfing or getting a peek at a notebook.

Re:Dear Zonk.

[Coke in a Can]

cleaver

Gangster: Give me your password!
Administrator: Never!
*Gangster grabs cleaver and puts in position to take off admin's pinky finger*
Administrator: Gagh! It's 50Trexler! Don't cut off my finger! Ahhh!
...and so on and so forth...

Re:Dear Zonk.

[st0rmshad0w]

LOL! I'll need to add that to my bag of tricks, along with maybe a speelchecker....

Aha!

[AEton]

Skavinsky consulted with the Berks County District Attorney's office and recommended charges of "Computer Trespass," in violation of PA criminal code section 7615, which carries a third degree felony charge.

The best way to get poor laws changed is to enforce them strictly.

Re:Aha!

[NaruVonWilkins]

Best, most insightful comment I've seen on the whole article. You're absolutely right - if the law's written badly, the only way to keep this from happening is to change it.

Now everybody knows my password.

[rminsk]

Thank you for posting my password. I guess I will have to change it now.

Barely even hacking?

[Primotech]

Some friend of mine installed Firefox on his network drive at school and caught a great deal of flack for it. Because we know what a great risk a proven, secure web browser poses...

Re:Barely even hacking?

[FireballX301]

Excellent.

Have you configured it properly such that malware can't break through?

Can you make sure someone doesn't install a malicious extension?

It may be fine and dandy for the home user, but as a tech for a school, installing FF presents yet another potential hole to be plugged. We have our hands full with IE6 anyhow....

Re:Barely even hacking?

[swimin]

Umm hands full with IE6? The only way to properly secure IE6 is to make it so the user can't even change their homepage. You could even allow users to install extensions for them only with firefox (from a list of approved sites, and only approved sites).

Re:Barely even hacking?

[wlan0]

Same thing happened to me. I got detention (almosy suspended) for having Firefox and Thunderbird.

Re:Barely even hacking?

[matts-reign]

you know what folks, they can't pick and choose like that. To the admin, whether you are installing firefox or subseven, it doesn't matter! You have to have control over your network, and that means not allowing foriegn software in, even if it is proven. You want firefox? Go ask your admin. Offer to roll it out over the network for him. Don't try to get it set as default, but as an option that is available. Disable the ability to install plugins or extensions. Modify whatever is nessicary so it works with their network monitoring system. Ensure that it successfully installs on all machines. Keep it updated so it won't be another security hole. How many of you are willing to do that? I bet most of the whining high school students aren't willing to take on the task of maintaing the network, so why can they complain about it?

Re:Barely even hacking?

[E8086]

"Most of the students accused were freshmen, but a few were sophomores and juniors. None of the accused were seniors."
They can always use the freshman defence: "The seniors(none of which are being charged with anything) locked me in a locker for a few hours, they must have used the computer assigned to me to test their 'hacks' to avoid getting caught. Might be embarrassing to admit being stuffed in a locker, but if it saves you from a felony conviction it might be worth a try.

"Shrawder said the secret password "50Trexler," was widely-known among the student body and distributed early in the school year. It allowed between 80 and 100 students to reconfigure their laptops, he said."

"was widely-known among the student body and distributed early in the school year"
I'm seeing this as being very close to the school had a bunch of things locked up with combination locks, my HS did this, and all have the same combination and somehow the combination got out maybe in mid-Oct. What would/should the school do? Change the locks/combinations or wait until after the school year is over then try and prosecute anyone they think accessed the locked areas? I wonder if that school has any signed honor code, then they could give them the admin pword and punish everyone who used it. If the school administration knew about the breach or had enough reason to believe a breach had taken place they could have changed the admin password and recalled and re-imaged all the machines and called it updating or performing maintenance or a Coast Guard health&safety inspection for all I care. Yes, the kids did something wrong and should be punished but the school should be more concerned in plugging the leak, unless someone brute-forced the pword.

What would you do if you didn't like your school spying on you and you had the admin pword and could disable the "security monitoring software"(spyware)? With the years of experience most of us have we can say: "I'd refuse to use it" and have our parents write a letter showing their support of our decision. I don't think a school can fail a student for not wanting to use their computer.

Locked down laptops...

[LostCluster]

From the FAQ... 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. These were school-owned laptops for approved uses only, and with a pretty tight leash on what could be installed.

Re:Locked down laptops...

[Pxtl]

Unfortunately, said leash was made of paper. Nobody's arguing that the kids were in violation of school rules when they hacked their own laptops - what we're arguing against is that a) the school is filing felony charges for a discipline issue b) the school is charging the students instead of their security people, and c) there exists felony charges that can be applied to such a minor crime.

Re:Locked down laptops...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like calling the police because a student is going to the bathroom without a hall pass. Sure, it could technically be considered trespassing -- but every school I ever went to would just give me a detention instead of filing charges.

dom

Re:Locked down laptops...

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

The policy keeps saying disciplined, and never prosecuted.

This might be a legal out for the students.

By saying disciplined and yet failing to say prosecuted it could be saying that it is making a statement by omission.

Also, their quote (in the section which appears to be letting then know what value the laptop and service is to them) that help support would cost $45/hr on their own is laughable.

Anyone that would provide support for less than $75/hr is crazy.

Re:Locked down laptops...

[JNighthawk]

Invalid syntax. Did you mean "!=" ?

Re:Locked down laptops...

[Seumas]

Like anyone ever paid attention to "hall passes".

I'm sorry, but the day I need permission to take a piss or a shit is the day I fucking shoot myself in the head.

Re:Locked down laptops...

[eluusive]

There is no way to satisfactorially lock down a Mac laptop when the person has physical access and can take it home with them at night. I'm sorry, but you can't blame the security people for this.

Re:Locked down laptops...

[eluusive]

-- I systematically moderate down people who describe their abuses of the mod and metamod system in their sigs. -- Isn't that an abuse of the moderation system?

Re:Locked down laptops...

[mooingyak]

I think he's simultaneously serious and deliberately hypocritical. I also agree with the sentiment.

Re:Locked down laptops...

[radar_music]

permission granted. kidding .. permission not granted nevermind.. dont shoot

Stupid

[Bones3D_mac]

Why are they giving these children felony charges for being intelligent enough to see through such pathetically weak security? At the very least, the school should have assigned each machine a separate password based on serial number.

In all seriousness, if they really wanted to ensure security on these systems, they shouldn't have allowed the students to take them out of the school.

Re:Stupid

[Xyrus]

Why did they give those burgalers felony charges for being intelligent enough to get through such pathetically weak security? At the very least, the homeowner should have had a dead-bolt on the front door.

If they really wanted to be secure, they wouldn't have given out the computers in the first place.

~X~

Re:Stupid

[nmos]

These are curious kids, not hardened criminals (yet). If you sent a shop student home with an engine you think it wouldn't come apart? Do you think the yearbook kids don't use the cameras/lab for naughty photos once in a while? There are a lot worse things kids could be getting into and giving them a criminal record is a good way to give them a head start towards being a criminal.

Re:Stupid

[Xyrus]

A curious kid gains administrative privileges and says, "Oh that's interesting. Maybe I should bring this up as a potential problem".

Kids blatantly using administrative priviliges, spreading the password, installing unsanctioned software, etc. are no longer curious. The are breaking the rules and regulations under which they agreed to use the computers.

There's a big differnce between finding a security hole and exploiting a security hole.

And as I've stated already in other responses, the felony charges are nothing more than media hype. These are minors, and absolute worse case may be ordered to community service, if they are prosecuted at all.

Most likely the school will discipline them and that will be the end of it.

The sensationalistic media would like you to believe otherwise, however.

As far as worse things they could have gotten into, you're right. They could have gained access to the school's administartive system and done something really malicious, like say downloading some kiddie porn pics to the principal's home directory.

Would that be "bad enough" then?

~X~

Idiots.

[FireballX301]

I don't agree that it's a felony level offense, but...

I'm a student computer tech at my high school, since the school is too cheap to hire a full time technical staff. You wouldn't believe the amount of times I was asked for the local administrator passwords to the campus computers, just from people who wanted to 'mess around'.

The main problem is twofold: first, that the school doesn't want to be held liable for any 'bad' content (the obvious part), and that IT MAKES MORE WORK FOR ME. The admin password was leaked many times, and you wouldn't believe how many times I've had to either reformat computers or wipe Kazaa/Steam/random emulators from computers where students wanted to mess around. The worst part, when some of them tried to remove SynchronEyes (our 'spy' program), they were so incompetent with what they were doing that they ended up fuxxing the domain privileges and rendering the computer inoperable on the network. We rarely, if ever, monitor student activity, since we don't have enough staff.

If you want to mess around or do anything 'cool' with a computer, DO IT AT HOME. If you're at school, use the computers for school work. It's not a game as to how much work you can cause for the local techs and admin, the computers are always for WORK. If you go ahead and make it a game, we get VERY pissed at having to clean yet another computer.

Or better yet, do what I did and join the tech support staff.

Re:Idiots.

[kmortelite]

When I was in high school, if things were locked down too tightly, we'd figure a way to break it, and then use the computer like we wanted. We weren't trying to do anything malicious, we just wanted some freedom. Perhaps it's different today?

It seems like these machines were locked down so draconianly that they were not useful.

Re:Idiots.

[mvdw]

So you re-image the computer. That takes all of what, 10 minutes. Just put in the student contract or whatever that if the student fubars the computer, then anything on said computer will be erased. Quite simple, really; the student loses all their mp3s, pr0n, whatever, you get a hassle-free life, everyone wins.

Re:Idiots.

[TrappedByMyself]

If you want to mess around or do anything 'cool' with a computer, DO IT AT HOME.

Yeah right. If I fuck up my home computer, I have to fix it. If I fuck up a school computer, YOU have to fix it. Every single time...

It's always more efficient to make mistakes on someone else's dime.

Re:Idiots.

[FireballX301]

You could run the Office programs. You could surf the internet. If you needed something special, we came around and installed the program for you to make sure it fit.

Things are different today, in that students seem simply to be more malicious today. You ever install a virus/keylogger onto a school computer, just because you could? I've dealt with that.

Remember, the school setting is meant for minimal liability more than anything. Sad, but a truth in today's world.

Re:Idiots.

[LihTox]

Sounds like a good "punishment": put the offenders on the tech support staff and put them to work policing the network and cleaning up after the clueless and the pranksters. Is that onerous enough? It might channel their m4d 5k1llz in a more marketable direction. Then again, I'm no sysadmin, so what do I know?

Re:Idiots.

[rpj1288]

I did that very thing. And you know what? I agree. These students were, franky, idiots. On the other hand, that password should have been changed at the first sign of a problem. In addition, only one password protecting all the admin priviledges is equally idiotic as those that exploited it. At our school, what we do is install a Deep Freeze, ( http://www.faronics.com/index.asp ), which restores the hard drive to a set image at every reboot. Only four people have access priviledges high enough to edit that, and none of them are students.

Re:Idiots.

[rvalles]

Disabling Orwellian monitoring crap is not evil; it's an heroic act; the use of this kind of crap should be outlawed and no, don't give me this protecting kids crap. Kids shouldn't grow accostumed to surveillance. They should grow up as sovereign individuals who value their freedoms, and question power.

Re:Idiots.

[jonored]

Quite... now, what would be a much nicer way of handling such is to carry around a nice little liveCD, with just enough to get networking and an X server and SSH... the computer goes down, talks funny on the network for a while, then comes back with it's exact config intact - assuming the network hasn't shut it off for talking funny, and can handle a computer restarting... no effect on the computer. Barely even spin the hard drive up...

Of course, now they've locked the bios on our computers - can't blame them, and I have a laptop now anyways.

But there are certainly things "cool" you can do with a computer that don't leave stupid messes, if you have a clue. And it's most useful if you've got a computer available that is yours and running a sane OS, but hey. Could at least get a browser & ssh up if not.

But then, that doesn't apply as well to apple laptops. Reasonably to x86 laptops, but not quite so easily to apple ones (at least, 'till they become all x86...)

Re:Idiots.

[audacity242]

Sovereign individuals can buy their own laptops and do with them as they please.

I don't agree in any way whatsoever with pressing felony charges, but I also don't agree with people screwing with property that is not their own.

-Jenn

Re:Idiots.

[TrappedByMyself]

We weren't trying to do anything malicious

Ha. We intentionally did malicious things. Viruses on school computers. Vile messages to faculty. Sabotage computer, AV equipment, and hell, any other equipment we could find (ahhh, the power of a single paperclip shoved in a fan). Endless teacher harassment. Fiery toilet seats. Cafetaria leftovers + school bus windows + cars. Even the poor library books weren't beyond our wrath.

We would have been executed by today's standards.

Of course, teachers could still physically abuse us, so it was an even trade.

Re:Idiots.

[Zackbass]

It's not a game as to how much work you can cause for the local techs and admin, the computers are always for WORK. If you go ahead and make it a game, we get VERY pissed at having to clean yet another computer.

Actually, it IS a game, you're just on the wrong end of it. Just like releasing chickens in the halls the point of the game is to piss someone off while having some fun. I remember someone commandeered one of the school's servers one of my years in HS as a dedicated CS and ROM server. Good times, well, except for the poor admin.

Re:Idiots.

[anthony_dipierro]

If you want to mess around or do anything 'cool' with a computer, DO IT AT HOME.

Isn't that's where these students were when they accessed the illegal parts of the laptop?

Re:Idiots.

[westlake]

Sounds like a good "punishment": put the offenders on the tech support staff

Leave the fox guarding the hen house? I don't think so.

Re:Idiots.

[jamesh]

for $20 or so per PC you should be able to get some pci cards with a flash chip on them that can restore a PC every time it is rebooted, and do so so quickly that you'd never even notice.

Failing that, you should have a start and forget method of restoring a PC to the way it was. If you are restoring each PC that breaks manually then you are working harder, not smarter.

Maybe to circumvent the students who just want to play rather than deliberately cause trouble, allocate a small handful of computers, separate from your main network but connected enough to the internet, and say go for it. Make sure the PC's get re-imaged nightly, and monitor them somehow so that if anything illegal is done from your network, you can identify those responsible.

The summer before I started Uni (1994), i think the university had gotten into a fair amount of trouble due to the activities of a few students. The feds had come knocking on a few doors looking for those responsible. Consequently the year I started the university was draconian about security. I managed to lose my computer access for a week twice, once for accessing my account externally, and once for having a world readable folder in my home directory. I should have paid closer attention to the TOS.

Re:Idiots.

[eluusive]

Foxes make good guard dogs, once you train them.

Re:Idiots.

[rekenner]

No. It isn't. It's Apple Remote Desktop. It's a very useful thing, in this situation. (Had the same program at my school, I was a tech, yadda yadda.)

It's no more heroic than a pain in the ass for the peopel that have to fix it. There are things the students shouldn't be doing in school. Typically, no one was even WATCHING the students. The only time thigns were done was if a program that shouldn't be on during school was noticed on ARD. It can sort computers by the active program.

Re:Idiots.

[izomiac]

It's kinda silly for every computer to have the same local administrator password to begin with. Take my school for example. It's a boarding school that issued each student a laptop. Initially we were power users on our machines, and people couldn't install printers or anything so they told everyone the admin password (which was the same for every student laptop on the LAN). Other years they didn't tell it to us, but LANMAN isn't exactly the most secure hash... Anyway, as is the case with essentially every Windows box I've seen lately, the "Server" service was left to start automatically. Since the computers were on the same network anyone could use that password (the AUP forbids changing it) and get onto the default hidden shares for each drive, access the registry/services, or even control the computer as if it had VNC on it if you had the right programs. Fortunately, I don't think anyone but me knew how to use the "net use" command (and I didn't do anything too evil to my classmates). Still though, I can't imagine why any self-respecting network administrator would allow such a serious security problem arise and repeat itself year after year in the first place.

Re:Idiots.

[LihTox]

Depends on their crime. If it's just mischief, or "seeing what I can get away with", then they might just be good kids who want a challenge: give 'em a job. If they're stealing money or changing grades or running spam zombies or something, then...no.

Re:Idiots.

[EvilStein]

I agree with that to a point, but I don't think that the kids are the problem in that aspect.. it's the parents that will flip out and sue the school district for billions when they find out that "evil internet pornography" is accessable from school computers.

When it comes to "Free Speech of minors" or "protecting children (even though they're 16-17) from that evil internet porn" - the "protect the children" mentality seems to win out more often than not. Often times, the results aren't pretty. :(

Re:Idiots.

[rvalles]

> Typically, no one was even WATCHING the students. So it's sorta like the Panopticon.

For whatever remote desktop they're using, to be ethically acceptable, it would have to popup a request for authorization on the laptop.

Re:Idiots.

[TheCodingRooster]

School property which is taxpayer property.....

Re:Idiots.

[SilverFire]

At my highschool, VNC is installed on every networked computer. The admin and his underling use it to monitor [read: frighten] students when they suspect they're doing something they oughtn't be [wasting bandwidth] and to administer computers without getting off their fat asses. [Note: I find the latter a valid purpose, however. :] Sometime during my sophomore year, I had a moment of insight and clarity and realized that the VNC configuration dialog shows the VNC access password "hidden" behind asterisks. Calling upon my testicular fortitude, I Googled for a small utility that would show whatever was behind those asterisks. I ran it. The password materialized before me: "walterxx". WTF?! Come on. "walterxx"? That's even worse than "Trexler50"... though slightly less-guessable. Further probing showed that "walter" was the BIOS password on computers where it's restricted to 6 characters and is "walterxx" on those where it isn't. But I diverge. Anyhow, I've never used this information for any malevolent purposes myself (or any purpose at all, really), but I let the password "slip" to, I'd say, a good half-dozen people. Unfortunately, it spread, as all good and meaty information does, to several students less-imbued with morals than I. They began VNCing random people and installing malicious software (I think they were exploiting computers with a piece of software called 'Optix'....), including worms, on their computers. They apparently also changed grades. This is clearly going too far. I see little harm in VNCing your friend in another class (or the same class :) and fucking with him [though I'd much prefer if you didn't], but the extent they went to is uncalled for. Luckily, my school didn't call in the feds, but dealed with the students "in-house". I think they received about 5 days of in-school suspension. I mean, I see the admins "fear-tactic" use of VNC just as Big-Brother and Orwellian as the next guy and condone closing it immediately on login, but as soon as you start harming other people, you know you've crossed the line. Obviously, I'm not exactly sure what the students in this article did, but declaring it a felony is completely absurd. I doubt they were doing anything so significant to warrant more than in-school disciple as the USAGE POLICY STATES. If you're experimenting, the school ought to know that that's the tendency of teenagers, especially when given a challenge (and toys). The offenders should have been disciplined, not felonized.

Re:Idiots.

[nmos]

True enough, but these ARE kids. Taking stuff apart to see how it works etc. is what kids do. If they sent 100 laptops home with kids and none of them messed around even a little bit THEN I'd be worried.

Re:Idiots.

[blincoln]

You ever install a virus/keylogger onto a school computer, just because you could? I've dealt with that.

If yours is a Windows environment, you should be restricting software installation with Group Policy. If you know exactly which executables are supposed to be allowed to be run by users, you should be restricting that with GP too.

With a bit of planning, your IT staff could come up with a design where the techs don't *know* the local Administrator password for the machines, and the only one they can leak would be their own.

Re:Idiots.

[dhazard]

"Failing that, you should have a start and forget method of restoring a PC to the way it was. If you are restoring each PC that breaks manually then you are working harder, not smarter." They sort of do, I am a Tech Support Aide at my HS and we use a program called Deep Freeze, and it stop at least a good 70% of all Spyware, and common mischief that students do to the PC. All we have to do is reboot the PC and the settings get changed back to its right configuration.

Re:Idiots.

[Volvogga]

While I agree with you that it is on the childish side to download Kazaa and emulators on a school computer (how long could you be on a computer for? 2 or three hours?), I must dissagree with your conclusion on the 'spy' programs.

Having graduated from HS this year, a rather populated school ('A' sports class, I believe) with older computers (PII's and PIII's), and a staff that *did* use the SynchrinEyes program frequently, I can assure you that you would always know when you were being monitored. The computer would suddenly slow to a crawl, the mouse would 'jump' in gaps on the screen, and web pages would take five times longer to load (and our network was already slower than 56K speed on most occasions due to its usage). Even using Word would become a pain.

I don't particularly care how you justify it (not held liable for bad content), anything that makes the computers less usable than a 386 is not a piece of software/equipment that should be used. This is not the only thing that is a problem with it. There is that feeling of annoyance that comes from someone watching you; a feeling which (believe it or not) decreases productivity even more. It is essentaly no different than a person standing over you while you are reading a book, and reading over your shoulder. In my case, I was always worried that the Librarian at my school (real Drac of a lady and the worst of the SynchronEyes monitors) would be monitoring me and look away for a moment, only to look back just as I would encounter a pop-up of questionable material (tig o' bitties!), which has happened to almost eveyone I know at school at least once.

This program is so much of a pain in the ass, that I have had some of the most timmid, straight-arrows of the school approach me asking if I knew how to dissable or even BREAK the stupid thing. It didn't take all that long to find a few ways around it, but it generally was a big risk to shut the thing off, as the monitor could tell if the program was disabled. We got warned the first few times, but then we were getting kicked out of the Library or computer lab and threatened with disiplinary action.

Our charge? Wanting to get our work done. SychronEyes (and I'm assuming most 'spy' programs) is a total piece of shit, which, in the wrong hands, decreases productivity and, overall, totaly fucks up an otherwise useable computer. Afterall, a computer is not truly obsolete until it can no longer due what you require of it.

Re:Idiots.

[cybercobra]

Reminds me of my school.
The computers are only supposed to be used for schoolwork (except for those in the student center), but most people in my class, and all of the CS guys have mame installed and play it on the computers.
The school is blissfully ignorant to the fact that the ROMs are illegal. I've talked to the senior who helps admin and he knows and doesn't care, and most of the teachers don't either. The only ones who care are the ones in the library, and all they do is ask you to logoff. The apathy/stupidity of the admins is staggering.

Re:Idiots.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares if they want to play MAME on the school's time? It's alright to use computers recreationally, and for all we know, they could have been working quite hard and needed a break.

Generally, the computers are there so if someone *wants* to work, they can. I don't care if students are playing Quake or UT in my labs, and hey, I'll even join in from time to time if they let me. But if students are waiting in line for a workstation, I promptly and politely ask the gamers to leave - the machines can be used for gaming, but actual work gets priority

Signed
LAN Admin at a large Canadian university
(AC cause boss reads slashdot, too)

Re:Idiots.

[Chordonblue]

" Disabling Orwellian monitoring crap is not evil; it's an heroic act.."

Are you talking about monitoring or control? There is a difference.

For instance, in my labs we do not allow the students to use IM, PtoP, or other non-academic/network destructive programs. If we did, the result would be that students would be sneaking IM chats during class time or taking all of what little Internet bandwidth we have.

Is controlling their use of our resources Orwellian, or a reasonable response? What happened up in Kutztown had more to do with the students modifying the PROGRAM control software than some sort of Goldsteinian revolt.

Re:Idiots.

[Knight2K]

Seeing as you were (are?) in high school at the time, I could see how you could see slipping the password to a few trustworthy people as harmless, but apparently it wasn't. In my eyes, you are as guilty as the people who used this information for harmful ends, because you enabled them.

Okay, so you were curious and figured it out. I would have hung onto that password if I needed it to get around something to do my actual work. And perhaps I would have used it to help a friend out in a similar situation (which is also a dumb high school thing to do. No one can get you in more trouble then your friends).

If you truly cared about the Orwellian tactics of the school admins, then 'cracking' the password and spreading it isn't the right thing to do. The right thing to do is get your facts and arguments together and meet with the principal, the school board, and other responsible parties. It is pretty likely that they won't agree because they instituted the policies and, while they might be smart people in other areas, are probably sheeple with computers.

So the next step is go to the papers with a sexy headline and the facts. In my experience small-town papers love to skewer the local government and the school if they get the chance. And the larger papers will soon pick it up. That is properly exercising your civil rights.

That said, I can't really condemn you for what you did. I was a smart kid in high school, but everyone does dumb things as teenagers. Comes with the territory. But if you are still in a position to do what I suggest, go for it.

At the very least, civic activism is good experience and makes a nice essay for college applications. Also, a student who handles situations like these firmly, but politely and responsibly, is usually accorded greater freedoms and a larger say in school matters than snot-nosed kids who cause over-worked teachers hassles.

Re:Idiots.

[Rakarra]

Doesn't matter if it's "taxpayer property" or not. It being "taxpayer property" doesn't mean any individual taxpayer can do what he or she wants with it.

The District Mission Statement:

[Rafikichi]

"To provide an interactive educational environment which encourages students to acquire the skills, knowledge, and attitudes, necessary to become responsible members of society"

Destroy all students

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of assholes are these school administrators?!
Their JOB, hopefully their PASSION is to help students learn and be prepared for life as adults. How does giving them felony records for typical high school curiosity do that? How can these administrators go home at night and think they are doing the right thing here?

I think a protest is in order.
The entire student body should boycott the school. Stop going. Perhaps they should ALL have accidents with their laptops too. Ooops, dropped it from the second floor.
Damn... I know these are stupid retaliations, but I'm so pissed.

Re:Destroy all students

[hoggoth]

> they should ALL have accidents with their laptops

Excellent idea. You should show solidarity by destroying YOUR laptop as well. That would show them.

Re:Destroy all students

[che.kai-jei]

this aint a bad idea.

@#$@# Educators!

[salesgeek]

Am I the only person here that thinks that it is the most flimsy form of chintz that educators use the legal system and literally ruin students futures over something so minor as this...

Wait a minute - the administrators have to show them who's in charge... and having the cops do their enforcement... that'll show them.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[bergeron76]

Educators are the most important resource in my country (the USA).

It's not my fault that they are underpaid and undervalued. I vote(d), and I support budgets for Educators.

As an American, I never thought I'd say this, but
"I am not my Government.". They are making decisions that 'We the people' don't agree with and we (the people, remember?) can't to anything about it anymore.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[blyloveranger]

Well it is pretty obvious that the parents sure as hell didn't show these kids how to respect other people's property.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[OverlordQ]

Good, their futures need ruined. I wouldn't hire a person like this, it's what Enrons are made of.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[lachlan76]

So you're saying that breaking the rules in high school should mean that a child should have the rest of their life ruined? You really think that getting the admin password is something that should make you lose your right to vote?

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[fermion]

Well, if I am speeding, and the cops pull me over,and accidently shoots me, that is a very bad thing, and hopefully the cop will be prosecuted, but I was knowingly breaking the law, and sometimes, even in the US where things are mostly fair, punishments are not always reasonable.

In the schools the same thing happens. The students is told not use their cell phone or music player in class. They choose to challenge that request,and the teacher has not choice but to enforce boundries and take the item up. The students might be used to getting the item back, but the teacher may or may not do so. The teacher may in fact it place in some random donation box. It is fair? Maybe not, but we all know we take risks when we break the rules.

Proabaly a number of people agree with you. They probably also think that if someone does not lock an item up, and that item is stolen, it is the not the fault of the thief, but the owner. People used to believe that killing minorities was great fun, and some still like to kill gay people.

We really don't know what happened in the school, or how much the students provoked the staff. It is my experience that if the police are called in it is because the students are not allowing the other students to learn. In this case the choice is between possibly destroying the life of a few students, or allowing them to destroy the future of the rest of the school.

What we do know is that the students broke the rules, and now seem to be too wussy to take the consequences.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[OverlordQ]

yup. Little ignore the 'policies' here, ignore some SEC rules there . . . it's all good right?

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[zakezuke]

In the schools the same thing happens. The students is told not use their cell phone or music player in class. They choose to challenge that request,and the teacher has not choice but to enforce boundries and take the item up. The students might be used to getting the item back, but the teacher may or may not do so. The teacher may in fact it place in some random donation box. It is fair? Maybe not, but we all know we take risks when we break the rules.

But what if teacher-a asks a student to bring his walkman to help with an AV project, and teacher-b blindly following the rules and confiscates it, and teacher-a fails the student for not being able to complete their project. Sounds silly... I've seen this happen.

Cell phones, another good issue. What if the highschool doesn't provide a telephone or even have a payphone to let students phone home and say "come pick me up". Cell phones are useful this way and parents are often giving them to kids. Activity directors advocate this... keeps kids safe, reduces liability. But the student gets it seized because it's written in the book, irregardless of the fact the parent gave it to the kid or the permission slip reccomends a "cell phone".

The moment you look at the letter of the law, without giving any regard to it's intent or meaning totally eliminates any sence of justice. It's not being a Wussy if you disagree with the consequences of an unjust or unfair law, it's your duty and a citizen to stand up for the sake of our posterity. There can be no justice so long as law is absolute!

Stand up and ask why!

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[st0rmshad0w]

Speeding?

Jaywalking?

How do you rate?

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[mOdQuArK!]

I'm not the person you were replying to, but I don't think being a criminal is a good enough reason to stop someone from voting.

My reasoning is pretty simple: allowing criminals to vote provides a valuable form of negative feedback against stupid legislators. If buttheaded legislators go around making most of the population into criminals, they will eventually be thrown out of office & their mistakes fixed.

Unfortunately, a lot of people believe that criminals should not be allowed to vote, which makes a pretty convenient way for legislators to disenfranchise the segments of society who might not agree with what they're doing.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[lachlan76]

I know, it's things like that that make me glad I don't live in the USA.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[OverlordQ]

oh thank god, i'll ignore you now.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[mpe]

Unfortunately, a lot of people believe that criminals should not be allowed to vote, which makes a pretty convenient way for legislators to disenfranchise the segments of society who might not agree with what they're doing.

It might be a better idea, in practice, to disbar criminals from holding office...

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[mpe]

But what if teacher-a asks a student to bring his walkman to help with an AV project, and teacher-b blindly following the rules and confiscates it, and teacher-a fails the student for not being able to complete their project. Sounds silly... I've seen this happen.

In which case the person at fault is teacher-a. They have set a very bad example to the student and wasted teacher-b's time. If teacher-a wants the rules to be varied then it is entirely their responsibility to follow the relevent procedures for doing so and informing anyone who needs to know. In this kind of situation the teachers are in the position of enforceing the rules. Whilst inconsitant enforcment of rules tends to lead to poor school discipline even worst is where people who are ment to be enforcing rules encourage breaking them.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[salesgeek]

Good, their futures need ruined. I wouldn't hire a person like this, it's what Enrons are made of.

I'd expect this kind of attitude from someone named "OverlordQ". A bad decision at age 16 does not make a lifetime of the worse sort of white collar crime. A mistake at age 16 is the time for a lesson to be taught, but not at the expense of the next 80 years of someone's life.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[salesgeek]

In this kind of situation the teachers are in the position of enforceing the rules. Whilst inconsitant enforcment of rules tends to lead to poor school discipline even worst is where people who are ment to be enforcing rules encourage breaking them.

This would be nice if in the real world the rules were applied evenly and crueley at every turn. Even the FBI, IRS and BATF have this tool called discression, and it is often a very powerful tool for making justice work in a way that doesn't destroy people.

One thing I learned in the Navy is that just because a rule says I can do sometheing to someone if they break it, I don't have to dole out the max penalty - and in fact in doleing out the max penalty consistently you create an environment of mistrust, disdain and ultimately, failure. With zero tollerance rules for inconsequential items like cellular phones, fingernail clippers and toy guns with extreme life altering penalties, you create an environment dominated by fear and cynicism that has zero resemblence to the real world, with the sole exception of airport security. The good news: our high schools seem to be cranking out candidates for jobs screening passengers at airports by the cruelest form of natural selection.

It's private school for my kids. I'm not going to let some power hungry teacher ruin their life. At least in a private school I have the pay the bill or not veto (which is VERY much like the power we all have in business).

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[salesgeek]

It might be a better idea, in practice, to disbar criminals from holding office...

What ever happened to "Sir, your debt to society has been repaid in full. Good luck out there."

2,3,4,10,20, 40 years in jail seems like enough punishment. What ever happened to the forgive part?

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[salesgeek]

Cell phones are useful this way and parents are often giving them to kids.

Educators need to understand that cell phones are part of our way of life, and they need to teach students how to be responsible and polite users. Why do educators always respond by banning things? (back when I was in school, walkmans were new... and subject to simmilar banning.)

Also - parents really need to think if the risk of allowing their children's life to be ruined is worth it when evaluating sending your child to a private school.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[zakezuke]

In which case the person at fault is teacher-a. They have set a very bad example to the student and wasted teacher-b's time. If teacher-a wants the rules to be varied then it is entirely their responsibility to follow the relevent procedures for doing so and informing anyone who needs to know. In this kind of situation the teachers are in the position of enforceing the rules. Whilst inconsitant enforcment of rules tends to lead to poor school discipline even worst is where people who are ment to be enforcing rules encourage breaking them.

What about a photography class - no cameras allowed on campus, and the sylybus requires students bring their own SLR camera, none provided by the school?

I've had a few of those meetings, lol.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[anagama]

GP post was a joke. See, he's saying that the true criminals are the politicians who make stupid laws.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[emidln]

I don't know what kind of fucked up world you live in but taking my cell phone in high school would have amounted to theft if not given back. My parents would have been pissed off about me breaking the rules, but they would still pressed charges because an asshat teacher decided to steal from them.

Also, in my very personal experience, the police are called when the staff gets confused. The State police are called in when the locals are confused, and the state police knew enough to drop the issue. That is a waste of my tax money and a fucking shame.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[emidln]

I went to a private school. If I fucked around they wouldn't take my stuff they'd tell me to pack my shit and leave. Taking property and redistributing is not an acceptable means of punishment. Expell the student, suspend them, or otherwise discipline them within the means of the law.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[alex_ware]

No you'll find that the cellphone will be held by the school for a set period of time according to how badly you disrupted the class.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[alex_ware]

Then you should get it in writing, because if you have a note explicitly telling the teacher not to confiscate the camera, then you are safe.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[zakezuke]

Then you should get it in writing, because if you have a note explicitly telling the teacher not to confiscate the camera, then you are safe.

It *WAS* in writing, on the sylibus! The same one that had been used for 8 years! In one case I had to decair it stolen property and get the cops to get my camera back from the school. Not being a student anymore, I can't say for sure... but in my day one got a hall pass with a note for photography. I never had a problem when I was a student, but oh have times changed.

Sure I'm "SAFE" but it doesn't change the fact that a conflict exists between the rules and the equipment required, and when one of the young ones gets the camera seized resulting in much wasted time dealing with the bozos who say "we don't allow cameras on campus, it's the rule", even though photography and media classes are offered that use cameras!

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[salesgeek]

That is still something that should be done at home.

This is a cop out.

It is that they use them at forbidden times

Like when, say all day? When I call my daughter she better answer regardless of what the teacher says. I guarantee if I have to call her it is the most important single communication she will have that day, regardless of what the english lit teacher thinks of his/her opinion about Chaucer.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[salesgeek]

Then you should get it in writing

Or perhaps go to a school where they allow cameras for photography class... Stare real hard and remember... remember...

It's policies like these that have ensured my kids will go to a private school where I can use the almight buck to make sure that justice is in line with my demented world view that says you need a camera for photography class. God, I must be insane.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[ChrisMaple]

"Educators are the most important resource in my country (the USA)."

Coal, iron, and trees are resources. Human beings should consider it an insult to be called a resource. It implies you are the means for someone else's life.

Part of the problem here is that you can vote for "educator's" budgets. Schools should not be part of the government (except military academies like West Point.) When schools are privately owned and operated, the students soon understand that they have the power to prevent widespread abuse by the school.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[ChrisMaple]

It is my experience that if the police are called in it is because the students are not allowing the other students to learn.

That's grounds for suspension, not police and criminal charges.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[zakezuke]

That is still something that should be done at home. If the parent wants the kid to have a cell phone, then the parent needs to train and understand the risk.

And schools and educators need to understand if they are not going to allow kids to use the office phone, and there is no pay phone by the school... this is going to leave kids stranded.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be boundries, and i'm not saying that kids need to learn an element of self control. But the number one reason I gave my niece a cell phone was for saftey. No phone at the school when the doors were locked, and no pay phone for 20 or so blocks. But let's say a kid uses a cell phone at an in approperate time... fail them for the day, give them a suspention, and by gally sieze the phone till the end of the day. But as far as lessons to each, having *them* pay for the time they use on a pay as you go phone teaches responcibility. Digital watches were banned at many a school for a time... they were a distraction.

And private school is no different, except at a a good private school they do not have to put up with the bullshit of a parent calling a child and in the process denying an education for everyone else, or the class structure falling apart because a child pulls up a naked picture on their phone.

I hate to say this (that's wrong but hey) but nakid pictures are not limited to phones. No one ever brought a playboy, or their dad's naughty playing cards to school? But I had the common sence to do it by the lockers and not inside class, just like everyone else!

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[alex_ware]

No I mean writing explicitly telling whatever teacher who would want to confiscate your camera, from the photography teacher.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[alex_ware]

A good independant shcool makes the world of difference becuase it's way of getting it's money is impressing the parents. If red tape and general BS gets in the way parents pull out and go elsewhere.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[zakezuke]

No I mean writing explicitly telling whatever teacher who would want to confiscate your camera, from the photography teacher.

In my day... it was on the hall pass.

Today... can't say for sure, not in high school... but the last time I saw the classroom he had a stack load of hallpasses all pre-filled out "photography student".

Safe... my left foot! All it takes is one bonehead teacher or security guard blindly following the rules to ruin your day.

The funny thing is, this is all perfectly normal and happens all the time.

Re:@#$@# Educators!

[alex_ware]

Whoa, security guards? Seriously?

Happened at my school too ..

[yrogerg]

In my high school in the late 80's we got a new network and the default password for all students and teachers was "IBM". 5 bonus points to whoever guesses which company set up the network. At the time it wasn't a big deal to mess up the network, it was considered buggy. Now you get lynched.

Computer Trespass my left foot!

[zakezuke]

Shrawder said the secret password '50Trexler,' was widely-known among the student body and distributed early in the school year. It allowed between 80 and 100 students to reconfigure their laptops, he said. The more computer-savvy students began to disable the administrations' ability to spy on the students' computer use.--tfa

I rather thought if you had the key to someone home you couldn't call it "Breaking and entering" even if you were a dumb ass and put it under your mat. Would not the same rule of common sense apply if they were dumb enough to let the students at the password? Ok, TFA isn't clear how they got the password, but 100 people had I'd hardly call it felonies hacking or computer trespass.

Re:Computer Trespass my left foot!

[pdbogen]

Right, it wouldn't be "breaking and entering"... it'd be "trespass".

Re:Computer Trespass my left foot!

[zakezuke]

Right, it wouldn't be "breaking and entering"... it'd be "trespass".

You can trespass on something someone physicaly gives you, like a locked box or an ibook?

The Faq

[3.09 a hour]

A couple things seem out of whack with this, the first being that only 13 people were charged, when 100 (ish) had access to the password. Also, there is nothing at all in the rules about the securutiy system, or lack there of, so what can the be charged with, if they didnt break a contract. Finally how is this a felony, at worst, they broke thier written contract with the school, its not like they installed pirated software on it (i hope) Bottom line, this is a case of the students knowing more about computers than the school wants them to, and the school lashing out because it was one-uped. Funniest thing about the faq 'Viruses written for windows cannot affect macs'... what about viruses written for macs?

Re:The Faq

[usererror3000]

probably only 13 students got charged because they were probably the "geeks" who figured it out. or maybe they had a history of causing trouble. or maybe they were trusted students that might have worked in the schools IT Dept.

Re:The Faq

[PhilixDMA]

Or maybe they were the idiots who got caught.

Re:The Faq

[kaens]

If the school was anything like the one I went to, the 13 that got charged were the ones that were detrimental to the schools image to begin with. The rest were all involved in school activities or sports.

Unanswered question

[LostCluster]

What did the 13 who got charged do differently that made them stand out from the "80 to 100" students who used the compromized password?

Secret? LMAO!

[Oldest European]

"Shrawder said the secret password '50Trexler,' was widely-known among the student body..."

If it's widely-known, how can it be secret? ;-)

Re:Secret? LMAO!

[AndroidCat]

If it's widely-known, how can it be secret? ;-)

The school administration didn't know it, duh! ;)

Incorrect Story

[Manip]

Should read ... - "For the administrators to monitor the students computer usage and for students that held the secret password to monitor one another. In order to keep the student's privacy safe while using the badly configured laptops the students had to get in and change the password. Upset by the fact they where made to look like noobs the school district are now bringing charges on all students that changed the password. When ask for comment the network admin had to say "I have an MCP, I think I can configure some laptops securely, the students are just messing with stuff using illegal haxor tools that they downloaded off P2P, I have contacted Microsoft, Apple and the MPAA about them!""

Re:Congrats

[louden obscure]

maybe the students coud end up making something better

yeah, with felony charges they may have the chance to learn how to make license plates...

Don't use their computer

[AndroidCat]

What if you bring in your own laptop?

Re:Don't use their computer

[stfvon007]

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 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.

Re:Don't use their computer

[AndroidCat]

Students will be required to use the school district issued laptop for school purposes.
Indeed. When rarely powered up, use the issued laptop only 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.
Translation problem. Exactly how is the spyware needed in their classes?

For these reasons, other computers will not be used on the Kutztown Area School District network.
Surely there's a non-Kutztown wifi within reach? ;)

Enders game

[3770]

Anyone else get Enders game flash backs?

For those that don't know Enders game, it is a great science fiction book by Orson Scott Card.

Re:Enders game

[GabrielF]

Ummm... no
The people who ran Battle School were smart and though out the consequences of their actions.
The people who run this high school are idiots

Re:Enders game

[pete-classic]

They were smart, but they were also sons-of-bitches.

By the way, watch your butt, AC is watching.

-Peter

Re:Enders game

[bani]

this must be some new usage of the word "great" I was previously unaware of.

OSC is a bigoted hack.

Re:Enders game

[pkhuong]

Wow. How does your opinion that the author is a bigoted hack preclude the possibility of said author's work being "great"?

Re:Enders game

[bani]

Because said author's work isn't great. I was deeply unimpressed by ender's game when I read it.

And I felt that way long before I ever learned he was a raving bigot.

You want great? Just about any of Niven's Known Space stuff. Asimov. Clarke. Heinlein. Herbert. Bear.

I can see how ender's game might have great appeal to angsty teens as "my first SF novel", but as an adult I found ender's game incredibly two-dimensional and simpleminded. He took the fad of the times (video games) and turned it into a novel. The major problem is it was already cliche then, and it is doubly cliche now.

Overall, OSC's writing style is as smooth and subtle as being clubbed over the head, and as deep and insightful as a dinner plate.

But if you like that kind of writing, then hey -- knock yourself out. OSC is obviously for you.

Re:Uhm...

[unleashedgamers]

Im my school system all the admin passwords are catholic10005 and the usernames are install (The Calgary Catholic School District)

The parents should lawyer up and sue back

[Anonymous Coward]

FELONY charges for reconfiguring the laptops the schools give the students to use?!?!?!? Any parent should be outraged that their student could be subject to a felony for something like this. Parents should have do sign off on ANYTHING that might subject their children to such bogus charges. And they should be riled their own district would act such a way if some porno and ebarrassment to the school administration is all that happened.

Message from God

[pete-classic]

Watch your butt, Bernard is watching.

-God

PS: I know there is no mod for "I Don't Get It." Please don't substitute "Off Topic".

Thanks,
Peter

cool

[imatt]

Cool kids in my opinion. They'd be my best friends. I wish my school gave out iBooks, or any laptop for that matter.

Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: What about computer viruses?

A: A virus that is written for the Windows Operating System (Win98, 2000, XP) cannot infect the Macintosh Operating system.

Hey! Neat! But um, what about computer viruses?

Wow....

[cato kaze]

As a high school senior in pennsylvania who has done things similar to those being described in the article, I'm worried. Before, my school district basically just slapped a student on the wrist for things like this, but I have the feelings that students in EVERY school district in the state are in trouble if schools start prosecuting because they are too stupid to handle anything technologically with reason. Hell, a kid in my district got 12 days out of school suspension for getting around the BESS Proxy wheres a kid who ripped a hunk of flesh off of another one's chest got 2 days in school suspension. People are fucktards...

Re:Wow....

[nmos]

Hell, a kid in my district got 12 days out of school suspension for getting around the BESS Proxy wheres a kid who ripped a hunk of flesh off of another one's chest got 2 days in school suspension.

ACK! They'd have had to shoot half the kids at our school, and that was a fairly good school too.

Re:Wow....

[Caseyscrib]

People are fucktards...

Actually most people are reasonable. Its administrators/law officials/politicians that weasel themselves into positions of power only because they want control. These are the fucktards you speak of. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Re:Wow....

[ImTheDarkcyde]

i've also had similar situations, the school wiped emulators and roms and all (most) games from our personal network drives (150mb per person) and then our computer science teacher let us know they planned on In School Suspension for those with games, an expulsion for those with ROMs (i own the carts, i swear)

long story short, schools make money off of kids being there, if you are not there, they lose X dollars, removing such a large amount of kids would not only be unprofitable for the school (its a business, remember?) you would have computer teacher with no students, no need to show up (we ALL had them) who doubled as the tech guy for the entire campus.

of course, i got wise and did what these kids should have in the first place, burned doom/quake/anythingelse to a cd and ran it from there

Re:Wow....

[mpe]

Hell, a kid in my district got 12 days out of school suspension for getting around the BESS Proxy wheres a kid who ripped a hunk of flesh off of another one's chest got 2 days in school suspension.

Is there any reason why the injuried student (or their parents) did not go to the police?

Re:Wow....

[xenoandroid]

Well, yeah, welcome to The United States of America. I really don't understand why people are surprised when a society that cares less about human beings physical and emotional well being than it does for economic gain does that kind of thing. I could probably go out and club some random person on the street and get a less severe punishment than I would for sharing an MP3.

Re:Wow....

[Nonesuch]

mpe wrote:

Is there any reason why the injuried student (or their parents) did not go to the police?

Schools strongly discourage "bringing the police into it..."

In my experience, the policy was that if the victim goes to the police, the victim gets suspended from school.

Re:Wow....

[angrist]

Bah, a real geek knows that it's really:

Power attracts the corruptable

Re:Wow....

[agraupe]

But the problem is (and I know from experience) that sometimes you *need* to access a restricted site. And the teacher is off doing other things, and doesn't want to be bothered, and it will save everybody 20 minutes if you just do it yourself. The point of BESS is not to prevent worms, as far as I know. Besides, these systems should be patched to avoid such things.

Re:Wow....

[chris_eineke]

a hunk of flesh off of another one's chest

Boobies!

Re:Wow....

[overbom]

I'm guessing that the reason the kid got 12 days for disabling BESS is that mucking around or disabling a proxy can ruin the district's ability to get e-rate money back from the federal government.

I'm not saying it's not fucked up, I'm just saying that's probably why it happened that way.

Yeah, right

[P0ldy]

TFA:

"I don't know why this is such a big deal," he said. "At no time was the security of the server breached, and I don't know that it has cost the taxpayers any money."

A server breach does seem pretty impossible. Considering the complexity of the password and how few people knew it, it's doubtful they wouldn't know if the server was breached anyway.

The Good News

[GabrielF]

I got out of high school two years ago and I have good and bad news about what's changed: The Bad News: School administrators are still morons The Good News: At least they've learned to pick better passwords. In my day all the passwords were things like "staff" or "teacher" or (my favorite) "inspire"

Re:The Good News

[kc8jhs]

When I was in high school, the updated the macs to foolproof after I proved the uselessness of At Ease (debug window, "G finder")

The worst part, was that when Foolproof was installed, the campus wide hotkey to disable security was: Shift-K

SHIFT-K!!

Took about 3 hours to be widely known, and 2 years later when I left it was still there.

You couldn't even type a K on those machine without the caps lock...sigh. And I regularly got in trouble for exposing stuff like that, or for example the science/biology teacher that had his whole hard drive shared (grade files and tests) with no password.

-Mikey P

Everywhere

[Luigi30]

This happened at our school too. We all got laptops and we did the same stuff. They spied on us, we got the passwords. They had student volunteers running the helpdesk. They were challenged to break the passwords. One did it and told the rest how the next day. The helpdesk was given fully unlocked computers to do whatever they wanted with, while the rest of the school was given the locked-down, awful, spyed computers.

The same thing..

[CyricZ]

.. the same thing that caused many Americans to lost their marbles after Sept. 11: FEAR caused by a LACK OF UNDERSTANDING. These politicians do not understand technology, hence they fear it with all their might. And the legal response by politicians to fear is to pass fucking moronic laws.

Re:Alternatives?

[BandwidthHog]

Is that you, trolling every single front page story tonig--

Okay, after searching through a bunch of threads so that I may infest this post with links to evidence of this person's transgressions, I see instead that this is simply the new slashdot meme.

<angry_old_man>
And I would have gotten away with it
if it hadn't been for you damn kids
and your fucking memes!
</angry_old_man>

*gets drunk*

High Schol Security

[Anonymous Coward]

Only vaguely related, but this reminds me of my high school, which spent somewhere in the vicinity of $50,000 on a school wide security system with individualy armable zones in every classroom, complete with door, window, and motion sensors. Then set the system-wide disarming code to 2468 so the teachers could remember it.

scary

[Jett]

Back in HS we had Win3.11 boxes locked down with the stupidest security software ever. The only thing you could use was Notepad and the crappy applications you were supposed to be using (which was really just a typing tutor thing that couldn't even keep up with you if you could type over 70wpm). I hacked that stupid security program using Notepad every single day and then put it back together before class ended. I did forget a few time but the admin was too stupid to figure out how I did it and couldn't prove anything ("I dunno, it broke?"). Of course this was pre-Columbine and the militarization of schools...

ridiculus rules

[Doppler00]

Will students be able to install software on the laptop?
No, ... 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....

These are the most ridiculus set of rules for computer use I have ever seen. Not allowed to install software on the laptop? Are they afraid some student might install Java, Perl, or Python and actually learn how to program? Are they afraid the students would install photoshop/gimp and be artistic? What is the point of these computers if they are restricted to a predefined set of a circulum some idiot came up with. I guess this is just another case of schools not wanting kids to think for themselves

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.

I guess this is fair enough, but not really. Can't have students colaborating with eachother on homework assignments, or e-mailing their teachers for questions.

Can a student use their iPod or digital camera with the laptop? Can students load music and photos on the computer?
Yes, students may connect their iPod music player or digital camera to their issued computer....

Well, It's reassuring to know that at least they allow the students to be good consumers and purchase iPod's and digital cameras. We wouldn't actually want them to learn anything.

Re:ridiculus rules

[0xdeaddead]

Learn? Think for themselves? You must be new to North America? Go and get an SUV, and start to tour around the country...

Re:ridiculus rules

[mpe]

These are the most ridiculus set of rules for computer use I have ever seen. Not allowed to install software on the laptop?

They are being loaned computers which belong to someone else. This isn't that different from the sort of policies employers might apply to laptops issued to employees.
Though an employer might well simply fire an employee who violated such rules and call the cops....

Are they afraid some student might install Java, Perl, or Python and actually learn how to program? Are they afraid the students would install photoshop/gimp and be artistic?

How do you know that this software isn't amongst that already installed?

Costs inflated

[usererror3000]

"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."

They say there is $1800 worth of software on the laptops... what a waste of money, I'd just have them put openoffice on a just a cheaper laptop running linux.

I have a feeling that the reason that only 13 kids are charged is because the 13 might have been the "geeks" who figured it out, and the rest of the kids just followed.

Set the administration of the school on fire!

[rvalles]

They offer the laptops into such conditions that revolutions are bound to happen. What's this "can only use school's laptop and not your own" shit? and "You take care of the laptop" shit? and this "cannot install programs" shit? and this orwellian monitoring crap?

Death to them. They've done it exactly the wrong way, and it's only natural for students to protest and disobey the dictatorship. Under this conditions, it's alright to set up a resistance armed with AK-47s.

Live CD

[crypto55]

Why not just use a live-on-CD linux bootdisk? I haven't seen that many for Macs, but I'm pretty sure that Yellow Dog has one. That would give the students the ability to run their own OS, although it would be slow because of read speeds. At my school, we run crappy little 900mhz pIII Win98 SEs. Originally, they had almost no security, but now it's building up. I sometimes use Knoppix, without any modification to the system itself.

It sounds to me like this is just a story about a bunch of script kiddies who got caught *gasp* without covering their tracks.

Re:Live CD

[aldragon]

Heh. Reminds me of the face that a few computers at my schools have cd-rom booting disabled... however they set the stupid bios password to "admin" on a good number of the computers.

A friend of mine guessed that bios password first try because he accidently pressed the key to go into the bios and felt that giving a joking guess at the bios password took less effort than pressing the power button. Man, that was funny!

Re:Live CD

[crypto55]

The cmos password is the acronym for the school or the tech center... and besides, it's stupidly set to boot from CD-ROM by default...

Re:Live CD

[aldragon]

(hmm... stupid typos... s/face/fact/ )

Source?

[TekMonkey]

That's absurd. I don't see how this can be charged as a felony...

The thing the adminsitration should be asking is how the password was leaked. :/

Re:Source?

[TekMonkey]

And I guarantee that if 100 students at my school got admin rights on school-issued laptops, there wouldn't be any disciplinary action and probably just increased security.

Re:Source?

[cyberfunk2]

Cracked likely...

alphanumeric... perhaps.. but a little long there...

more likey: "Most Common Surnames in the U.S.", something i'd definately add to my wordlist....

TREXLER shows up... apply dictionary rules, add potential numbers in front, bingo.. there's the password.

Re:Source?

[gtkuhn]

The thing the adminsitration should be asking is how the password was leaked.

Someone administrator probably had it on a sticky note stuck to their monitor when some kid got sent to the office and saw it. If so, the administrator should surely be charged with "Cyber Espionage" or some other felonious nonsense.

Re:Source?

[TekMonkey]

Actually, a comment a couple posts below mine says that's the address of the school. :D

Still might have been cracked though.

MOD PARENT DOWN -1Troll

[LostCluster]

What version of the article are you reading? It doesn't say that.

I get it, I get it

[3770]

I'm so proud.

Want to know where that quote comes from? I'll make you work for it... Search for my other post in this thread.

I could have been a felon...

[anthony_dipierro]

When I was in high school I convinced my Mom to get free internet access through the local college. It was part of the usage terms that no one else was supposed to use the access, so I guess I was a felon just for doing that. Then I figured out that the public_html directory was accessible through the anonymous FTP server, and that's where I got caught. I guess that'd be a second felony computer trespass charge there.

As it turns out I didn't get in any trouble, and though the account was disabled my Mom even was able to get it reinstated after sitting down with the head of the computer services department and promising that any time she logged on and used the service she would be the one physically typing on the keyboard. So I got my internet access back, but had to be more careful from then on.

About a year later someone in my local calling area came out with this nifty pay service called PPP.

But hey, I could have been a felon. Or, maybe I am a felon? What's the statute of limitations for computer trespass, anyway?

school computers have no security

[TRRosen]

I was a tech for an Edison project school. They use the same password for every computer in every school the operate. This includes the servers that hold all the individual passwords.

Re:school computers have no security

[blackomegax]

that is utterly sad if all i need to do is use knoppix to obtain a SAM file, crack it, and then i basically own the WHOLE network? someone needs to be FIRED for that.

Also...

[Rafikichi]

I would have blanked the HD and installed Ubuntu the first night... and after the lovely administration found out I would 'inform' them in the most unkindly way how their PC-use policy is contradictory with their mission statement. (Must have had the expensive macs sponsored by the **AAs).

Having helped the sysadmin...

[microsoftlinux_user]

at my school, I can see how the administration would be pissed. However, being a student at my school, cut these kids some slack! Granted, it's more work for the admins, but if these kids are bright enough to do this kinda stuff, make a class about it, and funnel this intuitiveness into forming future sysadmins. Just a thought

Bitching

[TimeTraveler1884]

we get VERY pissed at having to clean yet another computer.
Why are you bitching? You've got job security because of them don't you? If you want to be like the Maytag repair man, be my guest. But you don't have a leg to stand on if you can't lock down the machines well enough so that this does not happen.

Re:Bitching

[FireballX301]

Uh. It's not a job. I'm a student, doing this for experience. And we did lock down the machines, its just that other students that worked as tech leaked the passwords.

Re:Bitching

[TheCodingRooster]

Change the passwords. Really easy.

Re:Bitching

[st0rmshad0w]

And stop giving the to FRICKIN STUDENTS!

it's a crime

[frovingslosh]

$1385.00 for a notebook computer and additional costs in excess of $1800.00 each computer for the software, all at taxpayer expense, handed out to highschool kids, and the kids not even allowed to use their own notebooks instead. Poor security and over reaction when the high school students defeat it. I see the real crime here. Quick, lets arrest some students before the tax payers figure out who the real criminals are.

Don't the kid's have a perfect defense here under the legal concept of "attractive nuisance"?

What were the technology adminstrators doing...

[gozar]

The administrative password for the machines was 50Trexler.... Ummm, where did this come from? Why it's the address of the high school!

I'd be nice to know the laws broken

[standards]

It would be nice to know exactly what law was broken here. Remember, "breaking school policy" is not the same as "breaking the law". Only the legislature(s) can make law.

And so to claim a felony, they're claiming that some law was broken. Why can't anyone describe that law?

I heard the kids were reading Slashdot. Waste of time, those poor souls already lost....

Re:I'd be nice to know the laws broken

[zakezuke]

And so to claim a felony, they're claiming that some law was broken. Why can't anyone describe that law?

TFA isn't all that clear and pacode.com is none too helpful. they only stated "Computer Trespass" PA criminal code section 7615, a Third degree felony.

PA Title 18, Chapter 76: Computer Offenses
"Computer Trespass" PA criminal code section 7615, a Third degree felony.

(a) Offense defined.--A person commits the offense of computer trespass if he knowingly and without authority or in excess of given authority uses a computer or computer network with the intent to:

(1) temporarily or permanently remove computer data, computer programs or computer software from a computer or computer network;

(2) cause a computer to malfunction, regardless of the amount of time the malfunction persists;

(3) alter or erase any computer data, computer programs or computer software;

(4) effect the creation or alteration of a financial instrument or of an electronic transfer of funds; or

(5) cause physical injury to the property of another.

(b) Grading.--An offense under this section shall constitute a felony of the third degree
--http://www.wcupa.edu/infoservices/polici es/pa_ti tle_18_chapter_76.htm

Also see " Unlawful Use of Computer"
3933 (a)(1) F3 GRAVITY SCORE 5 PRIOR RECORD POINTS 1
3933 (a)(2)(3) M1 GRAVITY SCORE 3 PRIOR RECORD POINTS m --http://www.pacode.com/secure/data/204/chapter303 /s303.15.html

And as the PAcode site is now slashdoted... I takeit someone else posted this info.

Re:I'd be nice to know the laws broken

[unitron]

They mave have acted "in excess of given authority" but I don't see where they had the intent to do any of 1 through 5 unless you really, really, reach.

Sounds like Officer Skavinsky and the Berks County District Attorney's office don't really know what they are doing and don't understand the law in question or computers in general.

Re:I'd be nice to know the laws broken

[zakezuke]

They mave have acted "in excess of given authority" but I don't see where they had the intent to do any of 1 through 5 unless you really, really, reach.

Sounds like Officer Skavinsky and the Berks County District Attorney's office don't really know what they are doing and don't understand the law in question or computers in general.

Officers often don't understand the law, understanding isn't required only enforcement. I don't mean this to belittle police, that's just the way it is esp. when dealing with computer crimes.... and when the DA tells you to arrest a bunch of kids on a felany charge well you arrest a bunch of kids on a felany charge or get suspended/fired.

Now... I agree rules were broken... as to what degree they were broken I have no clue. I didn't see anything about violations of privacy, changing grades, or anything above and beyond gaining access via a weak password that everyone either knew, guess, or saw on a post it. For all I know, all they did was tweek with their machinens to surf for porn.... or even get around the proxy so they can lookup naviagation (i.e. sextants).

Re:I'd be nice to know the laws broken

[Alsee]

Read number (3) again. It is virtually impossible to use a computer at all without altering any data.

-

Unconstitutional

[Brett Glass]

It's interesting that the school district's policy document states:

Student use of email, chatting, IM, and game playing is a direct violation of the KASD computer policy.

It seems to me that this is a violation of the Constitutional rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association.

Re:Unconstitutional

[anthony_dipierro]

It seems to me that this is a violation of the Constitutional rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association.

I'm sure the restriction only applies to what the student does with school equipment.

Re:Unconstitutional

[DavidTC]

Yeah, because we all you know can't use government property to exercize your rights. The right to freedom of speech ends at your front door of your private residences, after all.

Re:Unconstitutional

[anthony_dipierro]

No, the right to freedom of speech ends at the front door to someone else's private residence. These laptops are owned by the school, and it's not a violation of freedom of speech for the owner of property to restrict what someone can do with that property. If my boss tells me that I can't read porn on the company computer, is that a violation of my freedom of speech?

Re:Unconstitutional

[Plautius]

Irrelevant, Schools have a long standing right to control what students do at school. Schools are considered to be acting "In Loco Parentis" (sp) which is a fancy way of saying that they are acting as the students parents. Schools can no more infringe on a students constitutional rights than a parent can.

Re:Unconstitutional

[anthony_dipierro]

That's interesting. I wonder how you explain the multitude of First Amendment cases that have been won by students and their parents.

Re:Unconstitutional

[belmolis]

A public school is not someone's private residence. In general, people have full 1st Amendment rights in public facilities. Students have some too, but there are limits due to the fact that they re minors and that the school has to impose some restrictions in order to function as a school. Even so, courts have upheld some free speech rights for minor students.

Re:Unconstitutional

[anthony_dipierro]

A public school is not someone's private residence.

But we're not talking about what the student may do inside the public school, we're talking about what they may do with the school's computer. I'm not the one who brought up the analogy of private residences, anyway, maybe I should have just rejected it rather than trying to correct it.

In general, people have full 1st Amendment rights in public facilities.

Your free speech rights in a public building are generally not the same as your rights in a public park. If you entered a public courtroom while court was in session and started reciting the declaration of independence, you'd be arrested.

Students have some too, but there are limits due to the fact that they re minors and that the school has to impose some restrictions in order to function as a school. Even so, courts have upheld some free speech rights for minor students.

This is very true.

Re:Unconstitutional

[burns210]

Well you can think that, but you would be wrong. The school district can dictate the rules a student must abide by when using district equipment. Why wouldn't they?

Microsoft can "violate your right to free speech" when they go after people who are posting their serials or product keys, libraries can block adult sites from children(actually, atleast at the school district I work at, we are forced by law to have filtering methods in place to block adult content).

It is 1) not the kid's computer, but rather school property on loan to the child and 2) a public school that has legal restrictions and requirements in the technology they make available...

besides... why not just have LDAP (OpenDirectory, from Apple, or any other) with Administrator's accounts as admins and student accounts as restricted users? Don't hardcode a password that will be easily hacked, make it authenticate to a server. (No, an admin couldn't log in if a kid was at home, but a school tech doesn't support computers from on-site, they repair them at a school, where the LDAP server would be available).

Re:Unconstitutional

[DavidTC]

So you're saying that it would, for example, be okay for the school to allow access to Christian chats but not Jewish ones?

That is clearly insane, and thus we must assume that just because the laptops are the schools, does not mean they can put any restrictions they wish on them, but must instead follow the constitution. The government is only allowed to put as much restriction is needed on public property, like in your crazy courthouse one.

Whereas a private individual would be perfectly free to set up whatever restrictions they wish.

Just students have the right to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association at school, except when that interferes with education, students must have those rights on the school's computers. If the school cannot legally stop discussion it does not not approve of on school grounds between students (Which it can't, in case you're confused.), it cannot legally stop email it does not approve of using school computers.

Now, obviously almost any converstation during class could interfere with education, but no one is using these laptops during class, and just like the school can stop students from building a 'meeting room', I can see how it could stop students from installing IM software.

However, I see nothing that would allow them to infringe students right of association and speech by forbidding students from using email at home, via webmail. It's exactly like any other web page the student is allowed to visit, except the student can...speak! It's a fairly clear constitutional violation, delibrately restricting speech.

Re:Unconstitutional

[st0rmshad0w]

Lets not forget that the schools are considered to be acting in loco parentis and allowing kids the use of those apps might expose the school to legal liability.

Frankly I simply don't see the need for anything more advanced than a specialized dedicated-use device rather than a full fledged general purpose machine.

Re:Unconstitutional

[Brett Glass]

Schools have the right to keep order in class. They don't have the right to restrict activities such as speech outside of class (remember, the kids take the computers home). Quite a few court cases have affirmed students' rights to do things that administrators and teachers do not like (including posting Web sites in which they criticize the school).

Re:Unconstitutional

[anthony_dipierro]

So you're saying that it would, for example, be okay for the school to allow access to Christian chats but not Jewish ones?

No, I'm not saying that. But the establishment of religion clause is phrased (and has been interpreted) much differently from the free speech clause. For example, censorship of school newspapers was considered Constitutional in Hazelwood School District et al. v. Kuhlmeier et al. But I don't think the ruling would have been the same if the school had censored Christian articles but not Jewish ones. There's also the fact that the restriction you presented was based on content, while a restriction banning IRC is content-neutral.

That is clearly insane, and thus we must assume that just because the laptops are the schools, does not mean they can put any restrictions they wish on them, but must instead follow the constitution.

Clearly they must follow the Constitution. And clearly they cannot put any restrictions they want on the use of the laptops. But it's also clear they can put some restrictions on the use of the laptops.

The government is only allowed to put as much restriction is needed on public property, like in your crazy courthouse one.

There are different standards depending on the restriction, but I'm fairly sure necessity isn't even the strictest standard.

However, I see nothing that would allow them to infringe students right of association and speech by forbidding students from using email at home, via webmail. It's exactly like any other web page the student is allowed to visit, except the student can...speak! It's a fairly clear constitutional violation, delibrately restricting speech.

I think you make a good argument, and I'm no longer convinced the school isn't violating the students rights here. It's a tricky issue though, as those who wrote the Constitution likely didn't anticipate that we'd be using government money to buy laptops for students who could then take those laptops home and use them to play games.

Of course, the Constitution also didn't anticipate that we'd be applying the First Amendment to the states via the Fourteenth, which wasn't even created at the time. Now that I'm reminded that the First Amendment doesn't directly apply to state run schools, I think I'd have to say that the school can limit the use of IRC on or using school property.

Re:Unconstitutional

[DavidTC]

The real problem here is that all restrictions on speech for students have been based on one of two things.

1. Disruption of the educational process.

2. Redirection of school resources that could be educating. (Aka, no groups chatting online in the library when people need to use those computers, even if there is not a class at the moment.)

The problem with 'no email' is that while the computers are the school's, they aren't being used during school, so can't disrupt anything, and they wouldn't be used for school related things if the students using them couldn't use them for other stuff. They don't magically appear at some other student's house for that student to use.

It's much the same reason that schools can't pick and choose which student run organizations it allows after school. If it allow anyway, it has to allow them all. And the only way it can disallow them all is just make the students leave, because they have no right to be there at any hour they want.

Re:Unconstitutional

[DavidTC]

Gah, hit submit too soon. Continuing the post:

The use of school real estate, by students, outside of education, has already been decided to be all-or-nothing...the school doesn't get to pick 'good' uses. (You'd be amazed how many schools have tried to shut down gay and lesbian clubs, and they can't without shutting them all down, which they do by removing students from campus after hours, which they obviously can do.)

Anyway the court actually has a two pronged test for this, and the first prong is just 'is it free speech?', which I think we can all agree email generally is, small exceptions of death threats and blackmail aside. Obviously for it to be covered under the first amendment, it has to actually be covered under the first amendment in the first place, regardless of education.

The second prong is the 'two things' I mentioned...although the courts says it would have to produce 'substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities'.

The problem is that, until recently, almost all the case law was about student run school newspapers, which are a completely different beast. If the school is using resources to print it, and those resources are intended for an educational use, controlling that newspaper may be allowable under certain circumstances.

In addition they can consider any offical status the paper holds, thus having its name put on the articles in it. And the school newspaper tends to be read in school, which can produce disruption. It's a very gray area, and people think all free speech issues in school are gray areas.

But that's nothing like the issue here. If someone checks out a laptop, it's theirs until they turn it in. (In fact, I bet they are barred from letting other people, including students, use it while they have it checked out.)

The school could take laptops away from people who didn't have schoolwork to do and give them to those who did, but considering students, at minimum, check the things out for 15 hours or so overnight, and can't possibly have that much homework, barring them from using email while it's checked out does not seem to accomplish anything.

I can't think of any way to justify this rule of theirs, the sole purpose seems to be 'We don't want students talking to people' and schools do have to be able to justify a rule if it infringes on the first amendment. Normally they can get away with 'That speech disrupts school', but that doesn't even vaguely fly here.

It was an asinine password anyway

[Roofus]

Let's see, the postal address of the district office is.....50 Trexler Ave!

50 Trexler Ave.
Kutztown, PA 19530

Excellent, nobody would ever think of "50trexler"

Re:It was an asinine password anyway

[Dhalka226]

50 Trexler Ave.
Kutztown, PA 19530

I originally read that as "Klutztown." I was laughing at the irony when I realized my mistake. What a let down.

Re:It was an asinine password anyway

[Large Green Mallard]

Back when I was in high school, the school computers were running DOS 5, and PowerMenu .. (1992-1996).. the password was the last 4 digits of the school's phone number.

Actually, most of the computers were Mac Pluses.. *shudder*

Re:It was an asinine password anyway

[Rufus211]

Hey, that's the IT password at my school!
(IT for us != computing services. IT does the projectors, lecture setups, and stuff like that).

Re:It was an asinine password anyway

[sjames]

When I was in school, we had a 300baud modem connection to the school system's mainframe. They ran a restricted access login system. However, if you hit ^c when asked for the 'charge code', it would say line terminated and drop you to a system prompt (I presume that was a bug) running with enough privilege to have some fun. The system log would record it as a failed login. Each school's directory was the same as the school code entered on the achievement test.

Detention?

[oneiron]

What ever happened to detention? Suspension? Expulsion?

Re:Detention?

[KutztownStudent]

Dettentions were tried, some just didn't pay attention to them and repeatedly did it so they were the thirteen to get the worse punishment.

Ooooh, it's teh Evul USA

[HermanAB]

teh police state, teh great Satan, full of evul, 12 year old hackers out to destroy teh werld. A country generally has the government it deserves...

Re:Ooooh, it's teh Evul USA

[MSZ]

Not even Americans deserve this...

Re:Congrats

[ccoakley]

...or recycle computer components for Dell (anyone have the link from theregister.co.uk handy?)

This makes me angry.

[sllim]

Someone here minimaly needs to loose his/her job.
I wouldn't blink at a stiff fine. I certainly wouldn't protest a prison sentence.
And for those of you that are too dense to figure it out, I am NOT talking about the students.

I don't care what porn sites the students accessed or what damage they did. There is NOTHING they could have done that warrants a jail sentence.

Something stuck out to me. WHY WASN'T THE PASSWORD CHANGED? I mean, most places change important passwords a minnimum of every 6 weeks. That by itself should have put something of a lid on things. I mean, who cares if the kids knew an old password?

No, I am with the kids on this. They are being wronged in a very serious fashion.

The spy program was probably Remote Desktop

[gone6713]

I was a student tech staff at my highschool. We weren't all given iBooks, but we were an all mac school. The student tech staff was given the admin password and we fixed almost all of the computer problems in our school, granted our school was tiny (200 students k-12) but we and the 1 Network Administrator/English Teacher did all the network stuff.

We used remote desktop on all our computers, but once the admin password (the same one that was used for 8 years) was leaked to the student body, anybody could get on remote desktop and control their friends computer.

That is probably one of the problems that the school was having with the iBooks. Another way they could change the password was if one of the students had an install CD. Pop in the CD, go to the file menue at the top of the installer and click on change password. Easy

Thoughts from a parent

[ExTex]

If one of the accused was my kid, I'd have a lawyer at the courthouse Monday morning with all of his knives sharpened. School boards and principals love power and tought talk. The point where the rubber meets the road is when an equal or higher power responds with bigger guns. A well connected and/or wealthy parent on a mission is their worst nightmare. I'm guessing that the accused children have been well chosen based on having parents who will either capitulate or don't have the resources to fight. Still, it won't be long until lawyers start getting involved on behalf of the accused children. The school officials are on thin ice when they start intimating that these students are somehow fellons by running sideways of a "usage policy." School records of children are strongly protected by federal law and by nearly every state law too. By accusing these minors the school is possibly breaching certain areas of student privacy, plus setting themselves up for a slander or libel suit. Minor children can not enter in to a legal contract. Conversely, they can't be in breach of a contract. You just can't be a felon for breaking a school rule of not using a computer in the way you were asked. By the way, committing assault, battery, and other violent acts are not the breaking of school rules. They are breaking established state and sometimes federal criminal laws. The school district needs to remember that they are a public entity that is likely subject to open records and sunshine laws of their state. Wait until the right parent seeks a court order to have a looksee at some of the administrations' machines and records. I have to think that the local prosecutor and police want no part of this game and will turn on the school at the earliest chance.

Re:Thoughts from a parent

[eluusive]

While I agree with you on many of your following points, I dont' like the first couple of your sentences. If your child did indeed violate the usage policy, the last thing he needs is you vindicating him for being an asshat. He or she will grow up to be a much better person if you don't instantly protect him or her from the ramifications of their actions every time someone accuses them of doing something wrong.

Re:Thoughts from a parent

[ExTex]

I'm unfamiliar with the term "asshat" but I think based on the context of your post I get what you are saying. My hypothetical reaction is based on the absurdity of the situation. Charging a child with a felony for a transgression that would be best punished by at least a detention and possibly a suspension, is a far greater issue. Fighting a felony charge would cost real money and the stakes for the child as well as the family would be sky high. A felony conviction for a minor would be an awful thing to carry for a lifetime. Especially for this type of violation. You are absolutly right that too many kids aren't held accountable for their actions. This is sadly a shocking and extreme case.

Re:Thoughts from a parent

[BackInIraq]

Actually, in addition to a lawyer your two other best friends are going to be media attention and contacting Congresscritters...both state and possibly national. Bring their name into it and suddenly they'll desperately want to side with the team that will lose them the least votes...and the school district that wants to turn kids into felons for what sound like (relatively) minor computer-related infractions probably won't be it.

Re:Thoughts from a parent

[xdroop]

If one of the accused was my kid, I'd have a lawyer at the courthouse Monday morning with all of his knives sharpened. School boards and principals love power and tought talk. The point where the rubber meets the road is when an equal or higher power responds with bigger guns.

What's the lesson here?

• Rules only apply to the poor; the rich can effectively buy/bully 'exceptions'.
• Your kid learns they can do what they want, and then daddy bails them out and just makes the problems 'go away'.

Ah yes, the OJ syndrome -- the best justice money can buy. Welcome to America.

Re:Thoughts from a parent

[w8300v-2]

This reminds me of something I saw on the local news (Houston, TX) about how things like chewing gum in class are being classified as 'disruption of class', and these kids getting 'tickets' and the parents having to go to court and/or pay fines. I can see a kid getting into 'the system' for something like drugs or bringing a weapon to school, but chewing gum? Talking in class? And of course, it's always the kids whose parents can't afford to fight it that wind up with these kind of 'punishments'. I'm not that old, but 'back in my day' kids got into trouble like that for dealing drugs or trying to burn the school down.

Re:Thoughts from a parent

[jaybee2001]

[Quote] "Minor children can not enter in to a legal contract. Conversely, they can't be in breach of a contract. You just can't be a felon for breaking a school rule of not using a computer in the way you were asked." [/Quote]

That's why you sue the parents.

Re:Thoughts from a parent

[torokun]

On point 1, not really.

I rather would see it this way:

* Authority figures can run roughshod over the poor and/or uneducated, so long as they don't have a lawyer to represent them.

As for point 2, you're right, mostly. Parents shouldn't leave their kids to get tagged with something they don't deserve. But neither should they let it go. The kids should get the suspension or revocation of use privileges they deserve, plus get chewed out for being asshats by their parents.

No worries...

[seanvaandering]

I guess I will have to change it now

Dont worry! I've gone and changed it for you!

These people need help.

[Above]

Per the school district faq:

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.

and

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.

most of all

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

I'm sure to anyone reading slashdot it's clear the school board, and school district were completely unprepared for giving every student a computer. Use a computer without downloading any software? Ever? Are they high? You couldn't even install a dashboard widget. They also clearly don't understand why there is a much more limited virus risk for macs, there is still a risk. It's crap like this that makes me not want to have kids.

Re:These people need help.

[DavidTC]

I don't see anything in there about changing any passwords at all.

But, yes, the school district was idiots.

Re:These people need help.

[SysKoll]

It's crap like this that makes me not want to have kids.

Whoah, slow down. Wrong conclusion. You want to have kids and substract them from the influence of the induhvidual setting these moronic school rules. I suggest shooting all the morons, or, if the former was somehow deemed impractical due to ammo cost, homeschooling your kids.

You want bright, informed kids to give nightmares and stress the heck out of these school admin morons. Now, science shows that applying high stress on lab rats decreases their libido. Ergo, if you stress these morons enough with your kids, they won't reproduce as much, thus ensuring a higher average IQ for the next generation.

So go forth and multiply. Save the next generation.

Great, now our schools CREATE criminals.

[thedarb]

So let the school give your kid a laptop, tell him *not* to play with it...

Charge him with a felony for when he finally does...

You know what's next? The kid thinks, "If I'm going to get time and a fine for this, I'm going to do something WORTH being charged!"

And bam, there you have it, your school administrators have just created the next violent school attackers who shoot up the school.

Wake up school administrators! You are pushing your kids into being criminals, and likely endangering yourselves and your other students in the process! I can hear the story on CNN now, and this time you won't be able to blame their music or their video games.

*TheDarb

Re:Great, now our schools CREATE criminals.

[ChllaPk]

>and this time you won't be able to blame their music or their video games.

But the kids who were charged had downloaded music and "inappropriate images" onto their school computers. Obviously they were downoading dangerous and edgy music, and maybe even *gasp* computer games! Clearly any consequences resulting from prosecution would be because of the horrible music and games that these students had illegaly downloaded. Definitely not the school's fault...

Big strings on those laptops

[HPNpilot]

More like a ball and chain. The school my son goes to has laptops all over for student use and there is a pretty strict policy on their use. You can even check them out from the library. The kids are all saavy enough to know those are for certain specific tasks and most have their own computers at home for other things like IM, chat (downloading inappropriate pictures...) etc.

The point being, when they loan you a computer, it is only for projects they tell you to do. My son's school isn't nearly as strict as TFA's school but that is how many schools see it. The way to deal with this is to only use the school's computers for what is absolutely necessary and everything else must be done on non-school machines. Lack of use may kill the program, but that is the result of their policy, no more, no less.

It's been a while, but when I was in HS we had one teletype with acoustic modem to a county timesharing computer (HP 3000). I was the school geek and shared passwords with head geeks at other schools and of course we figured out the alternate password trick on accounts and also how to get the admin password so we pretty much owned the system. We never messed anything up but one day were discovered and told in no uncertain terms to CUT IT OUT or we would lose access permanently. No police, no heavy handed shit, just cut it out or we would lose our toy.

The people in this country need to adopt a "zero tolerance" attitude toward stupid knee-jerk laws like these. Fire the school administrators, elect a new DA. Our kids are our future!

They should be punished

[paulsomm]

As there is no way to construe any of what they did as appropriate.

BUT . . . felony? c'mon. Even _IF_ they had "hacked" (and I use that lightly here since it sounds like they simply elevated local privileges and did nothing to the network, servers, or corporate data) a suspension, detention, etc would more than suffice.

This is at best an issue between the school and the children's parents. The police don't need to be involved.

This has been coming...

[SleepyHappyDoc]

This is just the latest escalation of the erosion of the traditional barriers between teachers and students. In the past, the teacher was the person facing the class, who knew more about the given subject than the students. Sure, there was always the girl in the front of the class who always got 90's and knew all the answers (Christine, I still have a crush on you), but the teacher could still stump them, albeit less often than the average student.

Nowadays, there are students, especially in computer/technical courses, whose knowledge and abilities far exceed the teachers. This change in the balance of power/knowledge must feel threatening to the teachers, since they have less use if the students already know more than they can teach them. People in positions of authority who feel those positions are threatened sometimes go over the top. That's exactly what this is.

BTW, if these students are convicted of a felony over this, will it affect their ability to vote?

Finally, last September, were the parents of the students who were the beneficiaries of these laptops informed that improper use could result in such harsh penalties as their beloved children being unable to go to a decent college, or the loss of their freedom? If so, did they explicitly and informed-ly agree?

Please don't tell them of DSL

[HermanAB]

Put Damn Small Linux on a CD or USB stick and then you don't have to hack the shitty software on the laptop - just run your own.

Ooooh, those eeeevul hackers...

Re:Please don't tell them of DSL

[Large Green Mallard]

Plus, they were iBooks :)

They also probably have an openboot password on them.. (of course, if you add any ram to them and hold down cmd-option-pr when it boots, it's not an issue :)

Somebody please, arrest the children!

[kihjin]

Times have changed,
Our kids are getting worse!
They wont obey the authorities
They just want to hack and surf!
Should we blame the government?
Or blame society?
Or should be blame the images on TV? Heck no!

Blame Vice City! Blame Vice City!

All the guns and blood and gore
Shootin' cops and killing whores

Blame Vice City! Blame Vice City!

We need to form an assault, it's all Vice City's fault!

Re:My school used different methods....

[stfvon007]

When someone in my class tried to steal the instructors password to a networking class that used online materials. (Sent a message to the company that provided them forging the e-mail header to look like it was from the teacher, saying "I forgot my password, please send it to address@aol.com")

The next class instead of going to the computer lab we were sent to a classroom instead. Once we were all there, the district network administrator came in, and started giving a lecture on how to track down where an attempted intrusion is coming from, Using a real life case study. It was quite an interesting presentation actually, exept for one student who was watching in HORROR (with a complete look of shock on his face) as they described in great detail exactly how they tracked him down and learned exactly who did it. He was visibly shaking at the end of the lecture. (Before the lecture he had absalutely no idea that anyone else knew about the password theft attempt)
Besides that he got a few days of in school suspension, but that was it.

Re:Forging a new generation of litigous a**holes..

[kfg]

What horrible crime had I committed? I installed Space Quest 5 on a computer to play at lunch.

Well, that is pretty offensive. You got off lucky though. I used my trig workbook to keep a table at the lunch room from wobbling.

I'll be out in only 20 more years.

KFG

Nobody likes looking stupid

[idiot900]

I remember being in high school and encountering this sort of thinking. It hasn't changed in several years, apparently.

I think the school staff know exactly how inconsequential the security breaches were. But nobody likes being made to look stupid - especially by kids many years your junior. These students took advantage of security problems that never should have been there in the first place. Certainly the students were wrong in what they did - no question about that. But making this into a felony issue is a defensive move on the part of the school to divert attention away from how badly they did their job.

On another note - apparently the school had $900,000 to spend on this. Why couldn't they afford a competent IT person to run it?

Re:Nobody likes looking stupid

[unitron]

"I think the school staff know exactly how inconsequential the security breaches were."

They used the school's street address as the admin password on all the machines. They know nothing about security. (They probably even had to ask a student how to turn the laptops on.)

destroyed?

[falconwolf]

i've been charged with a felony as a minor and now i'm working for nasa :P

And when did this happen? At one tyme it wouldn't of mattered much but with governments and businesses tightening the reigns an arrest can be harmful to a person's future. It used to be that one of the things that mattered most was if you could do the work, but now even employers like Home Depot give potential employees a battery of tests including personality tests and your credit history. What used to be childish pranks are now crimes.

Falcon

Re: destroyed?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

in early 1999, i was 16 at the time of arrest, 17 at the time of trial.

Apples, huh... dilemmas, dilemmas...

[DriveDog]

Wonder what the teenage Steves would have thought about this? Wonder what comments they might make now, when pissing off school systems might mean cutting into sales of Apples?

Tell them

[Kremit]

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.

Throw 'em in jail

[NitsujTPU]

<sarcasm>

These aren't exactly cherub faced youth! They're felons. Throw them in the slammer!

</sarcasm>

Stupid.

[BigZaphod]

I posted the following awhile back on slashdot, but I think in some ways it bears repeating here. Not because it is amazingly unique or insightful, but more because I learned a ton by screwing around with computer--sometimes school-owned ones. And I think I'm the better for it. If I did this kind of stuff now, I'd probably have been in jail at the age of 16 or something. This trend needs to change.

----

There was a lab that I used to hang out in. Being one of the few geeks in the school, I pretty much had run of the place. The teacher who oversaw the lab encouraged creativity and ingenuity. Sometimes he'd get pissed with something I did, but in those cases I just fixed it and moved on. This kind of activity, over a year or so, ended up earning his trust as I would also fix the odd problems with windows/autocad and such that would crop up.

Eventually I became the de-facto admin for that entire lab. During my required study period he would give me a pass to hang out in his lab--sometimes even when other classes were in there. Talk about heaven. I had the run of a computer lab that was networked. It was like being a king. :)

Around my junior year or so, they replaced the computers in the lab (aging 386/486 era machines with DOS, mostly) with shiny new Pentiums running Windows. For a few months they were basically just open and normal Windows machines. I think they even had Internet access. This was, of course, a total disaster. The net was new, then. People didn't have it at home. They downloaded anything and everything. Porn, viruses, music, etc.

The result was an *cough* admin *cough* who ended up being in the room almost everyday for awhile. He would spend his time poking around in control panels and "fixing" the computers. Eventually he must have gotten sick of that because they hired a local consulting company to come in to secure them all. Pretty soon the whole place was all passworded up with all these layers of cheap third party locks, etc.

I broke all of them--with full (unofficial) support of the teacher who taught in the room. They had tried to lock the systems down so much that half his programs wouldn't work right anymore. He had endless problems with students just trying to save their completed CAD drawings. I made a lot of those problems go away by circumventing the security, showing him how, and then giving him pointers to try to minimize the visibility of the hole so that other kids and the admin dude wouldn't find it. Not perfect, but it helped.

After some time of this the teacher pulled me aside one day and tells me in a reasonably loud-so-that-others-near-by-can-hear voice that I need to be careful because Mr. Admin is getting pissed that someone keeps getting into his expensively secured systems and he's going to try for suspension of that person when he is caught. Of course nearly every one of his students knew it was me--but they weren't going to talk. I had helped them all out of computer jams at some point or other. So after doing the semi-public speech, he later pulls me aside in private and says, "Hey, keep doing what you're doing. I'll make sure they don't do anything to you. Those bastards are making my life such a living hell and they won't listen to my needs that I've given up trying to deal with them. You at least make it possible for me to teach my classes."

So of course after the next round of "security upgrades" I was once again on the job. Eventually I figured the way into the system and changed all the screen savers to be the marquee one and had it read, "Ha ha! I got in Mr. Security Guy!" Hoo boy did the shit hit the fan. I was shielded from it, but the teacher just loved it. The admin dude was pissed. The consulting guy was there almost everyday for like 2 weeks. My teacher would just smile and nod. Eventually they locked it down pretty heavily, but by this point I was a senior and I was graduating early and was out of there.

Those were some good times. Seriously, though, I swear that in this

hire these kids

[usererror3000]

Heck, the school should hire these kids (the ones who actually figured out the password, not the ones who just followed the directions)

Nerdy anecdote

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

So it was freshman year in Cornell, 1990, and I had doubly no hope of getting laid, being a freshman and also a geek guy, the one girl on my floor that I had a crush on ended up dating some jock, so I fell in with a group of cool malcontent geeks who liked to play early Mac network games looong before they existed on PC's (all hail Spectre, Bolo, and NetTrek 3!) and got to breaking some rules.

At the time, Cornell was Mac-dominated (oh, happy memories) and the Upson lab had a network of IIci's just waiting to have their security hacked. I forget the tool that was used, but we figured out that it stored the password in a certain file that we could reach by bypassing the file security with Norton Utilities for Macintosh (haha Mac OS 6 security, bah). We procured a copy of the software, installed it and created a password on my own IIci, then took a copy of that file (with the obfuscated password) and replaced the file on the lab IIci. Instant admin access.

But we didn't stop there. We had such organization that we managed, as a team, to use this trick to install a fun little background process called NetBunny... on ALL the macs in ALL the labs. NetBunny does nothing on its own, but paired with a little utility called StartWabbit that we pointed at any campus AppleTalk network we wished, would begin the chain reaction. What then happened is that the Energizer Bunny would walk across the screen thumping the drum, going literally from screen to screen across the whole lab. It was pretty much a riot, if you were in on the joke, but the admins couldn't figure it out (we had hidden the executable well through obfuscation by renaming it and pasting another icon on it) and after they heard the recognizable "thump, thump, thump" sound would jump up and run around helplessly yelling "It's the bunny!!" We did it a few times with "agents" at each location to witness the mayhem. Good geek times.

I think it's the nature of very talented people, that when The System is not challenging them sufficiently (or when they refuse to take on the offered challenge due to lack of interest or motivation), that they seek out their own challenges, and fun.

I don't think these kids should get punished this harshly. Felony charges? Simply for trying to break the rules? Please. Face it, it takes some effort and talent to break in, it's just misplaced effort and talent. Find a way to redirect it. I mean come on, it probably started with some high-school geek starving for attention who wanted to seem cool.

Re:Nerdy anecdote

[ibennetch]

[huge grin] -- I remember NetBunny. That was the best extension around...we used it all of the time in the labs at my high school. There is nothing like knowing you've unleashed the power of the Energizer rabbit boom-boom-booming across 20 computers.

Then it kind of went away for a few years and we added a new tech person who'd never seen it before. We had fun with that.

I was one of the students who helped run the labs, so I had to help eradicate the bunny whenever it would crop up, but it saddened me to see it go every single time.

thanks for the memories :-D

Re:Nerdy anecdote

[Scudsucker]

But looking back it on, it doesn't seem very different from teenagers who used to etch carvings into their desk or spraypaint the walls.

Nonsense, how could you be more different? One was physical vandalism that costs thousands of dollars to fix, and the other, while a headache for admins, caused no physical damage or data loss and made a nice screen saver. Try comparing apples to apples.

I am an IT Director in a High School District...

[xorowo]

...and I think that pursuing felony charges is going too far. It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out how the password was leaked, and the person that leaked it should be punished harshly. I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for student crackers. That said, I imagine that the letter is designed to scare the crap out of the students, more than it is designed to suggest an actual imminent arrest.

I just dealt with some students who abused positions of trust (as tech aides) to install keylogging software on multiple computers. We came down hard on the student who initiated this because he used the information he gathered to access email and grades of the teachers whose passwords he caught. I never considered recommending this to the police, though, because I knew that we could suggest expulsion (which we ended up on a compromise with the student and his parents on) and scare the student into not doing this again. Or, at least, we now know who he is and we can ensure that he won't do the same thing.

The primary downside is that high school computer experiences shouldn't have to be as controlled and locked down as they are in most places. While we absolutely need security surrounding our student information system, grades, attendance and teacher files, I don't like locking down computers and trying to force certain behaviors. Let these kids work normally on the computers and be clear about what is appropriate. Locking them up will only, in the end, produce exactly what these district's saw -- students who do everything possible to break the security.

Oh, and the parent who said, "and I don't know that it has cost the taxpayers any money" is delusional. Everything I do in my job costs the taxpayers money, so if I have to spent dozens or hundreds of hours tracking down the source of a security breach instead of working with students on a multimedia project or with teachers on instructional applications, then it costs money.

You mean, re-imaging isn't already policy?

[rufusdufus]

Are you implying that you wouldn't reimage a laptop before giving it to another student? You would leave whatever they left behind on the computer for the other students to see?

Any compentent tech would always reimage a laptop before giving it to another person. This shouldnt take more than 1 minute of work and about 5 minutes of waiting.

I did some of this sort of stuff

[assassinator42]

Never got the admin password though. Aparently, it was changed every week or something like that. At first, I put firefox and some emulators on a network drive, and latter made the folder hidden. All student account were limited users though, and we couldn't type c:\ into the IE bar and browse files. However, you can get around that by typing the path you want to browse in Word's web toolbar. Later, I just started putting the files on my USB stick. Put it in, autoplay comes up, select open in explorer, execute program. To any students: I don't recommend doing this. It can seriously hurt your grade.

Re:I did some of this sort of stuff

[tomjen]

Ore just use the old trick, by making a shortcut to the c drive. Oldest trick in the world.

Speaking of Apple

[commodoresloat]

I noticed this was listed under "Apple" because the students were using iBooks. Could this open some eyes and increase interest in alternative (Linux, Windows) offerings?

Re:Speaking of Apple

[xenoandroid]

Why would it? And why would you want to increase interest in Windows?

... I wish I saw this earlier...

[rekenner]

My school also had this. I was a computer technician for my school... About 20 students did that. We had about 1500 students with laptops... Yeah. That was fun.

Everything that happened in the article happened in my school, pretty much. AFAIK, no one was charged with anything for changing anything, the only thing was students that damaged the computer and refused to pay or tried to keep it over summer (Theft charges.)

We had to go through about 4 passwords because they kept getting out. Eventually, the computers had to be locked down so that just about nothing could be done on them.

One difference, though, was that there was no way to get around blocked websites on the laptops, as all the connections in the school were filtered through the county servers. Students still managed to get porn onto the computers, through connecting at home. That was a 10 day suspension and the laptop priveledge being removed for their time at the school, I believe.

Officially, we weren't allowed to connect to the internet at home, but there was nothing preventing it. I believe that next year my school is going to be putting a program onto the laptops to allow for (screened) home access, though.

Again, this all only applies to my school, but the situation is similar.

Re:... I wish I saw this earlier...

[rekenner]

Actually, I should clarify. The students got into admin accounts onto THEIR laptop, which were local accounts. They couldn't do anything on any administrative servers or anything of that nature. We didn't want the admin password out, but no real changes could be made, except to the laptop. Students would change settings they had no clue about and we had to fix them was one of the largest annoyances, and that's about it. Most of the times we would just reimage the computers if they had done a lot (Oh, you had work on the laptop? Oh, sorry.... Our teacher/overseer for the class was a tad on the evil side, and we picked up on that... As if we weren't already.). Reimaging took about an hour per laptop, and were done off external HDD, that we had 3 of. We later got Powermac G5s running on the school's network that we could do (wired) network reimaging.

Re:... I wish I saw this earlier...

[KutztownStudent]

Students were illegally downloading remote desktop off p2p to spy on the admin leading to the potential, possibly may have even happened,leak of the more powerful passwords.

Kevin Mitnick

[falconwolf]

When Mitnick was arrested the cops wouldn't let him have a phone. They thought he could launch nuclear missles by whistling into a phone at specific frequencies.

I'm not sure if his probation is over now but one of the terms was that he couldn't even use a computer.

Falcon

Re:Kevin Mitnick

[bladesjester]

It ended quite a while ago. He's now a security consultant.

It is true that among the terms of his probation were stipulations that he could neither own nor operate a computer or cell phone until the end of said probation. His parole officer, however, let him slide on the cell phone portion as long as he showed his calling records because the man realized that he'd be using it for legitimate purposes.

Re:Kevin Mitnick

[arkanes]

The whistling thing is real, too. Prosecuting attorneys told the judge that during his arraingment and bail hearings, and he was held without access to a phone (even a prison payphone) for that reason. The kind of bullshit some people will swallow is amazing.

Re:Kevin Mitnick

[QuickFox]

Of course it's completely ridiculous! Would nuclear missile systems be so vulnerable to cracking that people could log in by telephone? And give them commands? And tell them to launch nuclear strikes? And get them to obey? With nobody noticing and stopping the process?

By whistling a carrier frequency?

--
--

Re:Kevin Mitnick

[loraksus]

Uhh.. You may decide to change your statement once I tell you that the minuteman unlock (i.e. to launch) codes were set to 0000000 a couple decades ago.

Re:Kevin Mitnick

[Freexe]

Well he could whistle something simple to start a program that could have done the rest? at least in theory

Re:Kevin Mitnick

[tomjen]

How in the world could you posibly have any chance of knowing those codes? They are the us best keept secrets?

Re:Kevin Mitnick

[Alsee]

How in the world could you posibly have any chance of knowing those codes?

Maybe he reads Slashdot?

SAC [Strategic Air Command] remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders. And so the "secret unlock code" during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War remained constant at OOOOOOOO.

-

What would you suggest?

[Anonymous Coward]

That question doesn't really *have* an answer on the mac. What about viruses?

It's not just "there aren't any now, but there may be eventually so you should install a scanner." A virus scanner on the mac is such a nearly useless thing that the scanners available are very bad.

One of the best ways to break a Mac has traditionally been to install Norton Antivirus.

You can't *really* protect against a threat that isn't there yet. It's easy to build a virus identifying engine on Windows because you know what sorts of things you'll be looking for. You know what the various Windows virii look like so you can test the software.

On the mac you're writing into a void. Are mac viruses going to be executables, widgets, PDFs? What vulnerability is going to be popular for creating them?

In addition, Macs having only 5% marketshare means that even if there were a virus, there wouldn't be many carriers spreading it. Low-density populations don't spread infection easily.

All this is to say that, even though only a cock-eyed optimist would believe there will never be a virus on the mac, the prevention is currently more effort and more risk than the non-existent disease. The answer they give regarding viruses is a pretty reasonable one for the time being. Another good answer woud be "always have your data backed up," but that's generally true.

The rest of your post is equally inapplicable. Apple did *not* administer this network. Your assumption about having only a single password to protect the users from themselves is bizarre...

The idea that a school can hand out laptops to all its students with software on those laptops to restrict their use is inane. The students will always crack the system because the client is in their hands. If they didn't want the students accessing porn on those computers, they shouldn't have provided them.

No actual server was breached. All that happened here is that a bunch of horny students got around the school's filtering, downloaded some music and some porn, and are now facing felony charges. Very american, but not a case of failed security. A case of foolish expectations.

Oxymoron

[bergeron76]

The 'Secret Password' that was 'Widely Known'.

18 Pa.C.S.A. 7615

[danoatvulaw]

Just for everyone's information, here's the statute they might be prosecuted under. According to the sentencing provision, a third degree felony carries a maximum penalty of up to 7 years imprisonment (18 Pa.C.S.A. 1103) and a max $15,000 fine (18 Pa.C.S.A. 1101).

(a) Offense defined. A person commits the offense of computer trespass if he knowingly and without authority or in excess of given authority uses a computer or computer network with the intent to:

(1) temporarily or permanently remove computer data, computer programs or computer software from a computer or computer network;
(2) cause a computer to malfunction, regardless of the amount of time the malfunction persists;
(3) alter or erase any computer data, computer programs or computer software;
(4) effect the creation or alteration of a financial instrument or of an electronic transfer of funds; or
(5) cause physical injury to the property of another.

(b) Grading.--An offense under this section shall constitute a felony of the third degree.

Re:18 Pa.C.S.A. 7615

[SlimFastForYou]

Sweet! I love our justice system, it is so fair and just.

Evil students trying to install AOL Instant Messenger? Lock 'em up 'till they're 25 and take away their entire college savings fund while they are at it. The Department of Corrections will correct them well and convert them to good citizens.

Re:18 Pa.C.S.A. 7615

[xenoandroid]

Well yeah. See. What happens is that once they get out their lives have been screwed up so much that the government and corporations have a much better chance at exploiting them. That is the definition of a good citizen.

Re:18 Pa.C.S.A. 7615

[I_can_not_believe_I_]

Hmmm, interesting, but did they actually do any of these?

(1) Doubtful, they may have added information to their own laptops, but I doubt they would have removed any, especially with the security so easily beaten. That is unless someone got the bright idea to format his "friend's" laptop.
(2) Once again unlikely, if so, it would have been caught by the helpdesk.
(3) A re-iteration of point one for all intents and purposes.
(4) Really unlikely, had anything financial been altered, you can be sure that would be at the head of the story, with the value inflated tenfold.
(5) Physical injury of a laptop through the network.... yeah sure, keep dreaming.

Nice to see people wave laws around as threats, hmm I wonder if the kids parents have ever heard of a little term called bartery, the nice police officer was nice enough to supply his name.

Ah well, once again, litigation and charges are not all the answers, why not take the simple solution and give the kids detention (and possibly hire them to *properly* secure the network), and fire the IT staff.

Re:18 Pa.C.S.A. 7615

[3seas]

But does this apply to DRM where say MS decides you don't have a legal copy (understand all that MS gets wrong) and via DRM and network connection performs such crimes?

Who goes to jail then?

Re:18 Pa.C.S.A. 7615

[MooseGuy529]

<statement of="obvious">Well, it doesn't seem like they did any of that, did they?</statement>

The "cause to malfunction" line is possible, but the ideas of proper function and malfunction are defined by what the user is doing, so if they want it to turn off filters, it's not malfunctioning. Other than that, they didn't erase data (aren't 1 and 3 the same?), transfer funds, or cause physical injury.

Re:18 Pa.C.S.A. 7615

[Ratbert42]

If it took anyone more than $5,000 to repair the "damage" someone did, it is also a Federal felony if the computers were connected to the internet. Mandatory minimum of six months imprisonment and I believe due to the PATRIOT Act, they take your DNA and keep it in the antiterrorist files.

Re:18 Pa.C.S.A. 7615

[Alsee]

they didn't erase data (aren't 1 and 3 the same?)

No. Number three says alter any data. It is virtually impossible to use a computer at all without altering any data. Viewing a website alters the cache. Opening any document alters the "most recently used" list. Running any program at all probably alters the defrag application usage statistics.

-

Re:18 Pa.C.S.A. 7615

[MooseGuy529]

Politicians suck and have no qualifications to write laws.

Huh? Most probably you are trolling, but...

[PaulBu]

Funny thing is the same thing is said for violating a school's drug policy or violence policy. And I'd fully expect criminal charges in either of those cases.

What the heck is "violence policy" and how it is different in the US schools from "the laws of the land"? Is it something like a Catholic school punishing a student for not turning his other cheek when hit in the first one? ;-)

Seriously, the more stories like this I read, the more sorry I feel for the kids in the US public school system. No, never been in one, got my schooling "in Soviet Russia" and even there (and then, late 70s-early 80s) they would let parents give the punishment for something as harmless as this, not the federal penal system!

Paul B.

Re:Huh? Most probably you are trolling, but...

[bladesjester]

I graduated high school in 1998.

Believe it or not, now schools tend to punish *both* parties involved in a fight even if one of them was just defending themselves. I know - I got nailed with it a few times. I didn't start the fights, but the only cheek that was turned was the other guy's when it hit the floor. (The joys of being martially trained as a kid)

So, *yes* it really is like punishing the student for not turning the other cheek, and personally, I think it's bullshit.

Yes, by all means punish the person who started it, but leave the one who was just standing up for himself alone. Thankfully my teachers decided not to go along with the administration and didn't take points from my grades.

Re:Huh? Most probably you are trolling, but...

[PaulBu]

I know, I know... Actually "in Soviet Russia" it WAS practically illegal to participate in martial arts training (I did, we had to make sure that the door to the school gym is bolted before starting the routine -- of course the trainer would have to deal with most of the problems). And I can understand (now) some of the reasons why a teacher would dispense some punishment for both parties -- but not anything getting to the felony level, dammit!!!

Paul B.

Re:Huh? Most probably you are trolling, but...

[Nicholas Evans]

Ah yes, something I've been worried about the past year.

I've just finished up my freshmen year at a public school. I came right out of a tiny little private school, so I had yet to see how the big bad gorilla known as the NEW HAVEN PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM operated.

I was pretty shocked by what I saw, I'll tell ya. This one kid attacked another one one day at lunch. He grabbed his head and SLAMMED it into the bench, then proceeded to begin beating the crap out of him. The kid tried to fight him off (with a bit of success), because otherwise, he would have been seriously injured and/or killed. The only administrators/teachers present were all short, thin women in suits. There was not a whole lot anyone could do to help him.

And, lo and behold, despite the fact that he was VICIOUSLY assulted, he was suspended for a week because he didn't want to die.

Public schools really do suck. I've been wondering what I'd do if I were attacked by someone like he was. I'd probably end up fighting back, but I'm a good deal more clever than he is, and I wouldn't let the principal push me around after something like that.

Ah well.

Re:Huh? Most probably you are trolling, but...

[mpe]

What the heck is "violence policy" and how it is different in the US schools from "the laws of the land"?

More to the point these "policies" don't supercede the "law of the land". Which has lead to interesting situations of students being convicted by what amount to "kangaroo courts" then later aquitted by a real criminal court. Especially embarassing for the school concerned if it's the alleged defendant insisting on the involvement of the criminal justice system.

Re:Huh? Most probably you are trolling, but...

[COredneck]

Reminds me of the public school I went to - Carmel Clay Schools in Indiana. At that time, athletics was "king" and if you did not play sports, you were looked down even by the teachers. The punishments dished out were different between the jocks (slap on hand) and non-jocks (we will make an example out of you !). I happened to be a non-jock, so I experienced the heavy hand of authority. If you even dared to defen yourself from the "bully", you, not the bully experienced severe punishment and the bully got his hand slapped.

The shit doesn't change when going into the corporate world. Where I work at, our company is subcontracted to another (DoD contract usually pairs companies, one is prime and others are sub-contract). The manager I report to, I am not one of his favorites. The prime company files a formal complaint against me for something that happened on our own premises based on some minor technicality. I got called into his office and got an ass chewing to end all ass chewings ! One of his favored ones openly defies the prime's dress code at the prime's location (wears blue jeans, not dress pants). Nothing is done since he is the "fair haired" child. If he was not favored, he would be told to comply and "like it" in honor of Judge Smells from Caddyshack and have an ass chewing on top of that.

And, lo and behold, despite the fact that he was VICIOUSLY assulted, he was suspended for a week because he didn't want to die.

Re:Huh? Most probably you are trolling, but...

[Xyrus]

Look, they're minors. All this talk about felonies and prison time is all media hype.

Worst case scenario, these kids may be assigned to community time or a fine. And when they turn 18, their records are cleaned.

Sure, this may have been "harmless", but that's not the point. They were given state property with state rules and restrictions. Those restrictions were put in placed so little Johnny wouldn't do things like download porn and then have the parents sue the school for millions of dollars.

Is it ok for someone to walk into your house and take something just because you left the front door unlocked?

~X~

apple?

[pbjones]

if these had been DELL computers, would it have got DELL in the title? No! what has the brand got to do with it??

Just SW Costs inflated

[jayrtfm]

The hardware costs are correct, but the software cost stated is an outright lie. The academic cost of the software is probably around $600 to $800. IMHO it is a good mix of software.

Are you kidding me?

[PhreakinPenguin]

How can ANYONE that posts on Slashdot be saying that the kids should receive punishment for what they did? I've seen several ridiculous postings and I'll respond to a couple of the more asinine ones.

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.

It's not that big of a deal, they shouldn't face charges.

Yes it is a big deal, in more ways than one. The kids were all old enough to know the difference between right and wrong. They all knew that "hacking" their computers and downloading music and porn was wrong. One of the kids even was quoted as saying, "I knew it was against school policy but I didn't know it was against the law." Well, now he knows and will always remember after being charged with a crime.

What crime did they commit? Not sure as the article really doesn't say but based on some of the things they did, I can assume that they didn't download free music that didn't require a payment. Anyone trying to make an excuse for what they did should be sent back to school as obviously you need to learn a few things.

Re:Are you kidding me?

[PhreakinPenguin]

Correction, it should be:

How can ANYONE that posts on Slashdot be saying that the kids shouldn't receive punishment for what they did? I've seen several ridiculous postings and I'll respond to a couple of the more asinine ones.

Re:Are you kidding me?

[Spock the Baptist]

Shouldn't receive punishment is a different statement that should not be prosecuted for a felony.

The issue at hand is the severity of the punishment, not the elimination of punishment.

Re:Are you kidding me?

[tedrlord]

You're right. It's entirely their fault. They ought to be punished! They broke the rules, and deserve whatever they get! In fact, for breaking school policy, they deserve nothing less than death! Or life inprisonment, at the very least. I mean, using a computer their school gave them for uses other than the school intended. That is an infraction against the state! No punishment can be too severe.

But seriously, how insane is a program that hands computers to teenagers, says they shouldn't play with them, then goes directly to law enforcement when the kids go against policy? This could have easily been handled within the school through suspension or even just revoking of computer privileges.

Re:Are you kidding me?

[KutztownStudent]

Will everyone forget the newspappers they now nothing they seem to be telling to little and giving everyone the wrong ideas. The admin2 password was leaked, students changes settings and there computers were then reset. The password was changed and as far as i know not discovered but some broke in and changed things, detentions given. Some still kept doing it repeatedly and they got arrested.

Re:Are you kidding me?

[Sigma 7]

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

For those who don't know, students were given physical access to laptops. They were then charged with theft for guessing the local password to install unauthorized software.

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.

Your analogy breaks down because the student is given physical access to the machine. A more appropriate analogy would be giving students a locked box, telling that they need to use the contents, and punishing the students for unlocking a box with anything other than the special key given to that student.

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

I have a computer at home. Is it wrong to hack into my own computer?

Any decent entity should know that any physical access will negate any security measures (aside from grabbing an decryption key from a remote server, but even that can be bypassed eventually.) If you don't want students to eventually get full access to the system, don't give them unsupervised access to the laptops to begin with.

BTW, any software damage caused by installation of unauthorized software is repairable. Check the http://www.kasd.org/web121/faq.htmlFAQ, specifically the question "Can a student use their laptop computer over the summer?" which states that the laptops will be cleaned over the summer period. Also, any half-decent computer should have a jumper (or equivalent thereof) that resets the firmware to the original settings, should malicious software install itself into the BIOS.

Ultimatly, this should never be a felony conviction. While taking away the laptops is acceptable (assuming that the punishment is valid), criminal charges will be counterproductive as it destroys whatever respect children have for the law.

No iBook for you!

[Spock the Baptist]

If I were a parent in the school district in point, I'd not allow my child to use a school owned computer, or so much as touch a school owned computer. I can easily afford Powerbook, or an iBook for my child. If the school refuses to allow my child to use *my* laptop, then my child will do with out.

End of story.

Re:No iBook for you!

[Pete]

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*

Re:No iBook for you!

[Pete]

In fact, now I think about it, the prohibition against installing unapproved software on the laptop wouldn't prevent a kid from sticking in a USB key and running software off that. "Hey, I didn't install anything on the laptop!"

Eh, anyway. Highschools. Free laptops for highschool kids. Feh. *start bad yorkshire accent* When Ah were a lad, we used ta dream of seeing a computer!... :)

Re:No iBook for you!

[Anubis350]

As is oft quoted:

"when you have boot you have root"

and:

"when you have access, you have boot"

Re:No iBook for you!

[xiaomonkey]

Given how draconian this school seems to be (e.g. felony charges for misusing a school issued laptop), it seems very plausible that even running a non-standard OS on the system could be construed as unauthorized use of the equipment, and thus worthy of police action.

It's awful really, programs like this should be a good thing. I mean when I was in high school I would have loved a free laptop that I could use for homework and coding. *sigh*

Why give Laptops at all

[teaDrunk]

What is the point ? District/school officials make some money on this (or throw money around) ?
Just provide the kids monitored PCs on the LAN as usual.

Re:Why give Laptops at all

[Compumyst]

I can understand why a school district might want to give out laptops, or at least make them availible to students. But to force them on the students as part of the education proccess, disallowing them to make any system changes or even simply use their own laptop is going too far. And the part about using laptops on the school bus being a safety hazard - that one was funny.

Re:Why give Laptops at all

[BostonPilot]

I was thinking the same thing: do the students HAVE to have a computer at school? Can you opt out of the entire computerized classes thing? Would a terms-of-usage agreement have any basis if you are compelled to have a computer and you must sign the agreement in order to have a computer? What is your alternative to signing?

Personally I think computers in school is a terrible idea. Then again, I don't think current schools are a very good way of teaching. Not sure I have great alternatives, though.

RTFA

[jayrtfm]

"Skavinsky consulted with the Berks County District Attorney's office and recommended charges of "Computer Trespass," in violation of PA criminal code section 7615, which carries a third degree felony charge."

Re:RTFA

[zakezuke]

"Skavinsky consulted with the Berks County District Attorney's office and recommended charges of "Computer Trespass," in violation of PA criminal code section 7615, which carries a third degree felony charge."

Actually that would be Title 18 Chapter 76 (SS) 7615 but the TFA doesn't expressly say Title 18 PAcode.com doesn't have anything on title 18 criminal code online, except a chapter listing (SS) 303.15 which doesn't even list anything of Chapter 76: Computer Offenses (SS)7601-7661. I had to establish the syntax based on my view visits to Philly, and see what chapter isn't listed online.

(SS) = dec(21)ctrl-u Section but slashdot drops this character.

Inept IT admins in HS

[1eyedhive]

At my (now former) high school, the IT admins were absolutly inept, to the point that the Head honcho DOWNGRADED every last ibook from OSX.1 to 9.(whatever) because "OS Ten is too complicated" referring to the TCP/IP config and printing setup (entering IP's manually in a box for printer setup is apparently too complicated for him.)
this is the same guy who thougt you could deploy 30 non-multicasted disk images @ 4GB a piece over a 10Mb unswitched LAN within a day...
I know more about LAN security and the school's setup then he did, as the bloody student aide who's supposed to know shit...

I got a school issued ibook, immediatly RESTORED OSX proper, changed the admin codes to something SECURE, threw Firefox on there (as opposed to INTERNET EXPLORER!), and got IP printing working, and carried around a netgear WAP to every class to "allow me to print" when really i was surfing from class , i did do the work, though.
I patched security holes the IT staff knew nothing about though I could not get them to keep the Primary Domain Controller / File Server box locked down (the console was logged in as admin, unlocked in a student-accessable room, every time i walked by i locked it down and even tyed with the idea of making the password something real.

I COULD have smashed the entire school LAN to cyberdust from my ibook and have the techs crying uncle, but I didn't, because every time there was a glitch, they came running to me!

Hahaha.

[BJH]

I love this sort of attitude - "Just do X, it'll only take you 10 minutes, right? Sheesh, wtf you bitching about - chill out."

It'll take a lot more than 10 minutes when you have to do it to EVERY workstation EVERY day, just because people can't learn the difference between their property and other people's property.

Re:Hahaha.

[colinrichardday]

Hmm... Maybe you should make the local hard drives read-only (or require a better protected password) and have the students store stuff on a server?

Re:Hahaha.

[einhverfr]

There is no reason why imaging should require anything more than booting off a floppy and grabbing an image from a network server. That takes all of 10 seconds (not 10 minutes).

The only problem with this idea is not the labor overhead but what you do if, say, something does go wrong (say hardware failure) just before a final paper is due. And you image the computer thinking it was the student's fault, thereby erasing the important paper and then find out it is hardware?

Unfortunately no solution is perfect.

The best solution is to keep computers in the computer labs only, IMO.

Re:Hahaha.

[mpe]

There is no reason why imaging should require anything more than booting off a floppy and grabbing an image from a network server. That takes all of 10 seconds (not 10 minutes).

Many floppy disks are rather less than reliable. Floppy disk drives and teenages do not mix at all. A drive containing the broken off shield from a disk will take longer than 10 seconds to read anything. Ditto for one which has been stuffed with paper, blutack, chocolate, etc.

The only problem with this idea is not the labor overhead but what you do if, say, something does go wrong (say hardware failure) just before a final paper is due. And you image the computer thinking it was the student's fault, thereby erasing the important paper and then find out it is hardware?

In the case of a laptop you have a three stage process. 1) backup user data. 2) re-image. 3) restore user data.
Which is far more time consuming than a network workstation. Where everthing can be saved on a server.
N.B. In both cases if said student has saved something anywhere other than where they should have then it's their own fault if they lose their work.

Re:Hahaha.

[packetl0ss]

But then the high school would need to have $$$$ to purchase said software and many hardly have enough money to purchase the legal software they use already.

Re:Hahaha.

[BlueUnderwear]

Many floppy disks are rather less than reliable. Floppy disk drives and teenages do not mix at all. A drive containing the broken off shield from a disk will take longer than 10 seconds to read anything. Ditto for one which has been stuffed with paper, blutack, chocolate, etc.

Then boot your udpcast off a CD. Or off PXE (most computer nowadays do support PXE).

In the case of a laptop you have a three stage process. 1) backup user data. 2) re-image. 3) restore user data. Which is far more time consuming than a network workstation. Where everthing can be saved on a server.

Or, alternatively, if for some reason you can't set up a network server (laptops to be used at home): just use two partitions. One for the system (which students are not supposed to mess with), and another one for user data. If something happens, just udpcast the system partition. And have a small program ready to restore the partitioning table itself, in case that gets messed up.

(Yes, this still will fail in cases where the mischievous student decided to shrink system partition and grow his data partition, but in such cases, he's got what he was looking for!)

Re:Hahaha.

[Lord Pillage]

I remember back in the day, my Junior High school had DeepFreeze. It was a piss off as we wanted to mess around with the computers. We managed to disable it put a naked guy with a mullet as the desktop and reenable it so that everytime it booted up the naked mullet guy would be there. Needless to say we weren't allowed using the computers in that room anymore, even though it was never known exactly who did it.

Re:Hahaha.

[einhverfr]

Or, alternatively, if for some reason you can't set up a network server (laptops to be used at home): just use two partitions. One for the system (which students are not supposed to mess with), and another one for user data. If something happens, just udpcast the system partition. And have a small program ready to restore the partitioning table itself, in case that gets messed up.

Cool. All I have to do is save my changes back to the image partition and when it gets re-imaged, the computer still functions the way I want it to. No more electronic surveilance for me ;-)

Re:Hahaha.

[myov]

3 years ago, when I was a tech at a school, I could image an entire lab of 30 machines within 30 minutes.

1. Network multicast. I had enough boot disks to do a lab (all you need is to get to the ghost screen, tnen you can use the disk on another machine). Have the session auto-start when you reach the number of machines in the lab.

2. It's all in how you setup the image. The slowest part was booting up a machine one at a time and resetting the machine name. So, we added a script to the image to prompt and set it on first boot. Printers were all part of the image, and all I had to do was delete the ones in other rooms.

3. Something else that helped was turning off IE's "Allow download" setting. It got in the way of intranet stuff, so we ultimately added to the trusted zone (which did not have the restriction). That cut the weekly reimage the labs down to once a term.

4. If your students are mounting home directories from a central location, run a search for anything over 1MB, or multiple scans of .exe, .zip, .mp3, etc. Our policy was that computers were for school related purposes only, so if you had anything that wasn't allowed this search usually found it. Account locked, and you had to explain yourself. I usually unlocked immediately, but some students faced a 24 hour lockout.

Re:Hahaha.

[dknj]

I love this sort of attitude - "I need to do X on a regular basis because I have no clue about security and automation." Seriously, sysadmin work is only as hard as you let it be. If you hate doing something because its time consuming, its really not hard to automate it.

first of all, it takes me 10 minutes to start rebuilding a lab of 150 computers, and from there it takes each machine roughly 60-90 minutes to be fully functional again (although there is about another 10 minutes of work involved with disabling network booting afterwards). second, if you have to rebuild EVERY workstation EVERY day, it means your security is way to lax and your policies are not well defined.

IF you must have weak security and bad policies, then you need to move all personal data from the local workstation to a centralized server and utilize wake on lan/automatic reboots every night to rebuild each workstation (ris is not an option here, so get creative).

prevent local admin password leaks

[usererror3000]

Most laptops and commercially made desktops have a serial number, so if you make an simple algerithm out of that code (example if the serial number is "6835x" you can make the admin password be "yietx" because "[Y][I][E][T]" are the keys under "[6][8][3][5]" on a QWERTY keyboard. so that way hopefully maybe someone would find the password for one computer, but hopefully they wouldn't figure out the simple algerithm you made. or you could just make a simple database with the laptop serial number that is linked to a truely unique password.

now here comes some A.C. post about how "This is slashdot and we use dvorak keyboards"

Re:prevent local admin password leaks

[Sigma 7]

Most laptops and commercially made desktops have a serial number, so if you make an simple algerithm out of that code (example if the serial number is "6835x" you can make the admin password be "yietx" because "[Y][I][E][T]" are the keys under "[6][8][3][5]" on a QWERTY keyboard. so that way hopefully maybe someone would find the password for one computer, but hopefully they wouldn't figure out the simple algerithm you made. or you could just make a simple database with the laptop serial number that is linked to a truely unique password.

This is generally considered obvious. When enough students find their passwords, at least one of them will put 2 and 2 together and figure out the pattern. (It won't be as obvious if you use a DVORAK keyboard somewhere in the algorithm.)

Something better is to put the password into a hash algorithm. While not secure, it's good enough for the average user.

now here comes some A.C. post about how "This is slashdot and we use dvorak keyboards"

One other thing - Windows XP, by default, assumes you use a QWERTY keyboard when typing in a password. As soon as you log in, passwords typed in work by the current keyboard layout (e.g. DVORAK). Given that some people memorize which keys are pressed as opposed to the actual password (which they do - there's no way around it), you'll end up with "invalid password" prompts.

Kudos

[jayrtfm]

wow, that was beautifully handled. It's nice to hear stories of teachers/principals with a real clue on how to deal with things like this.

Deja vu for me....

[Elminst]

Ahh memories.
When I was a senior in highschool, we got a spiffy new computer lab filled Mac LC II's. Pretty damn nice.
well they put one of the advanced math teachers in charge of them. He even taught some simple programming classes.
Well the computer lab was open to anyone at anytime. If you were in studyhall, all you had to do was ask to go use the lab. No monitors, nothing. You could play whatever games you brought in off a floppy.
A friend and i discovered this lovely program in the math/programming folder called HexEdit. And it had this cool BLUE jack-in-the-box icon that was just screaming, "CLICK ME!!" It was literally 2 clicks in off the desktop. Well it did exactly what the title described. let you edit the hex code of any file you wanted.
first thing we checked; disable the lockdown software on the macs. Yup. works fine. Change one little hex char and the computer was wide open.
After (ahem) borrowing a couple of nice programs (sweet physics prog and couple math progs, and the hexedit prog); we reenabled the lockdown software.

We then went down the hallway that afternoon and TOLD THE TEACHER ABOUT IT.

He DID NOTHING.

Less than a week later, Macs were failing left and right. Not booting, crashing, etc. It didn't take a lot of brains to figure out that other people had found the program.
However, people with less brains immediately cornered me and my friend. Cuz when the computers break, you blame the geeks, of course. :/
They completely suspended our computer use, and sent letters to our parents. We were threated with detention and suspension. This didn't happen. Particularly after we explained to the administration how we had informed the teacher of his stupidity and he did nothing. And it helped that my mother was on the school board at the time, and she knew more about computers than most of the administration.
Still ended up with restricted use. No other students got even talked to. Even though my friend and I could name at least 6 obvious culprits. Most of the rest of our class thought it was the stupidest thing ever. Since they, and many of the teachers, relied on us for computer help.

The lab was no longer wide open, and they had a teacher/staff person in there all the time after this. too little, too late.

To quote another poster; People fear what they don't understand.
I would add; And if you understand it, then they fear you, too.

Re:Deja vu for me....

[quickbasicguru]

Reminds me of something that happened to me...

Last year, I was home one day browsing our schools webpage, and found that all but the top most directory on the web server was unprotected (you could see the directory listing). I was also lookinng for index.html on there top most directory, just looking for another way to see the main page, when I put in index.html in, I got a page containing a message from a 1337 h4xx0r group! I check the main page the normal way, and it is normal still.

Later, when I went to my schools webpage, I forgot the www part, and got access to the mail server's web interface. There was a whole lot you could do without being logged in, like seeing the name and email address of everyone there, even a few weird ones. (later, I would use this when I was sick to get the correct email address for one of my teachers, because the page where you would normally get it was incorrect) I saw the login part of the page, and just wanted to try it ONCE. I type in "web_master" as the username (because it was on the email list, and I try the password for our student account at school, (ever kid needs to know it to use the computers in class, etc.) and it works! The first thing I do is I quickly logged out.

I decide the right thing to do is tell a teacher about these obvious problems. BAM! The next thing I know is I am being questioned by the police officer at school. I am telling him about the the issues with the web server mostly. (he doesn't really care about the email thing) Next thing I know after I tell them about the hacker thing, he is telling me about how they know about people messing with the server, and he starts to accuse me of it (keep in mind, I had no write access, couldn't ftp it, or even get a directory listing of that directory). After lots of explaining I was let off the hook. (came close to deep sh*t)

But no, it just isn't done. A week later, I was called in again, this time for getting access to a teachers computer (I never did, the email thing wouldn't work because there name is too long, and I never tried to) The teacher was informed of a possible password breach, given my name and another students name who he didn't have in his class (I found out who person 2 was many months later) and he choose me, because I was in his class. This time, I am still trying to recover from the last experence, and this time I have no connection what so ever. I have to explain and explain and explain, etc. They keep saying that person 2 was saying that they were in it with me. I was like what the fu*k?!? I got off, but I nearly got into deep sh*t again.

Nearly done, I was much less curious at school after that, but I still found even more problems on the schools website. I also connected to my computer at home from school, showing a page that was modified to my advantage, and I got into Terminal in the schools computer, so I had some slight fun with man and ls. Only a few students found out, and they never told a teacher, though I got some requests to change grades, and I told them that I couldn't and so on. This time I used the leason I learned.

Leason:Don't tell anyone at school (expecially teachers) about any flaws you see, you will regret it, because they will take it the wrong way.

In retrospect, I am see how lucky I was.

Next year I will have a web design class that involves computer use, lets see how my free time will go.... I carry a knoppix disc around with me at school just in case.

Re:Deja vu for me....

[Elminst]

ah yes, that was it exactly.
Knew it was something like that. But it allowed you to edit the hex code.
We used it to hack up our games with custom messages and change power ups. (unlimited resources in Moonbase! rawk! haha)

Age and contracts?

[vorpal22]

Am I wrong in assuming that the age of consent for a contract in the US is 18? Why should high school kids, of whom the majority are under this age, be held liable for a contract formed between the user agreement and themselves?

Certainly, I think it's within the rights of the school to enact discipline upon these kids by revoking privileges and sentencing suspensions, but I don't think there are any legal grounds that may be enforced in this case as the contract, in the eyes of the state or federal government, is in almost all cases, not valid.

Ha ha, they got caught

[TheCubic]

just stating the obvious. I was quite grey hat in high school; one time i was being set up with porn in my network drive - right click, go to properties (Novell, btw), hey, look, i'm not the file owner! You might want to talk to this guy!

I may have tested some security myself, but just for curiosity. I certainly never gave any n00bs the password (actually, a password unlocking application) - that's how to get caught. Same goes with bragging.

Actually did a little consulting work later in life when a teacher showed me the new iBooks they were getting. Two minutes later: here's the root password hash. Lock down OpenFirmware, thanks.

It's almost always pride/confidence that ends up in big hacks, whether 'I set Novell to allow execute, but not copy' or 'I used two numbers in the password - it's _unbreakable_', or the worst: '[vendor] told me it's [bulletproof/_foolproof_/hax0rproof]'

Re:Educators?

[bussdriver]

This is a childish ignorant and scared administration handling children.

Perhaps the administrators would have grown up more if they had been teachers for 20 years beforehand.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

District's Usage Policy

[jayrtfm]

well, I didn't read the usage policy either. I spent 20 minutes or so trying to find it online, without success. That's why I linked to the FAQ, since it was better than nothing, and did describe parts of the policy. Their policy MAY discuss "charges may be filed".

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

My teachers are clueless

[resentment]

At my school, we have 1 network technician. He doesn't have enough time to monitor what we do. The computer class teachers are cluess when it comes to using a PC. They know the basics, which is word processing and internet, but they don't have a clue about security or the network. We still have Novell on our PCs, and everyone used the Novell Send Message function to send messages to each other. The school figured that it was a horrible offense, and started suspending kids for using it.
My computer teacher let me use her classroom PC to do some web designing, and when I was checking the proxy settings, I "browsed" to the last entered form information. Needless to say, she had a bunch of credit cards in there, and a few site passwords (including the admin login for the network).

External Firewire

[XeXeN]

It's a Mac, most kids I know have an iPod. Install OS X and boot from that, or go buy a cheap firewire HD, or better yet, I'm pretty sure these ibooks had airport and not airport extreme, which is supported under linux. Boot from a Linux live cd and have at it...

Who's to blame for power wars?

[qwp]

Most people who read this site have been in these kids seats at least once in there life. That is why this is a great place to gain support for your side. Except that none of us have a slight influence in your situation. It just goes to be said, life is about politics not about technology. These kids are obviously stuck in a power struggle that they stumbled upon. Luckly they will graduate in a few years and life will move on. The administration has made it their life, so they will be less likely to give to reality on the topic. Unless your losing something that you have a right to, (such as your achievements or ability to publicly voice your oppinion) the administration normally wins.

Deciding not to file charges.

[jeffkjo1]

Having read slashdot for some time, it seems that, in almost all circumstances where group of elected, or non-elected officials in power do something that the /. community decides is, well, stupid, said officials get thousands of emails from slashdotters.

Within a few days, administrators have a change of heart simply to stop the flow of email.

Houm Skooling

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, i fer wun gona houm skool me kidds. The whol worl gon crazie.

YOu have to admit

[einhverfr]

Anyone who thinks it is a good idea to have a password based on the mailing address of the school district demonstrates that at least half of the problem is in the inability to approach security problems intelligently (like, say, actually balancing security and useability).

Re:YOu have to admit

[bradrock]

Look, I work for a school district, granted I am the youngest systems engineer, but I actually have to side with the students. I was a student once too and I understand the thrill/curiosity of their actions. I would rather learn from the 13 students who committed this "crime" than punish them. I say the district should find out how the password was compromised and learn from that it was probably a bad choice for a password in the first place (how about 34hysErt& instead). It was the school that F'd up. Felony charges will haunt these students for some time, but the fact is they out smarted people like me. From what I understand the students in question just wanted to see a few "inappropriate" photos and install some software that they were curious about. Perhaps their punishment could be to help the IT folks to keep this from happening again instead of punishing them. This is a very natural thing to do in high school. Authority sucks when your 15 and this kind of punishment really doesn't help that attitude. IMHO the more restrictions you impose the more people want to circumvent them.

Analog Mayham

[Tablizer]

I remember the good 'ol days when we would get into simpler trouble by dipping the girl in front's pony tail into the desk ink well. You young wippersnappers get into trouble all the wrong ways. -Fogey

Living With a Felony

[bottlerocket]

I thought I'd share my thoughts, since this is a subject near and dear to my heart.

I was convicted of a felony three years ago, and my life was pretty much destroyed. I lost my job, my apartment, my college loans, and got slapped with thousands of dollars in fines to boot. I'm unemployable: I've shown up to different jobs to start my first day, only to be let go after because they got the results of the background check. The real kicker was that I checked "yes" to having a felony conviction on my application, but the managers claimed that "the computer says we can't hire you".

Since I am now unable to finish school and am stuck making six bucks an hour at McDonald's, I've been giving serious consideration to joining the Army. The recruiters say a waiver is no problem and they can wipe the felony from my record. I'd say gambling my life in Iraq beats the hell out of being doomed here in the Land of the Free.

Re:Living With a Felony

[k8to]

Well, assuming your crime isn't a scarlet letter everywhere, have you considered moving to another country? If it's as bad as you say (I have felony convicted friends who get decent employement, but their situation may be very different), then it's worth looking into. Especially if you're considering leaving the US anyway.

Re:Living With a Felony

[Anonymous Coward]

> Boohoo!
> You commited a crime, and now you're paying for it.
> Maybe next time you'll think twice before breaking the law.

Why would he think twice next time? He just said his life is fucked after commiting one felony, having two felonies on his record won't make him any more unemployable than he is now.

It was pretty obvious he wasn't complaining about the actual punishment for the crime, but instead about the scarlet letter effect that took place after the supposed punishment was meted out. Even if you were an advocate of the scarlet letter style blackballing for life of felons, how do you think it'd be a deterrent to future crimes?

I really don't know anything about felonies, and if the parent post was accurate in his statements, but if he was it sounds like branding someone a felon for life would make them *more* likely to commit a crime again, not less.

Re:Living With a Felony

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years ago (2002), I was convicted of robbery(long story, involving drugs, many regrets). Today I'm the store manager at a locally owned PC Repair shop. The trick is to get the job and start working before they know you are a felon, ALWAYS answer "no" to the felony question. You'll find that most places say that they check, but in fact they don't, as it costs money for a background check and checking every applicant would cost a fortune. You will get some that do check and you're just out of luck there, but it beats having them throw your app away immediately when they see that you have a conviction. Don't buy that BS about "not necessarily barring you from employment"--a yes on the felony question is nearly a guarantee that your app will be thrown out. Large corporations WILL check your background, however, so stay clear of those (small shops are nicer places to work anyway).
Another thing you might consider is moving out of state and removing from your resume any reference to the state where you have your conviction. This works because most places don't want to shell out the cash for a national check, so they just run state checks for the states listed in your resume (past employment, previous addresses, etc...).
Get a degree, or if you have one, get another one. You want to have something to show that you aren't just some street thug, but someone who made a mistake and have made something better of yourself in the time since then.
Finally, if you have been working a job and the felony comes up, BE HONEST. My current employer got new insurance that required national checks for all employees, and up came my robbery. He asked me why I had lied on my application, and I told him point blank--I was sorry for lying to him, but he wouldn't have hired me otherwise.
By this point he was already impressed with my skills and work ethic, and the fact that his profits had doubled since I started working there, He decided to go with another insurance company rather than fire me.

Oh, and that stuff about the army wiping your record is Bullshit. Don't believe anything a recruiter tells you.

Re:Living With a Felony

[metamatic]

The trick is to get the job and start working before they know you are a felon, ALWAYS answer "no" to the felony question. [...] Finally, if you have been working a job and the felony comes up, BE HONEST.

I detect a bit of a contradiction here.

Personally, I would be quite happy to employ someone convicted of certain kinds of felony--for example, someone convicted of possession of LSD. However, lying to me would be an instant cause for dismissal.

Then again, I'm not a store owner...

Re:Living With a Felony

[bottlerocket]

Actually, I have. My girlfriend and I have talked about moving to England after my probation is up. She loves the country, and my record would be more obscured than it is here. Not to mention that they have a more liberal view towards what I was charged with. (drug possession)

The reason why I responded to the grandparent was they said Canada bars felons from entering the country. I'd researched Canada's Immigration site, and they seemed to indicate that they would accept felons, provided they had completed their sentences. Cananda was on my short list of countries to move to, and the grandparent's information kinda shook me up. I mean, what if I'm trapped here?

Re:Living With a Felony

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

I would too, except for 2 words:

"negligent hiring"

See if your employee kills or rapes someone, the courts will take everything you have and give it to their victim.

Even though that crime doesn't make it any more likely that one would do such a thing - courts hate felons - and will be pissed at you for not providing the system with extra-judicial punishment (withholding employment) of the felon.

And anyone you hire (clean record, misdemeanor record, felony record) could kill or rape someone in the future - you never know. But if/when the non-felon kills/rapes someone - the court won't take your assets and give it to the victim. If/when the felon does, they will.

Same goes for not firing someone who gets convicted of a felony ("negligent retention").

Eliminate "negligent hiring/retention" damages and replace it with a work card system - for jobs which truly need to exclude legitimate risks (child care vs child molestors, bank tellers vs career thieves) - require employers to demand a work card from the state. The state would by default have to issue a work card unless the person was convicted of a crime and the statute declaring it a crime provided for denial of a work card for their industry and not allow retroactive application of the law.

Then people would at least know what they are up against, employers wouldn't need to act as an arm of the justice system or have the justice system confiscate all their wealth, and restrictions could be voted down more easily.

Re:Living With a Felony

[metamatic]

You seem to have some strange new usage of the word "negligent". Negligence would be failing to perform background checks.

Knowing someone's criminal record precisely and evaluating that their crimes should not have been crimes and do not indicate any likelihood of violent crime, that isn't negligence, it's laxness.

Re:Living With a Felony

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Well, it isn't my idea of negligence, but what a court would think of as negligence.

Trusting someone with a job when they aren't even trusted with a vote is very likely to be considered negligent in the eyes of a court.

And I shouldn't have used only violent crimes as examples.

Let's say I hire someone with a drug possession rap to be a coder, and the code has a bug which kills someone - a court will very likely rule against me, even if the conviction is 30 years old - they'd say it was likely the person was stoned or something (even though totally clean and sober people write buggy code every day).

I'm against needless discrimination against felons, especially when the activity resulting in the conviction should be legal.

I just want people to know the courts are a big reason why employers feel they need to discriminate.

Re:Living With a Felony

[metamatic]

Trusting someone with a job when they aren't even trusted with a vote is very likely to be considered negligent in the eyes of a court.

I cry 'bullshit'. By that logic no immigrant would be allowed a job.

Re:Living With a Felony

[k8to]

It bars certain felons, such as those convicted of drunk driving. .... A special measure was passed in their legislature to allow our dear leader to enter their country.

Drug posession is not on the list.

And yeah, there are a number of societies who don't view drug users as pariahs. Some sectors of US society don't either, (see San Francisco for example) but larger US companies for whatever reason tend to be smallminded in their ethics.

Too bad they don't have an OS

[callipygian-showsyst]

with a good domain/rights management system. Like Windows XP, for example. Then they wouldn't have to distribute "secret passwords" to allocate rights.

After all, the Unix core of the Mac OS operating system was developed in 1969. People have gotten smarter since then.

Re:Too bad they don't have an OS

[Doctor Memory]

Actually, the core of OS X is Mach, which was developed at CMU starting in 1985. The Unix "personality" that runs on top of the microkernel is based on FreeBSD, which was itself based on 4.4BSD-Lite, which was released around 1993. Windows XP is based on NT, which was first released in 1992.

If you've ever worked with a real commercial OS (e.g. VMS), you'll roll your eyes whenever anyone mentions "security" and "Windows" without including the phrase "lack of"...

BLAH

[Ritalin16]

BOO F*CKING HOO! Nobody got hurt, its not a felony. If they want to suspend the students thats their problem, but they shouldnt bring the police in to it. High school administration are all a bunch of whiners, no damage done to a school network is irreversable, as long as they got proper backups. They should use this opportunity to better secure their network. I know what its like because I've gotten in trouble for "breaking the TOS" on my school network a few times.

Different Passwords?

[theraccoon]

As someone who has never had to manage a large group of computers, I'm curious:

How difficult would it be to assign a different, random password to each system, and keep track of the passwords via serial number?

Back in the day, my high school computer lab used Mac LCII's, and the password -- "dylanmac", heh, I still remember it! -- was widely known. The students had LAN access to all other Macs, and used it to install extensions on each other's systems that caused random annoyances. Well, one day, I got tired of the games and showed the teacher what my system was doing. She watched as the Energizer Bunny walked across my screen, said something to the effect of "how cute!" and left...

After class, I explained to her that everyone knew her password, ratted out the kids who provided me the password, and recommended she change the compromised password to something a bit more complicated than her son's name. (Apparently they had simply watched the keyboard one day as she typed it in. Those clever h4x0rs.) She said that was "silly" and that "no one knows what my password is." After that, I just gave up, and took advantage of the situation.

Re:Different Passwords?

[DaCool42]

Unique passwords for each machine is really easy. Just take a secret key append the machine's serial #, and compute a hash of that.

Re:I am an IT Director in a High School District..

[unitron]

" It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out how the password was leaked..."

It was the school's street address. It wasn't leaked, it was guessed. If it had been leaked, it would have had to have come from someone in the school administration. Leaks come from the inside. (unless there's something in the terms of use that say if you happen to guess our pathetic password you aren't allowed to tell anyone)

Although it might be tempting for the attorney for the defense to claim that none of the students could have guessed the password so one of the school staff must have leaked it in an entrapment attempt. :-)

KNOPPIX!!!

[E8086]

...or the MAC equivalent, as long as you don't modify data on the hdd it should be very close to completely undetectable, just hold C during boot and you're set.

Re:Know what I'd do?

[symbolic]

I'd hand it right back. "No thanks".

The students had a wonderful opportunity to show what a complete failure such draconian policies can be. But, just like with illegal file sharing, they'd rather push the other way, and end up further behind than when they started.

Hacking is just getting around

[nukem996]

Being a student who has "tampered" with school computers many times myself there are three golden rules you MUST obey to stay clear of trouble.
1. If you hack it make it so they have to goto you to get it fixed(if you are caught) or pay massive amounts of money.
2. Make it so there is not enough evidence to charge you. Even if you are "caught" any punishment they try you just ask to bring it to a judge and if they dont have the evidence you're not guilty.
3. Just get around there rules, find loop holes.
Recently my school gave everyone sony craptops, eh I mean laptops. Being a huge supporter of open source I used knoppix. This goes ageinst there hole no installing non-approved software, hacking(had to crack WEP and I had a few novell cracking tools), and of course I had a few games on it. The admin of the school found out I did this and ignored it because he was to busy fighting kids who play games non-stop, fucked up other peoples computers, and who were looking at porn(I swear after we got these laptops ive never seen so much porn in my life). Basicly I didnt make his job harder or gloat about it at all.

Rules are rules

[humankind]

This is a matter of perspective undoubtedly.

If you're the person who set this up, it's an atrocity.

If you're the student who knowingly broke the rules, then it's unfair.

Lesson #1: Life is not fair

Maybe felony charges are harsh, but they're minors so the record would be expunged when they reach legal age. It's a painful, but poignant lesson.

This is not am ambiguous issue. Regardless of whether or not the security was proper, at some point you have to respect that these young adults have a decent grasp on the concept of right and wrong, and violating rules and laws carries with it a punishment that they must face.

Re:Rules are rules

[KutztownStudent]

There minnors they get their records swept clean and if the school just kept reimaging and assigning detentions what are they gonna learn. Most were freshman, they will just continue for their next three years of high school.

thanks a lot slashdot

[unkokue]

If they were just knew the password so they could change the settings on their iBooks, there's no way in fucking hell anyone can charge them with anything criminal. Don't waste my time with these stupid fucking jokes.

Re:thanks a lot slashdot

[KutztownStudent]

Yeah, just like i know a gun and a bullet can kill someone doesn't mean i should go to jail for killing. The password got out but it doesn't means they had to use it, that was their choice and now they are paying for it.

just a suggestion

[enigmatichmachine]

have nothing to do with the schools software... at all. they gave you hardware, so use it. point a wifi antenna or 2 at the school, and boot from a linux liveCD and bypass their software entirely. I don't think they can sue you for using hardware they gave you, can they? this is coming from a guy who had to blackmail his principal after computer troubles at his old highschool oh so long ago. ( btw, if you do break their security, take copy's of everything, you might need them later!)

Student responsibility

[vga_init]

A computer is a TOOL.

When you issure a computer to a student and let him carry it around everywhere with him/her and take it home, you're basically putting it in their position for an extended period of time. They have charge of it, and they are the only user. Also, they are liable if the computer physically breaks.

Given these conditions, I'd say that this affectively gives the student practical administrative rights. The school is way overstepping its bounds here with some of the restrictions they have tried to put on the machines. No e-mail, no chat? No personal software? It's none of the school's business.

Examples: Not EVERYTHING has to be used for academic purposes. The schools that I went to issued books, and we could do any damn thing we wanted with them as long as we didn't physically damage them. I can use the book as a door stop, a pillow, play a game of catch with it, etc. None of these uses are approved by the school, but I can do it anyway.

Just because with computers the school CAN block students from using the computer for things other than school, does that mean they should? Also, don't you think that students LEARN by being given control of their own computer system? Lots of kids don't on their own computers, and they don't have the freedom to customize or mess around with a system as they want. Laptops from school give them that opportunity (when I was a kid I had complete control over my own computer at home, and I learned so much about computer systems this way).

The school doesn't have the right to spy on the kids either.

That's my radical, left-wing opinion. :-)

I got detention for wiping teachers hard drive

[bxbaser]

Of course when i was in school this meant erasing the chalkboard when he was in lunch.

Charges? this is nothing compared to other uses

[ninjafury]

I just graduated from highschool a year ago, and my school also had the same laptop policies as this one. Now, I am very linux savvy, and we were given powerebooks. Me and some firends installed a linux distro on em and we were up and running. The password protection kicks in when OS X starts up, so this wasn't an issue with linux, but we had to get the network password, which we knew. When we got connected, all we needed to do was use a user agent switcher to fool the server into thinking Konqueror was safari.

Then we just used rotating proxy servers to access whatever we wanted to, and every chat program we used was JAVA based, so they couldnt detect them.

What they're doing to these kids is way outta control. They should just give em detention and it'll be sorted out. I mean, if the kids were a little smarter, they wouldnt have gotten caught (easily done), but hey, you learn from your mistakes and move on.

bad model

[cahiha]

The school district should have given the laptop to students as a one-time grant and let it be their own responsibility. If they lose it, they have to worry about getting another one. If they mess up the software installation and can't get schoolwork done, they have to reinstall the software.

For the district to own the laptops and then use the criminal justice system to try to tell students what to do with the laptops just sets all the wrong incentives. Under those conditions, I would have just locked up the school-provided laptop in a safe place and brought my own.

Because weak security isn't an excuse for cracking

[Sycraft-fu]

Just because security isn't good, doesn't give you permission to break it. THat's one of the things I find the most disturbing about Slashdot, this attitude that if you can break someone's security, it ought to be ok to do so.

No, people's vitrual property (their data) is just as much theirs as their physical property. You have no rights to break in to it just because you can. Even if you do no damage it's a crime. I certianly think you'd flip if you found me poking around in your bedroom, even if I hadn't taken anything.

The other thing is you fail to consider the physical analogue. Your home security sucks. I can say this with almost complete confidence because it's generally true. Let's cover some of the basics:

1) Do you use high security locks, like Medeco? If not I can pick them with little trouble. All the major brands at Home Depot or the like are weak as hell. Even the high security ones are venurable, but they are hard at least.

2) How's you door? Is it solid hard wood, with a steel frame? Do you have a reinforced strike plate for the deadbolt? If not I can kick you door in with no additonal tools.

3) How about your windows? Do they even have locks? I don't mean the little pussy handles that click in place, I mean an actual physical stop in the window. If not, I'll open it from the outside. If they are locked, are they security coated? Can they take a hit form a rock and not implode?

4) Any sort of security system? Does it have a battery backup? Does it phone for help? Does it use motion sensors? If not, it's easy to get around and you'd never know I'm there.

I could go on. Point is, unless you are one of the very rare peopel that are extremely security concious, your home security sucks. Even if it's better than average, it's still probably trivial to defeat. Even if you have excellent security, it's still not a problem for a group of professionals. You really have to spend a shitload to get real security that can't be circumvented.

However, I imagine you would not think it's ok for osmeone to break in to show you your "pathetically weak security". It's your house and peopel are welcome to stay the fuck out of it without your permission. Likewise it's my computer and you are welcome to stay the fuck off it without permission.

Underage HS Students

[rjthomas61]

Heck, if i had been prosecuted for my cracking in HS, I would've been just another hard case in juvie instead of the valedictorian. I graduated from MIT, and now I understand that the HS and Uni years are periods of ACTIVE learning. If a pupil with exceptional aptitude is suspected of some illicit activity, "I just wanted to see whether it would work," should be grounds for exoneration. Or for sentencing to MIT.

Funny FAQs

[gometro33]

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.

Therein lies the problem

[MMaestro]

Anyhow, I've never used this information for any malevolent purposes myself (or any purpose at all, really), but I let the password "slip" to, I'd say, a good half-dozen people. Unfortunately, it spread, as all good and meaty information does, to several students less-imbued with morals than I.

Lets face it. If you know a REALLY good secret that you SHOULDN'T know, its going to leak out. And when information leaks, theres no telling who learns about it. For every one of those 'good half-dozen people' you told the password to, there was probably 10 other jerks who went around screwing up the school computers.

I'm not saying 'hackers' (if you can call them that in such cases) should charged as a felony, but you've got admit there is a line. We all know students will install and download whatever crap they want onto computers and theres nothing teachers can do about it, so accept it. But when students start changing grades, breaking computers, or wasting bandwidth on something they'll probably never get to use or move off the computer (anything large than a .mp3 file and the kid shouldn't even be on the computer that long); you draw a line and punish those who cross it. The ultimate question, however is, where do you draw the line? Too close and you get pointless cases such as the parent news report. Too far and you get kids hacking into school computers to change grades and get let off with a 'slap on the wrist' type punishment (in-school suspension? Some schools outright flunk you for the year or expel you for that. Hell, most colleges fail you for the course just for plagiarism, imagine how they would react to a hacking attempt to change grades.)

Re:Therein lies the problem

[SilverFire]

Well, I intentionally leaked the password. Yes, I leaked it knowing that it would spread to people who would abuse it. Of course, it was never my intent for people to start changing grades and compromising the system in such a serious manner.

And I -did- admit that a line must be drawn -- I personally think that line resides between use that's benign (which true hacks are) and wherever your use starts to result in any harm of significant magnitude to other people.

While I don't agree that the students should have been expelled, I personally would have liked to seen them banned from any further use of school computers for the duration of their highschool career, under that caveat that a violation would result in their expulsion.

My intent of releasing the password was, honestly, 1.) to brag (Everyone likes knowing and telling secrets), 2.) to pester our incompetent admins (They sure pester us :) and, 3.) in hopes that perhaps they would learn something from the experience. Using such a weak password, especially for at least TWO things that are important, is never a Good Idea. Perhaps they should have found software that doesn't show the password to anyone who cares to doubleclick the system tray icon.

I wasn't connected at all to the ordeal, or even questioned, mostly because I'm not [too] stupid. I was largely careful. I didn't go traipsing about VNCing random people just to flex my ego. Sure, I'll be the first to admit that my motives for letting the password leak were a bit childish, but I truthfully didn't think it had potential for such serious abuse.

Uhm...

[John Pfeiffer]

Has anyone questioned the absurdity of them being charged with 'computer trespass' against machines IN THEIR POSSESSION?

Isn't there a more applicable crime somewhere in the DMCA that they can just have the kids executed by firing squad for? Like uhh... 'circumvention of blah blah blah' ? I mean, my god! They didn't want to get spied on and have everything they do monitored, they must be terrorists!

Ender's game

[KlaymenDK]

This sounds so much like the "student laptops" (more like tablets) that the cadets(?) used in Ender's Game. Guess we're finally headed for that promised "21st century future", eh?

Re:Ender's game

[Jalburrito]

That's what I thought right off the bat

Re:Because weak security isn't an excuse for crack

[Eskarel]

While I agree with you, this isn't really an applicable analogy for the case in question. This isn't someone breaking into your computer, this is something using a computer you lent them for additional purposes. They aren't invading your privacy, or going somewhere they aren't supposed to go, they are merely doing things with what you gave them that you don't like.

Technically you could argue that breaking this security involves learning, which is assumedly what these laptops were provided for in the first place, so it's not even really a misuse of resources.

JESUS FUCKING CRIST

[t_allardyce]

FFS never mind this, why the fuck are kids being given laptops in the first place? High school students have NO use for all this equipment, they are going to use it for music, porn and games and very very occasionally write a report on it. Seriously is it that important to waste that much money so some students can do word processing?? what the fuck happened to using the computer room or their home computer or even just writing with a bloody pen? This is just an insane waste of resources for no purpose other than to hype the fact that everyone has laptops. Yeah sure it would be _nice_ to give kids laptops but at the moment it just costs too much, when the price eventually drops to a reasonable level then this will be a viable option. For the price of this project they could probably have afforded smaller class sizes, useful equipment or more one-to-one tutoring. These computers will be useless in a few years - many of them will be broken (they're not designed to last forever), some lost or stolen, and the rest will be nearing the end of their useful life as glorified word-processors with computing power that would have only been found in a Cray a few decades ago. I would sack who-ever is responsible for this and who ever DARED to pass the buck for their mother fucking failure on to kids that are doing what kids do (at least they aren't jacking cars).

Re:JESUS FUCKING CRIST

[Alsee]

The school website lists the hardware and software costs are well over $3000 per unit. And of course the software being more than the hardware, groan.

-

Re:JESUS FUCKING CRIST

[t_allardyce]

Wow, the school management better hope they get absolutely exceptional graduation results from that investment. I just have a feeling the results will be the same or lower than before.

Re:JESUS FUCKING CRIST

[Alsee]

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.

-

Re:JESUS FUCKING CRIST

[EEBaum]

Amen to that!

Heck, our TI-82 CALCULATOR was enough of a distraction and hindrance to learning. How do you solve a quadratic equation? Why, you plug the numbers into "Quad Killer!" This was the teacher's official policy and recommendation. Not to mention all the Lunar Lander, Tetris, etc. Can't imagine how distracting it would be to have a laptop in high school.

Re:JESUS FUCKING CRIST

[Sigma 7]

FFS never mind this, why the fuck are kids being given laptops in the first place? High school students have NO use for all this equipment, they are going to use it for music, porn and games and very very occasionally write a report on it.

High school students can use the equipment appropriatly - use it to take noted much more quickly than writing it down on paper, as well as making it easier to transfer work between home and school.

what the fuck happened to using the computer room or their home computer or even just writing with a bloody pen?

The problem with using the computer room or home computer is that it isolates where work can be done - it may only be done at home or at school. While it can be tranferred by a floppy disk, that media format is generally unreliable (especially when you buy low-quality bulk floppies.)

Pen and paper, while guarenteed to work, isn't recommended. My writing is awful, and has never improved since whenever. (I've read that printing is a recommended alternative instead.)

On a personal note, when I was in high-school, I asked the teacher if I could copy stuff from the network drive to a floppy. I wasn't allowed to do it directly and had to rely on the teacher copying the data over. Naturally, she forgot to do so during the next week, along with the next few months - by the time I got the disk, I lost interest what I wanted. (It wouldn't be useful to be anyway - I didn't have a copy of Visual Basic at the time.)

This is just an insane waste of resources for no purpose other than to hype the fact that everyone has laptops.

Correct. Besides, much cheaper (and just as suitable alternatives) can be purchased second hand, and doesn't need to run anything not taught at the high school level. (i.e. it only needs MS Office and MS-Paint or some other simple things.)

I'm also not sure where they got the idea that the required software costs $1800. Generally, that means there's much more stuff included than there should be - perhaps they want students to install redundant software.

Re:JESUS FUCKING CRIST

[zakezuke]

> FFS never mind this, why the fuck are kids being
> given laptops in the first place?

But a tad late to replay to this.

Why give highschoolers laptops? Because it's important to get our kids to be computer literate before college. While you can likely slap together a power point presenation faster then a jackrabbit in matting season... to your average joe this is a skill. PCs are everyday tools and by giving kids a laptop they are forced to use this learn this tool. And it's entirely possible going with a cheap notebook that it would actually cost less than the 6 or 7 text books that go so out of date so quickly and switch to PDF.

So yes... chances are they are going to download porn, exchange music, and generally fuck around like kids do.... but there are people today who are so computer illiterate that they couldn't download an .mp3 if their life depended on it.

Re:JESUS FUCKING CRIST

[t_allardyce]

Well being a recent graduate looking to be successful, Its in my interests to keep the younger generations at a level of computer literacy that allows them to click 'add to basket' but not much else, but of course thats probably not in their interests so it wouldn't be wise to put me incharge. I can understand giving them cheap laptops, but these were very very expensive and kitted out with even more expensive software, and they didn't even run Windows (the OS they will be most likely to use in the real world lets face it). When I was at school we had computer rooms and/or computers at home and that was enough, infact even those were abused, if you walked into the rooms at most times of the day you would see 90% of people on the net (not working), maybe 5% using the net for work and another 5% on Word trying to get their homework done before the next lession. Then when the admin had left early we would have the afternoon to load up some games and use the network for an even less academic purpose.

Now back to the school: if they had spent the same money on desktop PC's they could have had enough to put on every desk in every classroom so that every student could just login at the start of the lesson, it would have been far more difficult for them to mess around with AND they would have had enough money left over to give every student another PC to take home! after that they would still have a sizeable bit of cash left over!

Re:JESUS FUCKING CRIST

[zakezuke]

Now back to the school: if they had spent the same money on desktop PC's they could have had enough to put on every desk in every classroom so that every student could just login at the start of the lesson, it would have been far more difficult for them to mess around with AND they would have had enough money left over to give every student another PC to take home! after that they would still have a sizeable bit of cash left over!

I can't disagree with you on this... though I don't 100% agree that desktops everywhere are the answer.

Part of the reason that makes *us* cool... us being those of use who use a varity of systems... is the fact that we can sit down and with seconds learn how to use something totally unfamilar. I think this should be paramount in any form of computer education.. fundimentals. To this end I'm somewhat happy they are using i-books... and heck in their abuse of the priviliage I suspect they had to overcome a few issues with file exhange with PCs (note, haven't used OS 10 so I can't speak on that level). On the other hand... windows based notebooks are much cheaper.

I won't debate the choice of product... for all I know they might buy the $3000 notebooks for sale next year for $2000 and spend another grand for new ones. I don't know their master plan.

When I was at school we had computer rooms and/or computers at home and that was enough, infact even those were abused, if you walked into the rooms at most times of the day you would see 90% of people on the net (not working), maybe 5% using the net for work and another 5% on Word trying to get their homework done before the next lession. Then when the admin had left early we would have the afternoon to load up some games and use the network for an even less academic purpose.

Totally... I remember the olden days... getting the other students really excited when I could get the computers to say rude things... and using the apple floor plotter make rude pictures. This lead others to do the same. So yes... 90% screwing around is fair comment... but amazingly enough, it focused our engery to learn something to screw around better... so in that way productive and educational screwing around. To this day I know a few pepole who do CAD... who still can make some nice rude pictures on the office plotters.

Re:JESUS FUCKING CRIST

[t_allardyce]

True, but not all computer use in school is about learning computing - most of the time you spend on the computer is supposed to be spent working on other subjects, doing research & writing etc. Its good for people to be able to learn different systems easily but OSX and Windows really aren't that different, you can teach someone who is familiar with one to use the other in a few minutes, and that's only if they can't figure it out for themselves. I still think desktops are the way to go - whether they are Mac or PC desktops or a mix of both (they could even afford that), notebooks cost more not only initially but in the long term, anything that goes wrong can be expensive to replace, and their nature dictates that the probability of them being dropped, spilled on, lost/stolen or damaged in transit is far far higher than any desktop.

Re:How'd they track it down?

[ArsenneLupin]

Just curious.

My guess is, they didn't track him down completely. They may have gotten the IP of the computer where the forgery was sent from (by analyzing the headers of the e-mail, which the networking company could have helpfully forwarded them to...). That would still not give them the name of the student, though. Just the computer that was used...

For the missing info, a bit of psychology was probably used (as described by grand-parent...). Just call the entire class into a room, and describe in an excruciatingly slow and detailed way those clues that you do have (without making it apparent that you are still missing lots of important info), and look for the "one student who was watching in HORROR (with a complete look of shock on his face) as they described in great detail ...".

In a word: a lot of bluff, really...

Or maybe, they did indeed find the student using technical means (student stupid enough to use his own login...), but with many HS students, the psychological approach works wonders... Lesson: if you want to be a pro hacker, work on your poker-face.

Trust!

[vidarlo]

The thing that is needed is that the teachers has a ability to trust the pupils. Without this fundamental trust, everything goes titsup! There should be no reason at all to spy on the pupils, and I myself would quite clearly either demand that spyware removed, or I'd refuse to use the laptop.

The last year, I've been in school into electronics. I've been trusted with handling systems, out of the idea that I have not done harm so far, and if I do, it will be logged. Sure, normal workstations on school has been locked down. But on the electronics course, we need full access to our boxes, so we get to install whatever we want. Our it-guy had no problems with me running linux on it, nor with me doing snmpwalk on his switches. Because he was confident in that the setup on the switches did not crash due to a snmpwalk, nor that I would in any way try to abuse it.

School also has a 802.11b network. This is for teachers only, so encrypted. I and a few friends put up a laptop to crack it. We was fully open about it, and did it to demonstrate for the it-admin that encryption was close to useless. No, he didn't even change the encryption, because he was confident in us not sharing it with the rest of school.

It all falls back to basic trust! If IT can't trust the pupils, they should be more self confident. A porn filter on the schools line is OK, but if pupils want to surf porn at home?

Wait... you can hack an iBook?

[ISaidItOmega]

They hacked their iBooks..? What, did they change their desktop wallpaper or something?..

I joke! I joke!!

Re:Know what I'd do?

[raju1kabir]

The students had a wonderful opportunity to show what a complete failure such draconian policies can be. But, just like with illegal file sharing, they'd rather push the other way, and end up further behind than when they started.

Huh? Thanks to illegal file sharing, we now have iTunes and a dozen other shops selling songs online at reasonable prices without having to buy a whole album.

And thanks to these kids' shenanigans, some fussbudget technophobe school administrators are ending up with red faces, the kids are getting an education in the law, parents are going to get together and organize and start paying attention to what goes on in the schools, and if you think a single kid from this story will serve a minute in jail or pay so much as a penny of fines, you're crazy.

I've worked for companies...

[WgT2]

I've worked for companies that would shut down your website if they found out your password was too weak.

A number and then a real(ish) name is one of the worst passwords one can come up with.... and is boring at that.

Here's a nice tool for coming up with random passwords. It doesn't seem to recognize including spaces (which are usable in passwords with Linux, BSD, htaccess passwords, Windows XP, gmail, and who knows where else) within the generator. I guess we're left to our imagination at that point.

Scare tactics

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

So that's a law under which anything that they "might" have done is illegal. Marvellous. However, taking them down the station to have them fingerprinted and saying "they might be charged with a felony" is surely just a way of trying to scare the kids (and their parents) into not doing it again.

If it were to come to court "in excess of given authority" would be an interesting thing to prove given that one the admin pw was given out on some occasions and was the postal address of the school district (as mentioned elsewhere here).

The school and the admins already look stupid in the local paper. I doubt that they want to look stupid in court too.

Who was financially responsible?

[argent]

It seems to me that if the school was making the kids financially responsible for the laptops (which is implied by the "recommendation" that they take out insurance on them), then don't the students get corresponding rights? I know that if I was going to be made personally responsible for two grand of computer hardware I wouldn't consider accepting those kinds of restrictions on how I could use it.

Apples of now and yesteryear.

[malkavian]

I think this is a dead on comparison on attitudes to day, and in years gone by.
50 years or so ago, the analogue (trespass charges from the article) would have been a bunch of schoolkids wandering off and stealing apples from some local orchard/garden. Just a handful, and just as it's 'the rebellious thing to do'.. That stage that many kids go through. And hey, adults do too.
Technically, it may be illegal, but common sense tells you it's a light hearted prank. Someone blowing off steam
You didn't just lump them in with somone who broke in your house and stole all your prized possessions.

If it were reported to the headmaster/headmistress of your school, you'd get a stern talking to, a series of detentions, lines to write, and probably a week kicking your heels in your bedroom.
All of which would say very strongly "It's really not worth the waste of your time to do it!".

An eminently sensible, and time tried solution. Everybody forgets about it in a few weeks, apart from maybe a slightly elevated reluctance on the part of the kids to 'scrump' for apples like that again.
Exactly as it should be.

Now: We get people like the teachers who went screaming to the police department at the first sign that somebody may have done something they didn't like.
Now, a suitable punishment would have been a series of detentions, letters home to the parents who would most likely have grounded the kids. And everyone would have gone on as usual.

Now, instead, you have a set of scared (and intensly angry) kids who if they do it again, are going to be much more careful, and if it looks like they're going to get caught, will likely cause collateral damage to hide their activities in.
And a series of shocked and angry parents who have suddenly lost faith in the ability of teachers to even try and keep some semblance of common sense in and out of the classroom.
Then, of course, the media, who love this, sending word far and wide to a generally disbelieving population, most of who are going to be shaking their heads at how far stupidity and knee jerk reaction has pervaded socicety and become the norm.
One thing's for sure: The image of that school is very badly damaged. I'd hazard a guess that several students will be moving (voluntarily) to another educational establishement.
The intake will likely be down (hey, would you prefer a school that'll give your kids a felony charge for a prank, or one that'll give them a detention and teach them pragmatism?).
The cost in PR and face for this action is incredible.
If the school holds it's current position, it'll likely cut off any possible stream for kids with a prankish side (who often tend to be highly creative; note this isn't just kids who misbehave just to be disruptive. Difference between Ferris Bueler and Bart Simpson) coming into the school.
And most other kids whose parents just don't want to risk it.
If they turn it around, and quash the teacher's wishes so completely, the administration will just never be treated as a joke, and it's authority will be seriously undermined (can you imagine, every small action a kid gets pulled up for, they'll be saying 'what are you going to do? Report it to the police?').

Maybe I'm just getting old, but all this leaves me with is the wish that things would go back to before the politically correct and lawsuit hungry era back to times when common sense was actually held in esteem. When you could actually learn to respect someone for being harsh but fair, rather than having them try to force respect by waving the threat of a lawsuit in your face at every corner.

OS X spyware software

[Danathar]

Just curious....does anybody know what they used (or tried to use) to keep users (standard users) in OS X from installing software within their /user directory?

Re:OS X spyware software

[KutztownStudent]

The accounts were limited rather than admin level in the os but there was also a list of usable programs sent (updated) to the ibook every time it went on the school network that said what would work and what can't. As well as some other stuff that apple scripted to lock it down.

Criminal stupidity and derelection of duty

[sjames]

Rule number 1 of security, if the attacker gains unsupervised physical access to the box, game over. What in the world did they think was going to happen?

You can raise the bar quite high if you use various crypto signature techniques, but ultimately a soldering iron and a flash burner will defeat that. A CPU that can check the BIOS signature in micricode on powerup would raise it much higher still(probably beyond a student's reach, in fact), but could be defeated by a determined attacker with the right laser and microscope.

Despite all of that, the real crime here is school administraters who have forgotten why they are there and who they serve. They are supposed to provide the students with a safe learning environment where they not only learn what's in the books, but how to get along in society. Part of that includes the school modeling society in microcosm. Part of that includes demonstrating that poor choices have unpleasant consequences while protecting them from the worst of those consequences while they are learning. Whenever outside law enforcement is called in, the school has failed in it's primary purpose. When outside law enforcement is unnecessarily brought in, the school has WILLFULLY derelected it's duty to the students, parents, and society.

Schools often claim to be acting in loco parentis and so need not recognize a student's 4th ammendment rights amongst others. Courts tend to agree with that. What they have forgotten here is that there are duties and responsabilities that go along with acting in loco parentis. Would any decent parent file felony charges in retribution if their high school aged child hacked their computer to bypass the parental netfilter?

The administraters are embarrassed that the students got the best of them. In their embarrassment, they have rather childishly decided to do as much harm to the students as the law will let them get away with. It sounds like the administraters responsable for this shouldn't be allowed anywhere near responsability for children until they spend some quality time with a qualified psychologist. In addition, given that the administraters have demonstrated an emotional age equal to or lower than that of the students, perhaps they should serve a few weeks of detention as well.

Were I one of the parents, I would probably petition for the administraters' immediate dismissal for incompetance.

"Kutztown" - not "Kurtztown"

[ibennetch]

Er, that should be "Kutztown" in the article title. Located in beautiful east-central Pennsylvania.

This is probably a good thing

[Anita Coney]

We have to prepare kids for the future. And once the DMCA was enacted, we no longer own our stuff. Thus, kids should get used to the idea that we can't use products they way we want. Thus if we use them in a way that society deems harmful, no matter how mundane that use is, there are going to be consequences.

Death Penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they should go for the death penalty. It is important to send a message to teens across the US that surfing the Internet is not to be tolerated and will be quickly and decisively punished. Not allowances for the, we didn't know defense. They need to learn early and now, that their actions contitute a grave threat against this country and that grave actions will be meet with grave concequenses.

So, please, everyone rise up with me and insist that the death penalty be employed to send the right message, to help protect our children.

More News

[jayrtfm]

From http://www.readingeagle.com/re/news/1401578.asp

"The way the school district handled this whole situation was unbelievably atrocious," said Hillary A. Thomas, the mother of Sheldon Thomas, 17, who completed his junior year and is one of the students charged.

Hillary Thomas was among five parents who agreed to talk about the case.

They said the students' actions would have resulted in nothing more than grounding or loss of computer privileges if they did with a home computer what has happened on school laptops.

No permanent damage was done to the district's computer system and nobody was hurt by the students' misdeeds, they said.

"I'd have pulled the modem plug and it would have been hidden," said LeAnn M. Shoemaker, mother of John L. Shrawder, 15, a charged student who was a freshman.

The parents said they didn't learn of the charges until they received a recent letter from police.

Dr. Brenda A. Winkler, superintendent, said Friday that district officials contacted several parents.

"The high school did a lot of contacting," she said.

Parents also are upset they still have not received a copy of the complaint that lists the charges.

They said the district should have tighter security on its computers.

Kutztown Police Chief Theodore R. Cole has said it would be up to the Berks County Juvenile Probation Office to send the parents copies of the charges.

The students are not in custody. The letter from police asked them to go to the Kutztown police station for fingerprinting and identification. The parents said their children have not done that.

Thomas said her son downloaded iChat, a messaging program, and Acquisitions, a program for downloading music.

"We have not even seen the charges, so the whole thing's in limbo," Thomas said.

Re:I am an IT Director in a High School District..

[Anonymous Coward]

I conducted a security assessment for a large school district about two years ago. Yup cracked %80 of their passwords in 20 mins. I was called in after some student changed his grades and attendance records in the district's database. They had no brute force detection on anything. No password aging. No real security policy at all. Did not find one strong password. Some if not most of the teachers login passwords to the main database (an Access db at that) was the same as their email name. They would not have caught this guy except he talked about it to a "friend" that then ratted him out.
After seeing how security was run at this LARGE district I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for IT Directors when their systems get cracked.

This crap is nothing new

[ScrewMaster]

Sometime around 1977 my father stood in front of my state's legislature and gave testimony regarding a computer crime bill that was up for consideration. He pointed out that this bill would not only have little or no effect upon it's intended targets (white collar criminals), but would instantly felonize the bulk of the state's computer science and engineering students. It was a really stupid law, created with the usual "we have to appear to be doing something so let's do something in a hurry without out thinking it through" mentality.

They hadn't thought of that.

That bill didn't pass (only because an intelligent, well-spoken engineer gave the politicians some facts they chose not to ignore), but there always those that feel the need to increase the crime/punishment ratio to insane levels. Oh I know ... the teachers and administrators in this case probably feel the need to "send a message" to the student body. They think that message is "respect the law!", when the actual message is "the law doesn't respect you, so why should you respect the law?" All this kind of treatment will do is create more Kevin Mitnicks.

Where are my bloody mod points when I need them?

[JonTurner]

That was very, very well said but (of course) I'm totally out of mod points so you'll have to settle for an "atta'boy!"

I agree - this shit is a total scam.

To answer your rhetorical question about why computers instead of additional tutoring or other materials? It's all about metrics. It's easy to measure whether a student has a computer... it's difficult to measure whether an instructor is efficient or whether tutoring sessions are effective.

BTW: My daughter is attending a state college and IIRC their MINIMUM requirements for a PC is (are you sitting down) a 3Ghz P4 or a 1.6Ghz Mac or faster(!) with a half-gig of RAM and 40GB HDD, an absurd amount of processing power for IM, email, web browsing and writing a few reports. Three thousand four hundred clock cycles (x # of cores, x #preinstuction fetching/multiple pipelines, etc.) adds up to a LOT of power. I mean, damn, you could compute a moon orbit insertion in less than a second on that machine but 99% of the time it'll be used as a glorified typewriter. How did anyone ever survive college with only pencil, paper and a typewriter?

Of course, when asked why top-end systems were necessary for freshman students, the staff couldn't tell me *why* they required a hot-rod computer, simply "that's our requirement." When asked what tasks the system must be able to perform, the staff said "general computing." Yeah, right. And the school **REQUIRES** MS Office, student edition ($150). According to staff, OpenOffice (free) is not an acceptable substitute. Again, no reason why could be given, simply "that's our standard."

Makes me wonder how Microsoft, Gateway and Apple are listed as "recommended" brands. I have no reason to suspect a kickback or paid product placement, do you?

MOD PARENT UP

[shiftless]

n/t

Re:My school used different methods....

[Alsee]

*Stop commenting on sig*

Okey dokey.

-

It ended quite a while ago.

[falconwolf]

Thanks, I didn't know for sure if Kevin's probation was over.

He's now a security consultant.

Now this I did know. Kevin has also testified before congress.

Falcon

Don't be like me.

[SteveXE]

When i was in 6th day, oh i dunno 12+ years ago, I somehow managed to get into the network of my school, this was when I was 1st learning about computers. Well like any childhood ass I deleted lots of stuff from lots of computers. Well because all this stuff is logged it wasnt hard to track me down. I got banned from the computers in school for 6 months. I guess the good news is the pc lab teacher saw my potential and after the ban was up she converted me to a white hat and i spent the next 3 middle school years helping her out and she taught me alot of stuff. When I went to high school I was smarter then the PC lab teacher their and she ended up letting me teach the class alot of stuff that she just didnt know.

Re:Don't be like me.

[serveblunted]

is there a point to this other than blowing smoke up your own arse?

Re:Where are my bloody mod points when I need them

[t_allardyce]

Makes me wonder how Microsoft, Gateway and Apple are listed as "recommended" brands. I have no reason to suspect a kickback or paid product placement, do you?

Well I guess that might be why these students were given these computers.

Anyway back to the topic, school is all about making mistakes and learning for real life and thats what these kids have done. im sure in the future they will remember to do it more discretely and avoid getting caught. They should have been more careful though, you don't just go through your school-issued computer willy-nilly, they should have first thought to themselves "why have we been given these machines?". They should have gathered some dirt on the principle - any kick-backs etc. If they didn't find anything they could either have written a report on his managerial incompetence or just made some dirt up - keeping it secure incase it was needed as 'coercion'. After that it would be prudent not to get caught, ok so its not right they should get felony charges, I would have made them write a report on 'covering your ass' and left it at that. They need to learn how to deal with this crap before they leave school.

Re:Sorry, no

[lowe0]

No, not as long as you're not touching content provided by *AA members. If all you're doing is listening to or distributing content that's in the public domain, then there's nothing they can do to you.

Why is this a Apple story?

[crovira]

Its got nothing to do with Apple.

Re:Know what I'd do?

[jaybee2001]

I did just that to our internet use policy back in high school. My father is a lawyer, so I had him look over the paper before I signed it. He took one look at it and informed me that I would be stupid to sign.

The policy did not have a list of offenses or punishments. It just stated, basically, that "if we don't agree with what you are doing, we can do whatever we want to you."

You can imagine the look of the secretary's face when I returned it unsigned "on advice from my lawyer." I had internet access at home, so I didn't really care.

I'll bet

[iminplaya]

that this is some kind of new McDonalds recruiting tactic, seeing as that this is the only place that these kids will be able to get a job if these trumped up felony charges hold up. Why would anybody honestly think this is a good thing? You damn people just won't be happy unless you can lock up at least 25% of your population, will you? Is this just an attempt to revive your manufacturing base? By using prison labor? You won't have to out source anymore. This is sickness!

Re:Where are my bloody mod points when I need them

[JonTurner]

Makes me wonder what would happen if a student said "No, I don't agree to your terms and refuse to accept your computer."

Why the police were called

[josquin9]

"I knew it was against school policy," he said. "But I didn't know it was a felony."

The students had no respect or fear of anything short of a felony conviction. The lack of repect for authority is epidemic and comes from more sources than could be identified, but I suspect that if the administrators thought that a stern talking to would have prevented students from continuing to do the same thing in the future that they would have considered it an option. The question here shouldn't be "why did the school overreact?' It should be "why can't the students be trusted to do what they admit to knowing was the proper course of action?"

I would be a little more concerned about the long-term consequences of a felony conviction, but the students in question are minors. The charges are likely to be reduced during the legal process, and their records will be expunged at age 18.

That being said, I think it was an ill-advised program to start with, and that the school district has shown their incompetence to manage technology projects of this size. If I were a taxpayer whose hard earned money was being used for this I would be livid. The people in charge obviously did not have sufficient mental resources and/or hired expertise to reach their stated goals for this initiative, but went ahead and spent other peoples money on it anyway.

I would imagine they could have funded courses on ethics for every student in the district with the money they wasted on unnecessary hardware and software, and that those classes would have done a lot more for the future of the community than redundant computer access for a generation of students who are obviously already sufficiently computer savvy. The fact that they were able to outsmart the administration and IT staff regarding computer issues proves that they already have more understanding of these areas than is needed to get a job.

Unfortunately, people who don't bother to take the time to understand computers assume it's a lot harder than it is, so they think kids need to be educated in it. Kids have plenty of places where they can learn about computers, and it's one of the few subjects that illicits so much self-motivation. How many coffee shops offer access on demand to history or biology instructors? How many libraries have chemistry labs or a place to disect frogs, or instruction in how play an instrument with a group of like-minded people? These are offerings that are possible through schools but often are being crowded out of the budget by techology funding.

No bitching here but...

[Chordonblue]

Basically, there is no such thing as an unbreakable lock. Personally, I don't believe there is such a thing as an unbreakable machine. A determined hacker (especially kids who have all the time in the world and think outside the box), WILL get in somewhere you don't want them to eventually. I've come to accept that reasonable security is all you can hope for.

Whenever stories like this come out there's always a horde of Slashdotter's to decry how the security (and those who implemented it) sucked. And that's fine, I understand the mentality, but you folks should understand the types who work in schools.

Many Tech Coords were or ARE teachers themselves with little or no experience in the security/networking field. For instance, before me this school didn't even HAVE a TC - it was just a cadre of willing teachers (the HORROR!)

You guys are missing THE most important facts.

[Zyxwv88]

I'm surprised that no one has noticed this. The school district REQUIRED students to use the school laptops, even if they had a laptop at home that they could have brought in and used. The school district also REQUIRES teachers to implement the laptops into the curriculum so they are used. The school district has monitoring software so that they can spy on the students. Basically they are providing themselves with tools that they can spy on students, requiring students to carry those tools, and if students disable the spy software, they get charged with felonies. Am I the only one that sees a problem with this? If my kid was in that school district, I'd be visiting with a lawyer and/or other organizations to get some changes made around there. This is a total invasion of privacy, but it's been glossed over as a "free" laptop, so people have looked at it as a good thing instead of the invasion of privacy that it also is.

I really wish...

[lucat]

...to meet the underdeveloped idiot who thinks that it is a good idea to charge these kids with computer felony. When will these imbeciles understand that the school is a place where kids LEARN (and this is *exactly* what these kids did) and not jails?
These stupids should understand that if they do not like kids or school they should simply change job. It is clear that an idiot who wants to charge a kid with computer felony can't even be considered a human being... and for sure not someone that should work in a school.

Re:I really wish...

[KutztownStudent]

Hello, i'm an idiot, because i actually go to this school and know everything about the situation unlike you. If you knew every detail of all the stuff that went on over the past year as well as what the technology was like in the school before this you would understand why the school has resorted to this.

Re:I really wish...

[lucat]

I can only base my opinion on what i read here, and from what i read here there is NO reason for what it has been done. Now, of course, if you go to that school you know better than me, but if the facts are just as they have been told to me then i keep my mind unchanged about this matter. Lately the schools have become jails, metal-detectors, videocameras, survillance with police... the SCHOOL is NOT A JAIL. It is CLEAR that when a school becomes a jail the students rebel to it and its rules. I still strongly believe that charging with computer felony a student because he wanted to LEARN and EXPERIMENT is IDIOTIC.

Re:Living With a Felony (pretty OT here)

[jimmyswimmy]

Just remember, most of those recruiters will say ANYTHING to get you to sign their papers... so if you're thinking about joining up just for that, make sure you get it in writing that they can "wipe the felony" away.

I don't think the armed forces can actually do that, anyway. On the other hand, if it was small enough and long enough ago, perhaps you could have a lawyer petition the court to have your felony expunged from your record... google 'expunge felony' for a zillion hits.

Rebels

[KTorak]

My school uses deepfreeze on all its machines. Ironically, it doesn't work on the Windows 98 machines in the computer labs (haha, go figure). It doesn't even seem to work on the machines with XP (you install something and it stays even if you reboot). I'm sure it could be easily turned off, i've never tried becuase i'd rather not loose my network access rights before I graduate.
From what i've gathered off that schools FAQ, I would be charged by simply installing firefox on the network hardrive. I've done this at my school to A) avoid storing my history for everyone to see, B) Be able to have my own bookmarks, and C) to avoid IE's annoying pop ups. I'm not worried about my Network drive being checked, we have a tech staff of about 5 for 7 schools for 5500 students. If I really wanted to be sneaky, I'd just install it on a thumbdrive.
Hell, I've know "student aides" (who assist teachers during a period) to copy exams from the teachers HDD to a thumbdrive without the teacher knowing.

No, this is what Ex Post Facto means...

[Whyte]

That is technically an "ex post facto" (adding punishment after the fact) law, which is illegal, but they weasel out of it by saying it isn't punishment, it is just aiding "public safety" by restricting "privileges" of persons with a "felony status", not punishment for a crime.

"Ex Post Facto" as a legal doctorine doesn't have anything to do with adding punishment after the crime. Since we don't live in a Minority Report (starring Tom Cruise!) world yet, all punishment comes after the crime... so this is somewhat normal. "Ex Post Facto" actually refers to adding a new law after the crime has been committed and then charging the person with that law. Even though the law did not exist prior to the commission of the criminal act.

Just as if the DMV takes your license away in an administrative hearing for DUI even if you are acquitted in criminal court! What about double jeapordy? Well the admin. hearing is not "punishment".

"Double Jeopardy" doesn't have much to do with punishment, it has to do with the prohibition of bringing a person to trial for the same crime after it has already been adjudicated.

However, in reality most offences have multiple punishments attached to them (i.e. your conduct can trigger responses from multiple sections of law). You pointed this out with your DUI-DMV example.

As another example, Armed robbery usually includes charges of aggrivated robbery, unlawful use of a deadly weapon, etc... depending on how you did what you did. After this you would probably be taken to civil court for violating the civil rights of your victims as well.

Re:Know what I'd do?

[symbolic]

We also have the DMCA, DRM, and a continuous push for even more protective legislation by Big Media.

I am convinced that something along the lines of iTunes would have happened anyway- all it took was acting on one of the biggest complaints that people have- they're tired of paying $15 for a CD full of crap, when there's only one or two songs that really merit any value.

Way to go!!!

[Rabid Cougar]

Now I know why I enjoyed your post so much. Tazwell, eh? I grew up in Washington County (John S. Battle class of '93). So I kind of have an idea where you're coming from. And you're on your way into med school? Good on ya!!!! I hope you graduate at the top of a class filled with yankees and NOVA's =D

On a side note, I had the following experience my freshman year of college (out of state, BTW). A guy living on my floor was from Faquier County, VA. He asked me how I did on some of the standardized tests (ACT, AP exams). At the time I graduated, I was only the 3rd person (and only male) in my high school's 30+ year history to score a 5 on the AP English Exam. Anyway, after I finished sharing my accomplishments with him, I could tell by the look on his face what he was thinking.

"What's the matter?" I asked him. "Do you find it hard to believe someone from Southwest Virginia could do so well?"

"Actually," he replied, "Yeah. I do."

Fortunately for him, my desire to yank his head out of his butt and slam it repeatedly against the wall was outweighed by my desire not to get expelled and go to jail.

To his credit, at least he was honest about being "elitist NOVA scum" ;)

Re:Bullshit

[Austerity Empowers]

Learn to read, then learn to flame properly.

Re:Uhm...

[KutztownStudent]

They also spied on other students, messed with other people files (deleting, altering, etc.) and tried to frame other people for breaking the rules (open a porn site, inapropriate backgrounds, etc.) through illegally downloaded remote desktop programs.

Re:How'd they track it down?

[stfvon007]

Actually they matched the record of who had logged into the online class materials during the same class time from that machine. (the computers didnt require a login, but the online class materials did)

Re:Living With a Felony (pretty OT here)

[bottlerocket]

My charge was a Class D Felony for possession of a controlled substance, which makes it one of the lowest felonies you can get. Unfortuanately, a felony is a felony in many people's (and most employers') eyes.

And believe me, I've looked into having it expunged. The information I've received has ranged from impossible (a page I found on Google reguarding my state's laws), possibly (a lawyer I can't afford on my salary, but offered free consultations), to "in five to seven years, maybe" (my probation officer). Five to seven years? I just turned twenty-three; this is the time in people's lives when they start their career paths, go to school, and generally build the foundations of their adult lives! I can't spend five to seven years "treading water" in the hope that maybe, someday I can have my record expunged.

Re:Uhm...

[John Pfeiffer]

Okay see, now THAT'S wrong. I'm perfectly content with the kids getting reamed for doing something like THAT. But if, like the article said, they were simply downloading stuff, even if it WAS porn or illegal music, and keeping the admins from spying on them...then this would be ridiculous.

bull

[jayrtfm]

google: citrix osx or google citrix linux and the first results are the clients for those OS

Educational problem, not security problem

[maar0e]

I'm sorry to say this, but as a person both having worked with maintaining computers in the class-room and having been on the other side because of annoying/impractical/senseless rules imposed by other administrators you make the wrong points. Sure, computers need to have some security built into your school computers, but this is no different from not giving the administrator priviliges to every random user on your network, or even to their own workstation computers in the company. There is a certain needed level of obstacles you can - and should set - to make sure only people who know what they are doing get past it. Let's face it here, if kids want to get into a computer and has sufficient time for it (and skills as well as determination to do research on the web), we can't stop them. It's a question of time, pure and simple - they have more time to try than we do to stop them. Your main issue seems to be a question of motivation for the kids. Don't try beating them at a game you simply cannot win - Child psychology 101 ;-). In stead try motivating them to use their energy in a more contructive way. Set them challenges, in the classroom or outside, similar to what they can do. For example a workshop for network security, where they can try getting past your countermeasures on the network and report them back to you. This way everyone has the game, but the result will be a more secure network than you could ever do on your own. These kids have near-unlimited resources, timewise, and if you treat them like the enemy, they will _be_ the enemy. The security-by-obscurity scheme never does anyone any favours. The time when you could simply tell students to do this and that is over. The informed (and probably spoiled) kids of today demand explanations and reasons for doing what was earlier taken for granted. If you can harness this you have a great ressource, if not you can keep fighting your losing battle forever.

What do you expect from HS students?

[Archimboldo]

Of course they're going to try to hack it. And of course they eventually are going to succeed. And what's the business of relying on a SINGLE password 50Trexler? Stupid. Spend more resources teaching the students the fundamentals. Computers are tools, not the fundamentals which are the raison d'etre for tools. Much of what is called progress is just so much technological roccoco anyway.

Technology divide

[xnot]

It's a difficult thing.

The essential "problem" is that kids are smarter then parents and teachers with respect to technology. Kids know this. Which is one of the reasons they engage in such acts. They think they won't be caught- because most of the time, they won't (unless they are foolish in the way they hack, which could happen). This is adults' greatest fear, really- kids who are smarter then them. Which is why everyone freaks out when some case like this comes into the spotlight. It's like parents blind themselves for the sole purpose so that they can act all protective/judgemental when suddenly their kids do something "they don't know about".

Or if the kid is caught, typically he/she knows that the consequences won't be all that bad. They might get grounded I suppose. But a lot of times, the parents are the ones who are blamed and have to take responsiblity for the kid's crime. (Example: RIAA suing downloaders)

Now some people say that kids don't understand the law yet (they are too young), so they shouldn't be responsible. My opinion: that's a complete load of crap. Heck, most PARENTS don't understand the law- that's why they have to employ lawyers. Declaring to some kid that he's ignorant and so letting him off the hook is akin to teaching a criminal that someone else will take the blame for their crimes, so they don't have to worry about it. Kids learn that, then later when they grow up and become REAL threats to society, and people wonder why.

If I had any "recommendations", it would be these:

1) Adults, you MUST make a serious effort to learn technology so that you have at least a reasonable understanding of what young people are doing on computers. Age is not an excuse. It's bullshit that you are "so old I can't learn like I did when I was 18". That's just a ridiculus society-driven belief, which is not in the least bit true. Maybe you have a few less brain cells, yes. But more times then not, you're just BS-ing yourself because you're too lazy to learn. Stop fooling yourself and do some friggin work, instead of assuming your kids at fault for what you yourself don't understand.

2) Kids need to be treated more like people, rather then "kids"- i.e. people who somehow don't know anything just because "they haven't been alive long enough". For god sake, if kids know things about computers that you don't, what does that say about your belief that kids are ignorant? Time is not a good indicator of ablity. Only results are an indicator of ability. Just because a kid hasn't been around "long enough" doesn't mean they don't have the ability- ESPECIALLY when they demonstrate that ability by doing something.

3) So basically, if a kid does a crime, then take appropriate action. Parents should not be allowed to "protect" their kids from ligitimently committed crimes. Just make the crime fit the action, as well as the person who did it. It would be appropriate to hold a session with the 80-100 to explain to them why what they did was unacceptable, and have them do something like work on a project to improve school security. Or, it may be appropriate to take no action against the kid if the school cannot prove that they had a program in place to teach the kids what actions on their computer are/are not acceptable. It is fair that a person be given every opportunity to know and understand the law before any judgement for breaking that law is given.

Costing a fortune

[lorcha]

You'll find that most places say that they check, but in fact they don't, as it costs money for a background check and checking every applicant would cost a fortune.

You better not leave your current job. Sounds like you really lucked out. I hate to burst your bubble, but my National Criminal serches cost me a paltry $25. Hardly a fortune.

If you are honest on your application, I'll at least listen to your story and make a business decision. If you lie on your application, that's a deal-breaker.

Re:i believe...

[metamatic]

..the correct word is "laxitivity".

Keep taking the laxitives.

I haven't heard of "bartery"

[GPS Pilot]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=bartery

Probably not what you had in mind..

An education that money bought.

[cvdwl]

On the countrary, this kid probably got an education far better than he was getting from most of his teachers. As someone who slept through %90 of high school and %40 of university, I TOTALLY understand his motivation... and yes, MANY years ago, I wrote "cookie-monster" worms for TRS-80's.

Limping back into my cave, cane in hand... where DID I put my teeth... now.