Slashdot Mirror
Charges Against High School Hackers Dropped
ZosX writes "According to eSchool News Online, the 13 students from Kutztown, PA originally charged with felonies for hacking have been given a deal, dropping charges in exchange for 15 hours of community service. From the article: 'The probation department realizes this is small potatoes,' said William Bispels, an attorney representing nearly half the accused students. This is great news for the students and their families."
Lame.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Jeez, let's all register at "eSchool News". Sigh. Talk about minimum effort editing.
They had a moronic school willing to proceed with this stupidity, and they're still at this school I presume? Going to a school where those in power have a severe mental handicap doesn't sound like good news to me. Having the possibility of a felony raised and it taking THIS LONG to and public uproar to dismiss this stupidity doesn't seem like good news to me.
Good news would be the principal and any police involved in this over-reaction getting an official reprimand.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I mean grafitti... But the real question is: did this bring out the real curiosity in them or will this forever stop them from exploring computers further?
-Palal
In meetings with students over the last several days, the Berks County, Pa., juvenile probation office has quietly offered the students a deal in which all charges would be dropped in exchange for 15 hours of community service, a letter of apology, a class on personal responsibility, and a few months of probation.
"The probation department realizes this is small potatoes," said William Bispels, an attorney representing nearly half the accused students.
The 13 initially were charged with computer trespass and computer theft, both felonies, and could have faced a wide range of sanctions, including juvenile detention.
The Kutztown Area School District said it reported the students to police only after detentions, suspensions, and other punishments failed to deter them from breaking school rules governing computer usage. (See "Felony charges for computer-abusing kids.")
But the students, their families, and outraged supporters around the nation said that authorities overreacted, punishing the kids not for any horrible behavior but because they outsmarted the district's technology workers.
The trouble began last fall after the school district issued some 600 Apple iBook laptops to every student at the high school, about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
Students easily breached security and began downloading forbidden internet programs, such as the popular iChat instant-messaging tool. Some students also turned off a remote monitoring function that let administrators see what students were viewing on their screens--or used the monitoring function to view administrators' own computer screens.
School district officials and prosecutors did not return phone messages left Aug. 25 and had not been heard from by press time.
In legal terms, the students have been offered an "informal adjustment"--the least severe form of punishment.
Bispels said a few students are thinking about refusing the deal because they don't feel they have broken any laws. "A lot of these parents would like to fight this on principle, but it's hard to put the kids at risk on principle," he said.
Mike Boland, who represents one student, said his client likely will accept the offer. "It doesn't require my client to acknowledge he is guilty of anything," he said.
"It's about as mild as you can go," agreed James Shrawder, whose 15-year-old nephew was among those offered the deal. "It's more of a face-saving measure."
One student who has had prior dealings with the juvenile probation office was not offered a deal. That case is expected to proceed.
Links:
Students' web site
http://www.cutusabreak.org
Kutztown Area School District's response
http://www.kasd.org/districtinfo/kasdPressrelease
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
but that they really don't stand much of a chance of conviction by jury.
Not to mention how silly they look.
KFG
Really bright hackers know not to get caught. Think of it as natural selection. They can still become politicians, with their experience in breaking the rules and getting away with petty punishment.
I hope that at least one of them fights it out, and makes the state (in all senses) that started this madness either see it out, or drop the charges altogether.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
When I was in my senior year in high school back in 86 and Apple IIe's were the flavour of the day (wonder if linux will run on it?) the math department had a password protected program for tracking and scoring all the students of the school for that year and guess what.. they forgot the password. I was asked what could I do so I ran the program through a hex dump and looked for unusual words appearing in the hex and found a word "ferret" tried it and got in. So its not all bad to be a computer enthusiast (nerd) at high school. I got no community service for that. I had the chance to up my grades but I of course I didnt.
I am glad they dropped these charges against this teenager. I am sure with all this attention he has learned his lesson. I hope that is the case atleast. Maybe he will become a programmer or something useful for the internet or the computing world.
Changing an admin password on an iBook considered hacking. I have heard it all now. I got a similar letter sent to me from a University I once attended but my one stated that I broke 14 out of the 16 rules they had in the computer policy. The other two were too lame to break.
They started to get worried when I told them how easy it was to crash the University ATM machines. Of cource I got caught as I was cocky like most young kids. They set up a stink ( rather funny thinking about it now). They told me that I was the biggest ever threat to the University ever ( I felt proud ). Ah well I went away and got my computers degree elsewhere.
15 hours in New Orleans right now would be tough going - they might want to re-do the plea bargain back to a felony !
Give a kid something he's not supposed to get into, and he'll try to get into it. Period. Be stupid about it, and he will get into it.
What these kids did sounds like the battle happening between many corporate IT-departments and employees.
Corporate IT departments erect all kinds of barriers for users to use certain applications and generally don't explain why these barriers are there. The most common answer I have gotten was: "Security". ICT-security is in my jobtitle and I know these guys were bullshitting me. Other things you hear are maintence, complexity or my favourite one: "It is our policy" and "The department heads agreed on this".
This is a battle that has gone on ever since we started with computers in the workplace. Invariably the result was that people worked around the ivory tower that controlled IT and got what they wanted some way or another (PC's got bought on office supplies budgets in the early eighties, they were forbidden by the high priests of mainframes) Invariably after prolonged fights the users win.
I currently see the following problems around me, where corporate IT erects barries, that people go around. In most cases corporate IT should enable it in such a way it is safe, or explain very well why it is not allowed at the moment, or at all:
- Banning of Instant Messaging
- Filtering of websites beyond porn
- Banning any Palm-like device, except the corporate one.
- disabling USB ports.
- disabling Wifi
- banning alternative browsers and all kinds of utilities.
- limiting the size of mailboxes
- disallowing or crippling desktop search
- disallowing or crippling streaming media
- Creating lengthy processes for getting new software on your desktop
Use Adsense for Charity
So, this appears to be the school's way of backing down gracefully. That is, they get to drop the charges without having to admit that it was wrong to press the charges in the first place.
Overall, not a bad out come. But, it does leave it as an open question whether or not the school district will every try something like this again.
In US public High Schools are there courses teaching programming?
You know, this is such absolute bullshit.
Several years ago (I think '99) I was in an optional school activity that fixed computers and made sure the school network worked etc.. There was one particular trouble computer where apparently students snuck on and installed a whole bunch of nasty stuff. One of the other guys that did this with me installed Back Orifice on it to monitor it (remember, those were the days when it was popular). One day he asked me to go on the linux box and check on that computer (I watched him do it plenty of times, so i knew how). At this point, the head of the computer group came around and saw bo2k. Oooh boy was he pissed. Since this was the time of people using bo2k as a virus, he instantly thought it was.
I told him that I was just checking it for the other guy but when he asked him he knew nothing about it and wondered why there was a virus on the linux box. Fuck.
I got kicked off the computer group, got a total of abut 25 hours of detention cleaning desks, and my parents got to pay the equivalent of about $200 in "damages". And no, I did NOT make slashdot with this.
I'M NOT ANGRY!
The below really bothers me. Someone may think that accepting that kind of offer admits no guilt, but in reality, it admits you're guilty. The logic is that if you are truly innocent, you should have no problem in court. But then again, the American judicial system is so messed up, especially towards juveniles/minors, it may be next to impossible to get a fair trial/proceeding.
3 aug26,0,1647962,print.story?coll=all-newslocal-hed
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-b4_5kutztown-
Mike Boland, who represents one student, said his client probably will accept the offer. ''It doesn't require my client to acknowledge he is guilty of anything,'' he said.
The general consensus is that the authorities in the US have become too strict, especially with "intellectual property", "the war on drugs", and "computer crimes".
They are basically making themselves a laughing stock internationally - the Canadian public doesn't seem impressed by what the current US adminsitration is doing, or how they are handling these issues.Things like this would not happen in any other industrial, civilized G7 democracy, like Canada for example.
It's quite shocking that the authorities are punishing students for using passwords - that they were given!Liberal Ontarians and French Quebecers are draining Western Canada's wealth. Stop them now! Support Western separatism.
"The district has incurred many hours of technician time in returning the misused laptops to their original images. This additional time meant additional technician hours and less technology coordinator time spent in high school classrooms and in the other five district buildings." Many hours? Maybe 2 hours of staring at a little bar to reach one side of the screen, but total bullshit nonetheless. Did they write down all the binary of the image and tap it in bit by bit?
I'm glad they're dropping the charges, but seriously, shouldn't this be a civil matter, not a felony?
The list of problems is not nescessarily what I experience in my workplace, but what I see and hear around me.
Use Adsense for Charity
For those that haven't followed the story, here is the link to a site representing the student's side of the story: http://www.cutusabreak.org/
i am currently attending junior high.
the sad thing is the school management and even some it departments are very naive about their computer security. i recently ALMOST got suspended from school from using batch files to start word, internet explorer, or excel! (they believe batch files constitute as a hacking tool/device that can compromise network security).
ideally, IT staff should be trained properlly and understand that security is only as good as the person enforcing it. if school network security is bad, then perhaps they should hire better people. this is because i recently got the admin password of the local computer taking about 15 minutes (1) boot usb key 2) copy sam file from hdd to usb 3) use saminside to generate pwdump file of sam hashes 4) pass the pwdump file to l0phtcrack which passes the hash through a rainbow table - the password was 6chars long with 1 number!?) - the IT staff were so naive to have the network and local computer pass the same, and allowing booting to usb key.
in the ideal world, school network security would be standardized and out-sourced to higher-skilled people.
these kids should be commended for proving how in-effective school network security is.
The authorities in question had the gall to offer a compromise that included:
15 hours of community service, a letter of apology, a class on personal responsibility, and a few months of probation.
A letter of apology? That I'm sighted, not dumb, and would like to use convenient technology to stay in touch with my friends?
And what is this from one of the defendant attorneys:
Mike Boland, who represents one student, said his client likely will accept the offer. "It doesn't require my client to acknowledge he is guilty of anything," he said.
I'd say a letter of apology counts as acknowledging guilt, at least in my books!
If you keep track of Paul Graham's essays (try http://store.yahoo.com/paulgraham/nerds.html), you will probably recognize this as a glowing example of the holding pen analogy he uses vis-a-vis present day school system. I'm apalled that the most important thing that these bright kids are impressioned with is 'Obey the Thought Police'!
Sounds logical, but doesn't match real life. First, these kids were guilty, of violating the school policy regarding the use of these machines. A policy that was known, and previously agreed to by the kids and/or their parents, in writing or some other equally legal binding method. No matter how stupid that policy was, or how ridiculous the school overreacted after (repeated) violation of said policy.
Now the school provides itself an easy (face-saving?) way out, by offering these students an easy way out that doesn't involve the judicial system. Replaces official charges with 15 hours of community service, as punishment for that policy violation. Still not an optimal response, but sounds a lot more reasonable to me.
Going to court because you're innocent? Doesn't work that way. People go to court for countless reasons, very silly ones included. Both parties involved estimate their chances, estimate cost (time/money/company image/...), and decide whether they think it's important enough, whether they can afford the cost, and whether that cost is worth it. Innocense is one factor, but doesn't matter much once you go to court. Criminals walk away all the time, and some innocent folks get convicted too. What can be shown in court, and how good lawyers you have, matters a lot more.
--sig on vacation till sept.3rdStudent Story:
Right to Read:
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
So here this guy goes pointing out how ridiculous the situation is, and how it is a nice example of US authorities having become too strict. That's not exactly rocket science, it's been said many times before that USAmericans are too sue-happy and that authorities don't have the wits to understand technology - often leading to ridiculous situations (software patents, anyone?).
And just because he said he's Canadian it's modded flamebait! I hate to break it to you, but this is a real problem is the USA, and it isn't a problem in most of the rest of the western world. So instead of silencing those who criticize you, perhaps you should let them speak, so that the situation may be improved?
If this were only one incident, I wouldn't bother to post this, but I'm fed up with americans sticking their heads in the sand and telling those trying to educate them to piss off.
Nice example: the Europeans who wrote letters before the last elections, arguing why people shouldn't vote for Bush. Guess what happened? The reaction was: piss off I'm not gonna let you tell me what to vote. Not an unnatural reaction, really, but it's very sad considering how ignorant many Americans are about the rest of the world. So here the rest of the world comes and tries to educate them, and their arguments aren't even considered. Now that's ignorant and smug about it!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Which in Dutch translates to : Cuntcity :-)
"Maintained storage costs the big bucks! Also, people keep emails for years longer than necessary,"
No, its just stupid, and you're parroting the line your boss tells you.
If its go gawddamn expensive to maintain a 200M inbox for 500 employees, then explain to me how GMAIL manages to keep 1G for anybody on the planet with a computer.
Its not the employees that are retarded, its the IT "professional" who can't figure out how to run a proper mailserver.
Maybe if you got rid of Exchange you could actually serve the business instead of vice-versa.
I've been in IT since '81 and I swear that each year the "professionals" in our industry getting dumber and dumber.
When i was at school in a town called Darlington in the north of england I got caught "hacking". This was actually done by some lads i knew, and they watched as the computer "admin" one finger typed his password in the computer that one of them was sat at. I think the password was somethign like the initials of that staff followed by their date of birth...
*hundreds of lazy admins rush to their computers*
Anyway we had a look around and found some interesting stuff like the "admins" had doom and hexen installed on the network, and there was a few letters of resignation from the staff that we came accross, and a picture in one of the teachers folders that a kid had crudely drawn in MS paint that had "teacher dies" written on it.
This was back in 1998, and 2 of the lads got excluded (a 1 week holiday) and I got a stern talking to. We all got banned from the computers (but this was not enforced).
I think its a bit harsh to give these kids anything more than school punishments. Hacking is pretty boring anyway i dont see the excitement.
Some things never change...
I can speak to the truth of this. When I was in my 4th year of highschool the IT department decided they wanted to lock down all the computers in the school, passwords this that and the other thing. They did this even in the lab that was used exclusivly for the programming courses, needless to say, pain in the arse. A small group of the students got a little annoyed about having to get up and get the teacher to unlock the computer at the start of every class, and anytime we managed to crash one among other things. So we conspired, about 3 of us, to obtain the passwords we needed to work freely, simply quickly mocking up a dummy screen and getting the teacher to unlock the computer. Now this is far worse then what these students did, we actually stole the password, it wasn't written down anywhere we could get to. You know what happened?
The teacher thought it was great, we all had a good laugh, he even wanted to have a look at the source for our little tool. Now, we did admit to the teacher we did this however, because there wasn't an environment of fear about going to jail for basicly a simple prank.
Had that been the case for these students the state might actually have had a case and gone to trial with it.
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
You earned respect from teachers. You earned more of a stigma from students. Finally, you were distrusted by the same stupid teachers if something went wrong. You'd show someone one of your programs and they'd be like, 'how do you do something like that?' Not that they'd listen to your answer. I really hated that question!
My point was.. well I'm pissed that these kids were prosecuted in the first place. If anything the kids should be encouraged and rewarded, while the school learns a thing or two about sensible security. The world may be brain damaged, however at least we can look down on everyone else.
Nerds should have their own country. Kind of like Isreal. We can encourage other nerds to enter and have a 0 tolerance policy to all other imigrants - unless they're cute and attracted to nerds.
Stupid finger pointing, kneejerk, blame society.
And we wonder why human/kids are so unreasonable.
Are these kids old enough to even be prosecuted ?
Suppose its not the schools fault in anyway.
a) You asked for it.
b) Who ever found the wallet should had taken it to the police.
2) A girl is drunk and falls asleep in a public garden, she is rapped:
a) She had it comming, she should fall asleep in a public ungarded place.
b) Who ever foud her should had waken her and help her.
3) The door lock in your house is a 1990 model simple to break, your house is burglered when you are on vacations.
a) Next time get a better Lock.
b) No one should had ever entered your house.
Please tell me where is the line ? between crime and not crime ! 15 hours of cummunity service ? WTF thats been lean on them.
The comparisons above are a bit harsh, but i believe that here there are plenty of people who consider themselves as law makers, and are completely out of sync with reallity.
Maybe im just being naive but if i let my door open whoever enter my house without permission is as criminal as the one who breaks the window to enter.
These kid/kids should have alerted the system admins to the vulnerability of their system and help to improve rather than disrupt. I do believe that this is the result of a stupid culture imposed by TV shows and other tipes of media that make people believe that its beter and cooler to be a cracker rather than helping to construct something better. You can see this trend in many other areas other than IT.
my 5 cents
JORGE
Is it just me or did anyone else read that as "klutztown"? hackers in klutztown...
ok i've been up too long..
I'll only rob you a little instead of robbing you a lot, how does that sound?
Who was the head of the IT department? Darl Mcbride? "All you unix are belonging to us!" Na, not even the UNIX Overlord is STUPID enought to put the computer password ON THE PC... Next time guys, just put the MP3s and pr0n on there for them. Hell, include some hacker tools. While your at it, I'm use the would like some movies off a bit torrent site. TO THE HEAD OF THE IT DEPARTMENT: YOU should be the one getting the shaft. YOU are the IDIOT that put the passwords on the laptops. YOU need to be sue. YOU need to be doing the time. YOU DON'T need to be near computers. YOU will never get a girlfriend now. I weep for the US's understanding of technology. It sad that we have people in goverment that think software patents are a "Good Thing!" (TM) Why stop there! Lets patent food! YAY! Lets also patent smells! I want the patent for stink, so evertime you fart I get 1000 bucks. I'm moving to Hong Kong or Japan. I'd rather put up with learning language and cutoms over than to have to live in a place where typing in a password into a laptop, that was on the laptop in the first place, can land you in jail.
Maybe they should do their community service explaining to people how to use their computers securely.
but when these policies appear to get in the user's way they're going to want a better explanaition than "security reasons" or "management decided".But, sometimes, "management decided" IS the only reason IT has. These people aren't always decision-makers.
Whats sad is that the School Staff let this happen for a little while without catching it. Almost every geek hacked into there high school computer system at the age of 18-24. Why is this any different for god sakes its funny.
Dear Slashdot readers,
In my defense the article did NOT require registration yesterday when I submitted the article. Had I known that they would have required registration I would have never have used their summary. Someone passed me the link yesterday and I thought it would be great to share with the slashdot community. Thank you very much for posting the full article text, Mother Fuckingshit (great nick btw! seriously!)
Please accept my humblest of apologies.
zosxavius photography
However after all of that came to an end, I was still treated by the school staff as some sort of hacker. Many openly expressed their distrust of me around their computers. Whenever ANYTHING ever went wrong with the computer system I was the first person they blamed. Now I was also the one they always turned to for a fix to their problem. Still I had to put up with all that grief just because my parents elected to take the deal.
Moral of the story, if you're innocent then don't agree to any deal where blame can still be associated with you. If you're innocent then make damned certani everyone knows it.
If I tape the key to my house on my front door, I'm an idiot. If someone notices and uses the key to enter my house, they're breaking and entering*, even if they only hung out and watched tv for a bit.
The new punishment is more appropriate to the offense, but trivializing it as something that should be overlooked is not the answer. An incompetent admin doesn't negate that the kids knew what they were doing was wrong.
* Breaking and entering requires only the slightest amount of force. Pushing open a door is considered sufficient.
With "Generation-Steal" there's not much difference between spoiled white kids in a high school or amoral black kids in New Orleans. Sigh.
What peeves me about this story, and a similar one, is that in both cases there was a lamatable lack of security-mindness among the school staff. Leaving passwords taped to the back of computers is the same as not using passwords at all. I consider this the failure of the staff members to exercise simple-minded commonsense security procedures.
In the other case that I have in mind, the teacher left her desk without password protecting her computer, which would've taken her 2 keystrokes to do. A student went to her desk and altered grades. Everybody nailed the student, but *no* attention was given to the very plan fact that the teacher left everything wide open.
And another criticism. Most school staff are clueless about computers anyway; the students can very easily run rings around them. If a technology is going to be used, then that technology should be fully understood by the adminstrators and staff. After all, a teacher *is supposed* to be smarter than the students he or she is teaching, right?
I recalled being so bored in school all those many years ago because I was light-years ahead of the techers in the areas of math and science -- even in their so-called "advanced placement" courses. It was all largely a joke as I recall.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
I'm sorry. I'm very sorry that your network security is a disgrace.
I'm sorry that your network admin staff is completely braindead.
I'm sorry that the ADMIN passwords were taped to the back of the laptops by what must have been the single most stupid person on the planet.
I'm sorry that likely the only thing anyone learned out of this is that 13 kids "broke in to the schools computers".
I'm sorry that noone will ever think to FIRE the dumbass who taped the passwords to the back of the computers.
I'm sorry that I had to write this.
Sit... Speak.... Shake.... Good Dog!
Felonies are meant to be serious crimes like "aggravated assault, arson, burglary, murder, and rape" and not minor infractions like what the "Kutztown 13" possibly did. Almost 95% of felony charges result in a guilty conviction via a plea agreement. It's rather disgusting.
IMO the only reason the "Kutztown 13" got off without a conviction is because of the multitude of complaints generated by the Internet and not out of any "common sense" of any prosecutor. The criminal justice in the US is like a giant meat grinder where the innocent and guilty get ground up together and spit out the other end. "Justice" is rarely a factor.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
Actually, the US has been sliding toward facism since Nixon, maybe before.
But 9-11 was a Federal Control Freak's wet dream come true. It was an excuse to completely trash what little was left of our rights.
Land of the free and home of the brave? We have become land of the coward and home of the corporate slave. We may still be a Republic, but so was the USSR. We may still have a vote, but when there are only two candidates, both of whom have their campaigns paid by the large corporations and both of whom are against P2P, shorter copyrights, for DRM and against pot, your vote doesn't really matter.
Walt Kelly's Pogo said it best about one election: "You can vote for Tweedledum or Tweedledumber."
Lately I've been voting only minor parties who have no chance whatever of being elected, simply as a Don Quijote-like protest against the Republicrats.
If I wasn't looking at a pension in five years I'd try to move somewhere else. Is Amsterdam warm?
I'm a BC caveman (Before Computers). My teachers were as abysmally stupid as my kids' teachers were (my youngest is 18).
I used it to my advantage.
I cheated in math by using a slide rule. "Oh, he can use a slide rule, he must be really smart."
Morons.
I had one paper graded as an "A" because the vocabulary was way above the teacher's head (this was a science class!)
I failed another paper (8th grade), however, because the teacher thought I made up the word "hierarchy."
What do you expect from a system that "rewards" the highest paid teacher with a salary that doesn't even approach the median income of the country? You can make more money managing a McDonalds than teaching. So why is everyone so surprised that teachers are retards?
[ot, but "SLOW DOWN COWBOY! IT'S BEEN 11 MINUTES SINCE YOU LAST POSTED"]
Public school teachers aren't the only retards areound here >:(
It dosn't matter how novel the hack is, it matters how much damage was done. In this case, not much.
Charging the kids with felonies idiotic. Too many people seem to think that 'if you break the law, you deserve whatever's comming to you'. The punishment needs to be perportional to the crime.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I am confused as to what "crime" you think took place here?
If you are referring to a prosecutor using the threat of a felony charge to force some kids to accept a "deal" then you may be onto something.
The students did nothing more than read their school books in a way the administrators found unacceptable.
How about one or more of these options:
1)"IT driver's license." Yes--I'd ridicule you for making me take it. But I'd rather waste a couple hours showing I can responsibly administer my machine than waste months waiting so I can get a fricking text editor on it.
2)PENALIZE those who screw-up. Don't restrict everyone in case they screw-up, instead penalize the screw-ups. Make it so THEY can't install anything or have to jump through hoops or have remedial computer maintenance lunchtime courses or whatever.
3.Let me run everything in a virtual machine.This is fairly uncommon, but WOULD be legitimate. Most times this is spelled out (and well-enacted), few will complain too bitterly.
I work in a small software company and even though we do not apply all the measures you're talking about, I can understand why these measures are there. Since you asked explanations, mine follow.
- Banning of Instant Messaging
I do not disallow it (it's used for work here), but I'm pretty strict about sending keys and other secrets being sent via IM. That's probably one of the reasons why you're not allowed to do IM, the other being that some people waste enormous amounts of time chatting.
- Filtering of websites beyond porn
We do not filter, the two most probable reasons are malicious apps and company policy (and in that case IT is not to blame, they're following orders).
- Banning any Palm-like device, except the corporate one.
Not done here, but probably is something related to secrets and policy from above.
- disabling USB ports.
Not done here, but probably it's for the same reasons as the item above (palms).
- disabling Wifi
BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING INSECURE. Let's face it: it's not the same to have to enter the building in order to connect to the network than just connecting from the outside. I'd allow it if everyone had to go thru an IPSEC gateway that authenticates and encrypts everything that is broadcast (no WEP, WAP or whatever, only with GOOD TESTED protocols like ipsec). The bosses won't pay for that kind of security, though.
- banning alternative browsers and all kinds of utilities.
It probably has to do with unauthorized apps, not alternative ones. Mostly to prevent the user from shooting himself in the foot (and taking the network with him). Think spyware. It depends on the user, and we encourage the use of alternate (safe) browsers (hell, I'd get rid of IE in a second, given the chance).
- limiting the size of mailboxes
Space is limited, and even though most people say that disk space is cheap, it is not when you're supplying mailbox space for 50 users. The only chance of adding disk space for the mailserver is to replace one disk with another, there's no place to add another disk. And very very large disks are expensive (if we had an infinite budget it would be another story).
- disallowing or crippling desktop search
No problem with that, maybe the desktop search tool is unauthorized software?
- disallowing or crippling streaming media
Because it consumes a lot of (critical) network bandwidth. We can barely do VOIP here, someone streaming music or otherwise is a constant strain on the network that is easily felt and prevents other people from working (same as big downloads, we schedule them at night if possible).
- Creating lengthy processes for getting new software on your desktop
Mostly because new software has to be analysed before it is classified as good. Your new interactive desktop might be loaded with spyware, and it would be a hassle to everyone else (see item immediately above). We don't restrict installing here if you know enough, but we might order some software to be uninstalled if it turns out to be bad (and we're not tolerant about that, it's for the benefit of the network).
By the way, a too strict policy like the one in your place is not a good thing. It only encourages the users to avoid the measures in place. But not all IT people are the BOFH (although it look like the only way of dealing with certain kinds of user).
GPG 0x1B479C78
I find your post hilarious. It makes several mistakes in evaluating the situation. The biggest is the "we're all reasonable people, we'd never do something like this" one. This rolls several dumb assumptions up into one. Assumptions that Americans are somehow abberant, that because this happens it's somehow representative of the US in general, and the assumption that there isn't some pocket in your own country where people feel sufficiently different from you that it could happen there too.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I was forgot to read a book for a book report in Alaskan History (8th grade). The assignment was simple: once a week, read a book about Alaska, and write a report.
I forgot to read a book on Alaska that week, so I made a report up about a fictitious book. The result? I got a 'D,' because it "Sounds copied."
Granted, I deserved an 'F.' But for fuck's sake, fail me for the right reasons.
There *are* good teachers. During my school years in Thorne Bay, Alaska, I was allowed to use the computers any time I wanted. A friend of mine and I would get the key from the principal on the weekend, and we'd "hack" (that's 'code,' for you hack-means-break-in-to-the-system weenies) for hours on end. We were *encouraged* to use the computer systems to their utmost, and *trusted* in the school on our own, without supervision.
But those days were different, and Thorne Bay is different from most places on earth. Hell, I graduated with 3 other people; the entire HS had only 23 students (there were 10 sophomores, for some reason).
Back then, besides having to walk to school uphill and underwater both ways, manuals were printed with real technical information. The Apple ][ manuals had the system source code in the back. While learning 6502 assembly, I would study the code in the back of the manuals, looking for interesting system calls.
Now what do students get? Systems that spy on them, that lock them out of the interesting bits, that enforce what the teachers consider "education." There's no such thing as exploration, no such thing as learning on your own.
Damnit, I've got news for them. The only person who can teach you is... you. Teachers aren't there to teach students; they are there to interest students in teaching themselves, in guiding the student along paths of knowledge.
Now schools are taking legal actions against their students? What kind of a fucked-up fascist world *is* this?
Sorry. That's my rant. I could be all kinds of wrong about it, but it's mine.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I think they should organize a school-wide boycott of the laptops until all charges are dropped for all of the kids.
The school should have never got the law involved to fix what was caused by their own mistakes.
Fuck registration. Use this email: bobsmith@mailinator.com
These kids should be given electric shock therapy and sent to a concentration camp. Better yet we should tape their stay and play it repeatedly on MTV for everyones amusment. For the next season if we fell short of "hackers" we could go after the kids that write in their text books or put gum under the desks.
Or maybe, the moron who taped the passes under the ipod should be written up and probably fired.
Don't blame me the kids man the kids... I'm an awesome security admin as long as they don't look at the bottom of that thing...
This story was in the Denver Post a few weeks back.
When i got caught at my highschool, they arrested me.
The parents are starting to understand that, even though the kids are doing illegal things like, ``hacking'' computers at school, they should be giving kids some ethics classes or maybe even a job, in my opinion it's the incompetent administrator that let this happen.
kids do Pot, drink booze, all sorts of ``bad'' things behind the school, and everyone knows it. why arent those kids being charged with possesion?
schools lashing out at kids commiting crimes like this shows that schools dont know what to do.
The message I'd take home with me would be "Screw you, school". Authoritarian bullying isn't exactly conducive to a learning environment.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
In addition I'd like to add that speaking from my experience as ex-teenager the lesson learned from tactics like these (first scare them then let them off the hook to teach them a lesson, make an example, send a message etc) is that the system is fucked up. And IMHO that's the correct conclusion.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
You were asked by the legal owner to do it. These kids were told, repeatedly, to stop doing this and were punished by the school for it.
If I lock my keys in my car and call a locksmith to get them he is perfectly allowed to pick my lock since I (the legal owner) requested it. Indeed, he'll even charge me to do it. If you decide to pick my lock randomly for fun, it's a crime and you'll be charged if caught.
That's the things. Just like with physical property, you aren't allowed to access computers without permission. Also permission of one kind doesn't constitute full permission. Slashdot runs a publicly accessable webserver, since it is setup with the intent to reach the public, it's the same as giving you permission to access it. However that doesn't mean you have permission to try to get root on the box and do whatever you want. Likewise that the school let these kids use the laptops was not permission to do whatever they want.
I can say as a lab admin for a university, if we had to deal with a similar situation, there would be criminal charges as well. If you break in to a computer, we'll yank your account and send you to talk to the dean. If you do it again, we are going to call the cops since you obviously didn't learn your lesson the first time.
True, our labs are much more secure than these laptops, but nothing any person with computer support experience couldn't easily get by. If you have physical access to the computer, it's not hard to just wipe and reinstall the damn thing. However just because you can do it, doesn't make it legal or right to do it. I mean I can break in your house. Unless you are someone with one in a million good security, it would be easy. However that doesn't mean it's legal for me to do so.
What you did, was put your skills to good use to help someone at their request. What these kinds did was put their skills to bad use for personal gain.
Some of the kids attempted to turn the notebooks back in as they thought the computers were too much of a distraction while in class, but were refused by the school.
bah, Kutztown, I'm still bitter they beat me at "Scholastic Scrimmage" in the Semifinals
You could just not do shit you aren't supposed to. If you want to play with hacking a UNIX system, you could go and setup a UNIX system of your own, and then work on hacking it rather than trying to hack a university system. If you want to play with a sniffer, setup a couple of systems on your network and sniff them, don't start sniffing passwords off the school's wifi.
I have absolutly 0 tolerance or sympathy for the little wannabes that call themselves "hackers" and try to break in to university systems or circumvent our security in the labs. The world is not your playground, you do not have the right to break in to and mess with other people's property be it physical or virtual.
It's not a mental handicap for univerisites to want you to use their systems as intended and not as your own playtoy. If you want to come to a lab and use the installed software, great. If you want to play video games or whatever, go do it on your own computer. Don't act like you have some kind of justification for absuing the property of others.
As I just finished reading through the topics that had been modded up, I wonder why everyone BUT the kids are being blamed for what happened.
/. that blame the schools and anyone government related for being too strict. When my parents were in school, the teachers physically beat them in front of their classmates for breaking a rule! If anything, kids now have much more leniency because of the very liberal advocacy groups who raise a stink whenever someone is punished.
I am sure when the school district gave those kids the laptops, there was an agreement signed and rules explained to the students. So it wasn't a smart idea to put the passwords physically on the computer, but how do you explain the minority who took it beyond that? The kids knew the rules, and they knowingly broke them. Sure a felony was too far, but 15 hours of community service seems too light. But now I'm sure the regulations will be much tighter due to these 13 kids, who may have ruined it for the other 483.
Then there's the segment of
Bottom line, the kids broke the rules multiple times. The school had to do something that would get the kids to stop, which happened. 10 years ago I got a Saturday School because I was working on my Geocities webpage in the school lab. It may seem a bit harsh for a 1st offense, but I never did that again!
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
What is the point of requiring every kid in the school to carry a laptop around with them? What benefit is there to that? According to the article, the teachers did not like the program because the laptops were a distraction in class.
I'm certainly not against computers, and I think they do have a place in education (writing reports, etc), but not in the classroom.
Kids need to spend school time learning academic subjects, not IMing each other and downloading music.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
After they'd been repeatedly told not to do it, and even punished by the school, it was time to get serious. There are lots of kids, and many adults, that just don't seem to think there are consequences for actions. It gets even worse with computers. Look at the attitudes on Slashdot, how many people seem to think you are prefectly justified in breaking in a system just because you can, that it's the owner's fault for not keeping you out.
It sounds to me like these kids thought they could just keep doing what they were doing with no consequences. They needed to learn that there are very real consequences. Sounds like that's probably been done. They found out just how serious their actions could be taken, and have been let off with a little community service. If they do it again, I say jail time is in order.
However the problem is saying "I don't like how they are doing things on their systems, so I'm going to take them over and do it my way". How we do things is none of your concern. It is none of your concern if there's a firewall (there are three in the case of our labs, one on the systems, one in the building, one for campus), nor is it your concern what apps are and aren't there. They are given as a "take it or leave it" kind of thing. If you like what's there, use it, if you don't, use your own. However don't presume that you should have a right to change what's there.
Same thing in this siutation. The kids didn't have to use those laptops, they had the option of simply setting them aside, and probably the option of refusing them. However they decided they wanted them, but only on their own terms. They got told this wasn't acceptable, and they kept doing it, sent to detention, kept doing it. They even locked the school's admins out.
Sorry, but none of that is acceptable. Any time you choose to use something that belongs to someone else, regardless of if that's your school or your friend, you need to obey their terms. A loan is not a gift.
When I was a student at this university, I always figured my system was for my stuff, school systems were for school stuff. So on my desktop I did as I pleased, I owned it after all. The university systems I used only when I needed something they had. Like the CS server for turning in my homework, or the school e-mail server for getting university e-mail.
The problem comes from people that seem to think that they should be allowed to do what they want with property that doesn't belong to them. We had a student that screwed up an app last semester because he wanted to play with Skype in the labs. The systems won't let you install software, so his workaround was to find one of the shitty engineering apps we have (and there are a few) that require people to have modify permissions to their directory and to stick the skype installer in plkace of it's exe file. That didn't work, of course, but screwed up Pspice for the students that wanted to use it.
Since it wasn't major he just got yelled at, but that's the same mentality. He didn't see what was wrong, he seemed to think WE were the assholes for not leeting him do what he wanted in the lab. We explained that Skype is fine per university policy on computers you own, however computers we own are allowed to have only the software we want on them.
Same applies to check-out computers. We don't do it for undergrads, but we do have laptops for check out for special reasons. However they are not your laptop. You do not have admin and you are expected not to try. You use the installed software. If it's not what you need, you ask, if we can't accomidate you, then sorry, use your own hardware.
Hefty fines, resitution and lots of community service is what they deserve. Their actions have caused disruption, cost the district money, cost their parents time and money to defend them and also cost the taxpayers money to deal with them. Also, they have set a precedent among their peers.
Any deviation from the above observation is nothing but dilution. To go easy on them would be nothing short of rewriting the law ( in a bad way ) and shoving the bill down the taxpayers throats.
Throw the book at the punks.
The law is at fault, the law says they have to attend school. They did that much. Anything else they do is optional. They can't sign a contract so any charges are irelivent. If the school wants to charge them they can't because they gave the kids the laptop, thus it is no longer school property. The kids actually tried to give back the laptop so they terminated any contract they had and since that is so, then when the school refused to take it back the laptops because up for grabs and any 'crimes' with the laptops were done to personel property and not criminal.
That is what I THINK. Now the law is both made and enforced by illogical conservatives. Even if you don't buy my view they still didn't commit a crime since no PHYSICAL destruction occured which I believe should be required for a crime to exist. When your connected to a lawless internet. You can't prosecute someone if they could have conducted the acivity without being here because it would make it unfair.
My reasoning is that the computers were given as part of the school's activities, as part of a mandatory program, if I understand correctly.
Since schools are de facto guardians of students while the students are under their control, they are effectively parents. I believe it's termed in loco parentis.
Anyway, a DA would not get involved if a kid hacked his parent's computers - it would be a domestic issue in most cases. So I say the school should handle it this way as well. If it's bad enough, then expulsion. But not a felony charge. That's not right. Kids will be kids, and schools should shoulder the responsibility, since the law requires parents to surrender their kids to them.
was suspended for violating school rules once.
is a fun story to tell now.
I found in the high school I went to that some IT people were cool and others were not. One administrator even encouraged me to learn about the network and get around any controls the school had in place that I could. Obviously I was not damaging anything and it was a good learning experience.
Another person in IT wasn't very happy about something I had learned to do at one point even though it caused no harm. He saw me with some screen up (not that I was changing anything or even could probably) and this pissed him off enough to write a detention slip out and send a note home. I refused to accept it and when I was called into the vice principles office(I think) I explained myself. Apparently he had done something before to my user account to make it even more restrictive and had written in the note to her that I had been in trouble with him once before and I should be given a detention. I refuted this statement since he had never talked to me and I was unaware of what I had done he didn't like since I hadn't done anything inappropriate or damaging the prior time. The second incident there was communications between us and I found out what it was that I shouldn't have been doing, programming. Apparently it was ok to program in class but not after school. My crime- was laughable. I told her now that I knew what it was I shouldn't have been doing I would stop despite it was quite hypocritical (she thought it was funny as well even though she didn't understand everything I had said). Canceled my detention. Parents still got the note and had to explain it away. My fanatic religious conservative parents were disappointed in me despite that I hadn't done anything wrong and the school agreed with me and canceled the detention. Schools are messed up institutions, and society is no better.
Kids are inquisitive. Tell them *not* to look behind a door, and you can be *sure* some of them, probably most, will. The defiant ones more openly than others.
:-)
But what do you expect ? They have this wonderfull machine in their hands, which can do *all kinds* of stuff, but they are told to *only* use it to "worship" the school. Mind you : the same school most of those kids only tolerate, but more often simply abhor.
Personally I would like to throw that school into jail, because they are willingly tempting (read *provoking*) quite some of their pupils to break their rules.
But than again : most schools are not known for their innovative idea's, or their wilingness to please their pupils. And I'm afraid that providing a kid with a multi-purpose tool while forbidding them to explore the extend of the usage of that tool (and I don't mean using it to spread viri or spy upon others) is nothing short of *malicious*.
P.s.
I'm 44, about trice the age of those culprits
Why didn't the school administrators simply take the laptops away from them the first time they proved to be untrustworthy? Or the second time?
It's obvious that if those kids circumvented the controls the first time around, they'd do it again.
It looks more like the admins wanted an example made, and it blew up in their faces when the police were called in.
Thank you for this post.
Hmmmmm
Johnny, put the flamethrower down its only for physics experiments, not roasting marshmallows.
::johnny does not::
Johnny, you need to goto detention, but we arent taking the flame thrower away.
Johnny, stop roasting marshmallows.
::johnny does not::
Excuse me, Mrs JohnnysMom, your son wont stop roasting marshmallows with the flame thrower we gave him.
Mrs JohnnysMom: Do something about it.
Johnny, please stop roasting marshmallows.
Okay Johnny, you're under arrest for violation of MPAA laws. These Flamethrowers are for physics experiments, not personal food production.
And I happen to like your country.
You're acting like a bigger ass than most Americans do when confronted with concerns about how your country is run.
I live in a 3 strikes state (California), and I don't like it. What can I say, the law isn't perfect, some people have tried to amend it, and maybe we'll repeal it some day. I dunno.
Anyway, you are a great example of how you can't make broad generalizations about people in another country. Three of my friends came here from Saskatoon in the last year. And they're all great. They don't rip into Americans because they don't happen to like our current administration.
Do I blast you for Paul Martin's kickback scandal? No.
So perhaps you could find your way not to condemn Americans or the American system for the actions of our government.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Can't we just send them to Australia?
;-)
Hey, there's a good idea. Then we'll be rid of those pesky kids who somehow think that being handed a computer in school means that they should dig into it and get busy learning how it works.
Here in the US, we don't want any inquisitive kids that want to take the initiative and learn about things. We want kids that understand at an early age that they shouldn't touch anything unless they are first explicitly authorized to do so. If they get away with this, before you know, they'll be checking out library books that they weren't authorized to read, instead of waiting for teachers to tell them what to read. You can imagine what sort of adults they're likely to turn into, unless they're punished severely.
I mean can you imagine what would happen to the US computer industry if the schools started turning out kids who respond to new things by trying to get inside them and learn about how they work? Much better that we send these types off to some place like Australia, to work in the industry there.
(An I the only one here who thinks that the school, as a purported "educational institution', should be putting these kids in charge of the computer setup, instead of the apparent incompetents who are running it now?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
This may be redundant or obvious, but this should have been a non-issue in the first place. Hacking? Laughable. These poor kids did what kids with computers do--explore. Not to mention that the password they typed in, the "hacking", was on the back of the damn computers. Shame on the administration for being stupid cowards, and shame on the police for being so ignorant that they would even think of taking action once they heard the story. Are there not enough bad guys out there committing real crimes that they have to resort to extreme punishments against kids? Everything I read about this case indicated that this was a school matter, and should have been treated as such, you know detention, or at the very worst a short suspension! I just hope that this doesn't screw up these kids' lives.
bugmenot.com