Legal Actions of School Against a Proxy's Host?

WakefieldHS-students asks: "I attend a public school, Wakefield High School in Raleigh, North Carolina. A friend of mine recently created a site that hosted a web proxy browser. It ran for a few months, and others at our school found out about it. The original domain was blocked by the censorship software the school uses, and it was changed a few times to get around this. Recently, he was forced to take down the proxy, with the threat of not graduating and the taking of legal action by the school. What legal rights, if any, can the school use to ban someone from hosting a website? Furthermore, what rights does the U.S. Government have to censor such websites?"

Comments

Ok, now tell us the rest of it

[Pyromage]

I'm relatively certain that the school wasn't just arbitrarily chasing the site across every domain he owned, not unless they had reason. Why was he running a proxy? What material was he or his friends accessing from the school?

As far as legal rights to censor that, they can do just about whatever they want in loco parentis.

It's not a web site

[scdeimos]

There's a whopping huge difference between hosting a web site and hosting a proxy server. To me it sounds like the student hosting the proxy server was doing this to circumvent the school's access controls, so it's a precedent for intent, irrelevent of it being malicious or beneign.

If the school's network admins had half a brain then all access beyond the border routers would have been deny-by-default, allowing access only from their content-filtering server(s) and mail server(s) thus making this sort of thing impossible to do anyways./p

Re:It's not a web site

[Lord Kano]

If this proxy is simply a website with a "Insert Web address here:" field and a "Go" button, it would look like any other website to their routers. Unless you're willing to impose and then troubleshoot a "deny by default" policy on all web traffic, it'll be easy to play cat and mouse with the network admins for quite a long time.

LK

It depends

[Sycraft-fu]

As others have noted, you haven't told us the whole story, so it depends on that.

However, even assuming is was real simple, ie kid hosts site, school doesn't like site, school threatens kid, it still depends. What it depends on is if you mean what are they legally allowed to do, or what will they try to do and get away with. Legally they can't deny graduation for things not related to the school itself. That's why things like random drug test are always targeted at peopel who do extracurricular activities. They can make them consent in that case, but to try and say "you do it or you don't graduate" wouldn't work.

Ok fine, but that doesn't mean they can't TRY to stop him from graduating. They can refuse to issue a diploma, fail him in all his classes, expell him, whatever. When that happens, he then has to fight. If he's in the right he'll win eventually, but the question is one of if it's worth it. Would it be worth potentially putting your life on hold over a website?

So here's what I'd do, depending on the kind of person he is:

Just let it go. Who the fuck cares? Take the site down. If he really wants to put it back up, use a registrar that hides personal information as others suggested and ensure it can't be linked to him. Just give in, it's not a fight worth fighting.

Or, if he's not the give in type, go the revenge route. Your post implies graduation is something happening soon. So leave it alone for now, very soon the school has no say in your lives. When that happens, hit them back. I'm not going to bother listing all the perfectly legal things you could do to give them grief, I'm sure you can figure plenty out.

Now by the way, if the point of this proxy is to circumvent the school's rules on what you are allowed to access, then yes, they can punish you for that. Next time don't be idiots: Create a front site for it, use SSL and don't fucking tell people about it.

Re:It depends

[TubeSteak]

Contrary to what you said Sycraft-fu, we do have the whole story.

The original [proxy] domain was blocked by the censorship software the school uses, and it was changed a few times to get around this.

Translation: Someone(s) accessed the proxy from school, the school blocked the domain name, the proxy owner started playing cat & mouse with the domain name.

Someone(s) were circumventing the "censorship" (how is filtering boobies, at school, censorship?) software and the school wanted it stopped.

What the school did is emminently reasonable. The owner of the proxy (a student) undoubtedly signed an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) stating that they wouldn't even try to circumvent school filtering software. That's all the school needs to fuck with his graduation.

The fact that the kid didn't get smacked down the first time (or the second time) that he got caught suggests to me that the IT people were quite willing to let it go. On top of that, the school admin don't want to keep the kid from graduating, they just want him to stop.

I'm not sure how legit it is to force the kid to take the proxy down, but arguably (and realisticly), requiring that the proxy be taken down seems like the only way to guarantee compliance. (Why they didn't blacklist the proxy IP, we don't know)

Conclusion: Take it down & be glad they aren't slapping him around for the rule(s) he broke. And if you're going to do something illegal about it, do it while it's still on your juvenile record.

They have no right.

[delirium of disorder]

Public schools should not use in school punishments for actions one takes outside of school. However, American school boards don't care much for the constitution. Administration views anyone who fights censorship and helps kids learn freely as more threatening then any violent offender. Your fried is lucky he wasn't expelled for running a proxy like I was. People concerned with these issues should get involved with peacefire.

Re:They have no right.

[chazzf]

The absence of the mod (-1, Incorrect) remains a consistent source of frustration. I suspect the main reason this individual is in hot water is the rampant abuse of his school's Acceptable Use Policy. This isn't a free-speech issue, it's a network-usage issue. Unless you think all AUPs are worthless and should be ignored.

Awww, rich kid busted for using proxy, how sad.

[Associate]

Couldn't wait to get home to update your myspace account?
They blocked Fark where I work for pornographic reasons. You know what I do? I wait til I get home.
Face it. You got caught. You should have given up the first time. Repeatedly moving it just makes you look guilty. Guilty of what? Not running a proxy. Guilty of using school resources inappropriately. See http://www.wcpss.net/Technology/pdf/6446.pdf I think anyone who reads it will agree that regarless of their support of the rules or lack there of, you did in fact break the rules. Better you learn now at an early age there are consequences for your actions. You can't disregard rules you don't like and expect nothing negative to happen to you. Wait until you get to college. No one there will give a rats ass about you. You will be expected to do things you don't like. When you fail, you fail you, not some well meaning underpaid teacher. Best thing you could do right now is admit to your mistake and suck up the consequences.

Re:Private versus Public

[jrockway]

> it's probably not worth the effort

It's definitely worth the effort. My school (not exactly private; IMSA) kicked out a number of students for supposed thought crimes. Writing a song about a teacher they didn't like; posting "racist" comments on a private message board from home; etc. I wish someone had the balls to sue them -- I'm sure they would have lost big time.

Just beacuse you're under 18 doesn't mean you deserve to be considered too dumb / young to have a voice. "First they came for those under 18, then they came for "the terrorists", now they're here for me and nobody is left to speak out." Don't put up with them.

OTOH, if the OP did something stupid, then they might have a case. Not telling us the details just hurts you in the end.

Re:Their network, their rules

[mrchaotica]

Here's the funny thing: The school system does have the right to punish students for certain things that they do on their own time with their own equipment away from the school campus.

No, the school system does not have that right! It has attempted to autocratically assume that right, and it has managed to convince most people that it has that right, but it does not have the moral or Constitutional authority to claim that right!

And I, for one, am sick and tired of our failure as American Citizens to put the school system (and all the other parts of government acting beyond their authority) in their places!