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Rethinking IM Privacy For Kids
mackles writes, "Now that the world has read the despicable instant messages from Rep. Foley, should parents take a second look at monitoring their kids' IMs? After all, it was IM logging that exposed the scandal; would we have found out otherwise? Cost is not an issue, there are free monitoring tools. Should parents tell their kids before they monitor? Parents and their tech-savvy kids are at odds on the topic. From the article: 'As many as 94 percent of parents polled this summer by the research firm Harris Interactive said they've turned to Web content filters, monitoring software, or advice from an adult friend to keep electronic tabs on their children.' The article quotes one 18-year-old as saying, 'A lot of kids are smarter than adults think.'"
My kids are smart enough to check what's running on their PC. Can I install a logger on my WRT54G (running hyperWRT + Thibor 15c firmware)?
parental responsibility blah blah blah if I had kids blah blah blah
So I'm not a parent yet, but having had parents who did a kick ass job raising my sister and myself, what if parents just, you know, talked to their kids once in a while? A parent that genuinely listens and cares about their children is going to be much better received - and far more trusted - by their kids than one who tries to become the FBI and wiretap everything their kids do. It just seems like common sense to me.
I know, I know, think of the children, blah blah blah. I hate election years.
'Nuff said.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
"my house, my rules"
at least there are parents that are making an effort - unlike the fuckhats that blame violence on the videogames that they let babysit their kids.
You see 'em? They're EVERYWHERE!
And most kids are not as smart as they think they are. News at 11.
Yeah, when I was 18 years old I thought I was smarter than my parents too. Now 19 years later I know better.
Yes. All activity by kids on the Internet should be monitored by the parents. But maybe the parents needs to take a "Internet driver license" test before letting their kids on the net.
A lot of kids are also not as smart as they think they are.
Yeah, I saw a yard gnome once, it didn't scare me - Space Ghost
If you have to tell your 16 year old boy that it's legally and morally wrong to exchange graphic sexual emails and IM's with a middle aged politician no amount of monitoring will help because you've already failed as a parent.
we should outfit them with a camera, GPS device and listening post. Never know what those kids are up to. We should rigidly protect them from all outside evils real and imaginary and then at age 18 turn the poor unsuspecting souls loose. See what happens.
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
Wah? Huh? If you're going to do this kind of thing of COURSE you should tell your kids... cos yeah, ignorance is always the best option. Imagine if they found out?
Kid: Mom, Dad, have you been spying on me?
Mom: Why yes, yes we have Johnny.
Kid: Lock and load...
Come on, I thought the era of parenting/managing by stealth was long since dead and buried. Surely open communication, cooperation and engaging with kids (or employees for that matter - it's the same deal really) makes better sense?
Or is there still a group out there that thinks education is bad, mkay? Don't teach our kids about sexual health because (GASP) they might become sexually active! OMG STFU WTF.
Hint: they're going to anyway, surely it's better for them to learn properly than from some xxx website.
I am a leaf on the wind
They could always install GAIM in FC5, I had to ask someone to find out where the logs are kept and strangely things like Off the Record (which encrypts messages on the fly to prevent man in the middle attacks) doesn't encrypt the logs, so all you'd need to do is "cd ~/.gaim/logs" and then you know what they've been saying. If they know how to do this to cover their tracks, chances are you don't need to (or can't) monitor them.
I always used to cover my tracks pretty well when looking at pr0n, but I guess you can tell from me writting that that I'm hardly in the danger zone for posting sexual content on myspace ; )
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
But they should talk to their children and explain why they think it's necessary. Not tell them "I'm doing this for your own good." Talk to them about the dangers. Like when you want to know where they're going out that night.
Because if the child thinks you're monitoring them because you don't trust them, or they find out you were monitoring them because you didn't trust them, that can do more damage to the parent-child relationship than anything else. Trust is important.
Besides, if they don't agree, they'll just circumvent you anyway, especially if they think you don't know they know you're monitoring them. Lose-lose.
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
anything that is on a PC can be subverted given enough incentive.
If I had kids I'd configure my linux firewall/router to block any traffic to/from their PC on any port but a non-standard one, and have a squid proxy listening on another computer in my network with a whitelist: any URL not in the whitelist would be logged and I could deny/allow access. I probably would also look into some kind of IM proxy that allows usage only at specified times and, most important, that disallowed any sort of file upload/download. Same thing with email, with automatic stripping of attachments and so on.
And for people who think this is too much: by definition children are not responsible adults, so I really don't see why they should have complete access to everything, also considering all the malware going around these days.
-- the cake is a lie
No kid wants to hear about sex from their parents, and no parents want to tell their kids about sex. You know what? At 12, you need to start, at 15 or 16, you need to be done. Just do it, and it'll be over with!
"I know you're coming onto that age where you're interested in girls, maybe guys. Now, you aren't allowed to have sex with them, but because it happens, I want you to know I won't punish you, I want you to tell me. And I want to tell you about safety. Condoms blah blah blah. Men over 17(or 18, depending on your state) blah blah blah. Men over 50, blah blah blah. Sexual predators online, blah blah blah.." and then go buy the kid some pr0n, whichever kind he likes, gay or straight, and don't talk about it for another week or two, don't mention it unless the kid does, and go from there. That way it's over with, it's out in the open, and you just did OMFG bought the kid pr0n, so nothing really seems that much further out.
Yes, you're kid will have sex around 15 or 16. No, you can't stop it, not without making the kid's life miserable. You can help it.
As far as IM'ing, if you are going to monitor, tell them, but realize it's stupid.
https://www.meebo.com/
Oh, meebo blocked? Anonymous proxy, with ssl, and there ya go. No, an informed kid is way better than a frightened kid or a kid living under constant surveillance.
Simple... create an account that's only for the kids. Lock down the administrative account with a good password. And install silent monitoring uitilites. Anytime you alert a child to a lock, that's when they aim to defeat it.
When you get into their teens, you're mainly an advisor. They will do what they want to do, you just need to be able to protect them. And obviously... Children really DON'T have a right to privacy. Sure, I give mine all the privacy I can, but if I'm responsible for you, privacy is a Priveledge.
Just my 2cents.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
Would you listen in on your child's phone calls? If not, then why go to great lengths to monitor IM conversations? Simply make sure that they can't stop you from looking over their shoulder every once in a while.
...but is it art?
Anyone have the quote?? I'm not aware that the exchange(s) have been publicly released.
"When I was 14, my parents were the most ignorant people in the world. When I turned 21, I was amazed at how much they had learned in the last 7 years."
-- Mark Twain
Iinstall hidden cameras in ther kid's rooms, microphones too. After all kids are not human, they don't need privacy or dignity.
There is a difference between taking authoritative steps to protect your children and being invasive upon their lives.
The difference is subtle but impactful. Treat them like theyre not human and they will not develop properly.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
For some reason, my 9 year can never figure out how I know when he gets out of bed at night. I'll never tel him the floorboards scream every time he shifts his weight. :)
First its not like these messages are going to come out of a the blue. In this specific case the perp spent over a year cultivating the kids before the nasties came. (That is the bad messages were sent after the kid had gone back to high school.)
Second is the authority issue. If someone really believes the message is coming from a very important person, they arent going to immediately dismiss something strange coming from them.
and they are aware that at anytime I can audit their chat sessions. Do I do it every day? No - but I find that if I occasionally audit them most (not all) of the time they've kept things clean and on the up and up. Asking kids to follow boundries without accountability is an idle threat (be good or else!). When I've discovered they've been inappropriate - they lose 'net/cell phone access for a while and believe me - that can sting for a teenage girl...
Um, preaching to the choir probably, but shouldn't parents be monitoring their kids' online activities anyway?
Back in my day our parents knew what kind of neghborhoods we played outside in, why wouldn't parents of today be any different WRT to online neighborhoods?
When mine are old enough to start unsupervised web use (currently oldest is 5) I will definitely be logging everything they do, not to snoop and evesdrop but just so I can spot check and see what they are doing every once in awhile.
"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live." - Mark Twain, "Taming the Bicycle"
Expect lots of last-minute election-year legislation from fear-crazed christian republicans in congress
intended to
protect the children -- yes, we must protect the children! -- from sexual predation from, um, fear-crazed
christian republicans in congress.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
What's different between this and the iconic perv outside the schoolyard?
Do people talk to their children anymore? They should feel comfortable telling YOU if someone starts talking to them in a sick way. If they don't, you've got MUCH bigger problems.
Spying on your children will not help, in fact, it could do more damage. Trust between parent and child is of utmost importance, erode it, and it's a long ways back.
No Comment.
The knee-jerk reaction is to censor communications rather than deal with them. Call the police if they are pedaphicalic and obscene.
"or advice from an adult friend" Yeah...and how many of those "adult friends" are pedophiles?
The post implies that some third party logging or IM sniffing software recorded Foley's approaches to the 16 year old male.
I didn't see that in any news article. In fact, it seems that the 16 year old simply showed someone else the chat logs, that HE RECORDED HIMSELF, after receiving them. The linked article doesn't mention the Foley incident at all.
Clearly this shows we should be monitoring politicians and not the kids.
t
Children have a certain right to privacy and parents should understand this. If parents monitor IM, kids will just figure out a way to circumvent it, or use another method of communication. It would be better if we try to equip our kids with some tools to solve their own problems. Parents have a responsibility to do this but so do our schools. If we teach our children to think for themselves, a lot of children-development issues could be resolved. And also make them better adults.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
"As much as I like meeting new people, I'm definitely not going to do it online," he said. "A lot of kids are smarter than adults think."
Big difference.
Personally, I think that the benefits to be gained from spying on your kids using loggers is pretty small compared to the potential price you are going to pay. Think of it this way, if you were to go and try and tail your kids whenever they left the house, how do you think they would respond? How would you kids respond if they walked in on you reading their journal?
You take a risk when you spy on your kid in such an intrusive manner. Whatever evils you might catch them doing is nothing compared to the kinds of evils that you will provoke them into by showing such deep mistrust. It is far better to have something close to a harmonious relationship then to try and control and monitor your kids actions. You need to set rules, but you are delusional if you think that you can enforce the rules without your kid's consent.
Now, I am not saying that kids don't need (to quote the Dog Whisperer) rules, boundaries, and limitations. They do. What I am saying is that those rules and boundaries are not there to keep them from doing bad or destructive things. If your kid wants to go out and be destructive against others or against themselves, there is little you can do to stop a determined youth. The rules and boundaries that and adult sets up are there to teach the kids not to do bad or destructive things.
So, could online monitoring catch your kid watching porn or acting like a jackass on AIM? Sure, but realize that in the process you are pretty flatly declaring your complete lack of trust in your child and setting up an antagonistic relationship that your child. I personally would rather my kid sneak in a little porn while I am away then sneak out at night to get away from what he sees as a malevolent dictator who has no trust in him.
Just last month I was telling my teenaged daughter that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy on the internet. Every IM and every email are like sending postcards that anyone between her and the recipient can read. Consequently, she shouldn't ever put anything in either that she would be embarassed by if it showed up in the newspaper. If she wants privacy, she needs to use a medium that can provide that. The internet ain't it.
And to that I say: LOL. ORLY?
The house, the phone line, the DSL service, and the computer are all in my name. I'm the one my kid puts at risk if he does something illegal. Can someone give me a good reason to *not* monitor what my kid does on the internet?
When kids shoot up schools, people ask "where were the parents? They should have known." When kids end up teenage parents, people ask "where were the parents? They should have taught them better." When kids get connected to the internet, people say "mind your own business! Privacy! Big Brother! OMG 1984!!!"
Pick one. Either kids have a right to privacy and the responsibilities that come with the lack of supervision, or they don't have that right, and the parents have to accept some responsibility if they don't know what their kids are doing.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
At home I can set up so the kids can't get round it, I own the socket, I own the router, I own the box that gives out permission and I can log everything.
What worries me is the new mobile phones, 3G and the like. While I'll own the contracts and be paying for it, I don't see how I'm going to monitor everything they do on a phone. Hell with a bluetooth keyboard even today's phones are pretty good IM devices, so how I'm going to cope in 5 years time I have no idea.
What I'd like to see is the ability to have a "family VPN" so all devices that I pay for are on the same network subnet and again I own the gate to the internet.
Hell it'll be an education for the kids trying to get round that, hopefully that will mean they don't have time for anything else!
And before anyone says "think of the kids privacy"... I'm a parent, I treat my kids as _my_ responsibility.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
So spying on your kids is probably not that hard, yes some kids are smarter then some parents and will defeat the spying but that is somewhat beside the point.
After you have installed your spyware you are going to have to monitor your kid, who they chat to, where they surf etc. These things take time, I have a distinct feeling that the parents time would be much better spent just talking to their kids.
Perhaps the spying, monitoring, examining logs from your kids computer is going to be outsourced, wouldn't that be hillarious.
Why are people suggesting the kid be monitored when if any crime took place it was on the side of the adult? Wouldn't it make sense that politicians get monitoring software put on their computers, rather than the other way around?
Oh, right. They have rights to privacy and kids don't.
I remember being 15 years old back in 1995 when we got the internet for the first time. My dad tried to scare the hell out of me: "Now there's a history in this thing so don't figure you can go looking at whatever you want, cause by God I'll know about all of it". What greater need might a developing ego have than to prove one's self against such a tyrannical claim? Of course 4 hours later I had figured out the entire thing -- it issue of course being the same software I was using was made for CEOs who wanted to download playboy pictures off yahoo's "links of the day" website. And so a click or two later all the evidence was gone and all I learned was that I had a green card to do just about whatever the hell I wanted. The only things that ever truely scared me were a few websites that had blinking text, echoed my IP (unknown that it was just an environment variable), and told me my IP was logged and the police had been called. That was a scary night, and I don't recall doing anything to deserve it.
Anyways, to be honest I can't think of anything my parents could have done to keep me from looking at things I wasn't supposed to. The only thing they could have done was treated me as an adult, and let adult content just be something fun for grownups to know about, instead of romaticizing it into this holy grail -- possesion was ego, as it were. So basically this point says nothing insightful at all, but just reminds us that if you tell a kid he can't do something, that's the only thing he's going to focus on until he can.
Cruising the web is halfway to letting your kids drive to the mall to hangout with strangers. If you're paranoid your kids are going to grow up too fast, just take away the damned keys. (Course then they'll hitchhike!)
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
It sounds like we rather need to monitor the electronic communications of our congresspeople, especially the ones who chair the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
...my parents occasionally look at things like history (snicker). However, I was the most computer-savvy person in my house, and ran the router/server. Now, I go to sites/do things that they might not like, but it hasn't harmed me or warped me in any sort of way. I learned my morals from them, and make my own decisions.
Now, I know that I'm not most teens, and most are stupid and don't give a flying fsck about anything, but children (especially later teenagers) don't get nearly enough respect. Just the question that "should we tell them we're spying on them?" makes me want to throw up. Jeez, no wonder kids think their parents are stupid...
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I'm not a parent, but I do feel that these chat loggers are a good idea.
From the adults end:
I know that in the modern lifestyle, parents don't always have time to watch over their kids shoulders every moment of the day to find out who they are talking to and where they are going. It would be better parenting if they did, but lets face it, in a world that is so high tech nowadays, that's just not plausable. I consider chat rooms to be useless, but IM is a useful tool, but there are dangerous people out there, so that just needs to be taken into account. I don't think blocking off IM completely is a good option because I know it saved my ass numerous times throughout school and I would want my kids to have access to it as well.
The logging would allow the parent to keep an eye on what's going on so that they can at least be red flagged and confront their child if they see something headed down the wrong path (such as one could be assumed as an online predator)
From the kids view:
I would have flipped out if my parents had been reading through my conversations as a kid. It's a violation of privacy and would cause me to resent my parents if they were doing that. I always hated it when they were reading over my shoulder too.
In the end, you can either monitor your kids really closely and they'll get pissed at you, or you can log their conversations, and they'll get pissed at you if they find out, or you can just ignore them and hope that they don't get abducted. Personally I think it's better to get them pissed at you.
On the subject of kids being smarter adults being smarter etc.
It varies by household. Looking back, I realize that I was smarter than my parents with computers. I knew how to clean up that computer so they couldn't even tell I'd been online. 6 years later, I've also realized my dad barely knows how to use the internet, much less track me, and my mom doesn't know anything about it either.
That said, I spent 90% of my time on the computer throughout my teenage years learning everything I could about the computer. Now I'm in the IT field. Usually that won't be the case. I work with a lot of kids and a lot of adults. Most of the parents using the computers, really aren't that smart even though they think they are. Most don't know how to check where their kids have been and etc. Actually on the average, the adult users are for the most part computer illiterate except for a few things that they know how to do really well, usually for their job.
Kids claim to be smart to, but most of them really don't know how to clean up their tracks. I repair a lot of computers that adults have for their kids (parents are shocked when they find out where their kids have been) and if they were really as smart as they claim to be, they could have cleaned up their tracks on their computers.
Basically what I'm getting at, is that niether side is as smart as they claim to be, although there are exceptions. Parents need to do what they have to in order to keep tabs on their kids because it isn't plausable in this day and age to keep 24/7 tabs on their kids while they are online. IM logging will help with that, provided they remember to check it regularly.
Software Reviews>
True. But, having been a teen, and now having one, I can firmly assert that teens habitually underestimate the intelligence of their parents but not so often is the reverse true.
And my teen has been told in no uncertain terms that MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal, et. al, are off limits. He has a blog. I set it up for him using WordPress on a web site *I* host. If he violates the rules, it's a simple "rm -rf blog_dir" away from death. Besides, those other places are full of crap. At least hosting his own WordPress blog, he's learning a bit about how that stuff works.
Anyway, I talk with my teen. And I tell him the policy in my house is the same as most corporate technology policies: The PC doesn't belong to him...it belongs to me...it's use is (or can be) monitored. The PC, and all that goes with it, is a privilege, not a right. And privacy is something he can have when he (a) is in the bathroom, (b) is in some state of undress, and/or (c) graduates.
First, I think the question should be, how did parents ever think they shouldn't be monitoring young childrens' IM? It's in the same league as knowing what house the kid's going to be staying over at and who'll be there. And the rules change as the kid grows up for exactly the same reasons.
But would monitoring have helped in the Foley case? The kid reported it, his parents knew about it, and still every party involved downplayed the incident to the greatest extent possible and took the first opportunity they had to drop the matter. What, exactly, would monitoring have changed?
Your nine year old must be pretty dull.
My two-and-a-half year old son figured it out months ago. There's a lot of sneaking around going on upstairs.
I am not going to systemanically monitor his actions when he gets old enough to surf the web. I AM going to give him help, advice and suggestions.
I could not agree with you more. Parents always go on power trips and never bother to explain to their children, how or why something needs to be done. Don't they see that taking the time to help their kids understand an issue TEACHES them to be rational and have some common sense. The more you dont' talk to them, the less they're going to think critically when they grow older, and the less they're going to try to UNDERSTAND things in the future. They'll be like robots, just doing what they're told and not knowing how to think for themselves.
Apparently, some of the conversations between Foley and the child were also through email and the kid was smart enough to forward them onto somebody else because he was getting scared. Wouldnt you want your children to react that way too and make smart decisions? Keep playing the powertrip parents and you'll get the kid who'll come across a Foley and not know what to do, or will just keep taking the harrassment.
Foley on the other hand....he definitely needs some better morals and some better security
I myself am 13 and know that my parents couldn't monitor what I'm doing but they shouldn't need to. I treat my self as relatively tech savvy and I doubt many adults could track my internet usage.
I use tor, ssh tunnels, ssl etc.. for everything. I have scripts set up to fill logs with junk so just reading the stuff would be a marathon task. I'm not encripting my life from my parents I'm more worried about the secret service or aliens *ajusts tin foil hat*.
Why bother? Just ask your kids to talk to you.
IMs are no different than invoking random people in conversation out in that scary world of our. Teach your kids about perverts and other dangerous people (like clowns) and there should be no need for excessive intrusion.
Can I install a logger on my WRT54G (running hyperWRT + Thibor 15c firmware)?
I am running a copy of Wallwatcher with that very router/firmware combo. It is a pc app written in VB (gasp!). If that doesn't scare you away, it is free and does what is needed.
Thoughtcrime does not entail grounding. Thoughtcrime IS grounding.
One of my former bosses was a big user of software tools to spy on his teenage daughters' IM chat sessions. (I think he actually got the idea, initially, after having a successful run as a reseller of a commercial web-site filtering/monitor package for Windows.)
In any case, he had the classical "good daughter" (A+ student, liked by everybody, never got in trouble, great at sports, etc. etc.), and the "bad daughter" (ran around with a convict boyfriend, left home and had to come back several times, didn't finish school, lost numerous jobs, etc. etc.).
I remember his shock and confusion when the results of his IM logging revealed to him that his "good daughter" was experimenting with drugs with her friends. He, of course, was expecting to see problems from the other one instead. His biggest "worry" was how to confront her about the problem without letting on that he had, indeed, spied on her conversations.
All of that just reinforced my own belief that if your kid is old enough to use your home computer, unsupervised, then they're old enough to have some expectation of privacy too. Anything else just compromises your ability to react to any issues that do come up.
The conversations they have over IM are generally no different than the ones they have while they're at school, out at a party, etc. Your concern needs to focus on putting up some "guard rails" along the sides of the "road of life" they're traveling -- not trying to control the speed or direction they're traveling in.
Unfortunately the tech savvy kid will be able to use an administrator "password recovery" tool, or can boot from alternate drive, or use a web-based portal into an instant messenger, etc.
At least some of them, can be found here. http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/29/congressman .e.mails/index.html/
Neither are most adults. A lot of people think they're quite craft or informed. I've seen a smug parent install various filters/etc on the machine, only to have an equally smug kid trick them or bypass them.
Try securing a school computer and see how many clever tricks the kids come up with to get around it. Although to be fair, in the day of google and the internet script-kiddies tend to abound, but back about 7-10 years ago my classmates and I found many an interesting workaround. Heck, some pretty clever security has been baffled by some remarkably simply tricks.
In the age where most communication takes place online, you can not just restrict a 17 year old from using Internet without a truly exceptional reason - or spy on every word of a conversation. Even homework may require some information only available through a search engine. You probably wouldn't hire a security guard to follow your kid and block any attempts for in-person and phone conversation. All that remains is education to help him/her make intelligent choices.
put the computer in a common area, a high traffic area of the house, rather than in their bedroom. now actually spend time with your kids there. no need for stealth wars between parent and child, no need for distrust
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
With everything a child does, they are learning. Everyone with whom they interact is teaching them. My children's education is MY responsibility. Not their own. Not the state's. I, as parent, am charged with guiding their development.
Recognizing the fact that everyone they interact with is teaching them, I must have say as to with whom they are interacting. I *MAY* cede some of that control in some circumstances in exchange for a level of trust that child has earned, but even in the best case, that trust is not absolute. You see, they are still learning. If they are in a chat room that is not controlled by me, then I don't know who those other chatters are, and what they might be saying to my child behind my back. Even though my child may have a solid base from which to make decisions, that base is still in development, and as I said before, everyone with whom they interact is teaching them. Even the random chatters in a chatroom.
I reserve the right to know what my child is learning. Without that knowledge, I cannot be a responsible parent.
Joe Mainusch http://www.weber-amps.com
My daughter doesn't have unsupervised time on the Internet. She's too young for that. But as she gets older, she will learn the risks as my wife and I can explain them best. We hope to foster in her the ability to share with us those things she's confused about, to ignore/resist the things she knows about but doesn't want, and to keep us in the loop on how her life is unfolding. At first that means we read over her shoulder. Later that means we talk about it daily but give her some space.
By the time she's grown up, she has to be fully competent at dealing with grown up decision-making. We can't (and don't want) to cover her eyes from all possible smut and evil that is a part of her future world.
[
Foley seems to be reforming.
He said he was going to turn over a new page.
In many cultures, childhood ends at puberty. Thereafter comes adulthood. Call it probationary adulthood if you like, but the person was expected to act like an adult.
Today in the United States, we treat people as children until they're 18/21. In some states they're allowed to stop going to the government school at age 16, other states lock 'em up in the name of "educating" them. Is it any wonder that, as John Gatto points out, many people never really grow up?
Sure, monitor your pre-pubescent kids' instant messaging. But if you want your kids to ever grow up, you'll have to act like you expect them to.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
The only reason why Foley requested a full body shot in Speedos is because he wanted to see how high the water level had risen in New Orleans. Any sane person knows that the appropriate apparel for water play is a bathing suit. So teach your kids to use common sense when analyzing online requests from caring adults and they won't end up embarrassing themselves in front of an entire nation.
Don't want them to view certain websites? Then edit the hosts file. Most kids don't even know it exists, so you can edit it and effectivly block the websites for web based IM, (I used it on myspace) and any other places you don't want them to go. It's not great for large amounts of sites, but you can block the popular ones that they visit a lot.
Basically it will keep them on their toes and make them realize that you are more tech savy than they thought.
BTW, I don't see what being a non-windows user has to do anything, you can just as easily do that with with windows as you can with the other OS's.
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I'm not sure that sticking a pod of surveillance cameras in their rooms, proxies and loggers on their computers, and GPS's in their lunchboxes is the solution to kids who go over the edge. I think perhaps those that were indicating parenting was responsible would agree that raising one's children tends to entail more of spending time with them, periodically but non-intrusively checking up on them (you can stop by to check what they're doing online at times, without bugging the machine), and in general engaging in a more interactive parental relationship.
Sure, you might catch something by bugging their PC/room/whatever, but it's no exactly a nourishing form of interaction.
While I certainly agree with the wisdom of those advocating for open communication and trust with their kids, there are elements to this particular incident that don't fit. And they are scary.
This youngster was a congressional page, and the perpetrator, a congressman, was in a position of authority. These kids are taught that it's their responsibility to follow instructions. It's part of their jobs and tied up with the honor and perks of getting to be a page. That must have made it doubly difficult for the young victim to come forward. Add to that his possible thoughts that he would be going up against a respected congressman. I think the monitoring was a saving grace here.
There have been numerous recent, chilling incidents where abducted or molested youngsters were forced into line by simple assertions of power (If you say anything, I'll hurt/kill your parents/family...) or authority (Who are they going to believe, you--the insignificant kid--or me--the respected adult...?). Youngsters are easily taken in by these kinds of assertions, especially if they're already frightened.
I am thankful that my own two achieved adulthood before sinister people had found so many ways to abuse technology. We made it through in the CompuServe/AOL days by having the computer in an accessible area. Now I'm not so sure. As a parent, I might want more.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
Anyway, I'd think that most teenagers would go "eew" when hit upon by wretched old pervy-congressmen (or other pervy-authority-figures.) If their relationship with their parents is comfortable enough, they can bring it to their parents' attention and that will hopefully end pervy-congressman's days as a sexual predator.
Naturally you should talk to your kids about sexual predators and you should probably do it earlier rather than later. I'd be much more worried about a younger child in a situation like that than a teenager. Teenagers will already know how things are supposed to work, while younger children might not understand what's going on.
I have to wonder about people like Foley, though. It'd be interesting to see if that behavior manifested due to years of repression and shame about sexual orientation or something. Maybe if he'd been dressing in drag in the gayest part of San Fransico he'd have been having healthy relationships with grown ups and it wouldn't have come to this. You'd think this sort of thing would be preventable...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is exactly why I started a company with a few guys who have spent our lives in enterprise software and decided it was time to make a difference. Kids are smart, they will figure out how to defeat monitoring software... the key to an effective solution is trust. IMSafer has built a product that does not spy, it only informs parents if there's something they need to worry about. Check it out, it's free... (it's a pretty snazzy Rails app as well) http://www.imsafer.com/
Adults know that kids are smart. That's not the issue.
The problem is that kids aren't as smart as they think. There is a saying that is mostly true... Age and Cunning beat Youth and Enthusiasm. Kids don't understand how true this is. Which makes them perfect targets for older people with bad intent. My son, as bright as he is, was scammed out of his password to an online game. I warned him people would try it, he insisted he could never be tricked and sure enough he was.
Again, it's not that you aren't smart. You just aren't smart enough. Yet.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
So far, it's worked out for to tell my kids that I am logging their IM chats and can read them at any time. They know I am a computer engineer and they're pretty tech saavy, but not quite saavy enough to find out if I'm lying or not.
I also require that they use the computers in the house in "public spaces". We don't read over their shoulder (much), but they know we might at any time and suspicious closing of windows or shutting down the computer is grounds for a discussion.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Sorry, but the answer is neither Yes or No. (Well, No is a start, but it's an incomplete answer.) The answer is that kids, like everyone else, need to learn to encrypt. Or else.
It's easy to say "but the parents are the good guys and it's ok for them to monitor their own kids" but that misses the point that there's a vulnerability. We hear that same kind of crap about the government (who we're supposed to trust, because after all, they are incorruptable and limitlessly benevolent) monitoring the citizens to protect us from "terrorists."
And the problem with that is the same: if the "good guys" can do it, the "bad guys" can do it, too. If parents are even capable of monitoring their kids streams, then other people are too. I don't want to summon the Four Horsemen of the Information Apocalypse (terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers, and pedophiles) so I'll just mention marketeers, the government, a vague assortment of criminals, etc. Do you want them spying on your kids?
If it has even occurred to you to spy on your kids, then after you reached the logical conclusion of "NO!" then perhaps you also need to take the next step and teach your kids how to protect themselves from the Four Horsemen and the other examples that I just mentioned. Tell 'em to use Jabber instead of proprietary IM protocols (so that you will have a wide variety of client software to choose from, so that features can get added in response to what users really need instead of what the megacorps need, etc) and then take advantage of one of those features: the ability to integrate with OpenPGP.
I sometimes hear lame excuses why people are too stupid or too lazy to use crypto, but kids are still forming habits and Doing Things Right on the net is a lot easier to learn than to relearn. Your 10 year old can learn to use GnuPG.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
40 developmental assets lists 40 things every child or teen should have in his life.
One of the assets is
Other adult relationships - Young person receives support from three or more nonparent adults.
Clearly XXX chat conversations are NOT part of the equation, BUT taking a personal interest in page's life after the term is over cannot hurt and usually helps a youth grow into a healthier, more productive adult.
I fear for the next class of pages. The male Congressmen may literally be afraid of getting "too close" to them for fear of a scandal.
The answer is accountability. Encourage Congressmen to maintain genuine friendships with their former pages. BUT keep track of all meetings and conversations until the page goes off to college so there is NO question of impropriety. Make sure parents and at least two other Congressmen have access to these records.
You should probably realize that this is not a recent development with the introduction of the PC to the home. Kids have always thought their parents were stupid.
The tone of your very first statement suggests that you too feel that way about your own parents.
I'm usually way out on the "pro privacy" side of these issues -- you know, YRO trumps all other considerations, etc. In the parent / kid context though, good communication is fantastic, but alone it's insufficient in a significant percent of cases.
One of the reasons we have a concept of "minors" (for whom parents are responsible) is that judgement takes time to acquire. Much as people would like, it's just not possible to *reliably* create kids with good judgement via good parenting. Kids are more susceptible to peer pressure, and they tend to go through phases where they're prone to concealing their activities from their parents. Some lessons need to be learned the hard way, but the "hard way" can carry an unacceptably high price in the online arena.
Different kids need different amounts of supervision and oversight in the physical world, and I don't see much difference between that & the online world. Most parents would't let their kid padlock their closet, nor would they agree never to search the child's bedroom under any circumstances. In the spirit of good communication, I would suggest telling the kid that you're monitoring & logging his/her conversations. That admittedly introduces some technical hurdles; ideally it should be done at the router or proxy level, which means disallowing encrypted protocols that can't be logged by an intermediate node.
If you log a child's surfing habits, you always have the option of not reading the logs unless/until you have reason to. But down the road if you have reason to suspect something (or heaven forbid something awful happens), you'll probably be glad you have the logs.
Pi Ran Out
The kid did show his folks and the parents did complain. Its just that it was ignored until recently when discovered by several sources. Even the FBI had the IMs months ago. So the issue here is not parents spying or clueless-ness but actual authorities acting on a real complaint of "cyber-predators". Funny after all the fear-mongering about on line pedophiles, there was one on the congressional committee.
I can tell you from firsthand experience that many kids out there today can outsmart anything you can put on their system, or really anything else you do. I'm personally 15 years old and I can give you a 100% guarantee that I can get around anything my parents could put on my systems. A couple months back Dad talked to some friend of his and got some ideas on how to keep an eye on me. He told me he was going to, so for each idea I outlined exactly how I would get around it.
/. in a million years, so I don't mind saying this. He's gone to unplugging the DSL modem every night and taking it to his room. What do I have to do? Plug my phone (Which gets free minutes at night) into my laptop via USB. Slow, but it works enough for IM and /.
In the end, it came down to he'd just have to trust me. He couldn't use a keylogger, 'cause I'd just kill it via Task Manager, no prob. Even if I was a limited user, it's very easy to escalate one's privileges when one has local access. He talked about putting in a hardware sniffer. I told him I'd just have to establish a secure connection to one of my webservers and route everything through it. A PITA, but workable. Also, most of my systems dual-boot Debian or FC4, and those that don't can easily be booted from a Knoppix disk.
My Dad wouldn't read
So listen up parents! Kids are smarter than you might think. I realize most of the folks reading this are computer-literate, but don't think that your kids aren't also! Think about it this way: Could YOU manage to get around it. If so, your kids probably can too.
the point is not to monitor your child's every move. that means you don't trust your child. so the child writes POS while you're standing there, who cares? the point is: you are there. you care. the kid knows this. and more importantly: the kid knows you aren't trying to completely control and completely filter and completely dominate their life. this is more important than anything else. this will raise a well-balanced kid more than all of the filtering and monitoring could ever do
and so, in such an environment of trust first, a well-raised kid will come to the parents if something creepy like a pedo is approaching them, rather than an environment where a parent trusts nothing their kid does: in such a zero trust environment, it's most important for the kid to express their independence... even if it means embracing unhealthy things
i know, it's not easy, and i know, it's not perfect. so is life. your job is to raise your kid as best you can. and teaching them the value of trust is one of those important things you need to raise them well
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yeah. How are you going to padlock every single device your kid comes into contact with? The school and library administrators where I live frown on that sort of thing. Are you going to police your neighbor's system security too? Maybe set up a Skinner box? You'll need to keep your kids completely away from books and other children, after all, or they might learn to get around your blockades...
Alternatively, you could actually teach your children your values instead of trying to lock up their options.
Unless, of course, you prefer your kids to be stupid and helpless.
The issue is parents communicating with their children. Setting some structure and guideline on use of the internet, and being open and honest about the positives and negatives of having all of that information available to them.
Get online with your kids, talk to them about their use in a safe and non-accusatory way. Ask them about their my space profile, not because you want to stifle their creativity, but because you're curious and want to know what they like about it, how they connect with friends.
There's a different between invading your child's privacy and protecting them from predators. The answer is not in the software, the answer is in the dialogue you have with them about it.
Talk to your kids, explain the facts and don't try to hide the ugly stuff. Treat your children as human beings that are able to think for themselves, otherwise you may as well pull out all your wall sockets and lock them in a padded room. Kids should be allowed to make mistakes, but let them know in no uncertain terms that there are some things they cannot afford to make a mistake with even once, and this is one of them. I think lessons like this can be extrapolated to a national level as well, bad things can, and will happen. But a fortress mentality or an attempt to control information is always going to be doomed to failure. Ohh and stop electing Perverts and Fuckwits.
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
if they figure it out, even without write access to the hosts file, they can use a web lookup like whois.sc or network-tools.com too get the IP address they wanted, then paste that into the URL in place of the domain name.
i did this to access AIM Express in highschool years ago.
also some kids will get their hands on a single port NAT to kill many remote administation or logging tools.
configure the nat to do it's thing on incoming, and to block all outgoing connections to other machines on the LAN.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Educating you children is about the best thing you can do. They need to know the risks and they need to know that you aren't going to be pissed at them when they tell you a 40 year old wierdo is trying to get in thier pants... Blocking bad internet sites is one thing but chatting is something completely different because your children can't indavertantly talk about old man's pee-pee. Obviously it comes down to the point that they may not know he's a freak, but once again; Being a good parent and being open with your children is the best protection here.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein
A Congressman is IMing kids with inappropriate messages, and the question we're asking is, "Should we be watching the online conversations of our children so they aren't vulnerable topederasts and other ne'er-do-wells?
Note that this isn't a perfectly valid question, but in my view there is a much more pertinent, critical, undeniably important question begged by this particular story, which is...
wait for it...
wait...
WHY THE HELL ARE WE ELECTING PEDERASTS TO PUBLIC OFFICE?
Seriously, why?
Clean ... as far as you know. How do you know they aren't hiding anything?
Coming from a 17 year old kid, if your kids are tech-savvy at all good luck trying to monitor their online habits. On a Windoze machine "hacking" admin access is easy as pie. Then of course there's doing things such as running a web browser off of a flash drive or using a Live-CD that can get around most filters.
Actually, not really. I don't think they know much about technology, and I think they overreact, but I think that, in the vast majority of cases, they make the best possible choice. Even when I don't like it, I admit that it's what I probably would do myself.
And, if I do say so myself, I feel I have never "hated" my parents, nor think that they are stupid. I feel I have avoided that, unlike most of my peers.
I understand that people have always thought that their elders are less intelligent than they are. There's even a word for it, though I can't immediately remember it. I was merely reflecting upon the most pervasive thought, and suggesting that there seems to be more and more justification for it (think of the children!).
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
This is a message for all the kids living in any Theocracy, whether it happens to be in Iran or the USA:
Do you think your parents are spying on you and taking Draconian measures to mold you into a little puritan? Want to be free to learn about the real world and maybe even use your own body as you desire? Do you want to learn about evolution, but have fundie nut parents trying to censor your entire environment? Don't want to loose your legal home (which includes perhaps your only access to food, shelter, and healthcare?), and risk getting jailed for leaving it? If you are reading this, you probably have some place where you can access the Internet with minimal restrictions. Maybe you are lucky enough to be online at a friend's house or library. Maybe you hacked the filter at your public school or church. If you want to expand your access and keep your freedom, you will need to take some precautions. To get around any logging or filtering software running on a local machine, I suggest getting your own computer. Try ebay. If you can't afford a full computer, and just want to chat, I recommend the zipit, it runs Linux, so you can modify it and add features like encryption. If these are not viable options, you should use a Linux (or BSD, or OpenSolaris) bootable CD. If you suspect that there is network based monitoring, you should use gaim-otr or gaim-encryption for your chatting and gpg for your email. Learn to tunnel your network traffic through http, ssh, and other protocols. If you are using someone else's PC, you should also check for a hardware keylogger. Use the presumption of your ignorance to your advantage. Play the naïve little kid. If you get caught trying to circumvent censorship and spying, act like you have no idea what you are doing and just got lost. Act like the computer is broken and you are confused and frustrated.
A brief message to the parents: Kids like sex. Kids are curious. Remember back when you were a teenager? Wouldn't you have really liked a (select gender based on sexual preference) about ten years older than you (someone in their 20s), to fuck? As illegal and "wrong" as that is, it's what we've evolved to desire. You become sexually mature as a teen, and you want the most fit sexual partner. People older than you are probably the most fit. As you get older, people younger than you are probably the most fit. All the technology in the wold will not change this. It's human nature. Your irrational fear of pleasure is no excuse to stunt your offspring's intellectual growth. Do you really want to keep them from accessing the biggest store of human knowledge ever amassed, just because you don't like the idea that they might actually want to enjoy sex? Or...is it worse than that? Are you a religious asshole that wants to keep your kid from learning about science? If so, you are the reason why your nation is going to plunge deep into a second dark age of technological decay and theocratic war. Thanks a lot!
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Remember the details of this case! Foley could have had sex with these teenagers, they were over the age of consent.
The reason why this case should end the career of Haskert et al isn't that Foley was creepy and didn't understand that "workplace" sex is always fraught with peril, it's:
1) there's a new federal law criminalizing sexual messages with anyone under 18. This is repub-stupid since many states have age of consent (for both sex and marriage) well under that age. It's one thing to protect teenagers from being haunted for a stupid mistake (which is the justification for covering 17 year olds under the 'kiddie porn' law), it's another thing to say what two HS seniors can send to each other.
But it's the law.
2) Foley was responsible for pushing that law through Congress.
So he knew the details of that law.
3) Foley has had a bad rep among the pages for years. Last I heard it was five years and counting.
So others knew he was taking far too much interest in these HS students.
Put it all together and Foley's actions are criminal but he's not some raving pedophile out of control. He's not even a "Dateline NBC" predator out for sex with underage minors. It can't be overstated that it would have been perfectly legal for him to meet these kids at the park then go home and **** like bunnies. He had a profound lack of judgement and is and will be paying for it.
But the GOP leadership... it has got to go. There is absolutely no way to defend keeping this information from the two other members of the Page supervisory committee... but rushing to inform the representative in charge of electing republicans to congress (NRCC) about the situation when the latest details emerged nearly a year ago. They're partisan hacks who put the interests of their party above the well-being of their underage charges and they should step down from their leadership positions immediately.
That's why you won't see Haskert and the others (Reynolds?) appearing in public much during the rest of the election cycle. They've done the indefensible and they know it.
The one thing this case doesn't involve is "children" and "IM". Children are under the age of consent and Foley would be facing very different charges. "IM" is already far stricter than what he could have said in person or on the phone, sent via postal mail, etc.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
exactly like me (as i AM a kid after all), that their social interactions over IM programs is for their eyes alone (and the person on the other end). Personally, i feel more worried my parents are going to get sucked into scams, get viruses, etc etc... parents are looking out for us, i just dont think most would have the knowledge to do it properly (with exceptions of /.'ers of course). I think a better option would simply be to talk to your kids, and they should get the idea...
Ya, it's easy to take care of all of this BS. Pull the plug on the computer. That'll get the boy's attention. And then if and when you ever plug it back in, put the damn thing in the living room. If you don't want us seeing what you're doing that's a good clue that you shouldn't be doing it. Don't like it? There's the door. Punk ass kid.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
One major difference: children are not adult workers entering into a consensual employee/employer relationship. Children are born into their families with no inherent rights except that to food, shelter, education and a decent upbringing to the best of their parents' ability. They do not have "rights" to privacy, speech, freedom of association or any of the basic civil rights adults enjoy. They live under the protection of their parents and therefore if the parents want to read their IM logs, that's their prerogative.
By that logic, citizens are born into their countries with no inherent rights besides whatever their government grants them at the time, and so long as they "choose" to live under the protection of that government (i.e. do not choose to uproot their entire lives and move somewhere else), it's the government's prerogative to meddle in the private affairs of it's citizens however it pleases. To anyone who supports the principles of liberty and constitutional democracy that most of the civilized world cherishes today, this is obviously wrong: people may have an obligation to obey their governments to some limited extent, but the governments conversely have an obligation to respect the rights and freedom of their citizens, and refrain from interfering except when absolutely necessary.
Our families are our models for government. The family is the most basic unit of society (i.e. the smallest and most primitive grouping of people). If we teach our kids that it's OK for their parents to monitor them constantly and meddle in their lives to whatever extent that they (the parents) see fit, then we're raising a generation of soon-to-be-adults who will not mind if their government does the same thing to them. If you wouldn't be happy with your government behaving a certain way toward you, you should seriously consider whether or not it's really OK for you to behave that way toward your kids. And vice versa: if it doesn't seem OK for a parent to do to their child, that raises some big red flags about whether it's OK for the government to do to it's citizens.
The role of parents is to use force only when necessary to keep their kids from *seriously* screwing something else up (i.e. punishing them for starting fights, vandalism, etc etc), and *educating* them about things which are dangerous to themselves. If those things really are bad for themselves, the kids will learn that yeah, mom and/or dad were right, that was a bad idea. If parents show a good track record of indicating bad things that the kids can verify with their own first-hand experience in the short-term, the kids will (rightly) be more inclined to trust them about the longer-term hazards that it takes years of experience to learn first-hand. But if the parents are full of shit and over-controlling, prohibiting things that don't really cause any harm, and meddling with and prying into their kids lives all the time, the kids will be less inclined to trust them about anything. Same way that the citizenry will learn to disregard the law entirely when the law is frequently baseless and unjust, but if the law is just and well-founded it will have many supporters.
Needless to say, all of this is solely regarding "children" of a conscious, verbal level of development, i.e. basically young impulsive inexperienced adults. When dealing with infants or toddlers who are actually incapable of really understanding what you tell them - not just perhaps inclined to disregard it - then obviously the same rules don't apply.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Worse yet is if they don't go crazy when they get out, because they have become used to 24 hour surveillance, and feel that being spied on is for their own good.
And then they run for office, get elected, and impose such views on MY kids.
How about you raise your kids correctly (that is something that multifunction remote with the TV does NOT do). Spying on your kids and reacting if they do something bad will have two effects: you will lose their trust (Do you trust your government when you found out they COULD be spying on you?) and it's just that: reactive.
Proactive will make sure they steer away from predators if they want to, if not, they're exploring on but should know not to invite someone they never met to their homes. I have been on my computer since I was 8 and I have never had a bad experience, I met a lot of persons in real life that I first met online, but always somewhere public (even if it's just the train station), never private.
You can't control your kids like you can computers or machines. They are sentient beings having their own thoughts and emotions. If they are going to explore, they are going to even if they have to evade you. When I suspected my parents from spying on me, I went to encryption, when they told me I could not date a certain girl, I went to live with her for a weekend. Just watch you as parent react when your kid disappears for 2 days after being told they couldn't see someone they (thought) loved.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Have you ever been to Iran? We are nothing like them.
The blurb totally misrepresents this quote. Thanks to the parent for pointing out the full quote.
Unless your prepared to make sure little Johnny can't get his hands on $300, you can forget about your router. Of course you could always make sure your kid never holds down a job, and stays away from any kind of business that might offer free or easily hacked wifi. Oh, you are probably going to want to move far enough out that you don't have any nieghbors that might have a wifi connection that reaches your house. You will have to keep them out of school too, because the school might be close enough to a business or home that might have or get wifi.
me: hey joe remeber all that blow we did on your retreat last weekend good times huh and then you snuck us that beer hahah oh man i would have fun with that on a side note who didnt look at pron when they were 17?
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Absolutely nothing will make your child distrust you more than if they catch you spying on them. Discovering that your own parent(s) have so little trust in you that they have to go behind your back and read your emails / chatlogs to find out what you're doing (especially when you're not doing anything remotely wrong) solves almost no problems and creates many. Think your kids are hiding something from you? They may or may not be at first, but I can almost guarantee they will be once they discover they need to.
Also, morals aside, you can't rely on a piece of installable software to do your spying for you. The number of cases where the parent is more technologically savvy than their child(ren) is microscopically small in comparison with vice-versa.
On a mildly related note, I wish the rest of Americans were a little more pissed off about the NSA wiretapping bullshiet. He should have been out of office within a month.
I caught the Mountain Wumpus! He gave me his treasure chest ($100) to let him go free again.
by John in DC - 10/01/2006 08:41:00 PM
Shimkus is toast. There's even video of Shimkus letting Foley talk to the pages AFTER the GOP knew Foley had page-issues.
You'll recall that he is the Republican member of Congress who runs the Page Board, the group in charge of the pages. You'll also recall that tonight we learned on ABC News that GOP House staff warned the page class of 2001-2002 to stay away from ex-Rep. Mark Foley.
Then why is it that on June 6, 2002, well after the kids were warned to stay away from Foley, Shimkus notes approvingly that Foley has spent a lot of time with the Page Class of 2001-2002? This is Shimkus speaking at the page's goodbye ceremony,
(Note: We've confirmed in the Congressional Record that this is the exact transcript of the proceedings that day.)
The GOP staff knew Foley was a problem the year before, they warned the pages in 2001. Yet Shimkus, the next year is acknowledging that Foley was still permitted to spend "a lot of time" with the pages. In the name of God, why?
Oh, but it gets worse.
Foley then gets up in front of Shimkus and tells a special little story of how he took one male page to a private dinner in downtown Washington, DC. Put the page in his BMW and "cruised" - Foley's word - to dinner.
And now for the kicker.
Foley told the kid he had to get permission from his mom and he had to notify the Clerk of the House, Jeff Trandahl, the Republican staffer who works for Republican Speaker of the House Denny Hastert (R-IL). You'll also recall that Trandahl is the Clerk who joined Shimkus in 2005 to talk to Foley about the creepy email exchange with the first child who got this scandal started.
Why did Shimkus let Foley spend so much time with the pages after GOP staff already knew Foley had a "page problem"? Did the Clerk of the House approve of this dinner? Did Shimkus? Clearly Foley had no fear in the kid going to Clerk and asking for permission - so Foley seemed to think the Clerk wouldn't mind. And clearly Foley had no fear in telling the story in front of Shimkus, so he obviously didn't think Shimkus would mind either.
Shimkus then introduces Foley. Read what Foley has to say to the pages of the 2001-2002 class in his speech wishing them goodbye.
Putting aside the creepy notion of children bidding on dinner with an already-suspected child sex predator, what in God's name were Shimkus and the Clerk doing approving of Foley taking a kid in his BMW to a private dinner in downtown Washington? The GOP staff already knew that Foley was trouble. They had already warned the kids. Yet Shimkus let Foley spend lots of time with the kids, by Shimkus
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I can't believe this thread hasn't blown up into a full fledged politician bashing episode, considering the mention of Mark Foley. But seriously, that this guy was caught demonstrates exactly why politicians should not be legislating technology blindly. He obviously is not the sharpest tool when it comes to the interweb. His AOL screen name was "Maf54." Way to be low profile.
Now see, all the child protection laws he was involved in drafting are probably top notch. He is an expert.
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
Kids can, do and will circumvent any adult filter if they want to. They are at a very serious advantage over their parents: They know a lot more tech people than their parents. Their peers. They have heaps more time to crack the lock than their parents have to lock it. And most of all, ALL so called "parenting tools" have already been circumvented. If by no other means, by TOR and similar tools.
In other words, all that can be accomplished that way is to lose your kids' trust completely. Should something happen, your kids won't come to you for advice and help, because they already broke your rules. Would you go to the cops when you stole a car and someone shot at you for it?
If anything can help, preparing your kids for the dangers of the net will. The only thing locking kids up ever did was to teach them how to break the locks.
Hmm... considering that, it may be a good thing. We'll need hackers in the future. And we'll need good ones.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm not even going to deal with the issue of whether kids are "entitled" to rights of privacy or not.
However, the simple fact is that if you raise your kids with trust and openness, they will grow up into a healthy adult. And if you don't overprotect them (although that is a very subjective term) then they won't be shocked when they actually do enter the real world. "What? The internet isn't just for trading recipes? OMFG!"
"Raising you kids with trust" goes both ways. If you told your kids not to go to a site, and then you checked later to make sure that they didn't, that's pretty easily conveying the message that you don't trust them. Same with monitoring their chats. And everything you try to do has a good chance of being bypassed by your kids anyway. So you demonstrate that you don't trust them and they get past all of your clever "protection"--no one wins there, no matter which way you look at it.
Let's say that your kid does see some porn site. And not just any porn site, but one on the far end of the spectrum of sexual activites--a horse having sexual relations with a clown, for example. If you simply talk to your kid and tell him or her that that is NOT normal sexual behavior, they will understand. Well, they'd probably ALREADY understand that that particular case is a bit off anyway, but that's not the point...
"Should parents tell their kids before they monitor?"
m mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9003519
Umm, can I have a "Hell yeah"??? I just wrote an article on Computerworld (blatant plug) about what a terrible idea it is to be secretive about this sort of thing with your kids. When they figure out you're using filters, router logs and keyloggers, and lying about it, they won't ever trust you again. Ever. Even with a $20 bill. And they might even write you off as a perv and cut off communications. (I had one moderately well-known figure in IT Security admit to me this weekend that he'd secretly installed keylogger software on his tech-savvy kid's computer when he started to use an encrypted proxy for private conversations with his girlfriend. What a positively boneheaded move -- I wonder how that'll turn out in a few years.)
Anyway, there's some quotes of people wiser than I in the following "Back to School" article -- http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?co
-Jon
I think not...(*poof*)
Wow, what gets modded as insightful around here scares the beejezus out of me. I've got three kids. The oldest is 13. He has a computer in his room and a gmail account. When we set up his email we were very upfront about it. We WILL POP download your mail, not because we don't trust you, but because we don't trust the rest of the world. He understands that and right now it isn't an issue. Someday it will be. As kids grow up, they want more privacy. The key is to talk. Kids give all kinds of signs when they aren't happy with something. Pay attention. When those problems start showing up, it's time to spend some one on one time. For me that means getting to neutral ground. For me and my son, that means going for a hike. A long one. By day three our world is so simple that talking is all that is left. As a parent, my son is not my buddy. At the same time, he needs lots of freedom, that means that I monitor his activities with as light a hand as I can. Mistakes happen, as long as it doesn't kill him, I gain nothing by preventing them. As he discovers chat clients, I intended to monitor his logs, by monitor the router connections, I can tell if he's turned off monitoring. Then it's time to talk again. Good thing I like walking.
That's totally insane. What the hell is wrong with the Republican leadership?! I can't believe they knew for five years and didn't do a thing. How hard could it be to have a quiet investigation? I read they only warned the Republican pages too, which is pretty damn twisted if you think about it - they knew they had a problem to the point where they were warning the kids to stay away from him but they didn't care if he fucking molested a Democrat page. There is some weird weird shit going on there. I've finally lost all faith in the party.
I've been the "network" and computer administrators of my home systems since middle school and thus an administrator on all the computers. I'm the one my parents ask to set up and fix everything. If they tried to monitor me on my computer, I would find out. If they tried the router, and chances I would know how to access the router before they did, and I could SSH to my friend's web hosting company (who started it in high school).
Then again, we're of a different demographic one could say. =/ =\ No immature alcohol binging here, or drunk driving, or smoking, any time soon, or ever.
The technology is different, problems are the same. I think most people would assume it's absurd to record their phone conversations and a serious infringement on privacy. Of course some parents make rules on when the kids can use the phone or keep access to the phone in the community areas of the home. i.e. no you can't take the phone into the bed room. Sometimes the old solutions work best.
The guy was in charge of anti-pedophile policy!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
If your children think typing their IM handle and password into a strange web site is a good idea, they need to get The Talk about phishing and identity theft as well as about sex.
0 1 - just my two bits
I was a teenager for most of the 90s, when the internet was new. I think the real concern with putting children on the public internet is that parents, (which I will be someday) fear that their children don't have the ability to make rational judgement about uncontrolled information.
While I can still remember my teenage years; I think the best approach is to not underestimate young people in their abilities to process information. Trust is key. I spent a significant amount of time visiting web sites that my parents would NOT approve of; yet as a result I've learned how to better discern fact from fiction. In some cases, I'm better then my parents in knowing when I'm reading manipulative information.
My mother was excellent when handling me as a teenager. She talked to me.
Will I allow my children complete, uncensored and unlogged access to the internet? Maybe not when they're very young & fragile... But, if memory serves me correctly, my peers who had restrictive parents (when it came to technology,) ended up worse then I did.
No, I will not work for your startup
Standing over your child's shoulder. If you bothered to raise them properly, you wouldn't have to. If you screwed up and it's too late, you better plan on standing there 24/7.
And that is why us kids have the wonderful people at www.peacefire.org
Oh, and cDc.
I'd like to see any of these work on me (I'm 16 BTW). Some keyloggers would get screwed by my software Dvorak keyboard layout....others because I use Linux. Hardware IM logging on the router level would be fucked by things like scatterchat or my Gaim-encryption and OTR plugins. Web filtering software would be killed by Tor, I2P, Freenet, and the circumventors from the great guys at Peacefire.
Not to mention the fact that I built my computer. I set up my network. I installed my parents computer. I repair all of them. And there are a few neighboring wifi networks I could connect to if needed.
Yea. I'm the kid that set up 5 of the peacefire circumventor sites for the kids at my school, disguised as a google search page, with SSL enabled, last week.
All I can say is: BRING IT ON! lol
This seems like a technical solution to an unknown problem. While I appreciate that it's entirely vogue to claim that there are 137 child molestors per every minor online and that approximately 100% of all children are raped or kidnapped perhaps we need to examine that whole risk versus return equation. Are we entirely happy we're turning our relationships with our children into an armed camp based on this somewhat vaporous claim? Just because it's technically feasible to micromanage your kids, is it a good thing to do? Aren't you going to give them cell phones, and god forbid, car keys some day? Then what? LoJack and GPS everything? DNA samples from all their dates? Background checks?
What the hell is wrong with the Republican leadership?!
I don't get it. What do you mean? Yeah, it seems rather sad, but honestly, their suffering was not in vain. It enabled the Great and Noble Republican Party to have one more vote. Surely, keep one vote in the House away from the Party of Evil, aka, the Democrats, is worth a few children's lives? You have to agree we must keep the evil Democrats out of the government at all costs.
And I think these kids got off pretty lightly! I mean, if Foley hadn't voted how the Administration had wanted, they could have be taken and had their testicles crushed one at a time until he agreed to get back in line.
But, I'm feeling kind today, so I don't even think we need to punish them much. Just send one or two of them, and their parents, to secret prisons. That should shut them up. We can let them back out when we don't need to operate the House anymore.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Well, there is a fine line.
Yes, I have no problem with the concept that you are monitoring who your kids are talking to. But I would draw the line when you feel the need to eavesdrop on what is being said.
First, remember that a conversation involves two people. One of them is your responsibility. One of them is not. There may be information that your child receives which is none of your business.
Consider your child talking to her friend, "Becky." Becky mentions that her Mom has passed out from drinking. A week or so later, your child says that Becky's Mom will give them a ride home from the movies. Knowing that Becky's Mom may have a drinking problem, would you feel comfortable letting Becky's Mom drive your kid home? Becky mentions that she heard that "Martha" had sex with "Kevin." You always thought Martha was a pretty good kid and you've let your child hang out with Martha. Will you suddenly stop letting her do that because Martha might tell your daughter to start having sex? How will you explain to your child that she can't do this stuff anymore?
By the way, how are you going to do the eavesdropping when they start doing voice-chats?
Like I said, there's a fine line between "protecting your child" and voyeurism and monitoring what is being said crosses that line.
Something feels seriously off kilter in these posts. Some remarks:
1. Gender Matters. The risk percentages for Boys vs. Girls are so profound as to force two sets of rules. Quit saying "Children" and pick a gender. After all, it's a portion of the "tender boys" who are beating up other kids on the playground.
2. Parents are local rulers. Kids can only hope they got stuck with semi-rational parents. Kids explore the difference between "X Random thing that has to be right just because Parent Said So" and "Statistical percent of real danger for actually doing this activity". Go on. Talk to Strangers. Mrs. Schnitzelheifer is dying to tell you about her garden.
3. Between 14 and 18 kids go through over 1400 days of nature telling them they are clearly ready for *something*. Better to have a Compromise Introduction to the facts of biology that reduces the pressure cooker factor. "Ooh, Johnny saw a picture of a Naked Woman!! Think of the Children!"
4. I agree that young girls have to be 100 times more careful, but giving *Metropolitan Area and Gender* is better than trying to hide as a cypher. Gender shows up in the first 5 paragraphs anyway, and city slips out the minute people go anywhere near any type of news or sports. "Don't give out your home address" is a better rule, which adults would do well to recall.
5. I had "3/4 unrestricted access" to computers. I believe my parents felt that anything which would later become a serious threat would show up in some kind of suspicious sign. (Only a consummate actor of a kid could blindside you, at which point you're outclassed anyway.) My net career is passing the 15+ year mark, and I know I've been called Naive, but during the "vulnerable" years no predator caught my interest field as being smart enough to bother talking to.
6. Suddenly at Age18 "all bets are off", and there's no substantive difference between 17 and 18 anyway, so it's better to give the kid a "practice year" to blow off steam, but still have enough parental authority to bail them out of the consequences of the law.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Because he seems to have that same problem.
We are the 198 proof..
.. the more children will slip through your fingers. On a serious note, I'm getting tired of all these people trying to be control freaks over their kids. Maybe some kids need it, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure its not helping the situation. No matter how much you think you can you can't control everything they do, so stop trying. It is in their nature to rebel, and you only make it worse by trying to be dictators. How about finding a more mature, adult way of dealing with them? Wow lets spy on our kids, that's gonna teach them a good lesson about maturity. This kind of software at schools, sure, whatever, its widely accepted and is not targeted at individuals. So thats not really doing much for the kids. As I have been able to observe my little sister's behaviour with my parents, I can tell that control is just not doing what they think it should be doing. She is almost 11, and I have 10 years on her, so I have a relatively unbiased opinion of the situation. I can tell that she has only gotten worse (although that will come with age anyway) but as she gets worse, my parents get worse. It is a vicious cycle, and parents need to learn alternatives to "controlling" their child.
If their chat software happens to use SSL then you'll be SOL at the router level unless you can employ some fairly sophistacated MIM attack. Of course if your kid knows SSL then they'll know you are watching.
I had the net in my bedroom from about age 16 and my parents were pretty trusting. My dad's a software developer and is a very smart guy, but when it comes to internet technology I do and almost always have run the show.
I'm not sure if it would have been different given all the paranoia these days, but i never thought anything of the dangers of meeting people in real life (even travelling across the country or abroad alone) and my parents trusted me to make decent decisions. No-one was ever not who they said they were, give or take a couple of years on their age.
Was I just lucky or is this mass paranoia unjustified?
But today's kids are spending a lot more time on the computer than, say, crossing the street. There's a lot of kids that spend a lot more time on the computer chatting/myspacing/what-have-you than they do riding a bike or walking around the city. And that brings up my other point - in most families, it's already pounded into kids heads to look two ways before crossing the street, don't talk to strangers, scream like bloody murder if someone tries to grab you. Kids are told to eat their vegetables, drink their milk. And I don't know of many kids that spend time chatting on the phone with someone they don't know.
The point is, the whole idea of kids online is fairly new, and parents don't have generations of experience on how to deal with it. Parents walk with their kids on the street, they know who their kids are talking to on the phone, they make them eat right. A lot of parents, when the same principles are taken to the internet, are clueless - they're just doing that IM/MySpace/etc thing, it can't really hurt them.
Somehow when the same dangers are transferred to the internet, it all of a sudden becomes a non-issue, with parents and kids, because it's new. Parents don't see it as a danger, and kids say and do things they would never say or do over the phone or on the street. So why should internet monitoring take so much time? Because it's not so hard, and it's a new thing. Parents need to figure out how to deal with this new area of danger, and teach their kids that even though it seems harmless, it can be dangerous. The same basic safety lessons need to be pounded into the heads of today's information age kids that were pounded into ours, the lessons just need to be extended to the realm of cyberspace.
You all have Oo.o and Firefox, so get World Wind.
The House Leadership knew that Foley had a thing for minors, but they did nothing. No amount of technology is going to stop pedophiles if our leaders aren't willing to hold themselves accountable!
[o]_O
I think IM clients should have a "child" mode, where a parental password or crypto key has to be provided in order to add "buddies", and no communication is allowed except from accepted buddies.
Somehow, I think their parents might find out now. How many eigth graders named Catherine could go to that school?
If you lock down everything at home, your kids will go elsewhere and get what they want anyway. My parents tried to lock down the house. I went to friends who had it all, and partied there. You must teach your children to be good people by being a good example. You must be a good role model - thats only half of it. The other half - pray....cause no matter what you do, your kid has a mind of their own. You can only influence it so much...
Fix your Dell XPS m1210 screen! -- http://m1210screenfix.blogspot.com
While there has been a lot of hysteria about myspace and IMing and stuff, and I suppose a parent should be aware of the technology... the effort and resources about this kind of stuff seems misplaced.
I mean, why worry about the 1 in a million (if that) chance that your kid will be taken advantage of by someone on the internet, when there is a pretty significant chance of teen pregnancy (most likely by someone at school), half the kids will experiment with recreational drugs, and the most deadly thing they will have to worry about is drunk driving? If there are things you are going to put significant time and effort and worry about, why not choose something that is more likely than being struck by lightening?
Sure, "online predators" are the biggest boogyman since Al Qaeda... but it is important to remember that the chance of anything serious happening to your child are virtually nill. Most of the fear is manufactured in order to have an excuse for the government to regulate the Internet.
))<>((
fofofofofofo
... but not in my house! I refuse to be the lax parent who lowers the standard for the other families.
At 16, my brother-in-law used to walk out on his parents and stay out all night, 2 nights, or 3 nights at his girlfriend's house... her father liked to be the hip dad who could talk to the young. Without this haven, BIL would have gone off in a huff, hung out with his friends until they got sick of him, then slunk back home by nightfall. This all eventually led to some unhappy nights in jail and years of probation for my BIL on drug charges, not to mention the rehab. Granted my in-laws made some big mistakes raising him, but when they were trying to fix their mistakes, it was all the harder because he had found an adult enabler.
No, I can't monitor 24x7 but my son (right now too young to worry about more than peer pressure to watch Thomas the Train)will have to know that there is a fair possibility of a random check, whether at home or elsewhere. For this to work out, I'll have to be in agreement with the parents of his friends, which means I'll have to take time to know and meet these people. Hopefully I can teach my son to avoid stepping into danger on purpose, but he's always pushing the envelope now and I don't see that changing when he grows older. Even an alert kid can make mistakes out of sheer inexperience especially if s/he falls into bad company. At least the chance of being busted may tip the scales towards virtue, maybe giving my kids an excuse to avoid dangerous things they don't really want to do anyway-- "Forget it, you know I can't, the old lady will find out and she'll tear me a new one."
I see IM monitoring as one more tool that parents have at their disposal to keep watch over their children. Just as I intend to retain the right to enter my kids' rooms at almost any time while they are living under the same roof as me, my children will also have to endure the possibility that we may overhear their phone conversations by chance, will meet all their friends and friends' families, and will sometimes monitor their email, IM, or other communications. If they belong to a network we'll join it too. This will be done quietly but openly, but less frequently as the kids become more streetwise and show themselves worthy of trust.
When my son climbs on the jungle gym I don't have to follow him around anymore and guide his every step-- but I'm sitting there on the bench, ready to warn him or catch him, if he's trying something way beyond his current skill. He expects it, and it's my duty... and the only things that will change over time are the size of the jungle gym and the distance of the bench.
You bastard...
Does anyone know how to get Diet Coke out of your sinuses?
Anything else leads down the path...frankly it leads down the path the the U.S. is currently going.
Windows Vista restrictions work great until the child boots from a Knoppix Live DVD.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Congratulations, you just gave the control-freak parents more rationalization for monitoring every communication the kids have.
I understand that people have always thought that their elders are less intelligent than they are. There's even a word for it, though I can't immediately remember it.
"Generation gap?" Ok, it's two words, but it's what that popped into mind.
I grew up with very strict parents. It was so bad, they would listen in on conversations I had with my friends - especially, girls.
... freaks me out.
Yeah, our society's obsession with freaking out over every new invention
I had friends with parents like yours back when I was a kid. They would seriously listen to every phone conversation that took place in the house (had extra lines installed just for this purpose). One family, the dad was an electronics whiz, and even hooked up an automatic recording system for when the kids were home alone - not that they ever let that happen much! Parents get home from wherever, then spend the evening listening to their kids' phone calls. The kids were never allowed a closed door, nor to go out for more than a couple of hours without a chaperone.
The difference is, when I was a kid, parents like this were considered PARANOID KOOKS by other parents. For some reason when it comes to the Internet, these people are now just "cautions".
Coupla factoids for folks who aren't sure just where I'm going with this:
1. Actual cases of adult "predators" successfully soliciting minors through the Internet are exceedingly rare - there's a reason they make headline news when they happen.
2. Your child is 10-100x more likely to suffer abuse from you, or a close family member or trusted friend. All the Internet monitoring in the world isn't going to help the fact that Uncle Bob is the most likely abuser of your child.
3. Sick adults have been trying to pick up kids - and I know this will shock many here! - since before 1996. Back then, it was "hey Timmy, want to come into my white van and have some candy?". Did we follow our children around 24-7 with video cameras attached to their backs in the 1980s? No, we taught our children to NOT FUCKING TALK WITH STRANGE MEN AND WOMEN.
I dunno, maybe it's like phishing scams. If I went door-to-door and asked people to give me their credit card details, claiming I'm "from the bank", people would slap the door in my face. If I did it by email, I'd soon be rich. Maybe the average Joe thinks this extends to their children's behaviour online.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
I am the only one who found it ridiculously transparent that this was a puff piece for eBlaste?
sigs are a waste of space
Do us all a favor and shut the hell up.
If to tell them that if I find them acting like lamers, or team killing, or trolling, I will beat then within an inch of their lives. Other than that, they can look at all the weird porn they want - I doubt there's much I can do to stop it. As long as they leave the family cat alone, things will turn out ok.
:)
Worst thing that'll ever happen to a kid from looking at weird porn is that he'll develop a strange fetish, and have to find a girl/boy who shares it to marry. Big fricking deal.
As long as you coach them to be anonymous when possible and supervise any first meetings with internet friends, I don't see that stalkers are that big of a problem. That 40-year-old meeting my kid for the first time won't be able to do much if his daddy's standing behind him with a shotgun
This happened in our house when my youngest was a bit older than 12. I was using a cache browser to find some website I'd seen a week or so before and stumbled upon all kinds of porn. Unfortunately I had a Typical Parental Response®.
When I got done grouching at the kid and he'd left the room his stepmother asked me if I had a Playboy collection when I was a teenager. Curses! Foiled again.
I went and apologized to the kid and a pretty good talk ensued. Found out that the kid thought women acted in those videos because they liked to and it had never crossed his mind that maybe financial need/pimps/lowlife boyfriends/childhood abuse/drug habits/whatever might have contributed to the woman's decision to get into the biz.
Did we cure him from viewing pr0n on the internet? Of course not. I didn't throw away my stack of Playboys when my mom caught me with one either ;-)
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
Difference is my parents KNEW who my friends were, and based on that I was actaully not allowed to hang around certain people. I was grounded numerous times when I got caught hanging with other kids on the "don't hang out with" list. And in hindsight, I am rather glad my parents watched over me although of course I didn't like it at the time.
On the internet, you do NOT know who the hell you kids are talking to. Therefore, if need be, I will sample what my kids are doing on the internet to see what kind of stuff they are doing. To do otherwise would be irresponsible in my opinion.
"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live." - Mark Twain, "Taming the Bicycle"
Look, I don't how many kids you've raised but the child/parent relationship is one you have to work at. It's not 'let the kids have their way or they'll kill you in your sleep' - if your kids are running around doing the things with computers that are suggested here, if you have parents who are wondering about routers and other ways of blocking what the kids are doing you've already completely failed as a parent. As the parent you are responsible, period. As the parent you are teaching, guiding, and helping your kids grow to adulthood. If you think that means letting your child have full and completely unguided access to computers and a car and the house and your credit cards then your kid might grow up alright but the chances for the big crash coming are greatly increased. If you choose to be a parent and guide them, directing them from a young age, teaching them right from wrong then this whole crap about kids going behind the backs of their parents isn't going to happen. Look, I hear from other parents who say to me, 'man, you are hard core on your kids - you have to let them be free.' - Well those parents who have said that to me have had to bail their kids out of jail, spend thousands of dollars on cleaning up their criminal records, begged their kids to go to college, have buried their kids and otherwise reaped the bitter harvest of their lack of parenting. And still they think they are right in their laizze faire attitude toward their kids. My son's close to graduating with a double E engineering degree, straight A, a good young man who knows right from wrong and who will be able to lead the kind of life he wants. If I let him do his own thing when he was younger he wouldn't have taken the hard classes, he wouldn't have had me over his shoulder pushing him to do his homework before anything else, reminding him that the choices he makes at twelve affect him when he's eighteen. Did I ever take his Playstation away, his computer away? Hell yes. It's called parenting. Belittle it all you want, be as witty and have as superior an attitude as you want but I've made the right choices in something that important to me and my family.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
I don't plan on eavesdropping constantly on my kids, however I reserve the right as their parent to do so if I feel the need.
Society constantly wants to blame the parents for events like Columbine yet people don't want to give the parents the authority to prevent these acts. Spank your kids, neighbors call the police, ground them, take away their phone and tv and internet, and you are depriving them and are a bad parent. Monitor what goes on with their friends, you are a control freak and have no respect for their privacy.
It always comes down to "you should be respecting your kid's privacy!!" until they go out and do something wrong and then suddenly it is "as their parents you should have known about this!".
Not that Heinlein was an expert on the ideal society, but I love the chapter in "Starship Troopers" where the instuctor discusses parenting "back in the 20th century" to the teenagers in the book's present. I thoroughly agree with his ideas.
My goal as a parent is that when my children reach the age of 18, I have taught them everything I possibly can so that when they enter the real world they have had the full background in their lives to make the right (or wrong) decisions and take responsibility for the consequences of those actions. My children may end up hating my guts, but they will never be able to say that I didn't prepare them for life.
"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live." - Mark Twain, "Taming the Bicycle"
then I'm all for it. If there are no children on the internet, then we can return to a time when the rest of us can use the internet in peace. No more assaults on the rights of adults to view what they want, when they want, in the privacy of their own home, as long as the content is legal. In fact, I'm in favor of completely eliminating the access of anyone under the age of consent. Then we can get rid of censorship on the net, and get back to the free exchange of ideas and the free examination of Mistress Matisse in tight leather.
The thing that people constantly are forgetting is that Internet Behaviour is PUBLIC BEHAVIOUR - that is, the Internet is a public place - and your activities are watched. The thing that really gets me is where kids think that their MySpace account is private. That's RIDICULOUS! Where does it say that everyone EXECPT YOUR PARENTS is allowed to access your MySpace account? Where does it say that everyone in a chat room can see what you are saying except for those who care for you?
:) Isn't it better to be the one doing the filtering and monitoring, and thus have the opportunity to actually *DO* some educating - rather than let them educate themselves?
I agree - that there are some legitimate cases where privacy is an issue - when it comes to email addresses, bank accounts, etc. That's what SSL was invented for.
HOWEVER - if you are using a non-encrypted protocol (such as HTTP, or most chat applications), you have NO EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY. If you parents aren't monitoring you, who's to say your ISP isn't? Or the ISP of the person/site you are visiting/chatting with? Or the person/site themselves? Or ANYONE WHO MAY SNIFF YOUR DATA ALONG THE WAY???
And even with encrypted communications (chat, for example), you have no guarantee of privacy that the person on the other end *isn't* logging your conversation, and *won't* post it later.
The argument of "Don't monitor or filter your kids - educate them instead" is flawed. The *REAL* education that needs to happen is that *nothing* (with very few exceptions) is private on the Internet. We need to teach our children to be careful on the Internet. Monitoring and filtering alone do nothing. Education alone does nothing. You need both.
Yes - there are ways around it. Ways to get anonymized. Ways to "hide your tracks". But looking at it cynically, if you don't filter or monitor your kids, they will never learn how to do those things, or how to be careful - and someone else will be monitoring them instead.
A filter or monitor without education is worthless. But at the same time, education without some sort of reinforcement is just as worthless.
As you mentioned, take a child who grows up with too many restrictions and you will see what happens when they "move out from under your thumb." Read Lord of the Flies for the flipside - and see what happens to a child who grows up with no restrictions.
And, as you put it so wonderfully, "Yes, it will be your fault."
A big part of good parenting that gets overlooked is allowing your kids to play with the children of parents who believe in the same parenting values as you do.
When I was growing up, my parents didn't let me play or spend the night with kids who's parents were not as conscientious as they were about things like appropriate play, snacks, behavior, etc. But it seems to me nowadays that people just let their kids do whatever.
Recently, my sister-in-law told of a story where a girl was coming to spend the night with her daughter, and the mom dropped this girl off at my in-law's place without even getting out of the car. My sister-in-law could've been a serial killer for all this lady knew. Shit, at least get off your ass to say hello and make sure the adult you're leaving your child with overnight has half a brain...
The parent poster has a great point about going to another kid's house to view questionable online content. You just have to remember, good parenting doesn't stop at your doorstep.
I wouldn't say that children are better off in ignorance, but you need to make sure that the information they receive is appropriate and age-specific. As for their coping mechanisms, I cannot agree with you. Yes, children are more adaptable than older people, but that does not stretch as far as you imply. Coping implies wisdom and experience, and youth typically do not have either in sufficient quantity. That's not a critique of young people, it is a function of their age.
Children and adolescents simply do not have the judgement skills that are necessary to respond to all situations. They are not adults in a smaller format, and any claims to the contrary are at best wishful thinking.
I think the best solution is to make sure the computer is located centrally in the home so that internet activity can be viewed by anyone present. When they get older, they could earn the privilege of having a computer in their own room.
Until kids mature to the point that they can make informed decisions on their own and accept the consequences for those decisions, it is the responsibility of adults to set and enforce boundaries. In doing so, we (hopefully) provide them with a safe and healthy environment in which to grow.
It is out job to act as adults, and their job to act as children. They have excuses for their mis-behaviour, we don't.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
At 43, I'm really (sarcasm) looking forward to retiring in a world run by a generation that has been raised to have no expectation of privacy.
I mean, come on, you don't tell your kids you are monitoring their chats...
And you're not going through their drawers checking for drugs, you're "putting away laundry". And you're not checking under the mattress for Playboy magazines, you're making the bed. And you're not snooping around their PC, you're making sure the virus signatures are up to date and the latest patches are installed.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
How do you know who your child hangs out with outside the house, yet do not know who they talk to inside the house? If you can tell they aren't calling the pedophile down the street or their classmate who takes drugs or whoever without recording all of their phone calls, then why can't you with instant messaging?
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
I spied on my kids when they were young. Read my daughter's diary. Listened in on their phone calls.
Now that they're grown they've put me in this nursing home. There's a camera that watches me when I sleep and another that watches me go to the bathroom. My son says it's for my protection.
I have a trust but check policy and my kid is not yet particularly sophisticated at covering his tracks...once I see him doing things like clearing browser cache etc I know the race is on...but the trump card is access.
The key is to be aware of what is going on as you go so when the kid is sophisticated enough to hack logging they are also sophisticated to know what is out of bounds.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
As a mother of three kids (two boys, 1 girl) I'd like to throw my $. 02 in the ring here and say that being able to monitor my kids has been an amazing help.
...and last but not least:
3.) Monitoring can make the aforementioned discussions possible. How's
that? Often kids go to great lengths to hide their actions-- particularly
online--from their parents. (My oldest son had two Myspace pages. One that was really tame that he told me about, and one that was outrageous that he hid from me! - When he turns 30 I'll admit to him that I actually thought that was pretty clever. But not till he's 30.) What monitoring software gives you is the chance to see your kids in their natural habitat, and see what's really going on in their lives. When you know what's really going on, you start to understand your kids better, and it makes relating to them and talking to them much easier and effective.
First, let me say that there's no substitute for talking with your kids. That said:
There are plenty of instances where the responsible thing for parents to do is to also monitor their computer activities. Among other reasons, here's why:
1.) Kids just don't always make the best decisions and often don't recognize the jeopardy they may be placing themselves in. (Sure, a few people do always make the best decisions, but that's definitely the exception and not the rule.)
2.) Youngsters and "tweens" are particularly vulnerable because they just don't have the social bearings to grasp what their actions or a predators words and actions really mean. There are *countless* ploys and tricks predators use to lure unsuspecting kids into being their prey. You would be shocked and amazed at the sheer cunning involved by these folks. We're talking stuff that makes phishing look pretty mundane. Don't believe me, just watch a couple of episodes of Oprah or Dateline's To Catch a Predator series. If you have kids, it these stories will keep you up at night.
Just to be clear, I don't monitor my kids because I think their bad - they're good kids. And I'm not spying on them and trying to catch them doing bad things. But I most certainly snoop around to make sure that they're safe. That's it. I just want to make sure they're safe. Period. And unfortunately, they're not mature enough to keep themselves safe. That's where parents and monitoring software come in.
I found this site with reviews on what's available: monitoring software reviews I ended up settling on this one: parental control software.
OK, this is slashdot, I forgot. This is the forum where I can make an off-hand comment about how a parent should know what their kids are up to and it gets turned into a nitpick session over every fucking comment I make.
Ok, for the record, I only know what I PLAN to do as my kids get older. I know that I am tech savvy enough that I can do a decent job of tracking computer related activity in my house. So in 5-10 years when my kids are on the internet I will be doing something just so that I can get a warm fuzzy that my kids aren't being too stupid. I am NOT going to be the Nazi let's impant transmitters in my kids type of parent, but if I suddenly see a trend of my son's computer hitting goatse.cx type web pages, or my daughter connecting to forums where teenage girls are bragging about their college boyfriends, I plan to take some sort of action whether it is more paying attention to that activity or confronting them if I feel as their parent that I need to.
I know everything that I did from my teens to my mid-twenties, and like most people I am amazed at both my stupidity and luck at getting away with some of that stuff. I have every expectation that my kids will do most of the same things I did. In the same way that parents should take responsibilty in being aware of their kids exposure to drinking, smoking and drugs, I will take responsibility and be aware of their digital activites.
If you think that makes me a bad horrible terrible parent, then that is your perogative. I think it makes me a responsible parent.
"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live." - Mark Twain, "Taming the Bicycle"
I was in exactly the same situation as a teenager. Past the age of about 9 I was also the most computer-savvy person in the house and I still look after the connection, router and W/LAN for them having moved out.
Being given unrestricted net access didn't do me any harm at all, and I'm all in favour of raising your kids (not that I'm a parent) well enough that you can have the confidence to give them enough trust to do what they want. I don't think my parents had any reason to believe I should be given that trust, and yes I did look at slightly freaky porn when I was still young enough to totally not understand my own/human sexuality, but in retrospect that was more a learning experience rather than "OMGWTFBBQ THIS INTREWUB HAS WARPED YOUR FRAGILE LITTLE MIND!112"
I have no faith whatsoever in the line taken by a shocking number of parents that your child will be "damaged" somehow if they see porn on the internet, hear "OMG THE F WORD" on TV or see drunk guys having a fight outside a bar. They may not like it and they almost certainly won't understand it, but in time they will. This not only adds a lot to the experience they have to draw on in trying to come up with their own view of the world, but gives them cool stuff to tell their friends at school.
I saw, heard and read "bad" stuff on occasion as a kid, granted I had a stable and mostly happy family life from pretty much the age that I had freedom to roam internet un-spied-on as well (no relation). It didn't warp me, fuck me up, get me raped by a paedophile or otherwise ruin my life even slightly, if anything it's simply given me the intellectual ammo to understand such things a lot better now, which I see as only a good thing.
Summarising even further - if you need to spy on your "kids" once they're (as others have pointed out) at the point where they're inexperienced adults rather than nurologically immature then you've failed as a parent. If they aren't totally stupid (which I suppose might be genetic as well...) then don't assume that because they're below the magical age they can't deal with nastiness. It is the absolute height of irresponsibility to swaddle your kids in bubble-wrap for their entire lives and then throw them into the deep end of the real world.
What are parents like mine supposed to do? I administrator our home network, have full admin on all computers, have router/firewall logs emailed to my email account, and have 3 personal laptops with wifi, as well as a desktop whose screens are not visible from the hall. There is no way for them to use technology to monitor me, and I can use the internet from anywhere in my house, or on my block (1 watt 2.4ghz signal amp, and +8dbi gain antenna,) so shoulder surfing is out of the question... (BTW I'm 16)
Finding out what forums your kids go to see if they're appropriate and preventing them from obsessively seeking porn is good and responsible. But monitoring their personal conversations is not. If you wouldn't record their phone conversations, then you shouldn't record their im conversations, and I really hope you wouldn't record their phone conversations.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
We have two kids, now 11 and 14. We tend to be very open and frank with them, and have had many discussions about baddies on the 'net and in the world. I have told them that, I bought the computer, and they should assume that I can see everything they say, see or read on it. They accept my right to do this, just as I have the right to enter their room at any time I see fit.
In practice however, I leave their bedroom door shut when they want it shut, and I don't go out of my way to snoop on the PC. It's part of our social contract - I intend to trust them as long as they give me reason to, and as long as the risk associated is small. They are comfortable that I trust them, and I think are comfortable that I will only assert my power as a parent when I feel (legitimately or illegitimately) the need to protect them. I have told them, in advance, that I may be wrong at times in my desires to protect them, but it's part of the Dad Package, which they otherwise think is a pretty good deal.
I know my son will start peeking at porn over the next few years, and I'm not worried about it. Lord knows I found Playboys pretty interesting at his age. I tend to think that he'll grow up OK, despite that.
I don't worry about online pedophiles. There just aren't that many of them, and while they make good press, the biggest risk to my kids is another kid, drunk behind the wheel of a car. After that, drowning, death by shellfish poisoning, bike accidents, and accidental shootings are all far greater risks to my kids, by two orders of magnitude than pervs on the net. I worry much more about those situations than what my kids say or do online.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
AM I the only one that see that replacing Parent with Government and Child with Citizen provides insight of other issues discussed on /.?
Hmm, how about re-phrasing that to something like "The Internet is a network which relies on nodes that forward information to other nodes, anybody who controls such a node may examine the information being forwarded".
This should explain someone that it's a bad idea to share private information on the internet.
Another thing - you (the parent) are a person who administrates one of those nodes, hence you tell them indirectly that you too *may* have access to the information.
The saddest poem
If we make our children earn our trust and their own privacy, they will hate us. Because no child should have to earn the love of their parent, and trust is one of the pillars of that love. Love is the only gift that we can give them, and we had better give it freely no matter what because we brought them into this world and it is the one thing they need, no matter how imperfect they are or how unequipped they are to satisfy our definition of loveable. This isn't intended as a personal criticism. I had a pretty awful childhood in the ways that really mattered, and what I said here are some of the things that I decided about parenting. They're just opinions and they are not perfect.