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PA Laptop Spying Inspires FSF Crowdsourcing Effort
holmesfsf writes "Creeped out by the Lower Merion School District's remote monitoring of students? Check out the Free Software Foundation's response to the laptop spying scandal and help build a wiki listing of school districts that provide students with laptops, so that the FSF can campaign against mandatory, proprietary laptops."
Hopefully this situation will be a stepping stone to help the public understand the role that computers play in our personal lives.
I switched to GNU/Linux in 1998 because lights on my external modem flickered each time I used RealPlayer to play files that were on my own computer.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
At the high school I attend, all the desktops and laptops allowed on school property have a form of remote monitoring installed (Web Sense, NetOps, along with Deep Freeze).
The problem is relatively easy to fix, though. I use my home computer as a proxy to get past Web Sense, and give myself admin rights to disable the NetOps and Deep Freeze. All students should know how to do this, and I teach as many how to as I can. Fuck the "monitoring" they do, this isn't China.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
At some point, you have to take someone's word that the software you are loading on your computer is "trustworthy", unless you're going to write it all yourself. And even then, how much of that code is going to be your own, and how much will be copied from elsewhere?
Free software isn't inherently more trustworthy, it simply moves the trust relationship around.
-merlyn
Every time I see the word crowdsourcing, I read it as crowdsurfing. I, for one, try to avoid being near anywhere that RMS is crowdsurfing.
garethw
All schools should be private and accountable to their customers (i.e. parents / guardians). Parents can even hire private services to spy on their kids via cameras and other means, in their own home or not. But this is a case of "tragedy of the commons" - everyone gets the same crummy overpriced tyrannical one-size-fits-all solution, whether you like it or not. Every time the government screws up, the socialists seize the opportunity to reward the government with more power and funding (their logic, not mine), and the "F"SF is no exception.
They already use government force as much as proprietary software does (if not more so, because proprietary software could exist without government through explicit privately-enforceable contracts, while copyleft could not), but they want more - a monopoly, government funding of socialist software, and then total government control of everything that has a microchip!
Real freedom comes from balance of power and free market competition, not blind faith in an all-powerful "authority"!
"so that the FSF can campaign against mandatory, proprietary laptops."
As if Free Non Proprietary Laptops won't in any way be used to spy on students.
THIS IS THE WRONG BATTLE, FSF.
The battle should be for privacy, not against proprietary laptops.
I say this as a Free Software user.
--
BMO
When will RMS stop using his proprietary laptop?
What the fuck is "crowdsourcing"?
I tried to read the Wikipedia article on "crowdsourcing" but it was laden with buzzwords and other marketing bullshit.
Is it just companies and other organizations trying to exploit common folk into doing work for no pay?
There's no proposal that can solve everything. Of the proposals that exist today, free software is just far and away the best situation life's offering.
It's not about *you* being free to read and change the source or distribute modified versions, it's about *all users* being able to do this. "freedom 3" makes this clear:
"The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this."
It's about allowing people to help each other, building an empowered community. If the situation is serious enough, anyone can take a look, or find/pay someone else to take a look. And even if the situation doesn't seem serious, there's still the possibility that someone will be taking a look at the code anyway. And once one person does this, then all users can benefit from that person's exercise of their freedoms.
The possibility of these things happening is usually enough to dissuade software publishers from putting nastyware into free software in the first place.
So, you're theory just predicts a problem that's possible but which is non-existant or practically non-existant in reality.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
The author is completely besides the point:
When the software on your computer is proprietary, then you can't know whether the light is coming on because of a glitch or because the camera is actually running.
Unless you both know programming and have lots of time to dig into the code, you don't know either (and even then, the machine might have been manipulated already at the BIOS level, and may be hiding the changes from you).
But even more to the point: The original source he quotes explains:
The webcam couldn't be disabled due to tough security settings.
That is, the students had not been given all the control the operating system could provide them. The exact same could have happened under Linux, if they had not been given root privileges, or if the root rights were restricted through SELinux. Free Software doesn't magically get you into control of a system (inded, I'd have more control over a machine running a proprietary DOS than over one running Linux where I don't have root privilege).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
For all those with a knee-jerk reaction to this, consider it from this perspective: You've just spent millions of dollars, building a network infrastructure, programming servers and switches and routers, creating images and an environment to handle all of this, all for a very specific task. You're saying there's *nothing wrong* with me using what you've built, however I want to, and you've no right to watch how I use it? If so, I'm coming to your place, no reason for me to ever spend a dime on tech! Hmm, does this logic apply to your car? Or bank account???
I had the same thought at first, but the summary says both mandatory and proprietary. I don't think they should ask schools to stop using or offering proprietary software, that's unrealistic, but what is the need to make it mandatory? If a student or their family truly wants to opt out for some reason, that should be permitted.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
The issue isn't proprietary laptops nor the student's control over them. It's bad governance. A bad decision arising from good intentions simply not thought out nor with proper controls and disclosure in place.
With good governance they never should have made a decision that would so obviously bring the school into such disrepute. With proper controls they could demonstrate how the function could not be abused, or at a minimum that abuse would be detected. With proper disclosure the school kids and their parents could have objected and this farce never would have happened even with the school having made the bad decision. With proper disclosure there is an entirely different scope for alarm - spying on kids with their knowledge is appalling but without them knowing, that's really something.
Using non-proprietary laptops merely adds one avenue for detection of the wrongdoing here. It's trivial compared to the other causes of the failure that need to be rectified, starting with the removal of the entire board responsible for the decision because of their utterly incompetent governance.
Is it just me, or does this just reek of opportunism? What the school in question did was appalling, but it has nothing to do with the open-source vs. closed-source debate, or the proprietary vs. open debate, it's just raw and basic ethics. This is about people's basic right to privacy, as well as the ethical conduct of system administrators. Windows doesn't stop you installing open-source software, and Linux doesn't stop you installing proprietary software. Neither operating system will stop a system administrator from installing nasty software.
Presumably the FSF would feel a lot better about this if the students were being spied on from laptops running Linux with open-source spying software? We could mask the presence with an open-source rootkit, and upload the data to a FreeBSD server running Apache and a MySQL database. Then this would be just fine. Groups that hijack legitimate issues in order to advance their own agenda are sickening. Jack Thompson likes to do this to advocate video game restrictions, pro & anti gun control groups do this whenever the latest gun violence story hits the news, and now the FSF joins in. I knew they'd been progressively losing sanity over the years, but I thought even this was beneath them.
As far as I know, you can opt out of having the school laptop. Even if they don't allow you to opt out on paper, you can still keep the thing in a closet and return it at the end of the school year.
The problem is monitoring software. This was likely illegal since these students *can't* agree to it legally (they can't sign contracts) and the parents didn't know it was there, either. At last check, the FBI was investigating the school for ECPA violation. I hope someone goes to jail over this.
Free software is not a panacea. There is nothing physically preventing the installation of monitoring software on a laptop running Free software. However, we *can* enforce laws already on the books that prevent things like this from happening.
It's a little too late to donate copies of Netlaw by Lance Rose to the school administration.
--
BMO
Facts: 1. the school told students who did not pay the laptop fee to not remove the laptops from school 2. the kid's parents did not pay the fee 3. kide removed laptop 4. school staff randomly inventoried laptops 5. school staff discovered laptop missing 6. staff activated anti theft program... Student broke rules and got busted, doesn't matter if it was a laptop or getting caught smoking on school surveilance web cam. how is this any different than someone using MoblieMe to find their missing iphones??
~corporate tool, but employed~
If they do that, then any student can disable it, and every student can then use that one student's non-spying version.
The perfect solution would be to have no spying in the first place, but since you haven't offered any way to do this, having software freedom is indeed the next best solution.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
The problem is relatively easy to fix, though. All students should know how to do this, and I teach as many how to as I can. Fuck the "monitoring" they do, this isn't China.
Did you to a lawyer about the risks you and the students are taking?
Their parents and guardians?
The ones who will be in no very forgiving mood when their kids miss graduation?
Did you talk to your wife?
Ever hear the phrase "Jail Bait?"
Mucking around with minors and the law is dangerous:
"Twenty-seven year old geek arrested as ringleader in local high school kiddie porn bust."
The school locks down its system to avoid even the remote possibility of being tainted by stories like this.
> The battle should be for privacy, not against proprietary laptops
Yes, exactly. The only reason there is no remote camera monitoring software for free OSs is that there aren't enough of them around in such environments for anyone to have bothered to write it. There's nothing whatsoever about an open source OS that would prevent the school from monitoring students using that.
The real issue here is privacy, as the parent post says.
I don't know about the proprietary laptops comment. I guess I don't care if its a proprietary laptop or not, but they should be standardized.
It would be a total mess is they didn't keep some control of the computers and hardware. All the hardware should be the same. This makes it so much easier for the IT department when every single laptop is the same model number. This makes replacements easy. If its hardware, swap the hard drive into a spare unit and everything works. All the drivers are the same. If its a reinstall, its just 5-10 min to load from a standard ghost image. I know you can get driver packs for those images, but its so nice when you know the few drivers you need.
Thats also where deep freeze comes in. Keeps the computer clean from user mistakes. We tried deep freeze and it didn't work for us, but I love the idea behind it.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
In Soviet Russia the laptop is watching you. No...wait...
3) or PEDAGOGUES ...oh, wait...
Ezekiel 23:20
Windows doesn't stop you installing open-source software
The 64-bit version of Windows blocks installation of unsigned software that runs in kernel mode. It also blocks installation of such software signed with a homemade certificate unless you start the computer in "Test Mode", in which case always-on-top "Test Mode" notices appear in the corners of the screen.
its diferent as the system was set up in such a way that it would produce child porn - which is a strict liabilitry offence. If they just had an ability to track the location they would be fine.
Why has the pricipal and the entire tech team not been suspened/fired and be under investigation?
But also "No", in that if I notice some suspicious activity in a program I use, I can have the relevant source open in front of me five minutes later to see why it did what it did
You didn't say it but you probably would re-compile from those sources and compare the binaries too.
Back in the early 80s, RMS decided the world needed Free Software.
A rather simple plan would seem to suffice:
Since a lot of people work on free software, the FSF has decided it doesn't need to focus its efforts on that any longer, but should rather advocate its viewpoints.
Building it required an understanding of software. Advocating it requires an understanding of people.
Us nerds are often more plentifully endowed with technical competency compared to our skill with people. RMS even more so.
And yeah, maybe he's not calling all the shots, but the FSF probably attracts a large concentration of nerds. The selling points that go well with those who get into FSF by themselves might not be those you should use on the general public.
Similarly, Linux tends to attract tech savvy (and perhaps not so people savvy) people. Those inmates tend to run the asylum, when it comes to usability, and they know what they want, which might not be the same thing as what everybody else wants (... in some cases, at least).
Presumably, optional proprietary laptops and mandatory open-source laptops are OK?
That's right, only closed-source software is used for nefarious purposes, right?
Ken
Uhm, no, it COULD produce child porn, or adult porn, or a reality TV show, etc...
Ken
Heh that'll really show those no good kids heh Heh HEH Gosh darn I sure do hate young people