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."

Comments

Great idea

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

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.

Meh.

[XPeter]

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.

Re:Meh.

[Enleth]

1. Install VirtualBox.
2. Install Windows as a guest (preferably the same version as host if it is Windows, or some believable version if the host is a *nix or whatever).
3. Start the virtual machine in full-screen mode, with automatic USB and CD pass-through.
4. Let them install all the crap they want, smiling and thanking them for it.
5. Save the sate of the virtual machine just in case it's suddenly needed sometime in the future.
6. ???
7. Prifot, and a crap-free computer with a good VM system installed for other uses.

Re:Meh.

[XPeter]

They tried to do that when I started to bring my netbook to school almost daily. I fought them over it, and eventually won the right to keep my netbook free of NetOps and Deep Freeze. All school internet is locked down with WebSense though, which meant I still had to use a proxy.

Re:Meh.

[bmo]

I call BS.

How is that a felony? Explain using examples and US law.

I'll wait right here.

--
BMO

Re:Meh.

[PopeRatzo]

If it doesn't belong to you, you have no rights to do anything with it, without the owners permission.

Some laws just beg to be broken.

God bless this kid for being ready to perpetrate crimes against the state at such an early age.

When he figures out that the real threat comes from corporate power over our lives, he'll be formidable. We need more 16 year-olds like this.

I wonder about "Free"

[MerlynDavis]

FTA: "any proprietary software is a computer that you don't control". How many people know half of what's going on with "Free" software? How many people not "into" tech know why free software is any different? And, how much free software is actually so thoroughly audited that everyone knows everything it does?

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.

Re:I wonder about "Free"

[PopeRatzo]

Free software isn't inherently more trustworthy, it simply moves the trust relationship around.

"Moving the trust around" is hardly as trivial as you make it sound.

In fact, it's the way truly free societies are supposed to work. You could sum up the philosophy of the US Constitution with the words "Move the Trust Around".

Re:I wonder about "Free"

[pla]

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.

Yes and no.

Yes, I don't personally audit every line of code I run on my computers, so in that sense I "trust" the FOSS community to act as a pretty damned effective first-line defense against most of the common crap commercial vendors try to pull (whether Sony rootkits or WGA or Energizer's recent scandal).

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 - Did it just get confused by a DNS timeout? Did it legitimately (it not necessarily with my permission) try to update itself to handle my request? Did it try to report everything I've done in the past 24 hours to a remote server in China under the guise of a "bug report"? With commercial software, I can at best block its action at the firewall and see what breaks; With FOSS, I can know what it did and act accordingly.


Free software isn't inherently more trustworthy, it simply moves the trust relationship around.

Yep, it does. And I'll trust a million strangers with no commercial interest in my life over a single CEO who sees me as a "resource" any day of the week, thankyouverymuch. And as a side-bonus, it also places more of that burden of trust right back on my shoulders. And while I may not always act in my own best interest, I do unwaveringly trust myself.

Excuse me?

[berryjw]

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???

Re:Excuse me?

[lena_10326]

Spending millions of dollars and loaning out hardware doesn't give school officials the right to remotely activate and control the laptop webcam and spy on children in their own bedrooms--potentially while undressing. People are pissed not due to knee jerk reaction, but because what the school did was fucking creepy.

Re:Excuse me?

[bmo]

No, you don't get to monitor people through your network, unless it's for monitoring how the network is working. Not without notification to the users (who in this case can't sign a contract legally).

You *do not* get carte blanche to monitor users simply because you spent money and built a network. In order to do that, you need to get a waiver from the users of that network.

If you're going to secretly monitor minors using your network, you are a creepy fuck and you deserve to go to jail because you've just violated the ECPA.

*BMO throws a copy of the ECPA and a copy of Netlaw at your head*

--
BMO

Re:Excuse me?

[BitterOak]

Spending millions of dollars and loaning out hardware doesn't give school officials the right to remotely activate and control the laptop webcam and spy on children in their own bedrooms--potentially while undressing.

But children love strangers to watch them undress in their bedrooms. Haven't you ever used ChatRoulette?

Governance

[DaveGod]

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.

Opportunism

[Ralish]

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.

Re:Opportunism

[PhysicsGeek42]

The FSF is not about open source software. The FSF is about protecting the personal freedoms of computer users. As such, a case like this where the privacy of computer users is compromised without their consent is of great interest to the FSF.

Re:Opportunism

[Skapare]

This event opened our eyes to the POTENTIAL for abuse by a group of people that typically is known for a greater propensity to be abusive.

And there are issues about even the program itself. For example, requiring kids to use that computer and not the one that they already have at home, which for some can be a space issue (where do I put it). It also imposes property care obligations on people that don't necessarily need to have it. In some cases students cannot leave their school provided laptops at school in the lockers and are required to take them home every day, which may be an environment with a greater chance of being stolen (and then the student be blamed for not taking proper care).

It would just be simpler if the schools would let the program be optional, though opt-in at any time. Let kids use their own computers when and where they like (but the school is not liable for problems with the kids own computers). Accept all known formats for assignment turn-in. Ignorance of teachers (to deal with Open Office formats, which they can do for free on any computer, so money is not an excuse) is no excuse.

And tell the schools to quit whining about budgets unless they are using the lowest cost solutions for their computers.

Re:A better idea: Somebody define "crowdsourcing".

[OnlineAlias]

Why yes, yes it is. However, the crowed usually gets something of value too, a la Google. You get your search results, they get to target advertising and gather statistics on you.

Re:people still don't know the real story in PA

[Anonymous Coward]

Student broke rules and got busted, doesn't matter if it was a laptop or getting caught smoking on school surveilance web cam

Single most important fact, which you neglected: He didn't get busted for taking the laptop home, he got busted because the photograph taken by the surveillance cam made somebody believe he was popping pills.

He got busted by the school for behavior that did not happen at school. Nevermind the fact that the "pills" turned out to be candy, because it's not even relevant. I don't care if he was shooting up, they shouldn't have had the ability to "catch" him in his own home.

Windows Vista/7 64-bit kernel mode code signing

[tepples]

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.

Re:people still don't know the real story in PA

[Fnord666]

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.

Citation needed please. This is the first I have heard of items 2,4,5 and 6.