Police Chief Teaches Parents To Keylog Kids

Hugh Pickens writes writes "LiveScience reports that James Batelli, the police chief of Mahwah, NJ, and his detectives conduct seminars that teach parents how to outfit a computer with keystroke logging software, giving them access to the full spectrum of their kids' online activities. Batelli explains that kids put themselves in potentially dangerous situations online every day, especially on Facebook, where they run the risk of coming into contact with child predators who troll the social networking site. 'When it comes down to safety and welfare of your child, I don't think any parent would sacrifice anything to make sure nothing happens to their children,' he says."

Comments

Nope

[Anrego]

I don't think any parent would sacrifice anything to make sure nothing happens to their children

If you are so out of touch with what your kid does online that you need this.. then you forgot to sacrifice something somewhere along the way.

No, you can't watch your kids all the time .. and at a certain age you can't just say "internet only when I'm around" either.

You can however educate your child on the risks out there, and have a good understanding of your childs judgment is.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

"In order to save the village, we had to destroy it" comes to mind.

Or "never time to do it right, always time do fsck it up and try something even worse" perhaps.

If parents'd done their homework, there'd be no problem. But they haven't, so this guy's "teaching" some half-assed catch-up technique that doesn't scale next to the drawbacks of being highly unethical and is bound to lose the parents their childrens' trust if (inevitably) found out. So the value of teaching this is mostly in how it's eventually self-defeating. The fact that a holder of public trust thinks its acceptable to teach this I find... telling.

As a parent you can insist that no internet access happens unsupervised ("training wheels") until it's time to take off the training wheels. If you don't understand that, then internet access is the least of your parenting worries.

Re:Nope

[houghi]

Reminds me of a girl in my class. She was not allowed contact with any of the other kids. He parents were very over protective. Then at 18, she was old enough according to her parents and was left loose. In about 3 months she became the school slut, because she had no idea how to correctly interact with others.

It is also like kid-proofing your house. Don't. The kid will get some bumps and that is how you learn: by failing.

It is basically the standard: do not take candy from strangers. I was raised in such a way that I would not even take candy from neighbors and if my parents were there and some neighbor wanted to give me candy, I would aks my parents first.

Education on what to do is the best thing you can give your kid. Not only so he won't get raped (which happens way more with people they know then with people they don't) and murdered, but s they have a basis for the rest of their life on how to handle situations.

As a parent you are NOT the babysitter and you are NOT their friend. You are the parent and YOU need to see that they learn as much as possible. Putting them in a cocoon will take the ability to learn away.

Protection is a short term goal. As a parent you need to look at the long term goal. 20+ years from the start.

Re:cue 100% of comments...

[HangingChad]

> But since they did, it means they want to keep an eye on their kid to make sure they turn out as they wish

My brother is one of those fat, old "the ends justify the means" right wingers. He felt it was okay spying on his kids because the ends justified it. What he didn't know was that my nieces and nephews were way ahead of him. I got a clue when they started asking me about running Ubuntu from a live CD and various ways someone might spy on a cell phone. It got to the point they were running "wild weasel" missions to cover one another. I don't think my brother knows to this day.

I mark the time we started going downhill as a country as the day those BABY ON BOARD stickers started showing up on cars. The dawn of the overprotective helicopter parents. After that it was locker and backpack searches, drug tests, fences, badges and metal detectors. On the way to the golf course a bunch of us drove past what I thought it was a minimum security prison. One of the other guys corrected me that it was a school. When we raise our children like prisoners, how do we expect them to behave as adults?

Classes like the one the police chief is teaching do little more than highlight the extent of decay our society has experienced the last 40 years.