The fact remains that he is forcing students to commit digital reconnaissance of unwitting networks. Regardless of the amount of disclaimers he puts into the syllabus, the students are still breaking the law. The last college I was at, we ended up with a lab machine that got infected with something (not sure what it was infected with, because the FBI confiscated the machine). It ended up pounding a remote server. The company that owned the server contacted the FBI who traced it back to us. While we never got explicitly in trouble, the possibility is there. I would think that the university IT staff would be much more concerned, since it's their network that is being used as the base for these probes. Someone, somewhere, is going to catch on to this, and call the authorities. Even if the prof says don't break in, even if these are white-hats, even if it's for learning and academic purposes, it's still WRONG. The wrongness of this plan is demonstrated by the university's stance that they will report anyone who scans university systems to the Dean of Corrections. If I were a student, I'd be concerned by that fact alone. I can't do it to my own school, but prof says it's ok to do to someone else's machine, who is completely unaware? Yeah........
Dear lord, this whole situation is getting even more ridiculous. From a technical standpoint, we all know that the capability to store the amount of information the NSA is gathers is possible, but the ability to mine valuable intelligence from it is darn near impossible. It's gotta be screened how many times, flagged, then read by a human to actually make a determination. That's where the breakdown is, at the human point. There's a finite number of people available to do that job. Beyond that, I'd be more worried about an individual targeting me than the government. For about $100, I can get your name, address, criminal record, sat photos of your home, credit scores, etc etc.
As for the ACLU defending my civil liberties: well, that may or may not be true, depending on which side of a lawsuit you are. Personally, I see absolutely no reason to NOT let stores say Merry Christmas. IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!! Is they want to say Happy Hannukah, no one complains....Who's rights are being defended, and who's rights are being trampled then?
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The fact remains that he is forcing students to commit digital reconnaissance of unwitting networks. Regardless of the amount of disclaimers he puts into the syllabus, the students are still breaking the law. The last college I was at, we ended up with a lab machine that got infected with something (not sure what it was infected with, because the FBI confiscated the machine). It ended up pounding a remote server. The company that owned the server contacted the FBI who traced it back to us. While we never got explicitly in trouble, the possibility is there. I would think that the university IT staff would be much more concerned, since it's their network that is being used as the base for these probes. Someone, somewhere, is going to catch on to this, and call the authorities. Even if the prof says don't break in, even if these are white-hats, even if it's for learning and academic purposes, it's still WRONG. The wrongness of this plan is demonstrated by the university's stance that they will report anyone who scans university systems to the Dean of Corrections. If I were a student, I'd be concerned by that fact alone. I can't do it to my own school, but prof says it's ok to do to someone else's machine, who is completely unaware? Yeah........
Dear lord, this whole situation is getting even more ridiculous. From a technical standpoint, we all know that the capability to store the amount of information the NSA is gathers is possible, but the ability to mine valuable intelligence from it is darn near impossible. It's gotta be screened how many times, flagged, then read by a human to actually make a determination. That's where the breakdown is, at the human point. There's a finite number of people available to do that job. Beyond that, I'd be more worried about an individual targeting me than the government. For about $100, I can get your name, address, criminal record, sat photos of your home, credit scores, etc etc. As for the ACLU defending my civil liberties: well, that may or may not be true, depending on which side of a lawsuit you are. Personally, I see absolutely no reason to NOT let stores say Merry Christmas. IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!! Is they want to say Happy Hannukah, no one complains....Who's rights are being defended, and who's rights are being trampled then?