School spying: infected laptops mandatory, jailbreaking grounds for explusion

[friendly_iconoclast]

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/22/school-spying-infect.html

School spying: infected laptops mandatory, jailbreaking grounds for explusion
By Cory Doctorow at 9:29 PM February 22, 2010

Here's an excellent investigative post on the surveillance technology and policy that Pennsylvania's Lower Merion School District employed against its students. Two security researchers, "Stryde" and Aaron Rhodes, read through the web-posts and other material made public by the school administrators who maintained the laptop surveillance as well as student accounts of its use and reports on the policies that surrounded it:

* Possession of a monitored Macbook was required for classes

* Possession of an unmonitored personal computer was forbidden and would be confiscated

* Disabling the camera was impossible

* Jailbreaking a school laptop in order to secure it or monitor it against intrusion was an offense which merited expulsion

http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-high.html

[NYC_SKP]

1. I look forward to reading how a piece of tape over the camera is impossible. n/t

[friendly_iconoclast]

3. I look forward to reading why a piece of tape should be necessary

Who the fuck came up with these Orwellian rules, anyway?

It reads like something John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and Dick Cheney came up with after a tequila drinking contest.

[Exultant Democracy]

6. Seriously. What else do I need to tape over? Not to mention the 500 pound gorrila, pervy wankers

looking at middle school children in their bed rooms.

[Nostradammit]

8. You can't possibly be defending the school district in this

Can you?

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ananda]

2. Absurd dissonance.

Isn't that going to seriously absurd lengths to spy
on students?

Don't those admins have anything better to do?

[kristopher]

4. That is an incredibly damining summation from the keyboard of the school's IT...

Just like the Bushies, they have done this in plain sight; bragging about their expertise in specialty blogs on the internet.

[TheWraith]

5. These administrators need to be permanently banned from the school system.

They're a danger to students, to privacy, and to the constitution.

[TexasObserver]

20. I agree. Whoever approved this should be barred from Public Education.

Let them go to work in Walmart as "loss prevention" if this is the kind of thuggery they favor.

[Newest Reality]

7. You never know ...

It could be that they want some unrestricted access to potential porn that they can peruse legally under the guise of policing the students ... just saying.

Otherwise, it is totally contrary to what we used to call our rights as citizens, as old-fashioned as that may sound and as normal as these types of intrustions are becoming.

Put this in the Orwell check-list of crazy, Big Brother stuff you would never thought could become reality!

Parents are allowing this to continue? Are they merely sheep raising sheep now?

[TheMadMonk]

9. Reading further. It appears an image is captured every time the computer...

...wakes from sleep mode.

This makes a mockery of the District's claim that the "feature" was only used 42 times to find lost, stolen or straying computers.

Images might have only been retrieved 42 times via the LANRev console software. The question is: How many times were images viewed by directly accessing the location where the images were stored?

[ThomCat]

10. That is damning!

How many students DON'T use their computers at least occasionally while they are at least partially undressed?

So every time they took the computer out of sleep mode, and they weren't dressed, the computer snapped a picture and stored it away for the administrators to retrieve later.

THAT is a child pornography ring.

[FiveGoodMen]

17. "THAT is a child pornography ring"

And everyone responsible should be tried on those grounds.

And listed as sex offenders for life. Including on public websites.

[dbmk]

21. And not 99.99999% likely not true.

That would be part of the feature. When activated. Not always.

Impressive how many here are able to jump to completely unfounded conclusions.

Based on the comments here one would think that it was established fact that they have been spying on students.

[MineralMan]

12. As many times as the pervy IT guys wanted to.

What's interesting is that the images may well be stored locally on the individual laptops. Easy to investigate. If they were on the server, they're already gone forever if these were competent IT guys.

[Trillo]

13. What is this, 4th Amendment day? n/t

[formercia]

19. go away.

[Better Today]

14. What surprises me is the compliant parents in all of this. If someone

had told my child that they must use the school offered puter and could not use their own. I would've been all over the place raising hell. Secondly, I would never have allowed my child to bring home the school laptop, period, I wouldn't have wanted the financial responsibility if it was lost, stolen, or damaged. I would have insisted that the required work studies be emailed to a home computer and emailed back. If I had needed to I would have gone as high as the State Superintendent regarding this, and that would be if I didn't even know about the surveillance.

I can't tell you how many times I've gone as far as the State Superintendent to remedy issues that other parents didn't know about, and when I discussed with them, didn't care about. For example, our elementary schools had a rule that K&1st graders couldn't use 90% of the school library offerings. There was a red line past which were all the books that had more than 10 words and pictures, but my daughter, who was reading 200-350 page "chapter books" at age 4, wanted to get a real book and was forbidden. . . three weeks later the red taped line was gone and she could check out what she wanted. Then we got re-districted and had to go through it again, again it got removed, and at the same time I got my daughter skipped a grade because I am not okay with the whole GAAT programs where children are removed from class (during this my infant son was on my lap and they made clear that skipping my daughter was a one time thing, don't even try with your son, boys are NEVER skipped). Then we moved across town and my son ran into the red line in the next school, got that removed. Two years later, I got my son skipped a grade because he was so bored he was bordering on becoming a problem student. My daughter has a bit of a weight issue. So instead of eating lunch at school, she would go directly out to be active. She ate breakfast, then came home to a small snack and a regular dinner. Some jerk teacher tried to force her to not only stay in at lunch, but quite literally made her sit there with a meal in front of her (which the teacher demanded be repaid to her by tomorrow) and tried to force her to eat. My daughter didn't eat any of it, came home to inform me, . . .the teacher was gone by the end of the month.

My point is,. . . WTF are parents thinking when they cow to the bullshit that schools attempt to put upon our children.

[dbmk]

23. Which seems to be related to the story.

Some of the information coming out (whether its fact or not is a bit shaky) is that the student had not payed the required insurance fee to be able to remove the laptop from the school.

Exactly to avoid the students/parents "financial responsibility if it was lost, stolen, or damaged".

And that the student had done so anyways - and therefore triggered an activation of the theft tracking feature (manually or automatically, I don't know). And when the student was called into a meeting about it, the person doing it might have mentioned that they had proof in the picture taken by the program.

Now, theres a huge legal issue in whether this kind of tracking, without a warrant, is illegal searching - no matter the situation. But thats slighty apart from whether a school used it to spy on the students. Which I still find very unlikely.

It is of course very _possible_ that someone has used the feature for a more "personal use".

But the school spying - as some sort of policy or program? Don't think so.

[HippieCowgirl]

15. "Little Brother" Download this book, Free... give the link to a young person you know.

http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2466

Lots of helpful advice on privacy, security, crypto, and getting one past the man.

Also a very entertaining novel.

[friendly_iconoclast]

16. +1 A most excellent suggestion, HC

Kudos to you!

[winyanstaz]

18. Whats wrong with the parents..why are they not up in arms and waving pitchforks?

If that was my kid being spied on...someone at that school would be wearing a lap top up their arse at the very least.

[dbmk]

24. Maybe because they don't jump to conclusions? n/t

[Citizen Worker]

22. Orwell's telescreen has arrived

Orwell was right when he predicted such devices in 1948. Moreover, there is at least one school district in WA that is planning on implementing some sort of tracking device for students who ride the bus to school. There are plans afoot to issue credit card sized cards to students that will log their boarding and exiting the school bus. No doubt the same will hold for when they enter the school. One method discussed was to have students "swipe" the card through a reader as they boarded and exited but it was decided that this would be too time consuming, as in picking students up earlier and taking more time to drop after school, and that means paying drivers more money. So that idea was abandoned and instead what's being talked about now is the same sort of card sized "ID" and a reader installed at the main entry door. Of course, this is all being done with student safety the paramount reason. That, of course, is BS. Rather, I think, it's to condition the nexst generation to being constantly surveilled. Welcome to the land of the free and home of the brave. The star spangled curtain draws ever tighter.