Small minds

[Chuck(G)]

Please take a read of this newspaper story:

http://www.berksmontnews.com/site/news. ... 2980&rfi=6

If I'd been charged with a felony for misusing computers back in my college days, I'd be pulling 25-to-life right now.

It sounds like there are two things at work here--the first being some IT knucklehead who can't design a secure content filter and the very small minds of school administrators who think the kids who circumvented the filter should be branded as felons.

Idiots. There is something called intellectual curiosity that now seems to be a threat to Homeland Security or some such thing.

[Lew]

I used to live in Kutztown and I'm not surprised. It is one of the most backwards and radically conservative places in which I've lived. This is what happens when government, at any level, tries to control what people can see. How can it be computer trespass to access a computer that was assigned to you? This is clearly government run amok, but is typical of the right wing, conservative attitude taking over this country that believes that we need to control what people see and do. Big brother is watching!

[Chuck(G)]

Joe, to my ears, you're spouting a bunch of non-sequiturs.

In the world we live in, people with connections, money and privledge often command a blind eye by the law, no matter what their polititcal bent.

Or haven't you ever read "Blood and Money" (it's about a Houston tuba player)?

[Chuck(G)]

Doc, we could talk about "idiot madmen" in political power for ages, but then we'll be into politics and that'll kill the thread.

Go and read the aritcle. Some high-school kids discovered the administrative password for the school-provided notebooks and loosened the browsing restrictions. For that, they're being charged with a class C felony of "computer trespass", which will dog them for the rest of their lives. These are freshmen, sophomores and a couple of juniors.

You may argue that "if they wanted to do that, they could just buy their own computers'. Except that the district prohibits that:

http://www.kasd.org/web121/faq.html

Why didn't the IT director anticipate that some students would try to guess the password? Why should he (or anyone in the school admin) be surprised that children would attempt to do so? According to the usage policy, any kid could've simply tossed the notebook into the trash and paid $67.12 deductible for a replacement.

How about a nice 23-character password with letters, numbers and special characters? And some security that ensures that the password won't be leaked. How about two or three interlocking passwords. Or is the IT manager such an idiot that he hadn't thought of that?

My assessment of "small minds" stands. Education is about encouraging curiosity, not stifling it.

[Chuck(G)]

Joe, to my ears, you're spouting a bunch of non-sequiturs.

Yes Chuck. I'm pretty sure I know what "tunes" play in your head along with whatever else might hit your ears. My point is that justice and politics (are these not 100% intertwined?) are an impressive collection of non-sequitors, and folks usually only notice the non-sequitors that aren't "in the same key" are their own favorite "tunes".

Refraining from ad hominem attacks, Joe, let's review the facts of the case:

1. Kids in a high school are issued shiny new Apple notebooks that have been configured with access-limiting and web filtering software. They are prohibited from providing their own notebooks for class work.

2. Somehow, the administrative password leaks out or has been cracked. I suspect the former, but have no way of knowing.

3. Some of the kids use the password to lift the filtering software and perhaps use (it's not clear from the story) the systems for browsing proscribed web content. No school servers are compromised. In any case, this is clearly counter to the terms of use and the students may expect to be "disciplined" (the term from the FAQ) for their transgression.

4. The school discovers the security breach and waits until the end of the school year before charging the students with a class C felony, even though no permanent harm has been done.

Now how do you, as a logical consequence, bring in Massachusetts senators, backwater conservatives (your term for them), public television, and an old Mississippi murder? Hell, you might as well throw in Vince Foster and cold fusion.

[Mark]

Some high-school kids discovered the administrative password for the school-provided notebooks and loosened the browsing restrictions. For that, they're being charged with a class C felony of "computer trespass"...

Why didn't the IT director anticipate that some students would try to guess the password? Why should he (or anyone in the school admin) be surprised that children would attempt to do so?

If these same kids had decided to walk into my house uninvited, it would not matter if I had locked the door or not. They would be guilty of breaking and entering.

[windshieldbug]

If I'd been charged with a felony for misusing computers back in my college days, I'd be pulling 25-to-life right now.

Well, perhaps not if you went to school in Mississippi or Massachusetts!

I'm not that aged, but if I tried that in college, I think they would have noticed me backing up the truck to the loading dock to try to get the teletypes and "notebook" processors...

[Chuck(G)]

...and a student could be arrested for vandalism and thrown in the clink for touching a freshly-panted bench with a "wet paint" sign on it. Or arrested for creating a public disturbance for wearing a questionable T-shirt.

As in all things in life, the important thing is proportion.

You know, a seminal event in my education was my curiosity about how the univeristy's time-accounting system worked (this was a large multi-mainframe system back then--the PC wasn't even on the radar yet). By some guessing and detective work I managed to dump (on the printer) the complete list of account codes and names for the system. This was not a small university, BTW--the list was probably in excess of a thousand.

I was met by the Computer Center director when I came to pick up my output. His response? "The good news is that you figured out our accounting system; the bad news is that we can't let you have the output. We think we've closed your loophole, but do keep trying; we're learning a lot about how clever students can be." That was it. By your standards, I should have been handed a blindfold and a cigarette. Did the university have a policy against "cracking"? Probably not in writing as this was in the very early days and "time sharing" was still pretty new. But I'm sure some administrative minion couild have found something in the Univeristy's rules and regulations that might have covered it.

(BTW, I had no intention of using the information--I was simply curious. I realized that use of the information would have been theft. There's a difference between guessing someone's credit card number and using it.)

Most of the folks I worked with in the early days of computer security had similar stories to tell. In balance, I think we all did a lot more good in the world than harm.

In this case, the kids destroyed no property (although that was certainly permitted under the guidelines), did not breach security of sensitive information and harmed no one. Yet they're charged with a felony that could damage their lives.

Maybe it's my "liberal" background, but I believe that there are two aspects of handling criminal or civil offenses. (1) the punitive aspect, where the transgressor is given a punishment sufficient to dissuade him from repeating the act and (2) a compensatory aspect, where any victims are made whole to the best of human ability. To me, this constitutes justice.

In this particular case, the second aspect is nil, since no property's been harmed. For the first aspect, the punitive one, a dropping of a letter grade or detention would have been sufficient to ensure that the problem did not recur.

[Mark]

(BTW, I had no intention of using the information--I was simply curious. I realized that use of the information would have been theft. There's a difference between guessing someone's credit card number and using it.)

That was then, this is now. In almost every case where a cracker is caught these days, they use the excuse that they were only trying to show XYZ Corporation the flaws in their security system.

I'll go back to my home analogy. Kids break into your home and when caught try to get off by saying they were only trying to show you that you needed better locks. And besides, they did not damage anything in your home while they were walking from room to room looking in your drawers and closets.

For much too long, computer trespass was blown off as kids just goofing around. It is a serious crime and should always be treated as such whetehr there was any damage or not.

[windshieldbug]

I'll go back to my home analogy. Kids break into your home and when caught try to get off by saying they were only trying to show you that you needed better locks

In this case the keys were right there in plain sight. When you leave your house, I imagine you lock it and take your keys with you.

[Mark]

I'll go back to my home analogy. Kids break into your home and when caught try to get off by saying they were only trying to show you that you needed better locks

In this case the keys were right there in plain sight. When you leave your house, I imagine you lock it and take your keys with you.

Under the law, it doesn't matter. The door could be standing open -- the kids still do not have the right to enter my home. And, at their age, they know it.

[Lew]

Chuck,

If the kids violate the law or policy, there are consequences. Plus, the school only makes the report. The district attorney has to actually take the case for it to go anywhere. I agree that as soon as it was discovered, it should have been handled.

Just because kids are "intellectually curious", doesn't give them the right to break the law, violate policy, and do things that normal kids understand are not right. Harm done or not done has no bearing on right or wrong. If that was true, I could drive 100 miles an hour through your neighborhood with your kids playing in the front yard, and if no harm comes to anyone, you can't say one word about it, and I can't be penalized under the law b/c nothing bad happened. Maybe it's just because I'm "curious" to see if I can do it w/o crashing. Since curiosity is my defense, along with a "no harm" defense, I can do just about anything I want as long as I'm just "intellectually curious". Excuses, excuses...

Those laws are in place to prevent the possibility of harm coming to someone, whether it actually does or not.

Doc

I will have to wait and see what happens with this before making any final conclusions, but it seems to me that changing settings on a machine you were given, and required to use, is a little different from hacking into a server, which is what the law was written to punish. This does appear to be over zealous application of a law to an only slightly related offense.

[Tubainsauga]

Firstly, what the students did is substantially different from walking into someone's house. I would say a more accurate analogy would be if they were given a text book with a substantial number of pages glued together by the administration. Of course the students would try to open up the pages. I’d bet most of the people on this forum would. The did not really break into anything, but circumvented barriers to access the internet.

Also, just because something is illegal does not make it inherently wrong. I could cite a lot of examples and get into a length debate over this, but unless you have absolute and unwavering faith in the legal system and government, you can’t really claim that if something is illegal something is wrong.

[Mark]

Firstly, what the students did is substantially different from walking into someone's house.

No, it's not. It is the electronic equivalent of breaking and entering. It does not matter that it was on a computer that they were given. I may allow a repairman to come into my house to repair my dishwasher. If I find, that while I was not looking he went into my home office and was going through one of my file cabinets, I could and would prosecute him. He knew his actions were wrong!

Back to computers. A employee of a company has a computer that is attached to the company's network. The employee has restricted access to the network; access to areas that are needed for the employee to do her job. The employee one day either by accident or deliberately discovers the password to give her access to the company's employee database, including all the employees' medical insurance records. She accesses those records just to sastify her curiousity not to do anyone harm. 1) She knows her action is wrong. 2) The company should fire her. 3) The company may even elect to prosecute her.

What about the employees of the bank in New York that were selling customer's private data. The employees were given access to the data by the employer, but only for legimate banking purposes. The bank can clearly prosecute these employees and they should.

[Tubainsauga]

My point was not that the computer was given to them, but that they only circumvented security features to access the internet, something that is open to the public and not private. No private records or the server were accessed. They were, in effect, circumventing a form of censorship.

[Alex F]

EDIT

Sorry folks, I don't know where I got the idea this happened in VA but I copied and pasted the wrong statute. It happened in PA. Their statutes are not all on-line and what is there (on some private site) may be out of date. In any case, I could not find any reference to the Section of the PA criminal code quoted in the news article.

Hence, all my subsequent comments are irrelevant and are withdrawn.

[Chuck(G)]

Refraining from ad hominem attacks, Joe...[except referring to a post as a "spouting a bunch of non-sequiturs" ]

It appears (from your list of facts) that some kids did some stuff they weren't supposed to do. If you think the level of their crimes' punishments are over the top, just think what would have happened if those kids had made light of someone being "gay".

Joe, I stand behind my non-sequitur comment. Let's see what caused me to make that remark.

(nahn seek kwit-her) n. Latin meaning "it does not follow." Refers to a conclusion that is not logically determined from the facts or law. A common expression is "that's a non sequitur."

I'd commented on an occurrence in a Pennsylvania involving notebook computers on loan to students who had taken the liberty of disabling the web filtering software on them. The students were being charged with a class C felony by the school administration. I thought that not only seemed excessive, but that the administration could have taken better care of security.

In rebuttal, you responded:

kinda like the concept of "public television" (both in theory and practice).

Yeah, aren't those backwater conservatives (a bunch of stupid, blue-collar idiots who know no better than to go out, work, and pay taxes to build state universities for the "real" people) are a bunch of knuckleheads? How 'bout this one?

A town deep in Mississippi takes forty years to convict some (now 80) year-old man of conspiracy to commit murder...yet they still can't quite manage to do so and only finally manage to convict him on three counts of manslaughter...

...and (in contrast) in enlightened "progressive" Massachusetts, there's another pitiful old man who actually did - undoubtedly - commit manslaughter 40 years ago, and - not only did they never indict him, but - they decided to make him a U.S. Senator-for-life !

How do any of these things answer the facts of situation under discussion, or answer my conclusions in any remotely logical way? What I read was the following:

• * You don't like public television.
  * conservatives spend their tax money to build universities.
  * an ex-KKK leader in Mississippi finally got what was coming to him, even though it fell short of what you thought he should've gotten.
  * Ted Kennedy is a scumbucket who should've done hard time for his Chappaquiddick escapade. Inexplicably, he's reelected to the Senate term after term.

To which, I'd respond:

• * I'm sort of lukewarm on public TV myself, but I do enjoy Nova and Frontline when I run into them. The Lawrence Welk and Andy Roo stuff as well as the Jim Lehrer "newshour' and Charlie Rose leave me cold. All in all, I could do without it.
  * Liberals also spend money to build universities. In fact, the "liberal" states (whatever that means) seem to have the larger share of top-notch schools.
  * I hope the Mississippi trial gave some sense of closure to the victims' families.
  * Ted Kennedy is in fact a scumbucket who should've done time for what he did. He was quite a thinker before Chappaquiddick, his 1969 China Policy paper was right on the money. But in general, I don't care for the man.

But your points still don't address in any meaningful "if A and B then C" manner the central point of my original post. Your points "do not follow" from it. All I get is that yoiu're peeved about the state of affairs in the world.

Join the crowd.

[ThomasDodd]

One more example where kids being kids is punished far wore than real criminals.

One of the reasons computers are where they are today is that kids and 20-somethings played and experimented with them. Now you can go to jail for trying to figure out the system. Heaven for bid you learn to use a dissassembler abnd look at some one elses code.

Lets continue to stifle curiousity and inventivenes. Just let the rest opf the world figure out that stuff.

Of course if one of those kids hadgiven another an asprin at school, they'd be jailed on drug charges. And if they had kissed their girl in the hall, they be in jail for sexual asualt.

[MaryAnn]

I'll give you a local recent example of "politics as usual" the reminds me of the TK incident.

Couple years ago, Tucson installed some new crosswalk signs, that lit up red and said something like "stop for pedestrian in crosswalk" when someone pushed the button. Now, a 16 year old girl pushed the button, waited for the car in the right hand lane to stop, and started riding her bike across the crosswalk. The sheriff's wife was coming along at a reaonsable rate of speed in the left lane, saw the new lit-up sign and squinted at it trying to figure out what it was saying. She hit the girl on the bicycle at full speed and killed her.

What happened? Nothing. The sheriff's wife was not even charged; the girl on bicycle was "not a pedestrian" and therefore no law was broken.
If it had been the converse....sheriff's wife on bike, 16 year old driving car, can you imagine the same outcome?

MA, who figures that family will never see any closure

[TMurphy]

Ok....the kids did wrong. They deserve to be punished...suspension from school, plus whatever the parents choose to dish out should be sufficient. But, come on, let's be realistic...a felony conviction?? Yeah, it was stupid. They circumvented a web filter they weren't supposed to. But, they're kids. Kids screw up, and make mistakes. Yes, they should pay consequences for them, but ask yourself...should these kids pay such a severe consequence, that it will follow them for their entire lives?? Potential future careers, college acceptance, everything can be ruined by having a felony on your record. does what these kids did really merit that??

I can understand if the school is going through the motions to scare the kids, so they (and others) don't do something like this again. But to actually go through with this would be absurd, and a waste of taxpayers time and money.

And before Doc starts--yes, I know it's the law. But it is still up to the school to decide if they want to press charges, right??? If one of your kids figured out your password, and used it to get around web filtering on your computer (which you allow them limited access to), I'm sure you'd appropriately punish him/her. But would you have them charged with a felony???