"Big Brother"

If little Johnny gets framed it's going be due to his allowing access to his system. When you're issued a system and an ip it's like your being issued a car. If you allow that car to be stolen or used in a robbery you're going to be liable for that misuse of the vehicle. This is the same principle. The punishment isn't years in jail it's restricting little Johnny from going out on the net without a nanny for a few months. I would suggest that is part of the learning process that when you enable to somebody to break the rules you're going to be punished as well.

"wheather you do agree with me or not that certain tasks given by tutors can make the student go cross a line/law/school rule."

I agree that it does happen, not that it should.

I'm all for privacy, but not at the risk of someone elses security, reasonably of course.

It is well know that a lot of viruses, Trojans, spyware, etc. come from adult sites (X) and exchanges of programs, data, etc. via IM programs. If the computer is on the schools network (and the equipment is not a loan, just as the teachers salaries are not a loan)then the whole network could be at risk if infected.

ALso remember that a teacher is a paid employee and therefore must follow 'company' policy. Also, kids are not adults. They are restricted from doing a lot of things (voting, drinking, etc.). If an adult wants to go to an adult website, they can, as long as its on their time and their computer.

"The tools aren't perfect but you work with what you have and save the lives and minds of those you can find. That is reality."

So many people on this thread are "sensationalizing" by talking how we can catch Johnny doing this or that or save a life by using a keystroke monitor. Please advise me, how do you find Johnny's specific e-mail in the context of millions of keystrokes , thousands of e-mails? How long does it take ?

Keyword - Work

You work for a school. Tell me where it says your work requires you to log on to an adult site. Tell me where it says pornography SHALL be brought ito the school.

Secondly it has been proven the porno sites are riddled with criminal types that infest them with virus and other privacy and commerce interupting programs. Show me where your employers says they want this in their system. Talk to your own IT person. Do you want students to know what your doing? How do you tell them no when your saying yes? Your private time and space is yours and none of that is at your employers.

Are you even in the IT feild. On a network all the computers are connected together. like all the printers. This "filter" is on the network it monitor the network by itself. reports are ran via printer and there you go you can see the log in of a person that violates the parameters that are set up with in the "filter". Last I checked we did not pay anybody to monitor anything.
"keystroke loging is just silly"
The only time a person is flagged is if they use offensive language or visits an offensive web site.
also when you block a web site there are these thingys called PROXY servers that allow people to go aroung the "filter" to get to the web site that they desire to visit.

The teaching staff needs to worry about teaching not what web site they would like to visit.

This is the age of the dominator, the essence of hunanity that is responsible for untold human suffering.

We live in the age of the tyrant, as only a tyrant would fail at both teaching right and wrong, and then attempt to disguise their personal failure through brute domination of their own progeny.

Why pretend to be other than a tyrant? You teach tyranny, not correct behavior.

"This guy is a tech support so I assume he is an adult and in a college or university of some kind."

Since he specifically mentions "underage youth" in his post, I would assume a public school.

I live in a rural area and all of the public school districts in this area (7 in the county) have at least minimal IT tech support staff.

"Academia is the crucible of newness. It is a special place that must have special freedoms, especially to explore."

The world is where you explore. School (talking about primary and secondary)is where you learn how. You are there because you are not yet ready for real exploration. It should be a protected environment.

They'd have a hard time convicting me for tresspassing on public property. Just because law enforcment is behind them doesn't make them right, and even if they did somehow convict, they'd still be wrong!

Anything obtained with "someone else's money" should be expected to come with "someone else's strings" attached :)

Many people don't understand what free speech is for, or what it protects.

Most of us raised here consider it a precious right, and not one to be truncated by either state or private action. The First Amendment stands different from, for instance, the Fourth Amendment right to be free of unlawful searches, which CAN be "infringed" by private persons in certain circumstances with relative impunity, whereas the State is not permitted to do so.

Free Speech is what we fought for in WWII. It is what we fought for in 1776. It is one of the most important rights we own, and a school has no right to infringe on it, without some competing interest which "trumps" free speech.

There are very few interests that do, and they usually amount to "Fire!" in a crowded theater and the like.

The 14 year old girl is in the care and custody of a school which stands in stead of her parents (in loco parentis).

We are talking about a college. There is no such doctrine to protect the students there, since they are pretty uniformly over eighteen.

And you're right, that the school has an interest, but it is an EXTREMELY circumscribed one. And absolutely nothing in the post that started this thread militates to show that that interest is going to prevail.

"A good analogy is private use of the telephone -- many of us think nothing of using the office phone to make a doctor's appointment or to get a call from our kid's school nurse."

That is a technical issue. It would be prohibitively expensive for a company to 'prevent' an employee from making a personal phone call, but they have every right to discipline the employee for doing so.

"In contrast, government entities such as public schools must be extremely careful when restricting"...

Not on school owned computers. I elected my school board to manage what my child learns. They had better do it, or I will replace them.

..." adults and near-adults."

You either are an adult or not.

"We must also always remember that some HS students are adults -- they're either 18 or legally emancipated."

Differs by state. In Ohio the parents are required to support a child until he is "19 or until graduation from high school, whichever occurs earlier".

Like it or not, the community, through their elected school board, state what they want taught in their school. If an "adult" student doesn't like the restrictions, he is free to not attend that school.

"Way, way, WAY too much time and effort are being put into entraping, finding and creating whole new classes of sexual criminals."

...if it was your 12 year old daughter that some perv talked into meeting him, whereupon he raped and killed her, you'd feel differently. Granted, the parents should be monitoring their children so that this doesn't happen, but their failure doesn't justify the perv's actions.

" (Well, in the US, Canada and Great Britain anyway ... other countries don't seem to have this problem.)"

Perhaps in those other countries, it is perfectly acceptable to have sex with 12-year-olds. Here it's not.

If a married couple pay taxes and people with children recieve earned income credit on taxes, Who is paying to condition who's children?
Get your hand out of my pocket and don't blame me for the actions of others. I've ben punched in the face enough.
If I'm done with my job,I improve my surroundings, I don't brag about how easy things are, I complain about how inadequate my methods are. I don't look to someone for answers that are staring me in the face.
aren't the schools in poor maintenace, TELL THIS FOOL TO GET OFF HIS ASS AND FIX SOMETHING.

"If the girl is showing an acre of belly, hip-huggers down the THERE and so on, she pretty much has figured out how to attract the attention she wants. Same with the guys showing off butt-crack and wearing a too-tight tank top to attract other guys."

More likely they dress that way because their peers dress that way.

my rights no more depend on the laws and constitution of a particular country than iraqi rights depended on saddam hussein's constitution. elites create laws and structures to benefit themselves and use ideology to get people to accept things as they are. nobody would be willing to fight and die for corporate profit or dick cheney, that's why it's called "freedom" and "democracy" (respectively).

the nature and scope of rights is the subject of debate, but rights inhere in each of us by virtue of the fact that we're human beings.

welcome to reality. i don't want my kids not to swear or be exposed to sex. i want them to do it intelligently and when it's natural and when they're ready--not when the school is ready or i'm ready. and i sincerely hope to have taught them well enough to make good decisions and to swear at the right people, just as i hope that each day they benefit themselves and society by bringing good into the world.

i strongly expect my kids to be protected from predation, but not to have their keystrokes logged every time they type fcuk or p0t or whatever into instant messager. that's called spying. if my kid's keystrokes were being spied upon, i would do everything practical to stop it, while encouraging them to apply creativity and brainpower in figuring out how to circumvent, stop, or protest it themselves. i'm not raising sheep here. rather, i want to raise intelligent, critical, and active social and moral agents.

it's the school's business to educate and protect but not spy or limit a child's use of language in private conversation. there's even a limit as to how much it's *my* business. i don't care that other parents want their kids to not be exposed to sex or profanity until they're 40. that's not *my* morality, that's yours, so keep it in your church and your trailer where it belongs and be prepared to use that college fund on therapy instead.

block p0rn and whatever else you want at the firewall and bring my kid's other actions or violations to my attention so i can deal with it myself.

as for keeping files like mp3s on school HDDs, i would hope that educators realize that a good way to encourage kids to learn about technology is through some of the ways it can be used for fun. at the company i work for people make part of their living my ensuring the supply of streaming media (yes, even p0rn). on the other hand, a really superb and nearly foolproof way to discourage kids from learning is through the use of unnecessarily restrictive policy.

all right, call me a shocking moral relativist godless communist sex-crazed libertarian hippy now. i'm waiting. don't call social services, though, since i don't actually have any kids yet. but when i do, they'll be little hackers. white hat, i hope.

(wow, my first post to techrepublic)

"Public and Private instutions have rights to setup and enforce rules on how their equipment is used."

They do? Because of what? Certainly, a private institution has more rights than a public one, but even those are narrow. If they don't want free speech, they should take the computers away. But here in the good ol' USA, we have free speech, and it should not be trammeled by fear. Only by real, identifiable threats.

that the pan on the stove is hot is [b]not[/b] by burning them!

swwg69 is completely correct. Why isn't anyone complaining because their kids cannot check playboy out from the school library? Answer, because NOBODY expects that playboy would be available in the school library. If I have to explain that expectation to you, forget it ... you're beyond hope.

Remember when you were in school and we didn't have a PC on every desk. Were you allowed to pass notes (profane or not)? No. If you were caught, the note might be read to the whole class and IF the note was inappropriate according to the teacher's standards, you could plan on detention, a visit to the office, Mom and Dad being called, etc.

Nothing has changed. We have just started applying the same rules to cybermedia. And remember, unlike the note you could not pass in class or the Playboy you could not bring into school -- both of which you owned -- the school owns the PCs and, by virtue of ownership, has the right to tell you what you can and cannot do with the PC.

So all the Big Brother conspiracy folks hitting on this one, get over it. This isn't Big Brother watching what you do walking down the street, this is a school protecting their investments. Wouldn't you do the same?

Two things. Thanks for pointing out to the many that this is a republic. I tire of people calling this a democracy. Revisit your Pledge of Allegence people ... "and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands" not "and to the democracy for which it stands." Nuff said.

Now, the protection goes beyond what joe-horr stated. Highly graphic web sites (what's the point of a NON-highly graphic pornography site?!?) use large amounts of bandwidth and tend to be those with the most worms/viruses/spyware/malware that gets pumped onto the PC.

This means that by barring access to such sites, the school is protecting the bandwidth so that it may be used for its intended purpose -- education. Also, by barring these sites, the school is taking a step toward keeping the PC operational so that the next student -- the one that was NOT viewing porn -- can use the PC as a tool for learning.

This is not simply an individual rights issue because NOTHING in a school, and I do mean absolutely NOTHING, effects only one person. Your rights stop at your nose. You don't have the right to crap-up the computer I'll be using in my next class. The school is protecting my right to a working PC and good bandwidth when they deny you the right to do whatever you want on that PC.

Those who make the personal freedom argument, why not take your argument a step farther. Why don't we allow the student's the right to format the schools PC hard disk drive? After all, stopping them from such action is denying them a right, isn't it? This idea is no more ridiculous than saying that a student should be allowed to view porn at school on a school PC because of freedom of choice. View porn or format the HDD, both are a choice, both could be protected by rights, and both are blocked in order to protect the rights of EVERYONE else.

Imagine if legend had said "to not eat your own waste".?
road apple was the translation

So what happens when they record the password to your bank account or to your private e-mail accounts? The school needs to use websense, not keystroke recorders to block access to inappropriate sites.

rad

Your original post makes it sound like the key stroke software is being used to make sure kids don't go to pornographic sites. Why not use web filtering technology for that instead, at least for that purpose? We use it at my office and it blocks access to porn, "offensive" sites, etc. Whatever we set it for.

I've read several posts fuming about how this denys the students their right to choose, freedom of expression, etc. Most of the "rights" discussion centers on the student's rights.

Okay, this is a rights issue. But, in terms of rights, the only rights question is why some people believe that the school that owns the computers, should not have the right to decide how the computers are to be used. Want to talk rights? Okay, but focus on who REALLY owns the rights associated with the computers. It isn't the students.

Keylogging is totally unneccessary, invasive, contraversial and confrontational. over 10 years ago I helped install a gateway that included software to block ports and web sites whilst monitoring all web traffic and note who accessed what web sites. This type of arrangement it standard in any decent corporate gateway. It also makes keylogging totally irrelevant and unnecessary.

Another way to manage this is to have the main school network NOT connected to the Internet and restrict that to a few machines in a supervised location.

School computer usage is not the same as corporate as many teachers now require assignments to include some research done via the Internet and most require them to be prepared on a computer. This makes the use of computers at school more mandatory than a privilege. Here in Australia we have less computers in schools than in the USA, yet I have seen students' assignments down graded with comments about insufficient research as "more was available on the Internet, see the list of recommended web sites supplied with the assignment outline" and an assignment refused as it was hand written. In the first case the students had no home Internet access and the second the student did not have a home computer at all - restricted access at school meant that they were being academically punished for be poor.

If they own the computer and it is for a particular use then should it not be their right to restrict from anyone the sites that are not part of their Scholastic?

As a Citizen of the United States by birth I believe that the right to free speech is a fundamental concept, a cornerstone to the concept that is our democracy.
However it is not now nor has it ever been a "right" of free speech to spend a school's (or any other entity) resources on the kind of personal activity that is being discussed here UNLESS THE SCHOOL ALLOWS IT.
While considering the ramifications of the "slippery slope" you might also consider the fact that the underpinning of our democratic society happens to be it's capitalistic economy. Free enterprise folks, that means that a business - any business (and certainly a school is) has a complete right to control it's assets in any way it sees fit. There's plenty of case law to back that one up. I don't think there's any "BIG BROTHER HERE".
I do think we'd better keep an eye on "homeland security", congress, and the other branches of government that seem bent on REALLY impungning our rights.

I can,t believe that you are so deprived of moral fortitude that you would post such garbage on the internet.
Since when did rights become more important than the people they protect.
In addition to your spelling I think you need a better eductation.

I agree with the general principles that you mnetion in your post, but would like to suggest that the 'tool' of ICT means that there are going to be fundamental changes in the way skills and knowledge are going to be delivered and taken up. Sure, we should put some parameters in place, but it is worth remembering that this tool will also allow for some really new ways for teachers and students to interact, so we need to provide some filters, witout being overly restrictive.
It's about education and helping people make appropriate choices.
Surely that's what education is about. If we encourage facilitated inquistion of knowledge then we can help the students make positive choices. The societal norms should be applied in the types of filters that are put in place, without being overly religious, morally righteous or cultural/racialy exclusive; we live in the developed democratic world and our education systems should reflect that.

I think I agree with it but only if the users, and this is in any case, not only for schools, if they are informed before using the systems, that a system is in place to monitor the internet behavior of the users. Because, imagine if somebody checks his bank account and later detects a bank fraud, who would be the most suspicious person ? YOU ! because you captured his passwords with your keylogger. I'm living in Belgium, and I'm sure you would go to jail by doing this whitout informing the users, even if they are kids.

THINK!!!! The next generation will already have it bad enough from drugs, gangs, etc. What we teach,or allow, our children when they are young, there is a great possibliity that the evil
thay see will stay with them into adulthood. Porno movies can help warp a mind into what it sees; as abuse is ok; depending on the movie; killing is also ok; and I could rant on but won't. As I have said before, IF it helps the security of my country(USA) and it's citizens, which include my family. Let :Big Brother" monitor what I do on the internet, even monitor my phone. A "Black Hacker" is probably monitoring it anyway!! I have nothing to hide from the government, but I wish harsher penalties were placed on "Black Hackers" when they are caught regardless of the nation they are caught. WEll that's that!!

You might as well get them use to it. In the corporate world you know that management is watching, and visiting and unauthorized or unapproved website could cost you your job.

I'm in a similar position to you as an IT Manager in a school. Remember their is a "Duty of Care" to protect the students from this sort of stuff. And as far as the teaching staff are concerned, it is a corporate network after all and they don't get a say in what is allowed or not allowed on the network. Surfing through porn is a sackable offence where we are in Australia here.

This is not about freedom of speech and never has been.
This about the protection of the schools network and ensuring that the students and teachers utilise the resources available in the correct manner.
You seem to forget, that, at the end of the day the school has a DUTY of CARE to the students and the parents of the students and they are fulfilling that responsibility by ensuring that students only access content for learning.
I also administer an educational network and while typing this I am processing my proxy logs and looking at which students have not been using the resource for the intended purpose which is learning related.
Oh me OH my here is a student who has managed a gig of traffic from my network to the Internet via megaupload.com, BLOODY HELL now my department has to wear the cost of that!.
Well well well look at that this student who is meant to be doing research on monitoring products is hanging out on Anime sites.
Not on my watch!
And to hell with their rights, on my network they have the rights and priviledges that I give them in accordance with institutional guidelines for learning and if I have to monitor what they attempt to view and what they view, so I can build a better filter list to ensure that learing is not disrupted because a student wants to upload warez or look at p0rn then that is what will happen.
Free speech does not come into it.

Cheers

Fellow Geeks,
I've installed a wide variety of this sort of thing at both the host and gateway levels. It occurs to me that if thought was given to this, that the host level would have been ruled out. It's way more expensive to implement and, from my experience, more likely to cause issues with trust and resentment.
In the corporate world, companies own the machines and networks. This means they -can- monitor keystrokes, block at the gateway level, station a spook standing behind you, etc etc should they want to and be able to afford it.
What generally happens when companies get too invasive is that higher ups get a sense of security, thinking they control everything. What also happens simultaneously without exception is that people that aren't just standard drones (read: the organizational talent) starts heading for the exits. Why is this, you ask? Let's explore, shall we?
The first thing that generally happens is that unqualified HR dinks want access to the controls. Following this, they start hammering on people or harassing employees because their magic box told them something happened. Because they don't get the tech end, they assume all false positives are the real deal. This causes major embarrassment and hassles to people that did -nothing-, even if they are cleared later. Getting back a good name after a person has been smeared by authority is virtually impossible.
Technology isn't a panacea, folks. It's fallible, you're handing it to morons that think it's PFM (Pure Fucking Magic), and they are dicking with people's lives. Just because a kid is 14 doesn't mean the damage is any less severe.
Before you go and deploy something, think first.
And if your boss wants a magic box, make sure and put in the costs about 100K/year for a security guy to admin it. Otherwise you desktop sorts are doing the general public a great disservice.

On the philosophical level:
Yes, you just became Big Brother. Read 1984 and contemplate sometime. Tyranny is incremental. If you grow up with it, you're less likely to rise up against it. It's too late for society as a whole. We've already given away the controls to tyrants. All -you- can do as techs is on a local level. Think before you do anything that later you'll wish you hadn't.

-----------------------------------------------

As a footnote, the sorting on many of these magic boxes drops people into some pretty nifty categories, like: porn, gambling, violence, mental issues, and religion. There are many others, but I want you to consider that most of you would get dropped into it at some point. at that point in time, your fate is dealt with by whatever HR type retread that has machine access. Is your religion the right one?

Cheers,
K

I as part of a team of 4 also manage an educational LAN and monitor all web activity with a proxy server, however I do not use a keystroke logger, yet.
I can understand why this may have been implemented at this school however.

I have noticed that a lot of the kids that come into my network are a lot more tech savvy in a script kiddie way which is truly worrying, they also like to use net send as a means to chat with each other during classes which is unacceptable.

Now we do not want to disable the messenger service as too many other things depend on it so we can manage my network and associated services.

Students are now cottoning on to HTTP tunneling software to bypass proxies and firewalls over port 80 which is also a major concern as this basically renders all security between the red and green zone null.

It was only last week as I was going through the logs which I do daily, that I noticed a couple of new sites show up megaupload.com and some other that allowed one gig attachments to an email.
Then i noticed that the student who had accessed it had sent, not downloaded but sent from my network over a gig of data in a six hour period in small blocks, trying to hide his actions I think.

So now we have a filter in place to block all upload type sites.
The result is my institute has to PAY for that data transfer over the link and that cost gets passed on to my section.
The implementation of the proxy is to reduce costs and ensure that we meet our duty of care to the students and ensure that they access content that is directly related to purpose "LEARNING".
As well as the needs of the business.

We dont need to key log as we also have Master Eye installed on all our desktops so that I and other teachers can monitor in real time what students are doing with their systems.

Invasion of privacy? I dont think so, network security and ensuring delivery of learning is taking place and that the parents money is well spent? yes.
Suppression of students rights? no! its our network and our institute rules and the rights and priviledges given by those rules are what they have when using OUR resources and what we give we can take away.

We do not want a visit from the BSAA wanting to audit and finding Warez stashed on my servers or being downloaded over my link.
Because then we are responsible for that and we are not taking a fall for anyone's actions but my own.

So those of you who are on them, get off your "RIGHTS" and "FREE SPEECH" soap boxes especially if you are a network administrator or security operator, you are supposed to be IT professionals, your job is to ensure that policy is met and enforced and if this means monitoring then so be it.

If you cant accept that then look for another job, not that we would want someone on our staff who felt that proxying was an infringement of the employees rights because that makes you a risk to our business.

It is accepted in todays society to legislate to protect people from themselves. It is becoming a too "protected society' in some ways and a big business. This has come about in a cultural & attitude shift as a result of the big push for the individual to have rights above all else. On the other side the rest of us have to be protected from the individual.
In the old days of "book learning" the control was in the hands of the teachers & librarian. They filtered all available materal. This control has been taken away with the internet and they are faced with the realisation that they have to "teach self control" to those that do not want to be controlled as they believe they have inate rights to do what they want - they are very wrong and need to be educated to understand the ramifications of their attitudes.
The use of monotoring tools to show them what behaviour modification they need is nessary in todays world of abticated parenting attitudes.
The education system is getting bogged down trying to do the parental & social work of a large group of todays breaders - who are not parents in the real sense of the job. How we deal with this is an ever changing challenge that no one wants to own.
So each educational place has to undertake what they see is best suited for their social environment and avialable resources to deal with issue as best as they can.

Who are we to be critical of thier efforts - are we prepared to do it for them - No
So we should be supportive and provide a range of solutions that are free and work in these situations

I'm not advocating porn in schools as a right, but I do think that blocking inappropiate sites is more than sufficient. Monitoring key strokes is an unreasonable intrusion on anyones privacy, including teenagers, and especially on teachers.

What most people under 60 in the US do not understand is that when you are using the equipment in a place of business, and a scholl is a place of business, you are not free to exercize all of the constitutional rights everyone fought for. The OWNER of the equipment gets to set some rules, not to limit your right to free speech but to limit your right of use of their equipment and bandwidth. Even John Kerry and Ted Kennedy probably understand this.

I'm all for filtering programs and email monitoring at schools because things that we wouldn't allow to happen at school outside a computer we shouldn't allow to happen on the computer.
My only concern is a keystroke recorder. It is very easy to steal passwords with applications like that and who is to say some one won't do that.

Aslong as ONE party is aware of the recording it is legal. This just ensures that a third party cannot secretly record a conversation. I have watched that law enforced quite a few times.

I think the School has it right in principle, however the way the are monitoring Key strokes is nothing short of invasion of privacy.

Any X rated site should just not be accessible ? Every school, not just this one, should employ content filtering to both students and staff.

Before you start yelling at me, I dont think of ANY organization spends a great deal of money in providing the infrastructure, management and expansion so that people can view X rated sites OR have any type of access to chat rooms.

Just because we have the technology and the information that the Internet brings does not mean any school student and I would extend this to Business should have unrestricted access to it.

Where does anyone get it in their mind that unrestricted access to the Internet is essential or even an assumed right in a school or even a Corporate world.

I am certain those parents paying school fees for their children to be educated and those companies who are paying staff hourly to sit in chat rooms would have the same view.

We have been educating and conducting business since time began ? without the Internet. Now we certainly can learn a lot from the vast quantity of information to the students desk or in business communications,sales and advertising sharply more productive.

The way to keep it safe is NOT to monitor keystrokes, - that IS Big Brother.

Its not very difficult to employ very efficient content filtering and/OR restrict access. You can even install programs that have bad words dictionaries.

Quality of life, and the world as we know it is NOT going to grind to a halt if the Internet falls over.

What is ambiguous about "underage youth"?

.....or lack therof? I pay taxes for my children to receive an education. I do not pay taxes for someone to collect keystrokes, especially when said keystrokes may contain passwords, account numbers, or email addresses that are no one's business. I also do not pay taxes for some self-professed "authority" to determine culpability for a real-or-imagined "offense" based on out-of-context "analysis" of said keystrokes.
Yes, the objectionable sites should be blocked; use a white list to limit the amount of maintenance required.
"Big Brother is watching?" is Room 101 big enough to hold everyone?

If little Johnny is careless enough to give his password out to his freinds, then HE is STILL responsable for the outcome, the same as *I* would be accountable for MY giving out of passwords to the admin account.. Responsibility is the key, most kids are not capable of policeing themselves, if they were the filtering companies would not exist. Another thing, is when you know who the kids are, you know the ones to watch.

than entrapment it does not prevent the process and only allows for a witch hunt later. Those realy up to something bad are more likely to rely on face to face communications anyway.

No school environment that I know of needs a chat service - thus the chating is closed by closing thsoe ports. Any decent email server has a scanner that can check for content as well as virus scanning. And inappropriate web sites are very easily blocked and web usage monitored at the gateway. Thus using less time and trouble than a keystroke logger.

A well built gateway does the job much more effectively and much cheaper than any key logger system. The reality check is that the only people interested in key logging are control freaks - almost forgot key logging is also a major security no no as it allows anyone with access to the log file to get IDs and passwords.

for anyone with one gram of computer savvy. The ID and password are stored in the logger file and can be extracted. Then used to seem to be someone else.

Keystroke logging is one of the biggest security no-nos in existence.

The moment you load such a program you are absolving anyone from responsibility for any use made of their ID and password as you have just breached the security and confidentiality of that information.

Using your car example you can not hold me responsible for the misuse of my car if you give me one with a starter button and no key or it has the same key as all the others in the fleet.

In many states calls can be recorded as long as ONE person is aware of the recording; two-party notification states require an intermittent beep on the line.

Most key stroke loggers block nothing, they just allow some one to examine what you typed at a LATER date, after the fact - good for a witch hunt.

Properly established gateways with web management software will block porn etc and stop this inappropriate use and downloading.

BTW I did not advocate that it was OK to watch pron or chat on a school network.

You state that parents can complain until things are changed - that assumes that enough of them know enough to understand the issue and methods used, and that the beaurocracy is open enough to change later.

Many schools and corporations have been managing this successfully with properly set up gateways for over a decade, why can this school not manage it that way. There is only two reasons I can think of for using a key logger over a gateway solution.

1. The person in charge is a control freak, and all that goes with that. Emphasis on the freak.

2. The tech staff do NOT know enough to properly construct and secure a gateway but do know how to load a key logger program

NB Key logging violates the user ID and password security so you can no longer hold them accountable for the mis use of IDs and passwords. Secondly if the keylogger is the only method you use how do you deal with people who plug a personal laptop into the network? You can not load your key logger onto that so they go straight past your poor security.

I didn't have time to be so elaborate & complete today until I went home from work.

rshanberg: "We give up the "freedom" to take matters into our own hands in exchange for the protection from someone else doing the same."

The single attribute common to absolutely every government is the claim of a monopoly on the legal use of [?????] (*).

The only question that a citizen may help decide, and only to the extent that he and/or she is fortunate enough to live in a democratic state, is, "According to what criterion should that monopoly be exercised?"

If you claim that there should be criteria, not a single criterion, I disagree. The only crime I acknowledge as a crime (or the only "sin" if you prefer that word) is [b]coercion[/b].

*Every government claims a monopoly on the legal use of [b]coercion[/b].

I know lots of teachers and most are not allowed to leave the school yards during their lunch break. Those that are usually have to go through some large hoops to do so, getting permission and telling people when leaving and when you got back - real hassle.

Also most employments have Internet use policies that allow staff to do basic surfing and personal business during their own time - thus Internet banking at lunch under such policies is OK.

The rest of the arguement I will leave alone as I see it as irrelevant to the main topic.

That is not always a feasible option at school - some school subjects it is required that you use the school computers, you have no choice. If your tech skills are so bad that you can not set up proper security at the gateway and resort to using a keystroke logger you are no longer in a position to come down on anyone about anything as you have just breached their ID and password security.

Blocking inappropriate websites etc has been done at gateways, with great success, for schools and corporations for over a decade. Why use a method that does not stop anything, it only provides infor for a witch hunt, that breaches security and ensures nothing.

I agree with appropriate monitoring and blocking, but where it is most effectively done and where it maintains security - the gateway with a web monitoring, site blocking and port closure for chat etc.

if they are using a keystroke logger, a technology that breaches security. Such logging is only ever useful after the event, it is not proactive.

A smart scholl uses the technology that has existed, and successfully used, for over a decade - gateway control and management via web monitoring and blocking software and port closures. Mind you such systems require a knowledgeable person to set them up, but can be maintained by almost anyone once established.

Keystroke logging is the sort of answer a control freak or some with no gateway building skills would suggest as a viable option.

A good gateway would block MySpace, chat rooms, IM connections, porn sites. Can even be set up to block anything that is NOT on a list of approved sites.

When I saw this article on my newsletter,I was shocked! Cause I can't imagine myself at the principle room in charge of visiting X rated site. I think no one should trace/monitor children's or adult's daily activities to just teaching to be a GOOD GUY.At some point such devices and technologies may be a part of our life and even governs want to monitor citizens at home to prevent crime,terrorism,prostitution,.... I don't mean such devices are always harmful adn bad. In case of high security,it may be helpful to detect bad activites. But the point is we don't expect to monitor all people with monitoring devices!!!

You are correct in any normal situation where the only source of the password information is little Johnny, then he is totally responsible for what is done by anyone using his password. However, the original post was about the use of a keystroke logger, and that immediately breaches the security around the password and anyone with access to that machine can get little Johnny's password. Thus the moment you install a keystroke logger you make the use of passwords redundant and you free little Johnny from any responsibility regarding the use or security of his password as you have breached its security.

No one, at the most very few, disputes the need for security or the blocking of inappropriate Internet access, or the monitoring of web site visits. What they object to is the idea of trying to manage this by keystroke logging instead of by proper software at the gateway. Gateway management stops the garbage at the perimeter, keystroke logging allows it to happen and gives you info for a witch hunt - no protection at all.

I think that the school's role of protecting the minors is to block access to content bluntly objectionable.

After that, in regard to protecting them against predators and so on, I think that monitoring is not the correct way. I think that it is way to intrusive in regard to privacy. I think that students / pupils of that age should follow an compulsory class on the dangers of today's internet and point them out that their actions could have grave consequences.

I have kids myself too, and I understand the feeling to want to protect them, but we also should teach hem to protect theirselves.

"What about the teacher who needs to do a little lunchtime online banking?"

... for thinking any organization computer can be used for personal use at any time?

Your "freedoms" do not include converting someone else's property to your own use without permission. That usually falls under the 'theft' section of your particular jurisdiction's laws.

Gee, why can't the teacher just borrow a school bus and drive to the bank?

I work in a School District and I'm directly responsible for the maintenance of the filter servers. Before I began here, I never would have imagined what went on.

We had same/similar experiences - one group of High school kids even started a resistance group with secret meetings and websites to try and share methods to circumvent the filtering. We've heard arguments from students about free speech and so forth.

The way I consider it is as follows:

Most of the problems we have are with High School students. They are the students that most extinsively use computers and are aware of the content the Internet provides. Much like your Parents(or maybe Grandparents or Great-Grandparents) with telephones, computers and cell-phones have become a social tool "necessary" for teenagers to communicate. Since High School is designed to (supposedly) prepare kids for a post-secondary educational environment, whether it be the military, college, business/trade school, or work-force, we should be doing exactly that.

What would happen to someone if he/she was caught looking at pornography at work? What would happen to someone if he/she was found to plagarize work from the Internet? What would happen to someone who rushed through a job to get back to their online poker game/chat room/MMORPG/Online Dating service?

Based on the web reports from our labs it is easy to say that almost 75-90% of the instructional time is spent by students surfing on the Internet, playing games, etc. Whether they're simply neglecting their work, or covertly playing games and minimizing the browser... it's like trying to have class at the carnival.

Aside from the aforementioned, schools are required by the Children's Internet Protection Act to have some kind of content filtering in place.

Good luck with your situation, and I will close by saying the following: I had the opportunity, thanks to the adminitration at one of the schools to sit down and speak with the "leader" of the "student resistance" about what we do and why. The student believed very firmly in the position that the group took. He had printouts from other anti-school-filtering websites which supported his position, and some well developed arguements. I explained our position, showed some network diagrams, and detailed how irresponsible behavior on the network can negatively effect other users not only at a school level, but at a district level as well. It was like a light came on for this student.

Information is the key, if your users are drawing the wrong conclusions, educate them to draw the correct ones.

"Also most employments have Internet use policies that allow staff to do basic surfing and personal business during their own time - thus Internet banking at lunch under such policies is OK."

That is by the grace of the employer. They are not obliged to allow it. Disturbing is the mentality that believes they are. Maybe school administrators will do the teachers' grocery shopping for them too, or... oh!, I know! maybe they can hire people just for that purpose! Maybe the teachers' union should strike to get that added in :)

It isn't about speech at all. It's about 2 things: whether an intity has a right to control & maintain it's own property and whether parents & educators should protect & teach children. I wonder how many of the responders here actually have children. Would you tell your 14 or 15 yr old child, "You should be home by 11, but use your own best judgement" and then do nothing when they show up at 2am. Oh, & be sure to tell them not to use drugs, but don't dare watch for behaviors that might indicate whether they do or not. Would you let your child hang out with anyone they wish without knowing anything about them - like whether it's a same aged classmate or a 50 yr old porn producer? Yes, I believe in parents & educators taking some reponsibility and setting limits for children and knowing where they are & what they while in their care do. Not only do I believe the school has a right to ristrict how school property is used, but I expect them to protect my children while they are on school property. I don't think a key stroke logger is the best way to do this, though. Firewalls can be configured to prevent access to most unsavory sites and there are other filtering programs that block access to certain types of sites across the board without spying on individuals. You know, an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.

Still, I have to wonder about a society that thinks monitoring one's own equipment is such an atrocity, & yet is is perfectly OK for the RIAA & MPAA to monitor the activities of private individuals on their own computers. They monitor what adults do on their personal & private computers that in no way belong to the RIAA & MPAA. Then they are allowed to take people to court with fragments of information gained by illegal search & seizure.

So have I got this straight now - It's ok to monitor what adults do on their on personal property, but it's not ok to have any control over children and what they do with other people's property.

I would totally be expected to be arrested for attempting to sieze public property. As far as having control over that property, I am the public and would expect my elected officials (school board, selectmen) to put the keystoke logger 'ultimate solution' to a quick and painful death with a good dose of embarrassment in favor of a less intrusive option. Of course that is based upon the assumption that my fellow public has higher that average computer and technology literacy and leans a little more to the left, both of which I pay for in blood by living where I do.

I'm also under the opinion that unless a school combines a heavy dose of by-the-book curriculum with intellectual stimulation, it's doomed to miserable failure. Being a product of a private high school, its painful to compare the public school curriculum to private school (local one is $28,000 per year, $21,000 if room and board not required). I have to shut up and entrust my son to public schooling and his peers during the day. My parental efforts are then consumed sitting on him when I come home to make sure he follows up on his homework assignments and is staying out of trouble. Meanwhile, he's got all the freedom he earns.

There is no such thing as TOTAL free speech. Get on an airplane and yell "highjack" or "bomb" and see how far you get with your free speech.

With free speech comes responsibility. Responsibility is the reason we don't use swear words or display pornography around young children.

By the same token, businesses have a right to protect their systems and limit free speech. If a business allowed kiddie porn at their work site, for example, they become liable for consequences. If a school allows the certain activities, they become liable.

Think about it for a minute. If your daughter was assaulted by a person they met on myspace you would begin to ask how they began using myspace and it would eventually lead to the school and individual teachers who allowed the activities. Who do you think would be the first to be sued in court? I've been a teacher so I know the answer to that one.

It's just not worth the risk.

Ok...a lot of people are talking about the blocking of these sites as violating free speech. It is not. VIEWING things posted on the web is NOT SPEAKING. Or publishing or posting etc.

If the school was preventing kids from POSTING things out on the web, THAT would be curtailing free speech.

And even that would not be curtailing free speech because the students are MINORS! Minors have little to no rights when it comes to free speech. Until they are 18 years old, their parents get to decide what they see and don't see, post and don't post.

The school is protecting it's assets (taxpayers thank them!) and protecting it's minors (parents AND taxpayers thank them!).

Well, add yourself your long list of those who don't understandt the concepts and precepts of the 1st amendment.

Free speech is not included as a 'right' as you are utilizing the property of others in your personal ambitions. Nor is it gauranteed in your workplace.

As an example, I may not agree with unionizing however, if a union thug shows up at my doorstep, I am bound by law to let them talk to my employees.

I don't agree with that law, and I feel it infringes my rights, but that is the law

What you do with either government owned property or the property of others can and is regulated by the owners of the property. Any school (or other government or private institution) may institute restrictions or controls so as to insure proper use and care of that property.

Now, my opinion as it applies to schools: We have all seen the fallout in the last 8 years of pornographic, violent, inane websites on the mental activity of students. I for one with 2 young children would gladly approve limiting the activities on-line of anyone who is working with or around my children.

Part of my duties as a parent is to provide a safe environment for my children; both at home and in school. The school system should have had these safeguards years ago.

Since I can't reply below. I'll reply here.
You mentioned a site, myspace.com, that had a problem with underage predation. He said nothing about that being the problem he had. You didn't seem to read what he said.
Considering that he said "Big Brother is watching" signs had appeared, I have to assume that could only be done in a post high school class room. These are adults. Their privacy, especially in an academic setting, should not be infringed.
I also happen to remember some comments from an instructor I had who was head of IT at the college and also a member of the union representing the teachers. He had an interesting problem of an instructor viewing rather explicit adult porn (Nude Greco-Roman wrestlers with erections.) Legally, it presented an enormous legal and academic problem that the administratiuon had no idea what to do with and no idea what all the ramifications were, but they were ugly so they left it in his lap. Now this is real world legalisms, not any wishful thinking. A whole lot of rules came into conflict.
They had to do something, but any restriction on academic freedom was not going to fly.
His conclusion was that the best resolution was to give the instructor a computer with an internet connection that was not connected to the school network. That satisfied all the legal requirtements of the situation.

All the essential liberties are gone now. They have all been legislated away over the years, including an assumed, but never written, right to privacy. (Unless you are aborting a f?tus, that is.)

A constitutional right to privacy regarding what goes on inside your home and who you communicate with, whatever the methodology, would set this legal system on its ear.

"When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country" - G. Gordon Liddy

... one could devise an argument in favor of allowing porn in order to support the porn industry, one of the last few industries in the US that has not been offshored wholesale to India or China.

(I seriously NEED that writer's retreat this year ...)

"It isn't long before you lose freedom of thought, along with speech, and you don't need to look far for examples in history."

1950's to be exact. McCarthy, Roy Cohn, etc.

Are you "working" in the IT department at a school, or are you a teacher, janitor, bus driver, ect. at this school? Is this school a college or a public school?

"a new device that records key strokes and notifies of profanity and when a user visits a xrated website"

What is the name of this device? How do you know it records keystrokes? (not likely, in my opinion, since you called it "A" device, whereas a keystroke logger would have to be installed on every computer, and you would have called them "these new devices".)

Well then, you had better make sure your kids don't cross any streets! They are likely to be hit by a car while crossing the street.

Also, You should be sure to search every last one of them for drugs.. we all know how teenagers and drugs go!

While you're at it, charge their parents for their drug possession! Yep, we need lots more folks in jail! That'll solve everything!

Are you screening for any references to Bin Laden? Al Quaida? The Koran? Molitov Coktails? Spud guns? You might have some little terrorists too!

and the mployer, in many cases, does not allow them to leave the premises - although staying on the premises during lunch is not a term of employment.

However, the point that I was making when I first spoke about them being allowd to use Internet banking during lunch was -

That some employers DO allow staff to use their equipment during their lunch break for Internet banking and responsible Internet use.

I never said it was a right, just that some do permit it, for various reasons. In such cases the use of a keystroke logger would be breach of privacy as well as a breach of security.

I am not even IN the USA. LOL.

Read his whack idea of office cams, because people THINK they have privacy...they do? This idiots been fooling himself too long, or living in Canada where you actually get some personal privacy rights, unfortunately most people take that security blanket way to far too.

You have to feel sory for people like that though. It must be so depressing to get up in the morning and see yourself in the mirror, then just sigh to yourself, "Ooooh, not YOU again!".

Why not just setup a proxy with a black list or a host.deny list?

Why keystroke log? Makes me think you are looking for far more than you are letting on. Further, it sounds as if you weren't clear or up front about what you where doing.

My suggestion: Implement a proxy or host.deny list and work from there. There are tons of black lists on the web, you just need to find the on that fits your needs.

The school records the keystrokes, akin to sound on the video instead of perceived visuals. School computers, government computers, corporate computers, it's all the same. They own them, they make the rules. You want your bandwidth taken by your children porn surfing while you're into a web project?
If the student or teacher is 'caught' on the wrong website or using profanity, ask yourself the same question the IM folks should ask... Is it a legit use? There could be some research taking place that requires access to and use of 'those' resources and is completely 'straight up'.
BTW, the cops would have to PROVE marijuana in that case, though...