“They’re being called the Kutztown 13 — a group of high schoolers charged with felonies for bypassing security with school-issued laptops, downloading forbidden Internet goodies and using monitoring software to spy on district administrators,” The Associated Press reports. “The trouble began last fall after the district issued some 600 Apple iBook laptops to every student at the high school about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The computers were loaded with a filtering program that limited Internet access. They also had software that let administrators see what students were viewing on their screens.
“But those barriers proved easily surmountable: The administrative password that allowed students to reconfigure computers and obtain unrestricted Internet access was easy to obtain. A shortened version of the school’s street address, the password was taped to the backs of the computers,” AP reports. “The password got passed around, and students began downloading such forbidden programs as the popular iChat instant-messaging tool.”
“‘This does not surprise me at all,’ said Pradeep Khosla, dean of Carnegie Mellon University’s engineering department and director of the school’s cybersecurity program. IT staff at schools are often poorly trained, making it easy for students with even modest computer skills to get around security, he said,” AP reports. “Fifteen-year-old John Shrawder, one of the Kutztown 13, complained that the charges don’t fit the offense. He fears a felony conviction could hurt his college and job prospects. Shrawder’s uncle, James Shrawder, has set up a Web site that tells the students’ side of the story.”
“Students and parents were required to sign a code of conduct and acceptable use policy, which contained warnings of legal action,” AP reports. “The 13 students charged violated that policy, said Kutztown Police Chief Theodore Cole, insisting the school district had exhausted all options short of expulsion before seeking the charges. Cole said, however, that there is no evidence the students attacked or disabled the school’s computer network, altered grades or did anything else that could be deemed malicious.”
Full article here.
Shrawder’s website: http://www.cutusabreak.org/
MacDailyNews Take: Felony charges? Ridiculous. How about taking the iBooks away or at least taking them and setting up a secure admin password (and not taping it to the back of the screens) before giving them back to the students?
MDN has it right. FELONY charges!?!?!?!
This is ridiculous. A felony is a serious charge. Look around, the powers that be are attempting to turn us into a nation of criminals.
Lawyers also have their hands in this. They have to be stopped
So craig,
When did your children run away from home?
Have you seen them since they left?
What did you do to drive them away?
Did you ever spare the rod?
Never got a Fathers Day card, did you.
Craig. That kind of black-and-white thinking gets innocent people executed in Florida. Someone is convivted of murder, possibly on dubious evidence. Serves time on Death row. Goes through appeals. Just before the execution, vital evidence is found that proves his innocence, but the state just says, “Yeah, well, we’ve gone through the appeals system now, so we have no choice. we have to kill an innocent man. I’m real sorry about that”.
This sort of thinking gets someone life in prison for three relatively minor offences that may not have harmed anyone else.
Think back to when you were 15. Did you not do anything stupid at all ? Did you not try to deceive your teachers in any way ? Did you not lie ?
What’s needed it common sense punishment. Nobody is saying they shouldn’t be punished, they’re just saying that making this into a felony offence is insane. Every single offence does not need the full force of the law and the maximum punishment. If it did, there would be more people IN prison than out.
Sometimes you just need to scare kids. A friend of mine tried to buy some nike shoes when he was about 13. It was with a credit card that an adult had told him to go and use. Stupidly he did, and got arrested. Got taken to the police station. His father got the call and asked if it was OK to pick him up after work, like 4 hours later, and asked if it was OK if they could leave him in the cell. Then the police just needed to say “Let that be a lesson to you. Next time you’ll be in big trouble”. And he never did anything stupid l;ike that again. Sending the kid to a young offenders prison would have done no good at all. It probably would have turned him into a real criminal.
Remember. These are kids. Kids make mistakes and society should help them learn how to fit in and how not to make those misatakes again. Society does not need to brand kids as trouble the moment they step out of line.
Get a sense of perspective !
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almost as funny as those darn high school kids at Hanover Hs (in PA again). there a principal went ballistic when he learned the meaning of a hand gesture they all displayed in the school’s yearbook.
this news is such a “Shocker”
idiot school officials
The school’s IT department should be charged with felony for BEING SO DAMNED STUPID!
These kids, although maybe “breaking the rules” so to speak, probably are the brightest of the generation. If i had always “followed the rules” I would be a one of clone of all the other dunces being manufactured in our school system. half the teachers don’t have a clue, and IT is a joke. going BEYOND what is available is how you learn.
It doesn’t matter that the school district’s IT department didn’t provide due diligence – the students STILL broke the law.
You know, being charged with a crime does not necessarily mean you’ll be convicted of that crime…just ask O.J.
Anyway, charge the kids with as much as you can and let the lawyers hash it out. I would be shocked (and disappointed) if the kids actually ended up being sentenced with a felony…especially considering that the school’s security was so lax.
No wonder there are so many lawyers in America, if you get nicked for a bit of mayhem and mischief on a computer you go to court and possibly have a criminal record!!
These kids were probably having a bit of fun; I doubt they were seriously intending to break the laws and become classified as hackers.
I’m for giving the kids a shock of their lives over this, but perhaps nothing more than a very serious chat down the station with a copper, and certainly nothing like giving them a criminal record which will remain with them until the day they die.
ps if you write your PIN number to the back of your bank card and someone takes your card and withdraws (some of) your money, are you responsible for the money taken? (i.e. is it too bad)?? Or is the bank responsible for the missing cash?
If someone takes money using your PIN, even though you have the number written on the back of your card, they are STILL a thief and can be charged.
You don’t just take the kids to the station to be given a talk by a cop…that generally does nothing. Unless the kids have a previous criminal record, they will qualify for 1st time offender status, meaning that the conviction will not show up on their record unless they commit further crimes. Call me crazy, but I think that would seriously curtail any thoughts of committing future crimes and just might set them right.
Geez, even 20 years ago, we didn’t have to resort to cops and lawyers to discipline in school and in the home. If that’s what it’s come to, then what does it really matter anymore?
20 years ago the school system was allowed to discipline its students. now if suzy perfect gets a B in class her parents will sue because she may not get into stanford.
magic word is ‘english’ a subject not taught so much any more (wouldn’t want to leave any children behind…)
America is going down. See ya!
Whilst you’re busy fighting with intelligent, innovative people, you’re allowing the dumb scum of society to rule it. And meanwhile, other countries are going to sneak up on your technological lead and snatch it whilst you’re busy suing the ass off some dude for downloading iChat instead of giving him a job to fight spam or something.
Just think, the two guys who started Apple, what were their names again? They were the same </sarcasm>….Yea, anyway, they had some business scam where they were SELLING devices to let you obtain free phone calls. They did this at college (probably should have known better to be honest). Imagine if the cops and lawyers had seriously curtailed their attitudes and perhaps even put them away for a spell for doing this stuff!! Where would your precious Apple be then? It wouldn’t freaking exist you morons!
You know, it’s been said that entrepreneurs and criminals are quite similar in that they’re huge risk takers. The major difference of course, is the legality of what they do (not to say that entrepreneurs don’t break laws from time to time either – as clearly they have done in the two Steve’s case.)
By the way, to those of you dicks who sit there are throw your stones, have you never ever ever broken the law? Not perhaps even gone over the speed limit in your motor vehicle for example??? Oh, no officer, I wasn’t speeding!
The kids should be punished, but Felony charges is just way too steep. I think 2 weeks of afterschool suspension and working around the school cleaning will be enough punishment.
Also, I think the administration needs to be smacked upside the heads for taping the Admin passwords to the iBooks. We are talking about kids here, if you leave the keys to the Porsche, expect to get a call from the police. The school is at fault here just as much as the students who knowingly broke the rules.
But legal action? People, this is a huge over-reaction! It shouldn’t be like this. EVER. They are kids, but if you’re going to punish them, don’t leave a mark on their future which could hurt their chances FOR their future.
There’s nothing you can do. There will always be idiots screwing up other people’s lives. Some of these idiots will be charging kids with felonies for downloading iChat, while others will invade an unprovoked sovereign nation and slaughter a hundred thousand innocent civilians so that their war-profiteer cronies can make fat profits, while charging the massive bill to the poor and cutting taxes for their billionaire support base.
It’s just life. And whether the idiots in question are school board members or Presidents of the United States, the best you can do is not be an idiot yourself, and vote the bastard out.
You folks need to read the rest of the article. HERE is the truly relevant piece:
“The administrative password on some laptops was subsequently changed, but some students got hold of that one, too, and decrypted it with a password-cracking program they found on the Internet.”
These students were ACTIVELY TRYING TO CRACK the second password. That’s a crime. I remember a graduate computer science program where the faculty member in charge of the department network told the graduate assistants that if they pulled any sort of computer prank (like spoofing E-mail) they would be out of the program, losing their assistantships, and working at MacDonalds. Trying to crack passwords is worse than a prank. It deserves serious punishment.
In my community we have a special school for students with serious disciplinary problems. Kids get “assigned” (sentenced is more like it) to this school for semesters or whole school years. I would suspend these students who tried to crack the password and place them wherever the school system sends its problem children. Apparently the school system can’t do this, so they resort to the more serious penalty of a felony charge. That’s too much.
However, this is not an example of a kid taking advantage of an administrator’s stupidity. This is an example of active computer vandalism. It’s a lot more serious than “kids will be kids.”
MW: true. ‘Nuff said.
^ Flame Bait troll ^
way to stay on topic
that was to Sam Jung Gai, not Bob C
pwrbkdude..
These are not the brightest kids of the school. Sure about that, the brightest didn’t get caught…
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Bob C,
“The administrative password on some laptops was subsequently changed, but some students got hold of that one, too, and decrypted it with a password-cracking program they found on the Internet.”
Well, if the students got the password, why did they need to decrypt it? What you posted makes no sense at all. However, if Kutztown was using an OS X version <10.3 and all the computers had guest access, they could grab the password hashes for /etc/passwd and crack them.
But, if Kutztown implemented proper security features, then school administrators would not be logging in as an administrator of their computer and guest accounts would not be present. Personal file sharing would be off.
An interesting article about the topic can be read here:
http://www.macos.utah.edu/Documentation/macosx/security/passwd.html
In any case the IT “professionals” should be fired for gross negligence. They followed none of the basic measures for computer security that are easily available on the Internet that even a noob could follow.