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740 Comments
- fyrehart, on 02/01/2008, -10/+462FTA: "Supposedly, if students were reading instructions, and I quote, on “how to make a bomb”, I’m the one who should be facing criminal prosecution, as I’m the one who provided all the means for retrieving the information."
So is Google to blame for making it easily found? - h4mx0r, on 02/01/2008, -11/+401The school staff there must be retarded.
It's 2008, learn how technology works and its rules or get out. - genrik, on 02/01/2008, -14/+384SUE.
- mst3kcrow, on 02/01/2008, -3/+345FTA: "A mass email was sent out from the administrator who accused me of this to all the teachers, administrators, librarians, etc in the entire school, which basically says I’m a criminal and I need to be watched when getting within a 10-foot radius of a computer."
As many people said on Fark, he should try to sue for libel and violation of free speech rights (in the case of the proxy server) to at least make the school administrators think twice about their actions. He might be able to use Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent and Gertz vs. Robert Welch, Inc.; Tinker for free speech rights that are protected in schools and Gertz for libel through reckless disregard of the truth. Hopefully some diggers that are in law school can comment on that. - FizixMan, on 02/01/2008, -4/+290I'll bet he was running "FoxFire" too. ;)
- Willow01, on 02/01/2008, -5/+244Yeah, yeah. I make websites. Once upon a time, I ran a huge network of over 50 proxy websites. They were cool and all, but eventually they absorbed a ton of server usage and, since there really wasn’t much of a ROI given that I couldn’t find an ad network that could fulfill the “should-be-doing-work-rather-than-browsing-blocked-websites” demographic, I wasn’t making sufficient money. The CTR with Adsense was hopeless, not to mention that each proxy, one by one, started getting blocked by the big guys. By ‘big guys’ I mean Websense and rest of the ***** ton of “Network Security” softwares. So there really was no light at the end of the tunnel, and I shut them all down.
Anyways, just a few weeks ago, I made a new proxy. A private proxy, nothing of commercial value, but one that I, along with a small group of friends, would personally use. It was called “Afnani’s Moo Proxy”, and was located at robertafnani.com/moo/ (now offline, but if you really care you can check it out at robertafnani.com/mooold/).
Before long, a lot of people in my school, and even other schools in the area caught wind of it, and basically everyone at Langley HS started using it. How could I tell, you ask? Well, it’s kinda obvious with Awstats shows only a few unique IP addresses accessing the site, yet a ***** ton of pageloads and gigabytes upon gigabytes of bandwidth usage. Great. I made a proxy on my domain name and now its the ***** everyone’s talking about. I must be a badass now.
Langley stinks.
This is when everything starts to go raw. Just the other day, I was pulled into an administrator’s office (whose name shall be undisclosed), and slapped in the face with a possible suspension. I am accused of violating my rights as a student, and intentionally attempting to disturb the learning environment of students in my school.
I was accused of breaking the law. Of providing a means for students to do illegal activities in school. And I got all the blame. Supposedly, if students were reading instructions, and I quote, on “how to make a bomb”, I’m the one who should be facing criminal prosecution, as I’m the one who provided all the means for retrieving the information.
Of course, I tried to argue my way out of it. Proxies are perfectly legal to create. I can do whatever the hell I want outside of school, especially if it involves my job, which takes part mostly on the Internet.
Much to my dismay, however, apparently I have no rights at FCPS schools. I asked the administrator and the tech guy (who, if I may add, is a great guy, and not the one at fault here) to point out on the Student Network Access Agreement what policy/rule I violated. They refused to, because there was no law that made what I did ‘illegal’. I wasn’t hacking the network, I wasn’t dickin’ around with the hardware; I made a damn website, and no where on the entire agreement does it say anything about not being able to make websites outside of school.
Being the one with lower hand, I had to submit to their will, so as to not get into any more trouble. In the end, my computer account at school was banned, but the verbal abuse and harassment to me was worse. Hell, I was pulled out of class during my final exam for the first semester of Philosophy, so who knows what grade I’m going to be getting on that test. And I was facing a possible suspension from the school premises for doing this.
I’m the little man in this situation: my school thinks they have all the power in the world, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I am now forced to take all my proxies offline, otherwise I face “repeat network abuse” and will get in a LOT of trouble (recommendation for expulsion, anyone?).
Langley High School has no right to do this. Suppose “robertafnani.com” wasn’t the domain for this proxy. I’m damn sure the IT guys wouldn’t WHOIS the proxy and attempt to arrest/accuse the owner of commiting a crime. I feel as though I am discriminated against, and that my school’s actions against me were unjust. They’re abusing their power and if I can’t get any help from the press, then there’s no stopping this administration.
Worst part is that now I’m tagged as being a ‘computer hacker’ and a ‘potential threat’ to the school system. A mass email was sent out from the administrator who accused me of this to all the teachers, administrators, librarians, etc in the entire school, which basically says I’m a criminal and I need to be watched when getting within a 10-foot radius of a computer.
I find it unfair that Fairfax County Public Schools feels they can impose this kind of totalitarianism on me, I’m now a criminal for making proxies. For making a website. A legal website. On my private server. Outside of school. Great.
God help me. - drunkenirish, on 02/01/2008, -18/+220I know I'll get dugg down hard for this, but whatever...
I work for a school system (webmaster of the whole deal), and I actively take part in finding just these kinds of violations. Our district was smart enough to put in a block that we can easily update with proxies and we catch 90% of the "big" ones. I set up a home proxy and it doesn't get caught, but we don't notice many of our students doing that.
Here's the reason why we have to stop them, though: Students surf pages that they shouldn't be on (more-so flash games and streaming video than anything else). Teacher comes by, student hides the violation. Student complains that the computer is running slowly, teacher verifies. Teacher then complains to administration that we, the tech department, are idiots because we don't buy them fast enough machines to do their simple browsing and word processing. District reacts by raising taxes, parents burn down the Board of Education.
But seriously, our district was smart enough to write into our AUP that any attempt to circumnavigate our filtering software is a violation of policy and will be met with consequence. Those are becoming more and more necessary, as I just removed 90 gigs of illegal movies and pirated games/software from our shared student server.
So before you judge us "idiot administrators", remember that we're trying to protect you, your parents and us from other lawsuits...sure, there are those who get off on the power trip, but most of us just want to keep everyone safe.
And before you go crazy, to, I'm under 30, so I'm not some "old man" who doesn't know what he's doing. - train2335, on 02/01/2008, -15/+195that's messed up.. kinda sounds like something my dumb ass administrators would do, lol
- TheAmbushAhead, on 02/01/2008, -9/+175I'm gonna take the unpopular view here anyway. so here it goes:
I used to go to high school at West Potomac, which is in FCPS, and not far from Langley. I was in a FCPS school. Now I had a teacher who ENCOURAGED me to make a website. You see, I was hacking and modding game consoles for my friends. I'd charge them some money, obviously, based on what they needed. Most of the operations I'd perform were illegal. Such as downright piracy. So my teacher found out about this, including the fact that I was illegally selling games for $5. Anyway, instead of even thinking of punishing me, he asked me to hack his PSP and give him some games because he said they were too expensive. He then asked for flyers about my service and said he would distribute them around school. And he did. And told me to make a website for the service. And he helped me make even more money off of it.
So, point of the story is not all of FCPS is like that. Just that bitchy administrator at Langley (and my old Bio teacher). - nepawoods, on 02/01/2008, -3/+168I have nothing against what you were doing, but your teacher was an idiot also. A teacher distributing fliers for an illegal service? He'd easily lose his job.
- Error601, on 02/01/2008, -10/+154One sided stories are almost always part fiction.
- thewird, on 02/01/2008, -5/+115Be a man and refuse to give in, they have zero rights over you. If they suspend you for having a public website you have the right to sue them. I would walk straight out of the office when they called me in and completely ignored them and said to read the law.
- airiox, on 02/01/2008, -1/+96It's the only thing schools are afraid of these days.
My little sister (16) was forced to attend a church on the teachers approved list as part of her grade and if she didn't she would fail. This is public High School mind you. The school is lucky my parents are nice people, if it was my kid, I would have sued the pants off the school and got that teacher fired. - thegreatsam, on 02/01/2008, -4/+73More than likely, he was being prosecuted for bypassing the filters that the school had in place to keep students from using the school resources for myspace, facebook, and all the other useless crap out there. I highly doubt he was investigated "for just making a proxy". I bet there's more to the story than this...
- inactive, on 02/01/2008, -11/+78My junior year of high school I was hosting my own http proxy. It turned out the comp. admin caught me and BEGGED me to take it down. Went so far as to telling my site host about it. Problem is that the site host... is one of my good friends.
Everyone in school found out about and it did get out of control. I was threatened w/ detention, suspension, and "legal action" because I was circumventing their blocks. I told them it's not my fault nor am I responsible since I never actually USED it. I was loading Damn Small Linux to get around the block!
Finally, my accounting teacher, the nicest lady in the world had asked me to take it down cause everyone in her class was going on Myspace. I was in FBLA and she was my leader, she's also a HUGE pushover. I had no problem with it cause she was nice about it and I never used it anyway.
The moral of the story - don't ever back down to administration you think is ***** or calling bluff. ;) - johnny222, on 02/01/2008, -5/+66http://duggmirror.com/people/High_School_It_s_ILLE ...
- manitoba98xp, on 02/01/2008, -12/+73Thank you for saying what desperately needed to be said. A growing amount of Digg's user base is (high school) students who have decided that it's their right to do whatever they please with the district's tax-bought resources. It's the responsibility of the Board to conserve resources and ensure a high quality of education for its students.
Again, thank you for making one of the most intelligent and logical comments I've read on Digg in the past few months. - BrokenBokken, on 02/01/2008, -2/+60Take it to the school board, local paper? Get a lawyer and sue the principal for slander? Michael Moore hated his principal because he spanked the kids. He ran for school board, got elected, and then was able to fire the principal.
- ccw808, on 02/01/2008, -3/+61It's not like there aren't other proxy sites out there. What difference does it make if he's making money off of it? He didn't break any laws. In fact, he wouldn't be in any trouble at all if his name wasn't in the domain of the site. Given the administration's ignorance, they probably wouldn't even bother with a whois.
- fkr3, on 02/01/2008, -3/+61And then you woke up and went to school the next day and they'd added your proxy to their blacklist, and you realised it was all a dream. :(
- ApokalypseNow, on 02/01/2008, -1/+50Was that church attendance a one-time thing? What class was it for? If it was, for example, a class on western theology, and a one-time thing, then I could see that being allowed as it is in the scope of the class.
Otherwise, yeah, sue the pants, briefs, and pubic hair off them. - DangerDaz, on 02/01/2008, -4/+50I'm 16 and in a Secondary School in England, by looking around a classroom it becomes obvious why filters are needed on the internet. People are in a classroom to learn, not to play. I feel sorry for the people in my school, and everywhere, that spend their lessons on MySpace or anything of the kind.
- voldern, on 02/01/2008, -3/+49http://duggmirror.com/people/High_School_It_s_ILLE ...
- BigBallistix, on 02/01/2008, -0/+45Don't forget vilification. Making someone out as a criminal, or using any derogatory comments in that email could do the trick.
- inactive, on 02/01/2008, -1/+43I wasn't aware knowledge of how to grow marijuana was a crime.
- subliminalurge, on 02/01/2008, -3/+45blah, blah, blah....
Next you'll tell me that I should create extra, unnecessary work for myself just so that my company won't be "censoring" the Internet.
Let me clue you in. The school isn't censoring jack *****. They're simply requiring students to use school owned property for the purpose that it was purchased for. The students can still go home at night and surf any damn site they want.
My computers, my rules. Company's computers, company's rules. School's computers, school's rules.
That's how life works. Learn to live with it. - mathmanjeffy, on 02/01/2008, -1/+42Which means it would be an elective course on Western Theology...
- maxpower2911, on 02/01/2008, -2/+40Remember the lesson we learned about that kid not being able to use firefox at school? This is about as one sided as that was. I would like to know the whole story.
- sv650touring, on 02/01/2008, -0/+37Nice. But you could have done something funnier. Maybe give the students something other than myspace when they tried to use it during her class... gay porn maybe
- genrik, on 02/01/2008, -3/+40This doesn't excuse the fact he has every right to do whatever he wants outside of school, as long as it is not illegal.
This is not illegal, the school cannot tell him what he can and cannot do outside out school hours. - ncc74656m, on 02/01/2008, -0/+36I think you just did, hats off to you, Crow! (I miss that show so bad)
Not being in law, I can just concur with your opinion though that he definitely has a case for a libel suit, and he would probably take damages and cost this asshat his job. At the very least the latter.
I am of the opinion that this sounds eerily close to the prosecution by Kevin Mitnick. - rabiddachshund, on 02/01/2008, -1/+36Tech Support funniest phrase: Mozzarella Fox Fire.
- leetleo, on 02/01/2008, -3/+36I mean, I can see where the school is coming from. Clearly they understand how the internet works, and if you think about it, the internet is not something that you just dump something on by proxy. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes.
- staeiou, on 02/01/2008, -19/+49He hasn't been turned into a criminal, just a rulebreaker. Imagine if he did this at work - if he created a proxy to get behind a filter, and told his coworkers. The network admin would tell the boss what the employees are doing to the company's network on company time, and he would probably get fired. He probably wouldn't get a good recommendation for his next job, either.
From the kid himself: "I made a new proxy. A private proxy, nothing of commercial value, but one that I, along with a small group of friends, would personally use ... basically everyone at Langley HS started using it"
This was a proxy that was created for the explicit purpose of getting behind a filter. This is insubordination, pure and simple. There was a rule (don't go to facebook, porn sites, whatever), and he worked hard to get around the rule. And it wasn't just him - he himself said he made so that his friends could get around network rules. That's the issue here.
Why not just block the proxy? Well, he admitted that he "ran a huge network of over 50 proxy websites" - I'm sure that it was a cat-and-mouse game between him and the admin. With domain registration being as cheap as it is, he probably created a new proxy when the admin blocked the old one. - Phrag, on 02/01/2008, -2/+31I think most people are reacting negatively to the heavy handed tactics of the administration when simply black listing the domain and asking the student not to do it again would have sufficed. The problem of proxies is not going to go away. I just look at it as job security.
- bjornski, on 02/01/2008, -1/+29Probably.
But if I was in your IT department, and caught you doing it, I'd suggest you be fired on the spot.
Now get back to work. You can ***** around and watch your videos at home. - SvenGeiss, on 02/01/2008, -2/+28mirror?
- ElbertF, on 02/01/2008, -3/+28That was fake. ;)
- weeeezzll, on 02/01/2008, -4/+28And by 'removed' you mean 'added to your personal library' right? ;)
- scotch32, on 02/01/2008, -0/+24No need for law students, there’s at least a few of us digg-lawyers running around.
I see very little potential for a successful libel or 1st amendment suit. First of all, a libel or defamation suit requires the statement to be factually untrue. Which, although I have not seen the actual email, I do not that is the case with the administrator’s email to staff. The bigger issue is that the statement is the opinion of a school administrator sent to employees, not a public comment containing false factual statements that injure the subject’s reputation.
No matter how ridiculous we believe the administrator’s response to be, statements of opinion, especially those that address a matter of public concern, are almost never libel. See Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1 (1990) for more information.
The first amendment argument is even weaker, although I admit it’s been a long time since con-law. Its one thing to set up a website criticizing the school administration – that’s free speech. Here we are talking about a proxy server, which a court will view as a deliberate attempt to circumvent security – calling that free speech is about as ridiculous as calling a DDoS attack free speech. - dOOBiEx213, on 02/01/2008, -3/+26Oh?? And what exactly does your comment have to do with the one you replied to? You're just looking for attention? Oh ok, carry on.
- drunkenirish, on 02/01/2008, -0/+23Exactly! We don't go after the students who set the stuff up, just those who abuse. I guess I didn't get it across at first.
- nepawoods, on 02/01/2008, -4/+27The problem is that if you make a proxy like that, off school grounds, not during school hours, it can be used for anything, not necessarily illegal or breaking rules. You should not be held responsible if some students then use school equipment on school time to access that proxy and circumvent rules.
- drunkenirish, on 02/01/2008, -0/+22I already know that our students can still get past our filter (as was evidenced by my testing a home proxy), but like someone said higher up, job security.
Having their own website isn't a crime. Setting up a proxy isn't a crime either. But every student has to sign an AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) to use our computers. Part of that says "You will not circumvent any installed technology by means of hardware or software" (paraphrasing), meaning they will not use installed software or added hardware to get past our security.
For a while we had a problem with students booting Ubuntu on our PCs, but then we shut down their ability to launch CDs on startup. Until then, it hadn't been a problem. Is Ubuntu evil? No! In fact, we have a bunch of machines in our offices running it. But the students were using it to try to hack our administrative passwords. So it's all about intention that makes what they're doing a violation, not the program itself. - inactive, on 02/01/2008, -2/+24Doesn't make it any less funny . Most admins of school networks are retarded.
- inactive, on 02/01/2008, -2/+22JANE!
- Taquoshi, on 02/01/2008, -0/+20I was in a meeting about a month ago and the IT department for the City was there. The head of IT explained that she had some high school students as summer interns and they were working on the City page for teens. Just as a lark, she asked them if they could get past the BOE's blocks on the school's machines. It took one kid 22 minutes by the clock before he was on MySpace, which has been blocked by the BOE.
I don't know if there is a possible way to contain the students from browsing where they want to go, but I don't think someone having their own website is a crime. At no point did these students leave their citizenship or their rights at the door of the school. These students are not criminals, they have broken no law and should not be treated as such. - ncc74656m, on 02/01/2008, -2/+22And be sued for being an accessory to a crime by whichever game company decided to sue you (he'd be named as a codefendant).
I do FULLY support modding efforts (though I agree with the makers that it should void your warranty where appropriate), but I do not condone outright theft and piracy. That being said, this isn't an indictment of you, an overall statement instead.
Oh, and be careful about blanket statements like this. This is personally identifiable information here, and depending on statutes of limitations, this could be seen as an admission of guilt, IMHO. - drunkenirish, on 02/01/2008, -1/+21I'm glad you're able to point out "my problems" are so very easily...and here I thought my problem was keeping my job by doing my job!
I have no desire for social control. I do have a desire to not have to waste my time constantly fixing computers and writing scripts.
Students also don't have "down time" in school. They are there to learn. The only "down time" I can think of is lunch.
But, it doesn't matter. Each computer is owned by the district, so like subliminalurge said above, we can say what the can and can't do.
Again, as I responded above, I set up a proxy to test if our blocker would catch it. I do not maintain it, nor do I use it.
And as for censorship, we block things like Myspace (where we observed students planning how they were gong to skip class), Meebo (where they chat about the pot they will drink and the alcohol they will consume during the weekend) and, other than that, mostly porn sites, or those used to get around our blocking software. We do not block political articles, constitutional debates, information on the war, etc...you know, things that students SHOULD be interested in.
Oh, and thanks for comparing me to Bush...you couldn't be more wrong. - Ace25, on 02/01/2008, -10/+30So few on this site actually get what your saying. Most of them are HS age kids that think they know it all and the world owes them everything. I am a network admin at a college and we have thrown many students out of school because they signed agreements stating what the will and won't do while on the college computers/network. One being not going to sites like myspace, and no going to proxies to circumvent our filters. If you do, and are caught, your expelled first time. As a college age student, they are adults (if not, they and their parent signs the contract), sign a contract with the school stating how to behave on the network.. and it is clearly written what happens when you break the rules.
Someone wants to make 1000 proxie sites outside of school and use it outside thats their business.. come into a network that I am paid to monitor and fix and try to get crap like proxies past me they learn the hard way it isn't tolerated. Usually only takes 1 person a year and word gets out around school. No one else tries it until new students the following year.. endless cycle. If it only takes losing the revenue of 1 student a year to teach the rest of the kids, as well and protect the network I am paid to maintain, then that is an acceptable loss. -
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