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The Yosemite Bear wrote:No what were saying is that:

1. the children got too harsh sentances

Based on what, exactly? Purely subjective gut feeling? The fact that you did it when you were younger? Neither represents a valid argument. From the original post, they could be looking at juvenile hall, community service or probation (in fact, no sentence has even been announced). Oooooohhh, it's a police state!

2. It was too easy to do=The Administration should have been fired!!!, they were obviously acting in a negligent fashion!/Grossly Incompetant!

Which is totally irrelevant to the question of what is an appropriate punishment, so it is at best a red herring. At worst it is an outright attempt at a thread hijack.

3. This is nothing compared to the shit most of us former hackers used to do to our school when we we're in High School, but we had more class then this.

Also totally irrelevant to the question of what is an appropriate punishment.

1. The fact that they were minors, and in most cases such tresspass is considered a misdomenor, not an adult felony. Or if run as a felony it's sealed in your record after you get to university.

2. no more to motive for throwing the book at them. The administration was embarrassed, their security was glarlingly incompetant, and in order to distract from their own culpability they are prosecuting as vigoruslly as possible to the fullest extent in order to deflect criticism away from themselves.

3. There is a thing such as prescident in law mike. The few of us who did get caught either got misdomenor, or felony sealed convictions, infact the worst offender in my high school is now the computer security person for one of the big firms (Inreach internet, the largest ISP in California/Oregon), a job he could not get if they had prosecuted his teenaged crimes as an adult, and a job for which his history of teenaged crimes plus growing up emminatly qualify him for.

The Yosemite Bear wrote:1. The fact that they were minors, and in most cases such tresspass is considered a misdomenor, not an adult felony. Or if run as a felony it's sealed in your record after you get to university.

You'd have a point if it weren't for the fact that they've been charged with computer trespassing. Which seems to carry a felony penalty in PA.

2. no more to motive for throwing the book at them. The administration was embarrassed, their security was glarlingly incompetant, and in order to distract from their own culpability they are prosecuting as vigoruslly as possible to the fullest extent in order to deflect criticism away from themselves.

Possibly, but it's still legal. Are you trying to argue that children shouldn't be prosecuted with the punishment x crime calls for?

3. There is a thing such as prescident in law mike. The few of us who did get caught either got misdomenor, or felony sealed convictions, infact the worst offender in my high school is now the computer security person for one of the big firms (Inreach internet, the largest ISP in California/Oregon), a job he could not get if they had prosecuted his teenaged crimes as an adult, and a job for which his history of teenaged crimes plus growing up emminatly qualify him for.

So because some students actually made something of themselves we should give* all of them a break just because ... why?

well yes, my generation is responsible for those harsher penalties because of the scares produced by Mitchnik and others. Even then judges and lawmakers were entirely stupid in terms of sentancing. Take the lord of the Dark Side himself Kevin Mitchnik. His sentance included that he would be in violation of his probation if he came within X yards of a PHONE, or peice of electronic equipment. Which ment that the locator device they wanted him to wear was essentially a crime for him to have on his person, no to mention it was physically impossible for Mitchnick to be in compliance with his porale.

this is how dumb people who don't understand computers at all go about framing the law. The older and more technophobic a society the more disproportunate the enforcement becomes. China currently holds that distinction with the DEATH PENALTY for using a computer to dial a phone, hang up and repeat.

There's a big diffence between normal stupid kid shit, and Kevin Mitchnik hacking into the US Department of Defense.

The Yosemite Bear wrote:well yes, my generation is responsible for those harsher penalties because of the scares produced by Mitchnik and others. Even then judges and lawmakers were entirely stupid in terms of sentancing. Take the lord of the Dark Side himself Kevin Mitchnik. His sentance included that he would be in violation of his probation if he came within X yards of a PHONE, or peice of electronic equipment. Which ment that the locator device they wanted him to wear was essentially a crime for him to have on his person, no to mention it was physically impossible for Mitchnick to be in compliance with his porale.

this is how dumb people who don't understand computers at all go about framing the law. The older and more technophobic a society the more disproportunate the enforcement becomes. China currently holds that distinction with the DEATH PENALTY for using a computer to dial a phone, hang up and repeat.

There's a big diffence between normal stupid kid shit, and Kevin Mitchnik hacking into the US Department of Defense.

I'm trying to search that post for something which is relevant to any criticism of the felony charges laid against these kids, and I can't find a single word.

The Yosemite Bear wrote:
There's a big diffence between normal stupid kid shit, and Kevin Mitchnik hacking into the US Department of Defense.

The law isn't meant to protect just the Department of Defense. It's meant to provide punishment for people who violate others privacy. People keep sensitive information on their computers stuff that you have no fucking business seeing.

It's quite literally like sneaking into someones house and looking through their personal files, installing cameras(spyware), and playing chess(chat programs) in their house.

It's a felony for a reason. Abuse of private property is not tolerated. I can tell you feel partial to "hackers" because you use to be one. However, society doesn't tolerate it. People want their personal property to be secure.

mind you copying the passwords from the back of open sdisplay laptops, is as lame in terms of computer skill as the dumpster diving, and prank calls Mitchnik used to get his unix administrator acces at AT&T when it was all one system, allowing him to break into the DoD computers.

to a certain degree yes, I don't see why a computer theft is more dangerous then other forms of easedropping/tresspass. the fact that many people still send confidential information through unsecure channels continues to boggle my mind.

I'd like to know why the hell they were giving them laptops.

Hello, dumb asses, those are the easilest type of computer to swipe.

And I laught at there network security, if passwords are kept taped to a laptop monitor.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote: You're comparing harmless teenaged fun on the school's computers with breaking into someone's house. Are you on drugs?

I wouldn't be so quick to call it harmless. One guy at our school got into trouble for managing to get hold of the admin password and then using it to use various fun programs normal students weren't able to install. Using that account also gave him access to the admin section, where the exam papers and details of students were kept. As far as I know he didn't actually touch that data, but there was still a reasonable fuss, as he couldn't prove he hadn't and the school had to consider the possibility that personal information had been compromised.

Kamakazie Sith wrote:It's quite literally like sneaking into someones house and looking through their personal files, installing cameras(spyware), and playing chess(chat programs) in their house.

While I agree that the kids screwed up by disobeying agreements that they signed (and compounded their error by ignoring repeated warnings - don't mess with people who have power over you), this analogy (like so many analogies to physical objects/scenarios) doesn't quite fit considering that the students were handed these laptops with the express purpose of being used. Furthermore, the property in question isn't nearly so private or sacrosanct as that of a person's home.

This is more like a matter of being in someone else's house, being told not to go into the bedroom or use the phone, and then going into the bedroom and using the phone anyway.

And, while punishment needs to be administered to the students (although I'm a little hesitant about felony charges), frankly that IT staff needs to be canned. Shit, the district IT department I work for is almost entirely a Windows shop, and it's a hell of a lot more secure than that.

I agree that the IT people are clearly incompetent. But these kids were warned repeatedly, and kept doing it. I think that multiple warnings are more than adequate rebuttal to any accusations that the school is being unreasonable. If you're a kid and your school keeps warning you to stop abusing their property, you have no one to blame but yourself if you laugh off their warnings.

I'm actually quite surprised at how leniently they were initially treated, now that I think about it. We were ready to order a maximum-length suspension (a couple of weeks, if I remember right) and a year-long ban from all district computers (enforceable by the threat of expulsion) when we suspected a kid of managing to get past the internet filter and dumping games on the student shared network drive, and this was only the first offense.

When the administration couldn't turn up any hard evidence he was the one who'd actually done it (there was still a boatload of circumstantial, though), they still banned him from the computers for the rest of the year.

Both sides are getting what they deserve. The students are being punished for ignoring repeated warnings, and the school system's IT people look like a bunch of bumbling idiots, which they clearly are. I wonder if they've been shit-canned along with the students who got around their inept security measures.

Seriously, what moron thought that taping the fucking admin password to the backs of the machines was a good idea?

At my middle school we had a group of about 8 or so kids that were the most knowledgeable of computers in a "tech assistant" class. We helped maintain the computers all around the school and such, we also kept an eye out for anyone else who was messing with the system. We were all sort of protective of it, seeing as how we were the ones that did most of the setting up for basically all the computers around the school. That year, we "caught" about tons of kids who were trying to get access to the system using an "administrator password", or trying to access sites that were blocked.

We have sort of the same thing here at my high school except that I'm not in it. It really helps to have the best and brightest on the administrator's side when they're doing security and stuff.

And no, none of the kids got administrative passwords to the mainframe. We got tech support passwords for individual computers, and access to the tech support folder on the network, and that was it.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote: You're comparing harmless teenaged fun on the school's computers with breaking into someone's house. Are you on drugs?

In both cases they trespass, so it is a valid comparison.

So according to you, protecting the sanctity of the agreement is more important than not fucking up the lives of a bunch of kids for crimes that deserve a slap on the wrist.

If the kids didn't decide to pull such a stupid stunt then they wouldn't have to be worrying about this now would they?

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. This person believes that repated jaywalking merits felony charges. I don't need to say anything more.

You evidently didn't read the news report where a person jaywalked and got run over in houston, who was then later put in jail for doing such a stupid thing (the jaywalker, not the driver).

13 year olds looking at nudie pics? *gasp* Quick, dial 911!

They're breaking tons of laws, even if you feel that they're dumb laws, they're still laws that need to be inforced. And if a dumb law has a severe consequence, then thats whats expected to be done to those that break said law, stupid as it may be.

If they had been found out before why did they give them laptops? I mean at my school the guy who got in to the school network got banned from using any on the school computers ever again. You don’t hand a known murder a gun and you don’t hand a known hacker a computer.

But time for the story about how incompetent the network security at my school was.
On the old network it was so bad you could get in to blocked files by linking to a folder in them. The internet security was so bad that you could about the only thing it did not block was porn and the programs that did the blocking could be shut down with control alt delete. There were also umpteen accounts that belonged to no body (user2 and stuff) which everyone new the passwords too. And also ever one new at least 1 teachers user name and password.

The internet blocking was in fact so annoying that sometime the teachers would ask one of the class to the shut it down for them.

But then they got the new network which ran on Windows XP. You could no longer simply shut down internet blockers but it still blocked pretty much everything but porn. But you could still link in to protected folders.
There was this one funny incident were a first year was accidentally given admin rights for most of first year. And the lap tops would periodically brake down and give the user Admin rights and the power to give others admin rights (some thing my physics teacher did for him self).

I also found a way on to a list of all the accounts on all the servers. But never did any proper hacking or anything.

Also there is much more they could have tried before charging them like the banning them from school computer and telling there parents to ban them at home.

ShinjiGohan wrote:

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote: You're comparing harmless teenaged fun on the school's computers with breaking into someone's house. Are you on drugs?

In both cases they trespass, so it is a valid comparison.

The acts may be comparable, but the magnitude of harm and the amount of punishment deserved are very different.

So according to you, protecting the sanctity of the agreement is more important than not fucking up the lives of a bunch of kids for crimes that deserve a slap on the wrist.

If the kids didn't decide to pull such a stupid stunt then they wouldn't have to be worrying about this now would they?

That could be used to justify any punishment for the breaking of any law.

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. This person believes that repated jaywalking merits felony charges. I don't need to say anything more.

You evidently didn't read the news report where a person jaywalked and got run over in houston, who was then later put in jail for doing such a stupid thing (the jaywalker, not the driver).

Obviously there are cases of jaywalking so egregious that jail time is justified, but for the most part it's a slap-on-the-wrist offense, just like this should have been.

13 year olds looking at nudie pics? *gasp* Quick, dial 911!

They're breaking tons of laws, even if you feel that they're dumb laws, they're still laws that need to be inforced. And if a dumb law has a severe consequence, then thats whats expected to be done to those that break said law, stupid as it may be.

Ah, I see. So it's the law, therefore it's right, or we should at least act as though it were.

Granted, I think this is a bit extreme. I did a lot of shit like this at my school when I was there though (**EDIT Actual Activities**) Nothing really really bad though. At the same time, I knew I could get fucked if I got caught.

The whole "accepting responsibility for yourself" thing...

Tinkerbell wrote:Granted, I think this is a bit extreme. I did a lot of shit like this at my school when I was there though (**EDIT Actual Activities**) Nothing really really bad though. At the same time, I knew I could get fucked if I got caught.

The whole "accepting responsibility for yourself" thing...

If doing it would get you fucked, whatever you were doing was, by definition, really, really bad.

I could probably sue this thread as a health risk - the moment the words "admin password taped to the computer" showed up, every single reader with the smallest simdgeon of technical competence should've died laughing.....

That said, a felony conviction's too far. They DL'ed dirty pictures and chatted. OOoooh..... They inserted spyware into the admin's comps? Unless they were fixing grades/tests, I can't see the harm.

Essentially, this is a punishment for hiring a moronic IT staff. The students just have to learn that "I CAN do it" isn't a justification. Give em' a misdemeanor or some such, legal wrist-slap, and confiscate the computers. And fucking fire the school's IT staff..... shitheads.

I really have no sympathy for the school administration. In my programming course, the teachers had to keep down much, much smarter guys. They did it by being smarter and harsh discpline(hack, and you're thrown out).

Revoke the privelege, small punishment, and hire smarter guys. That's all I can say.

Here's the problem with this topic: there's really not a lot of objective ground for how much punishment they should get. It's all, as Mike said earlier on this page, "pure subjective gut feeling". The argument will no sooner get resolved than one between a guy who likes blueberries and someone who hates them.