Student suspended for web site built at home
Proxy site lands kid, teacher in hot water
Conrad Sykes, a student of Lewis and Clark High School in the Spokane Public School District, was suspended for two days for violating computer use policies. He violated them by creating a website at home and telling people about it.
The Lewis and Clark High School student’s site, called Bad Dog, has been shut down.
Conrad Sykes, 16, said he created the web site because the school district’s content filter [Secure Computing’s Bess] hampered student research. With Bad Dog, students could access research sites the filter blocked–but they also reportedly could visit adult sites or others that the district deems inappropriate.
A proxy web site, such as the one created by Sykes, offers an opening through an internet filter that allows a student to surf the web without restriction. The proxy site essentially fools the filter into thinking that the student is still looking at an allowable site.
Proxy surfing sites are nothing new and are very common. Chances are that you visit one almost every day - search sites like Google use proxy surfing. Sykes used common knowledge to craft a common portal on his own time. Unless the school’s computer use policy prohibits the use of proxy sites (and something tells me they aren’t blocking Google) then he did absolutely nothing that they can punish him for.
The site’s success prompted computer teacher Wes Marburger to ask Sykes to make a presentation to other classes on the number of visitors to his web site.
The teacher was given a written reprimand and removed from teaching computer classes, AP said. The state Office of Professional Practices is now investigating and could potentially take away Marburger’s teaching certificate, according to AP.
…
Marburger told investigators that he should have reported the site to school Principal Jon Swett.
That’s a genuine shame. It sounds like this teacher was using an outmoded teaching style. Instead of relying on an automated system that had been proven to be a joke he was monitoring and guiding his students. I guess there’s no place for a teacher like that in Spokane.
(Tip credit to Suzanne Dunphy, other coverage at boingboing)
Okay I thought I was safe here in Washington. But more of our schools are getting attention. I quess Its time to retain a lawyer, it wont be long before the sicknees invades all our schools.
Where is the website stored. If it is on a school computer, then I understand the school shutting this down. If it is on his personal machine at home or on a legal web hosting site, then they cant touch him. Sounds like school officials are embarressed for leaving the back door open.
So a kid purposefully creating and using something that is used to get around restrictions at school is not a bad thing? He created a proxy to specifically bypass the school’s filter… That is wrong. It doesn’t matter where it was hosted or that the school’s filter blocked “OK” content… Every filter will block some “OK” content and let some “BAD” content in. They are not perfect and never will be. The kid did something wrong and the teacher encouraged him.
He did nothing wrong. He created the site on his own computer and on his own time. Web site filtering is communist anyway and I support anyone who encourages people to defy and get around it. I hope this young man has retained a lawyer and sues for violating his rights.
Othello,
He created a site at home accessable to any computer any where. There is nothing wrong with that at all as long as it is not harmfull.
Everyone else,
While the act of creating the site at home is nt against any rules, informing other students of loop holes in the school security, and then useing said loopholes is wrong.
Every one. what exactly is he suspended for? dosent matter. Detention comunity service tutoring in study hall, these would be okay punishments, but this zero tolerance those are not options.
He desighned a way to bypass school security in an obvious attempt to over through the government and cause terror, he is as guilty of terroristic threats as the kindergardner with the finger gun over there. lock um both up.
This is from the student handbook at Lewis and Clark:
7. Inappropriate Use of Technology
Inappropriate use of telecommunications equipment will be cause for disciplinary action. Unauthorized access to information, computer piracy, hacking, any tampering with hardware and software, electronic use of harassing and abusive or obscene language or using the network to annoy or offend others is prohibited. Any information that does not support classroom learning is to be avoided.
I think it’s reasonable to consider the use of any proxy server with the intent of circumventing filters an “inappropriate use” to obtain “unauthorized access to information”. In this case, I don’t think the student is blameless.
Having said that, the reaction of the administrators was very poor (as usual). The same student handbook also indicates that for the first violation, the teacher will discuss the issue with the student; the second violation garners a conversation with parents. To suspend him for two days was just silly.
And to threaten to revoke the teaching certificate of the teacher is beyond the pale. So what that he didn’t do what he “should” have done. What kind of harm could realistically have resulted that he should be removed from the class and possibly be barred from teaching in Washington?
Perhaps he could have congratulated the student for doing some good work, but then reminded everyone that the filters are there as part of school policy and it is not permissible to circumvent them. A little “nudge, nudge, wink, wink”, true, but it probably would have put him on better footing with his bosses.
Conrad received a suspension (way over the line for punishment) for coding a web proxy (something he should get extra credit for) on his own personal computer (off-campus, and thus out of the school’s jurisdiction) to get around a web filter that prevented him from doing research.
Mr. Marburger saw Conrad’s initiative and self-teaching (a rare quality these days, fast disappearing), and decided to encourage it (like teachers are SUPPOSED TO DO). He asked Conrad to do a presentation to other classes about the site (he gave the kid some homework not unlike the employed world). The school is threatening to take away Mr. Marburger’s teaching certificate for this (punishing the teacher for doing his duty as an educator).
It’s no wonder teachers lack quality these days. The best of them get in trouble for doing their job right.
The school is making the case that teachers and students should not be allowed to know how something works. Anything could be too dangerous to be trusted. Forget the fact that it points to protecting sloopy, incompetent programming and brings to question the right to proscecute child hackers who the gray line of public domain.
If the school was worried about the safety of kids they would look at the cost of their distructive policies including death. They are expanding the arena of public domain and pressing for the secret classification of basic programming protocal as a control. Ignorance and oppression is safety and schools are there to enforce it.
Yeah, I dunno on this one. It’s clear that he created the site with intention of enabling students to circumvent the school’s filters. I’d say the school is within its rights here, though as usual the punishment is way overboard.
I a kid uses the site from their home computer to circumvent the school’s filter it’s not a school infraction, if they use it from the school it is. The site is not a violation, the kid how uses it from the school is clearly violating a school policy. The software is defective if it was intended to ‘enforce’ a rule, clearly it does not! So the school has a right to review the software package, pursue kids who violate rules regarding the use of school equipment. The school does not have a right to control programming or what someone is allowed to write, most code is copyright protected so it violates the ‘freedom of speech’ to tell programmers what they may code.
Since when does the school possess total control over the lives of their students on a 24 x 7 basis?
From the data available, this did not involve school computers or network facilities, and was not done on school time.
Kipli and Othello are both granting the educational establishment total control over the student’s life; this is clearly inappropriate. I see this as equivalent to having a belief that it is appropriate for the school to exercise total control over a student’s life and conduct.
Someone should remind this school that they are a school, not a re-education camp.
Let’s break this down - there are three elements to the charges: creating the site, telling other students about it, and the use of the site to circumvent school filtering.
His intent in creating the site is irrelevant.
As has been pointed out, numerous proxy sites are available. he created it at home, and thus it’s no different than a personal site criticizing teachers or school administration.
As far as his telling other students about it, he was disseminating factual information. First Amendment, pure and simple. Did he TELL students to use it from school? Maybe, but so what - they still have free will - if he told them to jump off a cliff, would it be murder?
I see only one legitimately sanctionable violation of school policy, and that is by the students who used his site to circumvent policy. THEY have broken the rules, he just created a tool. When a kid is caught smoking in school, the school can’t punish the tobacco company. I suspect the problem here is they can’t figure out how to catch the kids using his site, so they consider him a target of easiest opportunity. His parents should retain a lawyer and sue the daylights out of them. If the administrators weren’t sub-morons, they’d figure out that they simply need to have the filter block his site.
Come now.
The student was out of line by clearly attempting to bypass the school’s filters for use at school… and for telling others how to use his site to do the same. Do you think he could produce a log that shows zero porn hits? I doubt it.
Now… the easy fix would have been and still is for the school to simple put his proxy server on the restricted list and presto! instant fix.
The student is more than welcome to program a proxy server. He’s welcome to peruse the internet from home. The school has their ruleset and he intentionally circumvented it and helped others to do the same. Unfortunatley, the administration decided to throw the rulebook out and make up a punishment.
Sigh. Can’t trust the kids to follow the rules, but it seems that you can’t trust the administration to follow the dicipline guidelines, either.
Garret for Dictator in 2008.
I imagine that the severity of his punishment compared to the recommended ones in the handbook are because he related the simple knowledge of proxy surfing. He let that cat out of the bag and there’s no way the school is going to get it back in. He caused them problems, he must be punished for it. Damn the rules and full speed ahead.
Bill (not the poster above):
I am by no means “granting the educational establishment total control over the student’s life.” What I am granting it is control over how school computers are to be used. And I think it is reasonable for the school to not want students to use proxy servers to get around filter software.
As dweeb and Garret indicated, what a student does at home, from surfing the web to setting up his own proxy server to making web sites that criticize his school, is most certainly out of the school’s control. Home activities fall squarely within the purview of the parents.
We can debate the relative merits and effectiveness of filter software, but in this case, it is appropriate to expect the school to want to control the use of school equipment. However, it also acted inappropriately (surprise, surprise) by punishing the student and teacher so harshly.
This really isn’t circumventing in the classic sense. He’s using perfectly legitimate technology that does a specific purpose that is certainly not wrong. There are many sites out there that do a similar thing that are not illegal for student use. For instance, a student uses web.archive.org, a site that archives websites over time for posterity, to view an archived version of a porn site. The site the student is viewing is hosted at archive.org, and the likelihood of the school’s filtering catching it is much less than if the student had visited the site directly. Did the student “circumvent” the filtering?
No, he went to the Wayback Machine and typed in the address he wished to view, then clicked a date. Exactly the same process as going to google, searching for something, and then clicking a link. Circumventing means going around, i.e., disabling the filtering, setting up a loophole in the network.
All this said, we must consider the fallacious argument that because the school has the policy, it must be right and therefore enforced. If the school installed a system in which students were hit in the face with a two-by-four as they entered the school library, no one would really be all too put off if students started ducking. Both web filtering and the two-by-four inhibit research. Perhaps the school should focus on making sure students can do better research, rather than screwing everyone over because of the one oddball kid who decides to look at tits during computer class.
–adam
Garrett, he did NOT intentionally circumvent it. He set up a method by which it COULD be circumvented. Installing a turbocharger in your car is not the same as speeding. The proxy server could have sat there for years without any students using it. OTHER STUDENTS **MAY** have circumvented the filtering by using his site, and THEY would be guilty of violating the rules, just like if they had used any of a bazillion other proxies out there, many of which were created for just this purpose.
I don’t have a problem with the filtering, although, if it hinders legitimate research, it’s poorly implemented. I absolutely believe that if a student used his proxy to view prohibited material from school computers, THAT STUDENT should be subject to sanction by the school. However, merely providing someone with information that they use to break the rules is a protected expression.
If you steal a fish for someone, then you’re guilty of theft, and for what - so he can eat for a day. If you teach someone how to steal a fish, you’re in the clear, and he can eat until he gets caught.
Dweeb (and others),
Your points are well made.
He didn’t do the wrong thing. Lots of proxies out there. But… (and tell me if I’m wrong here)
There’s a place where ‘the man’ has to step in.
Why are there locks on any doors in the school? Aren’t they just ‘filters’ that someone could get around? There are tons of lockpicks (I mean, ‘proxies’) out there. If a kid got a hold of a master set of keys to the school from a legitimate means (not stealing them) and made copies and left them around, he may not be doing anything wrong. And if he told everyone about the keys, he may not be doing anything wrong… and the individuals who snag the keys and go steal stuff are the actual theives. But — really: providing and advertising access is wrong on some level.
That’s my point.
g
Garrett,
-General motors makes Corvettes and advertises their ability to double, and in some cases, triple the highest speed limits in most states.
It’s still the driver who gets the ticket.
-McDonald’s makes incredibly unhealthy food, and advertises it everywhere. It’s still your own fault if you get fat.
-Guns don’t kill, people do.
-IT’S NOT THE TOBACCO COMPANY’S FAULT THAT PEOPLE SMOKE, or that kids smoke on school property.
-Rapists don’t get to blame Larry Flynt, and we didn’t arrest the Beatles for the Manson killings.
What’s the common thread? Personal responsibility and free will. Now, this kid’s actions had far more redeeming social value than tobacco, fast cars, adult magazines, or supersize fries. He improved his, and his fellow students’ knowledge of technology, he taught others how to more effectively conduct valid research, and he brought to the school’s attention a serious flaw in their approach to content management. Also, while there are millions of speeding tickets, hear disease and lung cancer deaths to point to, to date we’ve been presented no evidence that any students ever actually USED his site to cirvumvent the filtering. Seems to me, if they HAD evidence of that, they’d be able to come down on the student who actually did the deed. Almost ALL knowledge can be abused or used for nefarious purposes; that doesn’t mean we criminalize the dissemination of knowledge. If you prefer a society that does so, China, N. Korea, or Cuba will be glad to grant you citizenship.
Dweeb said “Almost ALL knowledge can be abused or used for nefarious purposes; that doesn’t mean we criminalize the dissemination of knowledge. If you prefer a society that does so, China, N. Korea, or Cuba will be glad to grant you citizenship.”
That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?
My point is that if you tell a bunch of kids how to go look at tits, they will.
Why is there looting when police forces break down?
That was my point. Information isn’t a bad thing. There’s a reason we have locks on doors. If everyone was trustworthy, there would be no need for police or any kind of security. The school doesn’t want someone standing around shouting about how to get around their (poorly) designed security model. They have that right. What they don’t have a right to do is to punish the student so harshly.
More recent research on zero tolerance indicates it does little more than create tyranny and balooning prison population while is sucks resource for engaging bright children.
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/er/pn_rethink.html#Anchor-Does-49575
Disorder and Disengagement in High Schools
Preliminary findings from the research are both surprising and disturbing. At most of the schools, students routinely report that their teachers have low expectations of them and allow them to get away with doing minimal amounts of work. In our own observations it was not uncommon to find students sleeping or playing cards in class, courses where students were made to watch videos that were unrelated to the subject of the class, and students who roamed the hallways freely without concern that they would get into trouble. One of the highest achieving students in our sample informed us that he was going to drop out of school at the end of the 10th grade because he felt he wasn�t learning anything. He had obtained the highest possible score on the state exit exam, but he was opting to quit school so he could take the exam that would provide a General Equivalency Degree (GED). He then planned to enroll in a junior college. Another student in the study, who was widely regarded as one of the best students in her school due to her high grades and good behavior, had been unable to pass the exit exam. When we probed further to find out why, we discovered that despite her high grades, she actually had very low skills in literacy and math. Her high grades, it seemed, were largely attributed to her good behavior.
Conditions like these were not present in all 10 schools in the sample. In two of the schools — the ones that happened to have the lowest suspension rates — there was considerable evidence that students were being challenged by rigorous courses and supported by caring teachers. But at the other eight schools, maintaining order and discipline were the priority of the administrators and relatively little attention was paid to the quality of education being provided. Some of these were large schools with elaborate security systems. However, even two of the smaller schools showed evidence of a preoccupation with discipline and had high suspension rates due to rigid enforcement of rules and regulations. At the larger schools, the focus on security appeared to be largely superficial. These schools had metal detectors at the entrances and an assortment of guards patrolling the hallways. Yet, beyond these symbols of order a disturbing chaos prevailed, particularly in classrooms taught by disorganized or unmotivated teachers.
Crediting ’social controls’ to keep society intact is one simple idea that distracts us from the complex effort of maintaing a just and civil society bound by social choice.
http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/aboutus/publications/justice_Chapter2.html
In fact, in 1999, homicide in New York City increased by about 10%, and the New York Police blamed media coverage, which, said the Department, resulted in police being less assertive.
But no one has in fact ever shown that aggressive policing is responsible for declining rates of violent crime in our cities — much less that aggressive policing is necessary in order to have reductions in crime. Again, the counter-evidence is stark, and obvious. Many cities across the country have enjoyed sharp drops in violence without resorting to the heavy-handed and heedless methods adopted by some urban police departments, like New York City. That includes a number of cities which have indeed done innovative things with their police, but in ways that have improved relationships among youth, police and the community. Boston, Columbia, South Carolina and San Diego are good examples. These also are cities in which the police have done virtually nothing new, but which have also enjoyed striking drops in violent crime. San Francisco is an example. Another illustration is East St. Louis, Missouri. From 1991 to 1996, homicide declined more rapidly in East St. Louis than in New York City — even though East St. Louis did not introduce zero tolerance. The sharp homicide drop in East St. Louis occurred at a time when the police were so deeply in debt that police layoffs were common. Many police cars did not have functioning radios, and many cars were idle because there was no money for gas.
People,
Read the article posted. Specifically this line:
Conrad Sykes, 16, said he created the web site because the school district’s content filter [Secure Computing’s Bess] hampered student research.
He DID create it to bypass the school’s proxy and it is implied, although not explicitly stated, that he DID use it. Why else create it anyways? How would he know it even worked if he did not use it? He did use it. As such, he broke the school’s rules.
Maybe he was punished too harshly, but he still broke school rules and trying to say he did not is wrong in and of itself.
As to the teacher… He is a COMPUTER teacher. He of all people should be aware of the school filters and that they should not be bypassed. He encouraged a student’s breaking of school rules. That is a huge deal when it comes to teachers. Regardless if a student showed ingenuity or creativity or some other great skill, you do not encourage them to break school rules. Regardless of how useless it is perceived to be. Such an opinion does not justify such actions.
othell, which school rules are important to uphold in the home? The college kid in Asia intentionally launched the ‘love bug’ worm committed an actual crime that affected world communication and was unpunished. Uhmm, was that a failure of social authority, should his teacher have been arrested? If you criminalize knowledge and expression, only criminals will be interested.
This knowledge is simple; we are trying to eliminate stoves in the home instead of teaching a child not to play with matches. The downside is a society that controls through imposed ignorance doesn’t grow socially benevolent intellectual resources to fix the system.
Other countries are not afraid to educate their public like India and China:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/international/asia/10asia.html?pagewanted=2&hp
Not least, the two nations pursued famously divergent paths: for India, democracy and belated economic reforms since the 1990’s; for China, a Communist system that began reforms in 1979, unleashing rapid economic growth.
Such contrasts have left some Indians to remark, sometimes despairingly, about a “democracy price” that slows development.
A homeless man with a grocery cart outwitted billions invested in homeland security. We can invest in smarter people or tighter controls. Oviously some people will be knowledgable and made more powerful by the growth of ignorance.
swp,
The majority of your post has nothing to do with this incident. You mention the kid who wrote the worm and asked if his teacher should be punished, and the answer is no. I said the teacher should be punished because the teacher encouraged the kid for breaking a school rule. The teacher did something wrong.
Lets not confuse the situation and bring up all these red herrings. The simple facts of the case as they stand right now are:
–The kid created a proxy to bypass the school’s filter
—-Since he used the filter, this is an punishable offense
—-It could easily be argued that it is a punishable offense if we advertised it to students, regardless if he used it from school
–The teacher encouraged the student
—-The teacher even helped the student diseminate the URL of the site or at least that it exists
—-The teacher broke school rules as well and should have known better
Now if there are issues with how harsh the punishments are, thats one thing… But trying to even suggest that neither should be punished is rediculous.
Othell, The majority of my post has to do with the social impact of policies that encourage mindless obedience instead of fairness.
He DID create it to bypass the school’s proxy and it is implied, although not explicitly stated, that he DID use it. Why else create it anyways? How would he know it even worked if he did not use it? He did use it. As such, he broke the school’s rules.
:-)))) you don’t really know do you? So for you the more serious infraction is the sloopy work produced by companies competing for public money has been compromised. You feel educators should validate sloopy work by defining the authority of education in sloopy law. You can’t be serious. What harm was done? The teach and the student exposed the basic flaws of internet security. There was no campaign to use the knowledge in a socially subversive way.
Of course obedience is important. But understanding when your car needs work is a vital part of being able to stop at the stop sign. The crime is not stopping and the public is not empowered to issue tickets to violators. Most people stop at stop signs because they believe it is important.
Garrett, you’re actually suggesting *I’m* being to harsh?
Let’s look at something you just wrote:
“The school doesn’t want someone standing around shouting about how to get around their (poorly) designed security model. They have that right.”
No, they do NOT have that right. They might have that right in the regimes I recommended to you, but they do not in the USA. It’s called the First Amendment. You don’t have the right to prevent the dissemination of knowledge unless it’s classified as a matter of national security. Furthermore, the knowledge in quesiton is already out there in public for anyone who looks. There are openly published books on how to speed, cheat the IRS, construct bombs and guns, the list goes on and on. Welcome to America, we’re free, and sometimes it’s not tidy.
You ask about looting - is it illegal to tell your friends that the police are on strike? You say information isn’t a bad thing, yet you want to punish the sharing of information. Yes, enforcing the rules is a cat and mouse game, always has been, always will be, and that’s good, because if the authorities had perfect control, they’d become tyrants in the blink of an eye. There is a tension between government and those governed which serves a checks and balances role
When Paul Revere made his famous ride, just what do you think he was doing? He was disseminating information with the clear intent that it would be used TO BREAK THE LAW!!!! Make no mistake, the colonists at Lexington and Concord were engaging in UNLAWFUL armed insurrection against the lawful authority at the time.
Othell,
We don’t know that he used the proxy to circumvent the filtering. He could easily test it any number of ways without ever setting foot in a school. Absent any knowledge that the student had used the proxy to get around the filtering AT THE SCHOOL., there was no rule breaking for the teacher to encourage. What the teacher did was acknowledge the student’s understanding of the subject matter he was teaching. As I pointed out, if the school had one shred of evidence that ANYONE used the proxy from a school computer to circumvent the filtering, they could punish the parties responsible. It would be VERY easy to capture such evidence, if such an infraction actually occurred. Laziness or incompetence on the part of those charged with enforcing the law is not grounds for tossing the Bill of Rights out the window to make their jobs easier.
“It could easily be argued that it is a punishable offense if we advertised it to students, regardless if he used it from school”
Do you KNOW what the First Amendment is? It could only be argued under a regime that has no Bill of Rights. He DISSEMINATED KNOWLEDGE. I suggest that you and Garrett look up a publication titled “The Anarchists’ Cookbook” to see just what dissemination of knowledge that can be abused is all about.You’re in for a rude awakening.
Sniping from the balcony…..
–
You folks who support the web fitering, or at least think the student was in the wrong, ought to know that web filtering is a horribly imprecise and totally ineffective way of blocking out “bad” websites, taking out all sorts of useful “good” sites as collateral damage.
–
Did the following, apparently from the student handbook (6th comment), give anybody else the willies?
Unauthorized access to information, computer piracy, hacking, any tampering with hardware and software, electronic use of harassing and abusive or obscene language or using the network to annoy or offend others is prohibited. Any information that does not support classroom learning is to be avoided.
–
“But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
Although I’ve defended the student in question, your Orwellian concerns are misplaced. Too many people confuse the First Amendment right to expression with a right to government funded dissemination of your ideas, any more than the 2nd Amendment obligates the taxpayers to buy you a gun. The school paid for the computers, and the school has a right to limit their use to school purposes. You have the right to say the king is a fink, but not the right to use the school wood shop to build a sign saying the king is a fink. Are the filters generally a bad method? Sure, but if incompetence on the part of public school administrators is unconstitutional, then we have one heck of a constitutional crisis on our hands, because it’s rampant.
You think that him creating a proxy site on his home computer is wrong? What is wrong with you people? There are dozens of free proxy sites out there already, is the school going to go track down all of those creators and punish them? I think the boy should be commended for being so creative, also, how many of his teachers are smart enough to have done something similar? Him building the proxy is not wrong. If another child abused the proxy by using the school computer to view illegal content then the violation lies with that child. To say the creator of the proxy did something wrong is about as rediculous as saying a gun manufacturer is responsible for a death. The person who used the gun in an illegal manner is at fault, not the person making it. Typical liberal filth and stupidity.
the blocks are queer he shouldnt be punished
Wow this whole story is pretty dumb!! How can you possible get someone in trouble for sumthing they do at home!?!?!?!