(May 17, 2012 at 9:33 am)Shell B Wrote: Hmm, I would not have a problem with it, provided it was conveyed before the issuance of the laptops. Given that they are school property, from what I read, it's not really as "Big Brother" as all of that. They should not do it secretly, though. Entrapping kids into getting in trouble teaches them negative things about authority.
This is a fundamentally incorrect read, and here's why. But first, let's inspect WHY this software is here in the first place, considering I got my career start in IT.
Schools have a big problem with students travelling over the web, downloading random programs and generally messing with whatever can be messed with. Normally, in my professional environment, if you had a computer that was "compromised" by it's users, you'd:
- place all assumed compromised computers onto an isolated subnet when they're at school.
- place a really good firewall as the gateway to that subnet.
- place a program that logs the URL of websites visited in the past week (but not much longer, lest the information both become too large to sift through) and downloads that log into a database for analysis against known attack sites. If one is paranoid enough, one can run downloads of all executables of those visited links and run them through a malware analyzer.
- use DeepFreeze (
http://www.faronics.com/enterprise/deep-freeze/ ). This will restore the computer to a pre-defined state at reboot with certain degrees of modification, thus killing whatever viral infestation that has not managed to penetrate the frozen state.
When the computer goes of out whack, you call it back in, analyze and react accordingly.
THIS IS HOW YOU DO PROFESSIONAL I.T.
Now, let's look at how the school is taking care of that -- they're using a screen capture software at a minimum, and probably one that supports taking pictures with the webcams (there was a case in the US a few years back about precisely this). This is a violation of privacy, as an
unredacted screen cap
may grab financial, personal, or medical information.
Violating the first or last is considered, to differing degrees and contexts, a crime. The middle also, but less frequently.
Furthermore, because these programs often contain the ability to 'spy' into others' home, if it possesses such an ability, it will be considered in a court of law as wiretapping.
I suspect the reason why the school chose this software is that they have an idiot in charge or running their IT, as it strikes me a suitably bullying and 'nanny'-ish suggestion that I'd hear parroted out of my high school teachers.
They see it in the same vein as an adult, in the computer lab, looking over your shoulder and saying "Stop that!".
They're woefully wrong and using the most dangerous software and methods to do the same of what I described on the top.
To return to the main, you're incorrect because your "OK" with a method of gathering information that exposes all parties to massive amounts of liability while not asking "Is there a bettter way?"
In my humble opinion, we need more of "Is there a better way" than "Yeah, sounds good. Fine. whatever".
