LOL student suspended for "hacking"

[Red Squirrel]

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/columnists...ber/7643262.htm

Hey!

On its face, that expression is neither offensive nor disturbing. "Hey!" is an informal way to say hello. It indicates kindness, simple courtesy and an economy of words.

But a 13-year-old boy at Richland Middle School in Richland Hills was suspended for three days in December because he sent that simple message to every computer in the school using an archaic form of instant messaging. The software was created years ago in the old disk operating system used in earlier versions of personal computers.

Carl Grimmer's father taught him how to send messages through network computers as part of a tutorial on how DOS worked. DOS, you might recall, preceded Windows as the dominant operating system during the 1980s and early 1990s.

"It was neat," Carl Grimmer told me the other day. "I had never seen it before."

I guess it's only natural that the next day, Carl went to school and in his eighth-grade computer class showed a friend how the messaging system worked. That's what learning and experimenting is all about. I think that's what school is about.

The result of his trick was that every computer in the school, approximately 80 of them, received his message of "Hey!"

At first, Principal Tommy Rollins didn't think much of it. "I saw it," he said. "It didn't say who it came from. I just deleted it."

Beverly Sweeney, a computer teacher and campus computer liaison with the district, entered Carl's computer class and quickly figured out where the message originated and who sent it.

According to Carl, Sweeney asked him, "Did you do this?"

"Yes," he replied.

"Do you know that this is serious?" she asked him, according to Carl.

"No," he replied.

Then she asked how he did it, and he showed her.

The matter worked its way up to the principal, who eventually suspended Carl for three days.

Rollins told me that students had been using campus computers in unacceptable ways, and he hoped to make an example of Carl. The Birdville school district does not have a written policy on what to do in this kind of situation, so the decision rested with the principal.

"You have to use your own judgment," he told me.

I respect Rollins as a kind and sensitive educator, but in this particular case, he may have erred. A three-day suspension for this "crime" seems excessive.

Carl did not send out a dirty word. Carl received no warning. No written policy prohibits what he did. Missing three days of school for something so minor is overkill.

But what I find more offensive is the unsolicited explanation I received from campus computer liaison Sweeney after I made my initial telephone call to Birdville district spokesman Mark Thomas to inquire about Carl's suspension.

Because Sweeney wrote her e-mail using her taxpayer-funded district e-mail account, it is a public document, and therefore, I quote it in full so we can all share insight into the mind of one of the educators who busted Carl for writing "Hey!"

She wrote: "Mr. Lieber, I want to communicate to you my concerns about some of the 'reporting' done by [the] Star-Telegram and my concern about an article I have heard you might be writing. Too often, people who do not know the real world of public education feel that they are the 'experts' who have all the solutions and that their opinions are as valuable as those who live in this world daily.

"If you comment upon events that are reported to you by a parent and do not fully investigate those reports before you publish your article, then you are one of those people. I have not heard that you have attempted to contact those people who really know the situation.

"I am speaking about one incident in the Birdville School District in which a student was expelled for tampering with the district's computers. Having been a computer teacher in the real world of public education for many years, let me say that suspension of students who are guilty of such tampering sends a message to all students that is beneficial and necessary.

"Students should not be of the opinion that it is acceptable to abuse the privileges that are afforded them by the taxpayers. If they are allowed to experiment and do things on the computers that the teachers have not specifically given them permission to do, we would never get any computer education accomplished.

"Hacking into a system should be highest on the list of tampering violations. I believe the other students are now aware that the district takes this seriously and will not tolerate such misuse of our equipment.

"I invite you, parents, our state representatives, and anyone else that thinks they know how a teacher or a district should react to ANY situation to come live with us for a while -- be a substitute teacher for a few weeks and learn the real world of public education.

"Beverly Sweeney."

The first problem here is that Sweeney, a computer teacher, apparently doesn't understand the term hacking. Hacking is not using a built-in command to send a message. Hacking is defined in two general ways: 1) use of a computer to break into someone else's computer system, and 2) the sophisticated techniques used by an adept computer programmer.

But more troubling is the notion that Sweeney does not believe that the rest of us have any right to question the decisions made by public educators.

Remember, we pay the salaries of the teachers and staff. We buy the computers. We pay for the buildings in which they are used. As long as public school is public, the Beverly Sweeneys of the world need to know that it is our right and duty to look over their shoulders and question what they do.

In this case, the punishment of Carl Grimmer was overkill, but the response of the school's computer liaison shows that public education really does demand greater oversight from us outsiders, certainly not less.

Hey!

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1900, old post ID:15567

[wldkos]

Thats bullshit, that's not serious in the slightest bit. The Network admins job is to make sure that these programs are not accessible or do not exist. Thats their fault, and they are avoiding the blame and putting it onto a 8th grader.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1900, old post ID:15582

[Red Squirrel]

Yep, reminds me of my school. If I wanted to, I could probably "cancel" a video conferance class without getting caught. They have a great network, but crappy administration (none). I was trying to get into the video conferance system through the web interface, because you can upload a power point presentation and access it to show the class at the other end, but it asked for a password and not even the princapal knew what it was! It's not "I can't tell you" but "I don't even know what that is, and what the password is". I could of probably brute forced it for a week and eventually get it, without them noticing anything.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1900, old post ID:15587

[megaspaz]

lol. what a bunch of fscking retarded teachers and faculty. this is serious.... yeah right. where in the blue hell does this take place in, country-wise? remind me, not to go there no matter how lucrative offer i get. just retarded. what the hell is this beverly sweeney even doing near a computer let alone being a liason? secure your systems. oops! you chose to network win9X machines. that whole computer department needs to be shot.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1900, old post ID:15618

[Red Squirrel]

My school wants to switch from netware to win2k.... win2k is not too bad... if maintained.

They have trouble maintaining netware, imagine win2k!!! I got access to the princapal's computer once, it was so easy. There was a password, but netbios is so easy to crack it's not funny, but I did not try since I don't have bad intentions.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1900, old post ID:15619

[manadren_it]

and the moral of this story is: If you can do anything with a computer other than point and click, you must be an evil hacker bent on destroying every computer you touch.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1900, old post ID:16064

[Red Squirrel]

haha. Well that's pretty much how lot of people put it. I was programing once and my mom thought I was writting a virus.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1900, old post ID:16066

[fab4fan]

i did something like this to my friend.
we both have xp
and i went to command prompt
and typed

net send *ip* hi
and he told me on msn that some dialog box popped up with my ip in the titlebar and it said Hi

lol.


Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1900, old post ID:17116