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> Making such a big deal out of it seems to be a total over-reaction. As I already mentioned. A felony charge is a gross overreaction. Your characterization g

by ux-app 12y ago

> Making such a big deal out of it seems to be a total over-reaction. As I already mentioned. A felony charge is a gross overreaction. Your characterization goes too far in the opposite direction. This is more than just a harmless prank. > three of those were confirmed to be paedophiles. I'm sorry to hear that. > it's those people that are the cause of your 'walking on eggs' feeling That's certainly half of the equation. The other half is the sadly routine issue of innocent teachers being accused of wrongdoing by malicious students. My school deals with these types of issues every year. Students often retract their accusations when they realise how quickly their angry accusation turns into a very serious investigation of said teacher. I've heard from first hand accounts this exact scenario play out a number of times. Most of these issues play out behind closed doors, so my sample of 3 or 4 over the last 10 years would mean that his type of issues is routine in a school setting. As you can imagine this type of process is extremely stressful for the teacher involved. > the fact that it involves a computer makes the offence not much worse This is flat out wrong. > He's being punished for what he could have done Taking unauthorised control of a teacher's computer is a very serious issue. An unambiguous message must be sent to all other students contemplating this type of action. The potential of harm is exactly what elevates this to a far higher level. > change a background pic and alert the teacher to get a much better password rather than destroy his reputation You are mischaracterizing the student portrayed in the article. From the article the student changed the background because he did not like the teacher. The fact the his actions were relatively harmless are indicative of his lack of imagination, not his good character. > that email could be forged quite convincingly without access to your computer at all... Spoofed headers could be easily challenged if it came to that. The issue of a student gaining access to a teacher's account and accessing it from school equipment greatly increases the burden of defense for the teacher. Now the access was not forged or spoofed in some way, it is indistinguishable from actions that the teacher could have undertaken.

jacquesm 12y ago
Sure, but that's all 'coulds' not 'dids'. Whether he changed the pic because he disliked the teacher or liked him is immaterial it is the access that matters here not the actual change. But something tells me that if the student doesn't like the teacher the teacher won't like the student either and in this case the teacher went absolutely overboard in going after the student, it is a textbook case of out-of-proportion escalation. No real harm was done and this should have been kept inside the school walls. Taking unauthorized control of a computer to replace a background image is something else than taking unauthorized control of a teachers computer in order to destroy their reputation. And in that case a response such as this one would have been appropriate. As for spoofed headers being 'easily challenged', this IT department isn't even capable of coming up with a proper password policy, do you think they'd be able to differentiate between forged headers and real ones?
- ux-app 12y ago
  Sounds like we agree far more than we disagree. As I've mentioned a couple of times in this thread, I find the involvement of the police a gross overreaction. Where we disagree is in your (and others) charactirisation of this as a harmless prank. > No real harm was done and this should have been kept inside the school walls. The potential for real harm was very real. > Taking unauthorized control of a computer to replace a background image is something else than taking unauthorized control of a teachers computer in order to destroy their reputation. The background image was of 2 men kissing. Let's be charitable to the student and assume that it was not pornographic. It's not unreasonable to assume that the student was hoping that the teacher would inadvertently show this image on an overhead projector to the whole class. If setting up a male teacher to show an image of homosexuals was not intended to negatively affect his reputation then what was the intent? If on the other hand the image was pornographic in nature then I'm confident that any 14 year old would know that "Mr.Blogs will get in lots of trouble for this!!!Lolz!!1!!" > in this case the teacher went absolutely overboard in going after the student This is not how schools work. A teacher does not "go after" students. They report the incident and school administrators take it from there. And i'll state it again - I am not in favor of the felony escalation of this issue! In a previous response you equated this "prank" to posting an image on the back of a chalkboard. Equating the two is deeply flawed. The chalkboard does not have any access control. The default response is : "hey some kid posted a stupid picture... lol!". A computer on the other hand does have access control. The default response then becomes "wow the authorised user of this computer set the background image to 2 gay men kissing". This is not a subtle difference. This is the difference between a simple prank and an innocent teacher with a smeared reputation and potentially ruined career!
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    > The potential for real harm was very real. Yes, but normally we punish people for intent and actual harm not for potential. > The background image was of 2 men kissing. Let's be charitable to the student and assume that it was not pornographic. It's not unreasonable to assume that the student was hoping that the teacher would inadvertently show this image on an overhead projector to the whole class. If setting up a male teacher to show an image of homosexuals was not intended to negatively affect his reputation then what was the intent? If you're a high school teacher you're going to have to have a ticker skin than that to let such stuff bother you. You're dealing with 30-odd students with hormones raging and all kinds of issues they need to deal with, your 'reputation' is not going to be damaged one way or another by you putting up a picture on an overhead projector placed there by another person. But your reputation will be determined by how you respond to it. > This is not how schools work. A teacher does not "go after" students. They report the incident and school administrators take it from there. Exactly. So if there is a chance of an over-reaction you limit the damage, both for yourself and the school and the student. > The chalkboard does not have any access control. That computer came pretty close to not having access control either. Using the lastname of the teacher as a password does not count as 'access control' imo. > The chalkboard does not have any access control. The default response is : "hey some kid posted a stupid picture... lol!". And that's exactly where this should have ended. > A computer on the other hand does have access control. The default response then becomes "wow the authorised user of this computer set the background image to 2 gay men kissing". It should be fairly obvious that the teacher did not put the image there to all present, that's the whole point of a prank. After all, it was found out who did it, wasn't it? The teachers career was not in any danger so you're still responding to what might have been, not what actually was.

by ux-app 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago

Sure, but that's all 'coulds' not 'dids'. Whether he changed the pic because he disliked the teacher or liked him is immaterial it is the access that matters here not the actual change. But something tells me that if the student doesn't like the teacher the teacher won't like the student either and in this case the teacher went absolutely overboard in going after the student, it is a textbook case of out-of-proportion escalation. No real harm was done and this should have been kept inside the school walls. Taking unauthorized control of a computer to replace a background image is something else than taking unauthorized control of a teachers computer in order to destroy their reputation. And in that case a response such as this one would have been appropriate. As for spoofed headers being 'easily challenged', this IT department isn't even capable of coming up with a proper password policy, do you think they'd be able to differentiate between forged headers and real ones?

ux-app 12y ago
Sounds like we agree far more than we disagree. As I've mentioned a couple of times in this thread, I find the involvement of the police a gross overreaction. Where we disagree is in your (and others) charactirisation of this as a harmless prank. > No real harm was done and this should have been kept inside the school walls. The potential for real harm was very real. > Taking unauthorized control of a computer to replace a background image is something else than taking unauthorized control of a teachers computer in order to destroy their reputation. The background image was of 2 men kissing. Let's be charitable to the student and assume that it was not pornographic. It's not unreasonable to assume that the student was hoping that the teacher would inadvertently show this image on an overhead projector to the whole class. If setting up a male teacher to show an image of homosexuals was not intended to negatively affect his reputation then what was the intent? If on the other hand the image was pornographic in nature then I'm confident that any 14 year old would know that "Mr.Blogs will get in lots of trouble for this!!!Lolz!!1!!" > in this case the teacher went absolutely overboard in going after the student This is not how schools work. A teacher does not "go after" students. They report the incident and school administrators take it from there. And i'll state it again - I am not in favor of the felony escalation of this issue! In a previous response you equated this "prank" to posting an image on the back of a chalkboard. Equating the two is deeply flawed. The chalkboard does not have any access control. The default response is : "hey some kid posted a stupid picture... lol!". A computer on the other hand does have access control. The default response then becomes "wow the authorised user of this computer set the background image to 2 gay men kissing". This is not a subtle difference. This is the difference between a simple prank and an innocent teacher with a smeared reputation and potentially ruined career!
- jacquesm 12y ago
  > The potential for real harm was very real. Yes, but normally we punish people for intent and actual harm not for potential. > The background image was of 2 men kissing. Let's be charitable to the student and assume that it was not pornographic. It's not unreasonable to assume that the student was hoping that the teacher would inadvertently show this image on an overhead projector to the whole class. If setting up a male teacher to show an image of homosexuals was not intended to negatively affect his reputation then what was the intent? If you're a high school teacher you're going to have to have a ticker skin than that to let such stuff bother you. You're dealing with 30-odd students with hormones raging and all kinds of issues they need to deal with, your 'reputation' is not going to be damaged one way or another by you putting up a picture on an overhead projector placed there by another person. But your reputation will be determined by how you respond to it. > This is not how schools work. A teacher does not "go after" students. They report the incident and school administrators take it from there. Exactly. So if there is a chance of an over-reaction you limit the damage, both for yourself and the school and the student. > The chalkboard does not have any access control. That computer came pretty close to not having access control either. Using the lastname of the teacher as a password does not count as 'access control' imo. > The chalkboard does not have any access control. The default response is : "hey some kid posted a stupid picture... lol!". And that's exactly where this should have ended. > A computer on the other hand does have access control. The default response then becomes "wow the authorised user of this computer set the background image to 2 gay men kissing". It should be fairly obvious that the teacher did not put the image there to all present, that's the whole point of a prank. After all, it was found out who did it, wasn't it? The teachers career was not in any danger so you're still responding to what might have been, not what actually was.