Individual rights Vs School Security

What rights do schools have to monitor all our actions on the computer. As it is, they already prohibit us from complete access to the internet. Not to mention, the restrictions they have in affect on programs in windows.
Do students not have any rights? I asked this to the tech department at my school, and they said, "If you can find a program which meets all legal requirements, and doesnt violate your rights, come to me. Then we will talk. Until then, I dont want to hear about it."
Do you have any ideas of better software that our school could use? Currently we have Fortress 101, and as for an internet we have BESS.
Thank you for your time, and any responses you might have to this question.

Thanks again,
Mike

Students do have rights, but your using the school's computers, so you have to go by their rules

Schools are no different than corporations. They have acceptable use policies that you must follow. First of all, you don't own any of the equipment so your personal wishes are not a consideration. Second, the school is liable for your actions while you are using their equipment, thus, the acceptable use policy is in place to protect the interests of the school.

The tech dept reacted appropriately to your request. If what you want falls within the school's policy then they will help you out. If they do something that violates the policy because you feel that it is your right, the school and the tech department will be responsible. Get used to this model because when you eventually move on into the "real world" acceptable use policies may be even more restrictive than your school.

--TH13

Indeed, when it comes to using someone elses equipment and network you have whatever rights and privileges they give you.

What kind of Programs you looking to run?

Ok here dude our school has bess proxy server too. But we have learned how to bypass this go to https://nadaily.com, or just type in nadaily.com. Now when you get to the site go to the bottom and u will see a white box type the url that you want to go to. I had tested this w/ everything porn, game sites, ect. ect. if this does not work go https://nhuanet.com now when you get there go to the bottom and in the white box type in the url. This does the same thing just bess blocked https://nadaily.com so u have to go to the other one sometimes. Well hope this helps you man. -Twisted-

twisted-
I am not looking to bypass what rules the school has. What I am really looking for is another option for my school which will allow me more privacy and freedom, but still offers the required security.

Our school uses fortres 101 like ur's but iPrism St. Bernard firewall. Fortres is a good program. Still lets u do what u need but keeps people from messing things up. St. Bernard is alright, i dont really come across it that much. It only blocks nude stuff and hacking.

defetones12,
you say the program is iPrism St. Bernard Firewall? I will have to do some looking into this site. Than you very much for responding with another option.
-Mike-

yes i dont know the technical details of it but i know our Network Admins like it. Its a 5,000 dollar piece of hardware too i know that. But no one at our school has exploited it or nothing bad i have heard of it.

That's what I like about dansguardian (www.dansguardian.org), it's a true content filter;
while you can use url blacklists with it, it goes one step futher and actually analyses the text content of the page with certain words worth negative values and other positives and if the total value of the page is past a certain configurable threshold, the page is blocked. For example, "breast" might be worth 10, and "cancer" might be worth -10, so a page about "breast cancer" will pass but not a page about "breast & sex"... so using a proxy site will not foil the filter.

It works actually quite well. I installed it at the begining of the school year (I admin for a private highschool), and I've had only 2-3 false positive pages that I've had to whitelist since.

Ammo

i found out the hard way yesterday that you can get in serious trouble for even using a program that you have access to. on my school network you are not supposed to access DOS but using a batch file I was able to send a net message to about 200 computers. I was just fooling around and said that 'the matrix has you' It was really stupid of me and now I may not be able to use the schools computers for a while. moral is, use school computers for school work only.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by SirSub
Students do have rights, but your using the school's computers, so you have to go by their rules

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Being a public school that I go to, wouldnt it be a publicly owned network?

I mean, afterall, my tax dollars paid for it.

I must attend schooling or my parents or myself could be fined or arrested.

By the aforementioned saying, prayer could be mandated in schools because you are infact, in the school and under their rules.

But wait, no, they are government owned, and tax dollar funded, so there has to be a seperation of church and state.

This never makes sense.

An alternate to using fortress 101 is to use DeepFreeze. My school was looking into it for a while but decided to stay with fortress. It is a rather interesting program. It images your harddrive and whenever you reboot your computer it brings it back to the orignal form. Its rather cool. You can check it out at www.deepfreezeusa.com

Guys,Your Looking For Privacy? with the site twisted posted it shows up as nadaily.com not as www.big****.com or whatever...

Theres your privacy...

second off all the site is,is an alternate server allowing you to search for what you want
(meaning no longer using bess server to search)

As for not bypassing rules....
simple,DONT LOOK UP PORN
;)

school's in america has the same rights that the us government has given themselves in patriot one (and soon patriot two) that gives all institutions the right to snoop on the people in said institution for "security" puposes, even at the comprimise of privacy

"What rights do schools have to monitor all our actions on the computer.
As it is, they already prohibit us from complete access to the internet."


It's like that in the real world when you work your given
a list of do's and do not's your usaully told not to discuss anything
about the employer or policies, it's written down in memos not to visit any
obsence or x-rated sights you just go to sights related to the work you do
no kazza or file sharing peer to peer allowed to make sure people follow
the rules they block stuff & there is a small eye at the bottom of the computer
screen that's the admin he/she can see what's going on so if you visited
some prohibited sights they can come back and ask what you were doing.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by DigitalReligion




I mean, afterall, my tax dollars paid for it.

I must attend schooling or my parents or myself could be fined or arrested.


.

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Well If you are still atending school then more than likeley you are still under the age of 18 wich means that you DONT pay taxes. They may take them out of your paycheck but you'll get them back. Secondly the school system is set up like a corporation. Think of the superintendent as the CEO and the school board as the board of directors. you wanna make changes thats the rout you need to go. Through the proper chanels. what exactly is it you are wanting to do that the school wont let you? More than likely they have a good reson to not let you do it. Theres a better than even chance that the admins do actualy know more about computers than you do. My advice would be to do whatever you want to do that the school wont let you at home.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by DigitalReligion


Being a public school that I go to, wouldnt it be a publicly owned network?

I mean, afterall, my tax dollars paid for it.

I must attend schooling or my parents or myself could be fined or arrested.

By the aforementioned saying, prayer could be mandated in schools because you are infact, in the school and under their rules.

But wait, no, they are government owned, and tax dollar funded, so there has to be a seperation of church and state.

This never makes sense.

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Think of it as driving on public roads:
Roads are government/city owned, yet you're not allowed to purposfully damage them. In fact, driving on public roads is not considered a right, it's a privilege. If you don't respect the road safety rules (and etc), you will loose your privilege to use them (ie: loose your license). It's exactly the same thing with school computers/networks.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by VizjereiMage
Guys,Your Looking For Privacy? with the site twisted posted it shows up as nadaily.com not as www.big****.com or whatever...

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Like I said, if the school is using a true content filter (like dansguardian), it acutally fitlers based on the text content of the page, so "www.big****.com", will still be blocked eventhough it's url shows up as "nadaily.com".


Ammo

Most of the restrictions on the computers are made in the registry. If you can make it to and edit the registry u might be able to gain some access back to your programs.

Schools in America report to superintendents who report to elected school boards. School boards usually have frequent school board meetings where citizens can bring their concerns. If you don't like a policy you can bring it to their attention. If you get nowhere with that you can petition for a referendum on a ballot. Or you can campaign to unseat school board members who don't see things your way.

If the democracy of the process bothers you, would you be any better off with anarchy?

well that is nice and all but i don't think it is necessary to fight with the school over internet privacy in the school. there is no need for a change. granted it restricts some site you may want to eed to go to, but with out it there would be all sorts of people abusing the priviledge, just like everything else. i stand strong for freedom and for privacy, but i think in some cases there needs to be said rules... these are public machines for your benefit, you could not have them at all

Welcome to the real world....a place full of rules and regulations that you may or may not agree with. IF you want to change it, then go into politics and 20 years from now you might be able to make a difference.

As it is now, count yourself lucky. IF you break the rules, you get sent to the principals office, detention or a short suspension. Out here in the real world if you break the rules you get an all expenses paid trip to a 8x10 room that you share with a big guy named "Bubba" who thinks you're cute and wants you for his concubine.

umm, synper/evil/VizjereiMage

how many accounts is it going to take before you realise you dont tell people how to do things they shouldnt be doing on computers they dont own?i think you need to see a DR, you talk to your self with your accounts man, for one, you can tell its you because of the personality in your posts, you cannot hide that, no matter how many accounts you use a part of you shows up in each one of them, just give up on pretending to be 3 people. Also, stop talking toeach account man, i dont give a **** you came back, you had the right to but **** at least dont pretend its not you,,,i mean dude, your other account posted a question about your computer being ****ed up, and you reponded to it on another account! i mean **** man, give up on that and just post normal ****, honestly no one cares you were banned before, you came back, its called a second chnce, just quit pretending, be yourself, and post something besides jokes and one liner replies and youll be fine ok?

our state DOE uses websense, its run off a list that the DOE admin puts together, it also can block wepages by there subject lines, it blocks the download of certain files (i.e. MP3s). its a good program if your looking for mild security and just plain restrictions on the internet.

What exactly are you trying to do...if its a purely learning driven request (and not gamming r something malicious) talk to the network guys/the CS teachers if you have a CS department. You may be able to get a sandbox network setup without the restrictions outside of the firewall.

My school has Bess Internet Filtering installed on its network also. Now I don't go browsing porn sites, but I do surf. What bugs me is that websites that shouldn't be blocked are. For example, some bands like NOFX's webpage are blocked. This makes the use of the internet very limited. Even when I am looking up information for school, some sites are blocked that contain useful information. Filtering is a necessary thing for schools and company offices, but I believe they are taking it too far.

Well, seeing as this thread was just revived and all i'm doing is d/'ing distro disks for FreeBSD, i guess i'll throw in my fifth of a dime.

Although i have no real experience with filtering systems at my school (i never took CS courses for anything because most of them had titles like "Business System and Technology" but was really "Learn how to use more MicroSoft products"), i can contribute some general philosophy. Imagine someone using your computer. They're someone you don't know and you're liable for their actions. Would you let them reign free on your system doing whatever they want, or would you lock your system down so that they could use it for some things, but not damage the computer or put any unwanted content on it?

It's kind of like the FreeNet group. I, being a former member of freenet, agreed with their ideas of free speech and anonymity. I liked the idea of being able to look through things without fear of being judged or banned from computer use. Then, i found that there's was a whole crapload of stuff on my hd. I didn't know what it was, i didn't know how to read it, all i knew was that it came from freenet. I got kinda scared by that then. I mean, i couldn't be assured of what was on my computer. It could be virus code, child porn, anything. After that, i realized that my convictions of free speech weren't as strong as i thought. Although i wanted to be able to freely express myself, i didn't want to be held responsible for other people doing the same. I immediately wiped that section of my drive and defraged so that stuff was put over it. I removed all my freenode data, and have never installed it since.

This situation is a lot like that. Although the people running these systems may not want you to be stripped of your rights and freedoms, they don't want to be held responsible for what you do with those rights and freedoms. As such, usage policies are formed and, whether you like it or not, you either abide by them, or don't use the system.

None of this is really directed at the original poster as it seems they were only interested in providing their school with alternate protection mechanisms. For that, i am glad. If we cannot see our options, how could we ever make a good decision? Anyways, that's what i have to say about it for whatever that's worth. :)

I had bess at my highschool, that is when i went there a couple years ago, and i found it quite easy to get around. The admin was my friend though, and since i helped with some of the chores in the lab, i got to keep this personal freedom. Most schools won't have an admin that will take a student seriously, but as it seems i was lucky. In general its probably a bad idea to do anything outside of the schools internet policy without permission.

Also i believe there is a page where you can make a formal request to bess to have them review a page you think should not be banned. I had a couple bans lifted by doing this.

i have no clue why this old thread was brought up but here goes...
as many of us know many internet security programs not only block content like pornography but also things that the maker deems innapropriate. For example, my schools program has blocked access to a young conservatives website, which has nothing on it innapropriate. sure, you could say its the schools computers and stuff, but you havto remember its our tax dollars paying for the security programs going on the computer, some of the computers might come free but they dont come with programs like Fortress 101 (at least the schools around here dont). Schools do not have the right to not allow subjection to websites which they deem politically wrong, even though it may not be offensive in any way. yea theyre not making the security programs, but the schools should have enough responsibility to get a secure internet access program which does not block content that is perfectly acceptable and is blocked simply because the maker doesnt like it. you may want to check out this thread if your interested in schools with politics http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=252010

Quote:

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Originally posted here by thehorse13
Schools are no different than corporations. They have acceptable use policies that you must follow. First of all, you don't own any of the equipment so your personal wishes are not a consideration. Second, the school is liable for your actions while you are using their equipment, thus, the acceptable use policy is in place to protect the interests of the school.

The tech dept reacted appropriately to your request. If what you want falls within the school's policy then they will help you out. If they do something that violates the policy because you feel that it is your right, the school and the tech department will be responsible. Get used to this model because when you eventually move on into the "real world" acceptable use policies may be even more restrictive than your school.

--TH13

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[This is exaactly correct, I couldn't have conveyed that point any better myself.]

Dont bother trying to get around the school's security systems and such, even if u do get around deepfreeze, bess, fortress ect.. the admins are just gonna catch u. all its gonna do is get u into more trouble... use school computers for school work and stuff, use your home computer for all that other stuff, best advice: dont give out any private info over the school networks, there all watchin everything

Check your date on this threa ian, I think it died out.

ian,

Welcome to AO :)

I would like to point out that if the date is flashing, then the post is dead. Some persons (not myself) might take exception to raising an old post.

I would suggest that the best method is to go down the bottom right and click on the purple "bump up" button, then enter your bit?

Not having a go, just a suggestion..............and I agree with what you said :)

Yeah, exactly, I don't care myself about posting to old threads bust some cranky old senior members have major cows. ;) I agree as well, good advice.

Back in the ancient days of windows 95 i was in high school, and what was interesting is that we had an old version of fortress.... now back then i was able to boot into dos and disable it (it was hiding in config.sys and autoexec.bat).... furthermore we had deepfreeze (which my college uses now)... i have done some security testing against it, and what we have found is that by booting into safe mode (with network support if necessary) it is possible to uninstall/delete the main executable...

I am not promoting illegal activities, but i am giving this information to show that there are ways to get around their security systems ONLY IF THEY ARE STOPING YOU FROM DOING SOMETHING LEGAL / CLASS RELATED.

the reason in the past i was always disabling them was because i was doing research papers on genetic mutation and DNA replication/cloning. for some reason, i kept getting blocked and because my admin was incharge of not only the network, but also teaching classes, and in charge of the FBLA club at school, she never had time to go fix all the computers in the school.

I understand why you are not happy with school policy, i was like that also. what i am doing now is trying to fix that problem. I am finishing up college and i m hoping to become a school admin, and maybe will be able to make a difference. maybe you should try this too... rather than b!tch about the system, try to fix it (and i know you can't do anything now because admins never take students seriously until the student brings the network to its knees (not a suggestion again, just trying to make it so you don't make the same mistake i did...))