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October 21, 2004 at 9:16 pm #1931DavidParticipant
So today I’m in my third period class, it had just started so I wasn’t working yet. I had my laptop in my lap (My IEP says I’m allowed to use a laptop), and I have my CAT5 cable going under the table to the network jack. I also had my external 40GB HD (Power-over-USB) connected to the school computer in front of me. (Just plugged it in, waiting for it to be detected by Windows 2000)
I had just booted my laptop up, and I was sitting at the desktop – the IT woman walks in and I quickly close my screen – I’m really supposed to be programming – she then says something like “He’s hiding something, he just closed it”. At this point I panic and pull out my network cable and kick it under the table.
I put my laptop and HD away, realizing they are pissed off. So about 10mins later, my “administrator” (assistant principal) comes in, and asks me to come with him, and takes the names down of 4 others in the class.
I’m walked to the office and he says to put my backpack in this room… I say that he can’t made me leave my property in a location that is not secure, he responds with “I can do whatever I want, I run this school.” What the hell? I have to leave my $1,700 laptop in a room because you are a moron? How is that right? I then am made to wait in the office for 20 minutes (I’m now missing my 4th period class… heh). I noticed this network woman go into the room with my backpack, but I don’t think they went through it.
Eventually I’m called into his office, where the two IT people are and him. He asks me to boot my laptop and let them “see what I have,” doesn’t that require a search warrant? I can’t see them having the power to search my personal property. After I show them that I have no “hacking tools” (hehe, what fools, I have Putty.exe on my desktop). What they think I had, I have no idea. This woman now asks me what “player.exe” is on my desktop, and asks me to run it. (What the hell could she think it is? Some hacking tool? lol!) My hand-coded media player opens, and she is impressed with my skill (Heh, 4 Hours total).
Now they want to see the contents of my external HD, yet they fail to see my “E:” partition on my main drive… I try to explain that I just replaced my HD with a new, 80GB one and put the 40GB one in this external USB shell. I open explorer and show them the F: drive, explaining that it’s a windows XP installation and that there is nothing to see. Then, this woman asks for “a print out of all the files on the drive,” I basically say “Um, no” while thinking “Wow, you are a moron, you are the IT manager?!” I knew that there was NO WAY they could request such a thing. however, if they insisted I’d have printed out pagefile.sys from notepad. 😀
I was then told that I could not connect my laptop to their network and that I was not to connect my HD to any of the computers either. However ti is okay to use our USB-Flash drivers (Some of my friends and I have Sandisk Cruzer Micro drives that we use to transfer data). That shows again how foolish they are, I can have a 1GB (Mine is 256mb, but they come in 1GB+) flash drive, but not a 40GB external HD? What the hell do they think I would do?
After all this happened, I can quite confidently say that I am more certified to run our schools’ network than any of them are.
October 21, 2004 at 9:26 pm #36322MartinBradleyMemberLol, sounds like a set of fools there Dave.
I am reasonably sure that your school are not supposed to make you leave the laptop in a place which isn’t secure, however I do think they were allowed to search the laptop. Because at some point the laptop had been connected to their network, this is what gives them the right to know what is on it. However, leaving the laptop in an insecure place is a violation of your rights, I believe.
October 21, 2004 at 9:38 pm #36323TigerbladeParticipanti think martin’s about right. they did have probable cause to search (or ask to search) the laptop, if they suspect you’re hiding something like “hacking tools”. but yeah they have no reason and no authority to leave your property in a potentially un-secured location, like a public access office. might want to check with a lawyer or someone who has more knowledge of the appropriate laws though
October 21, 2004 at 10:11 pm #36329SpikeMemberI just talked about rights in History today. Unfortunately, schools across the nation only have to have “reasonable suspicion” to search your property, which include your person (pockets, any clothing, etc.) and property. But that didn’t excuse them from making you leave your $1700 equipment in a room unattended.
I also carry a FlashDrive, although it’s only 64MB (on sale, $20 :cool:). Nobody knows about it, becuase it stays in my pocket unless I need to use it. I’ve only had one instance where this has been a problem. I was in the computer lab for another class, when I plugged in my Flash Drive into a fontal USB port on the PC. The room supervisor comes up and goes, ‘What’s that?’ I go, It’s just a USB FlashDrive. He said they aren’t allowed, you need to remove it. I said, ‘Why? It’s allowed two rooms down in my Computer Class (VB), so why can’t I use it here?’ By then there were at least three teachers hovering behind me. He finally resorted to letting me use it becuase it was the only thing I had my file on I needed to open. He wasn’t happy, though. I think schools need to lighten up on their paranoia with Tech stuff. If a roomful of people can get paranoid over a little FlashDrive…
October 21, 2004 at 10:59 pm #36316OreoMemberIt’s more ignorance than paranoia Spike. Dave, they really SHOULD NOT have made you leave your laptop in a place such as that. Things like lockers, etc… are school property and therefore the school and open them whenever they like. As far as your laptop goes, it WAS hooked into the network as TB mentioned, so in a way, some of THEIR network files may have been acessed (maybe grades??) The fact they made you leave your laptop in that area meant they were going to search it, or they would not have probably made you leave it there. (i.e. your IT fool took it with her into the office). My guess is that one of your cohorts in the school was screwing with something on the network. As you have already stated and proved, your IT “specialists” (I use the term VERY lightly) don’t have a CLUE what they are doing. If you want to go back to your principal and be really sweet, (or get into more trouble depending on the attitude of the guy) you can explain all of the things this woman was looking at (AND FOR) and explain that she might want to get microsoft certified or a BRAIN before she tries to run your school system. And maybe suggest that he doesn’t have the teachers store their grades online. 😉
October 21, 2004 at 11:10 pm #36325ys8er2323Membernope you should all know no matter what the consequence is, you MUST have a search warrent for ANYTHING. David you should have refused because there is nothing they can do about it.
October 21, 2004 at 11:14 pm #36317OreoMemberYs8er, schools are different in A LOT of aspects. Some rules don’t apply in school. You might want to look into that…when I was becoming a teacher we HAD to learn about the limits of the law in school. All they have to do is sqew the facts and they can make it so what they did was in the limits of the law. HE WAS connected to their network and they can easily prove that. No doubt some one was watching on the main PC to see what PC’s were connected.
October 21, 2004 at 11:32 pm #36314detn8rParticipantHmm… the school’s can upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows XP, but students can’t upgrade from the 3.5 Floppy to a 64MB Flash drive? THAT would be my argument. I had several .docs saved in my school login drive with many images in one document. With the images, you can imagine that they are heavy in size. So, for my heavy files, more space is required. Personally, I don’t let my school intimidate me when it comes to computing. Recently, my school fully upgraded to Windows XP, so they also had to upgrade Novell. They left the option to send network messages in the start menu.. so? Guess what happened. No — they didn’t suspend the student, but they suspended their computer rights. *rolls eyes* (For THEIR mistake!) Heh.. I also told the network administrator (him and I are good friends) that if my account was ever terminated because of it (and yep, I sent messages too :D) that I would bitch my way through it.. and I WOULD win because the other kids weren’t intelligent to know to fight it. He just laughed me, but what he didn’t know was that the school’s network went down that night 😀
As for your situation Dave, I wouldn’t bother with the school administration; I would go straight to the school board.
October 22, 2004 at 1:08 am #36321Someguy03MemberWell atleast your school’s IT manager is smarter than mine. I put several programs on the labs server: (because our computers automatically do a “system restore” and go back to their original state after the computer shuts down and turns on so installing them on the computer is pointless):
– FireFox Binaries on the schools webserver so I can access gmail because the guy wont upgrade the lab’s Windows 2000 IE versions from 5.0 to 6.0 and 5.0 is not compatible with Gmail.
– Ad-Aware on the server because there is spyware on the computer I use in the lab and the manager is too stupid to remove it himself
– Proxy Switcher on the server because it automatically downloads proxy lists from sites and tests their speed (this allows me to get around the lab’s internet filter)
and stuck them in an anonymous folder called “class work” and no one seems to have noticed. All the computers in the lab actually have access limitations set up on them so programs cannot be installed but I found I can just set a programs install location to a folder on the desktop rather than the Program Files directory and it installs fine.
One of my teachers had 2 computers in her room that were basically impossible to use because they got infected with an insane amount of spyware such as virtual bouncer, ad destroyer, lycos search bar, etc. Popups came up about 4 at a time whenever you went to a new web page and the computer’s eventually froze because of it. I got permission from the teacher (she wasn’t the IT manager, but ran the lessons and was new to the school so she wasn’t very strict) to take the computers from the classroom and bring them to the lab and fix them myself, which I did, because no one else would.
What happened to Dave was completly stupid and unfair, but I’m not surprised. Most adults I know refuse to believe that a kid could be so good with computers at such a young age and seem to take action (take you to the office and try and catch you red handed in your case) rather than try and understand what the kid is doing. This is simply a case of you being smarter than your teacher.
Something Similar happened to me and I posted it in a topic several months ago:
Kids computer talents judged by age, not knowledgeOctober 22, 2004 at 1:19 am #36333KislukMemberIn case you didn’t catch it, I’m in Dave’s class too and was one of the four getting in trouble. I sure hope that it’s nothing serious like what happened to David.
(Spark notes version of my dilemna)
October 22, 2004 at 1:58 am #36324TigerbladeParticipantQuote:quote:Originally posted by ys8er2323nope you should all know no matter what the consequence is, you MUST have a search warrent for ANYTHING. David you should have refused because there is nothing they can do about it.
uh, no. they dont. probable cause is all they need to search in most cases. there are occasions where they may need a warrant, but if they suspect you’re doing something illegal, that right there is probable cause.
October 22, 2004 at 2:09 am #36326AwesomeSauceParticipantQuote:quote:Originally posted by Someguy03Most adults I know refuse to believe that a kid could be so good with computers at such a young age and seem to take action (take you to the office and try and catch you red handed in your case) rather than try and understand what the kid is doing. This is simply a case of you being smarter than your teacher.
You are so right! well, it’s simply a case of you being smarter than your teacher, in the case of computing. I concur with almost everything everybody has said here, and yes Dave, I believe you probably are a lot more certified to run the school’s network than any of those peoples.
My school is ridiculously strict about using their computers. The student-accounts are really limited. If you click on the Start-button, all you see is: log off/shut down, All Programs> , and there might be one other… but that’s just about all there is. They use Novell too, and you can use the stuff that’s in the little Novell-Window that pops up when you log in.
But there’s a countless number of rules that they told us to follow: only go to websites that you are told to go to, no messing with the buttons on the monitor(hahah, we always used to do that in Elementary school :D), and a bunch of others that I forgot. So I get really paranoid whenever I start using one of their computers. If the teacher caught me rapidly sliding my finger on the Mouse scroll-wheel, they would probably send me out in the hall until class is over. I’m not exaggerating. Just a few weeks ago, my science-class went to the computer lab to get on the internet and go to some sites that talk about cells and organisms. There was this one cheesy-little site we went to that had a Macromedia flash file embedded in it, and I was kinda bored so a kept right-clicking the little movie and zooming in so it got all swelled up and pixelated, and the teacher was walking by me, saw the monitor and said “OK, I don’t know what you’re in right now, but please get out of it.” WTF? what am I in? what everybody else is “in”, that’s what. 😮October 22, 2004 at 3:32 am #36330SpikeMemberOur school is holding Constitution Day next Tues, and one of the questions I’m going to bring up is going to be sometihng along the lines of Why are all of you paranoid? (not exact wording). Don’t worry, we’re just students in front of the adminstration, a lawyer and a cop, so you can pretty much ask anything and not get in trouble ;).
I was also curious: How do you guys get to be so ‘techie?’ I want to be, but my school doesn’t do that sort of thing. So if you have a moment, tell me how you got to be so trusted with computers at your school.
October 22, 2004 at 3:35 am #36319DavidParticipantGuess who’s constitutional rights were violated? MINE!
http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Amend.html
Article [IV.]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.October 22, 2004 at 3:41 am #36327AwesomeSauceParticipantQuote:quote:Originally posted by spikeI was also curious: How do you guys get to be so ‘techie?’ I want to be, but my school doesn’t do that sort of thing. So if you have a moment, tell me how you got to be so trusted with computers at your school.
Hahah… From my earlier post, it’s pretty obvious that they barely trust us at all. And when you say “My school doesn’t do that sort of thing”, I assume that you mean your school doesn’t teach you much about computers. Neither does mine!:eek: which I think is kind of sad, because I think everyone should learn how to use a comp. but I’m not really that ‘techie’ though I guess you could say I’m a techie-wannabe. 😀
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