Network problem; help a young man for being falsely accused.

[rexbur]

I have a problem that I need an answer to before Tuesday the 14th. My nephew is in his first year of high school and has been accused of downloading inappropriate material on one of the computers in his Photoshop class. I realize that boys will be boys, but this kid is way to afraid of getting into trouble, I mean he is 15 and still his walls are covered with pokemon posters.
The proof that they have is Internet Explorer history file; as far as I know they its only one page, it was a search on a Japanese google image page. I have been to this page and there are only three nude images on it. My question is, could some other student access the Internet via the room network? And should all the information be on the server? I would really appreciate and theories on this matter, this is a really good kid and I don’t wont to see him pay for something he did not do. I am quite computer literate but networks and servers are not my forte. I have a meeting with his teachers and the computer tech that is accusing him; so any ammo I could get would be greatly appreciated. I am basically looking for defense material to keep him from being suspended.
One last question, should everything that was viewed on his machine via the internet be on the school server?

Thanks,
Rex
rex@ntldesign.com

 

[FaiTHLeSS]

If it was in his history then only he could have accessed from the computer, it cant be added there remotely as far i know. The only other thing is if he had left his computer then someone else used his computer to load the page. But from what your saying hes loaded the page by mistake. My question to the school would be, "How did my nephew get access to this in the 1st place, why wasnt it blocked by firewall/proxy server?". The school should be filtering the data coming into the network and that sort of stuff should be blocked from it even getting to the persons computer.

 

[cadaveca]

i agree with faithless... they obviously have some sort of monitoring going on to find out that he haad accesed the page to begin with, and with that in mind, it kinda makes sense that they did not filter it out because it was a japanese page and they had probably only used english words for the filter. it is possible for someone to add an entry into explorer history, but because we are talking about some seriously advanced hackin to do it(and it would have to be malicious intent) i think that it is more likely that he stumbled accross the stuff by mistake, and i think that the school and student should both chalk it up to a learning experience, and that in today's multicultural society the school should have taken greater steps to ensure that this did not happen in the first place, and the student should give a written apology(what for i don't know except it might make the school happier) and that should be all. Any student can go home , turn on tv to the discovery channel and see nudity of all sorts, nevermind mtv and the like.

 

[ashpp]

Rex,

I cannot seriously believe any school would suspend a student for this.

My arguments would be

1) The school obviously has a Zero-Tolerance policy on porn. If this is the case they should take all reasonable steps to protect children from viewing it. With zero-tolerance the only reasonable step is constant over the shoulder supervision. (filtering is not sufficent)
This obviously didn't happen - therefore the fault lies with the school.

2) The internet is full of porn, he was obviously searching on google for images. What is the likely hood of porn being returned? Very high even with innocent keywords. The school should have setup google in filtering mode.

3) Hes 15 and viewed 1 page of porn! So what? I suspect every 15 who has used the internet has accidently or on-purpose viewed porn.

At the end of the day if the school wants to suspend they are being very unresonable. Good luck.

 

[compuveg]

I would definitely be going with the offensive line.

1. The school should have filtering in place.

2. They should also have the browsers locked down on the student desktops so they are unable to view sites with ratings they aren't approved for.

3. If the school is using Google for a search tool, they should have already placed the appropriate cookies which would cause Google to ONLY use SafeSearch.

Assuming the school district is too ignorant and too poorly funded to have implemented any of those 3 systems, there's always the history file as his witness.

Any history file pointing to Google searches should be able to show the search parameters the boy used to return those images. I am sure that these parameters would indicate if the boy was looking for hot babes or cold sushi.

This history file should also indicate that he did or didn't request the full-image, once he saw the thumbnail from Google's image search.

I could understand the school being mad if he had gone and downloaded the full-size image, but it doesn't sound like this is the case.

Good Luck.

 

[zebratech]

I agree with all of the above. Do a search on the "White House" and porn links appear (all Clinton jokes aside). It's time to be proactive and not punitive. Remember the anti car theft slogan "Never leave your keys in the car. Why help a good boy go bad?"

 

[alexs0628]

Look at the times posted for the particular page the school is talking about. If a kid goes to a porn site, you will see more history then one silly page. If he really went to a porn site intentially, you will see page after page of listings for every image and sub page for that site. (Believe me, I know because that's how I caught my 15 year old son browsing where he wasn't suppose to be.)

One page listed in the history file proofs nothing. It's probably just there from some innocent browsing. The school is at fault for not having filtering software and exposing the kids to porn. Tell the school officials if they suspend your nephew, you will sue them for allowing him to be exposed to porn in the first place.

 

[scotitpulsa]

Without a doubt this student is not at fault! Every reply so far is correct in that the school's administrators and filtering capabilities are at fault. At any rate, i think the above replies cover most all of what i would like to say.

All i would like to add is that if they do feel the need to prosecute this student for this, I would recommend pursuing a lawsuit in an event of doing an audit on all of the teachers and administrators of the school. You'd be surprised at how many of the "respected" faculty of our school districts are using the networks set up for our students to learn from as gateways to their porn fantasies. I went to a small town school with very few students and I spent time as a network administrator intern in my senior year there and i found many instances of faculty members using the network for porn searching. Perhaps you might stir up a bonfire if you mention something of the sort! Good luck to you!

 

[rexburg]

Hi Everyone

I just wanted to thank everyone for all the input and advice. I have a meeting with the principle on Wednesday and I will let you all know the out come. I also neglected to mention that the teacher showed my nephew the printout of the google page; it contained three images of nude women. The word that was searched on google was skank. I did the same Japanese search and out of 160 hits I only got 4 nude images, most of the rest were of a rock group. Once again, thanks, you all have been a great help.
Rburg