I will try and put it another way. Let’s think of passwords as “locks”, and locks can of course be broken, worked around etc. we all know this. . Now what if a lock was put on a new gymnasium, and a group of student basketball players, really wanted to play with the new basketball hoops? Now let’s pretend the athletes are as stupid as the kids in the computer class, and they aren’t going to let some pesky contract, and some teacher tell them what to do, so they cut the lock off and they go and play some basketball.

-So the school gives them a detention and puts a new lock on. The students who “only wanna play basketball and create new moves” then steal a key. and they go play some basketball.
-So the school sends the parents a note, informing them of the contract, and telling them that it is imperative that they get their children to comply. But the students pick the lock this time.
-So the school gives them a suspension and puts a new lock on. The students bypass the lock again! Does the school, just keep putting on a new lock till the end of time or do they try and put a stop it? Sounds to me like the school did everything it could, then finally just had enough and let the people who should handle these things (police) handle it.

How is the crime above, any different from hacking into a vulnerable area of a computer network?

Kelly said: “”One thing the school didn�t try. Take the computers away. If for some reason that didn�t work, try suspending the kids. They didn�t: they sent notes to their parents. Seems like a no brainer to me, but apparently going straight from a note to the parents to calling the police, filing criminal charges, and having the kids in jail is easier. “”

They didn’t just send notes. They also tried detentions and suspensions BEFORE they called police.

Kelly said: “”Demerits, suspension, sure: time in jail, criminal record? Not. I didn�t notice anything in your response about going to jail if you used your work-provided computer to play Doom�I guess you would have been okay with that?””

Yes I would be very okay with that. How did doom come into this anyways? 🙂 If my employer told me not to use my work computer for Doom, had me sign a contract at the beginning of the year (same as the students) saying that I would not, but I did anyways. And then they were nice enough to keep warning me through demerits and then they finally give me a suspension, hoping that I will smarten up. Now eventually I come back to work, and yet I am such a retard, I continue to play Doom. Do they have a reason to fire me? Bet your arse they do. This is exactly what happened with the kids. They were warned, then given detentions, then notes to parents, then suspensions, then after all that, these kids learned absolutely nothing, so the school had to call in for help. That help was in the form of law enforcement.

Kelly said: “”As for the kids �monitoring� administrators�there is nothing complex or tricky about that, or particularly �evil�. The schoolboard put software on the laptops so they could monitor the kids remotely. The kids figured out how this worked and used it to do the same thing to the IT administrators. “”

I have no idea if it is complex or tricky, but that is totally besides the point. It is not complex or tricky to break a lock and walk into someones house, yet this is against the law. The students signed a contract, and agreed to play by the rules. They decided not to.

These parents and kids that whine about this, are the exact same parents who would turn around and sue the school because little Jimmy or Susie saw pornography on the school’s computer. Just because the school had nothing to do with putting the pornography on the internet, and nothing to do with the kids using programs to hack it, it would be the school’s responsibility and there would be lawsuits everywhere (probably already is regarding this case).

Kelly said: “”If the kids had hacked into some system, deleted/defaced/destroyed files, changed their marks, altered the teacher�s tests- I�d be on the schoolboards side in terms of pressing criminal charges. But what the kids did was roughly equivalent to sneaking into the teacher�s lounge and taking a cup of coffee from the coffee machine, then while you are there poking around in the magazines and stuff lying around on the coffee table.””

Sure, what they did was minor, but the fact is, they did it over and over and over again. If you had a child that kept tipping over a table, knocking things off, causing you a minor inconvenience, but did it all the time, wouldn’t you finally discipline the child? And if all that discipline failed, what would you do? And spying on someone on their computer, in my opinion is a heck of a lot worse then poking around magazines and stealing a cup of coffee.