Kutztown 13..

[Jinn]

Felony charges dropped against the Kutztown 13!! WOOHOO!!! A triumph on the side of common sense! (They got 15 hours of community service, instead..)

The case against the "Kutztown 13"--a group of Pennsylvania high school students charged with felonies for tinkering with their school-issued laptop computers--seems to be ending mostly with a whimper.

In meetings with students over the last several days, the Berks County, Pa., juvenile probation office has quietly offered the students a deal in which all charges would be dropped in exchange for 15 hours of community service, a letter of apology, a class on personal responsibility, and a few months of probation.


"The probation department realizes this is small potatoes," said William Bispels, an attorney representing nearly half the accused students.


The 13 initially were charged with computer trespass and computer theft, both felonies, and could have faced a wide range of sanctions, including juvenile detention.


The Kutztown Area School District said it reported the students to police only after detentions, suspensions, and other punishments failed to deter them from breaking school rules governing computer usage. (See "Felony charges for computer-abusing kids [eschoolnews.com].")


But the students, their families, and outraged supporters around the nation said that authorities overreacted, punishing the kids not for any horrible behavior but because they outsmarted the district's technology workers.


The trouble began last fall after the school district issued some 600 Apple iBook laptops to every student at the high school, about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia.


Students easily breached security and began downloading forbidden internet programs, such as the popular iChat instant-messaging tool. Some students also turned off a remote monitoring function that let administrators see what students were viewing on their screens--or used the monitoring function to view administrators' own computer screens.


School district officials and prosecutors did not return phone messages left Aug. 25 and had not been heard from by press time.


In legal terms, the students have been offered an "informal adjustment"--the least severe form of punishment.


Bispels said a few students are thinking about refusing the deal because they don't feel they have broken any laws. "A lot of these parents would like to fight this on principle, but it's hard to put the kids at risk on principle," he said.


Mike Boland, who represents one student, said his client likely will accept the offer. "It doesn't require my client to acknowledge he is guilty of anything," he said.


"It's about as mild as you can go," agreed James Shrawder, whose 15-year-old nephew was among those offered the deal. "It's more of a face-saving measure."


One student who has had prior dealings with the juvenile probation office was not offered a deal. That case is expected to proceed.

YAY!!! I wanted to buy a cutusabreak t-shirt, but they hadn't even started selling them yet. Oddly enough, their webpage isn't updated yet..

[Pragma]

Let's hope that the kids actually do learn something from this deal - not to break into systems they aren't allowed to. I'm surprised (and disappointed) that they were punished so little for this. I wouldn't think it'd be out of line to give them 100 hours of community service. 100 is more of a punishing number, while 15 is just spending a weekend doing something.

[Jinn]

I've done 15 hours of community service and 24 hours of community service. Trust me, they're punishment. 100 Hours for "breaking" a password that was taped to the laptop? I think not..

[Destrox]

I guess I missed the issue behind all of this. So they were all assigned labtops, and a few of these students had

Students easily breached security and began downloading forbidden internet programs, such as the popular iChat instant-messaging tool. Some students also turned off a remote monitoring function that let administrators see what students were viewing on their screens--or used the monitoring function to view administrators' own computer screens.

done that stuff above..

There is a felony in there where? I'm sorry but this shit is out of hand. Sure take away the students account privlidges and take back the notebooks, but pressing charges is utter bullshit.

[MSD]

We had winVNC for remote monitoring on our school desktop computers in high school, and within five minutes of beginning my programming class, I had written and utilized a brute-force utility and recovered the password. I handed slips of paper with the passowrd on it to two people, and within the hour, the whole school knew about the system and some of the smarter ones were misuising it. One wek later, we arrived at school to find that VNC had mysteriously disappeared from every computer on the network. It was fun to abuse while it lasted.

The best part was that every network admin knew that I had done it, but they couldn't do a damn thing about it without any proof.

I was also the mystery man who remotely accessed the faculty printer (1000+ pages per minute) to make a few hundred copies of step-by-step illustrated intsructions for bypassing the internet filter by using the board of ed proxy server instead of the HS server as the gateway. Again, I was dangerously close to being caught, but there was no proof that I had done it since the only identifying mark was a few lines of lyrics from a particular Nine Inch Nails song (anyone want to guess which song it was? ) I was smart enough not to say a word, and the people who I wanted to know figured it out.

[TM875]

I'm proud that someone in the courts had common sense and didn't take this case too far. Every student, from the inception of computers, has tried to crack them in any way possible.

As one of my friends said (who graduated from Kutztown a few years earlier than these kids) "Thank God I wasn't there - we'd all be in jail"


Edit: Could anyone provide a link to their website?