Thirteen high school students in Pennsylvania are up against felony charges for having tinkered with school-issued laptops.
According to parent testimony and confirmed by an otherwise vaguely-worded letter from the Kutztown Police Department, students got hold of the system's secret administrative password and reconfigured their computers to achieve greater Internet and network access.
Some students used the newfound freedom to download music and inappropriate images from the Internet.
James Shrawder spoke on behalf of a group of parents of six of the accused at a June 20 school board meeting. He said the administration may have railroaded the process by not providing authorities with the whole story.
"That's absurd," Superintendent Brenda S. Winkler said after the board meeting, in response to Shrawder's allegations that the administration withheld information until the end of the school year.
Link (via Declan McCullagh / politech)
Reader comment: Genie Ogden says:
The article on the high school "felons" really made me angry. I went to the newspaper site and sent them a comment. Kids are really being charged with ridiculous stuff these days! Arrested for pointing fingers at other kids (in kindergarten), etc., – it's not like they're planning Columbine type actions. And there are adults doing much worse things and getting away with it – Enron, a war in Iraq based on lies, etc.
My middle school daughter was doing a report about slavery and couldn't get to the book she needed on the internet because it had the word "bondage"
in the title. She could have used a password like these kids — but now she'd be in jail.
