Police Chief Teaches Parents To Keylog Kids 505
Hugh Pickens writes writes "LiveScience reports that James Batelli, the police chief of Mahwah, NJ, and his detectives conduct seminars that teach parents how to outfit a computer with keystroke logging software, giving them access to the full spectrum of their kids' online activities. Batelli explains that kids put themselves in potentially dangerous situations online every day, especially on Facebook, where they run the risk of coming into contact with child predators who troll the social networking site. 'When it comes down to safety and welfare of your child, I don't think any parent would sacrifice anything to make sure nothing happens to their children,' he says."
Re:cue 100% of comments... (Score:5, Interesting)
That was one of the creepiest fucking things I've ever read. Even if that's exactly what parents want, why on Earth should society support it? Living through your children is not psychologically healthy -- not for you, and certainly not for your children. They're not little mini-you's. They share some genetics with you, they'll obviously share a bit of you based on their upbringing, but they are not you.
If you want to argue you're protecting them... fine. It's a stupid argument and a terrible approach, but at least I can respect the goal. Suggesting you want to keylog your child's computer so you can spy on everything they do and make sure they turn out to be like you in every way instead of just "some ways"... is fucking creepy. There's no other way to put it.
Damn straight-I log what my kids do online (Score:4, Interesting)
Damn straight I log what my kids do online, but I never admit it or tell them about it. We were all young once and we all made poor decisions. It is part of growing up.
I also block content at the proxy server and act really dumb when certain websites don't work at our house from the family PC. "I don't know, did you get a virus or a rootkit somewhere?" is my standard answer. It works on my PC.
Someday they will learn about transparent proxies ... maybe. Until they do, they are "Lusers" and don't need to know anything about our home network security, just like the users inside my company don't need to know. Google and results for proxy are not blocked.
BTW, I learned this from my excellent parents. They knew I was smoking pot and drinking as a teen. They said nothing, but after a bottle of JD disappeared from my room, we entered the "don't ask, don't tell" parent-interaction-method. About 10 yrs ago, Mom admitted to everything - she was pissed about the pot, but her and Dad decided it was a "phase" and to leave me alone if it didn't impact any other part of my life - which it didn't. I was in sports, held a job, got ok grades (As and Bs) and didn't get into trouble anywhere.
Talking with your kids is a good thing too.
Trust, but verify - just like in the business world.
Who keylogs whom? (Score:4, Interesting)
The parents have already set the ground rules (that privacy and respect mean nothing) so the kids are only learning fromthat example - oh, and the example from law-enforcement.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent most of my free time for a big chunk of my childhood from about age 8 to 12 down at the local river /stream building damns and rafts with some of the neighbourhood kids about a mile from home.
when going out the door I'd call out "going out for a few hours, if not back avenge death."
In that time I never put myself in any more danger than I did climbing trees in my parents garden. Some danger but no more than the norm.
My parents had a fair idea of roughly where I was and had instilled in me the basics of not killing myself.
When we got an internet connection when I was 12 or 13 they instilled the basics of "don't give out your details online, don't give out your location online" which is really really really easy to follow if you're not an unusually thick child.
being a 13 year old boy I looked at quite a lot of pornography, went on a lot of forums and a lot of chat rooms but not once did I ever get approached by any kind of child predator or anyone trying to dig my location/details out of me.
the fear of child predators online is wildly over the top.
Your children are vastly more likely to run into them in real life than online and it's almost trivial to stay safe.
Re:Nope (Score:2, Interesting)
On the other hand, I think the internet does for pedophiles who want to find vulnerable children what it does for lonely men sitting at home looking for pictures of boobies.
Not really, these kinds of arguments always ignore lots of practical problems with this. How many adults, of any age, can successfully pretend to be a teen/tween/kid convincingly when talking to someone that's actually that age? How many kids/tweens/teens are going to be interested in that kind of conversation? (And if your kid is, you have bigger concerns than the Internet.) How many of these supposed child predators are going to manage to find a real kid/tween/teen instead of a vigilante and/or cop instead? Hell, if they exist in any large numbers, they probably end up trolling each other more often than they do real underage people.
The ones that get caught, and law enforcement parades through the news, are the stupid ones, the ones that really aren't a danger to anyone but themselves. The real dangerous child predators out there aren't trolling Facebook or other social media sites, they're building their own connections on darknets and things like Tor/Freenet. Law enforcement wants you to think otherwise, which is why they trot out the idiots they do manage to catch and make it a big media show. Just remember, whenever you see that, it's probably nothing but a media show ~80% of the time (or more). And law enforcement has an abysmal track record doing stings of the real dangerous predators, they tend to take shortcuts (like that one they did in England where they took over a CP site and then went after all the credit card holders who'd bought access.... and only years later finally realized they'd mostly gotten innocents whose cards were stolen. There were many suicides by innocent people over that one).
Re:Nope (Score:4, Interesting)
I kinda knew this would be the standard /. response. However, kids lie and lie well. Many probably know how to wipe their history. Many won't and don't know how to check for a keylogger. And in the end, honestly, I don't think there is enough hours in the day to know "everything your kid is doing."
I think I might use something like this. But not to spy on their internet activity. Just when I was in MS/HS, I knew a few kids that went missing or ran away with an older person. Then, such a tool would get you way ahead of the game on might have happened.
Of course, there will be abuse of the tool. It would be perching on your kid's shoulder, and if they sense you are doing that, they'll just as soon seek another computer, or go to a friend's computer, or from a school computer find out how to bypass it a million different ways (Linux Live CD for one if no BIOS PW). And I know parents who go out of their way to make sure their older HS kids don't look at porn. If they are actively seeking it out, they're old enough to look, imo - though it might signal a talk, not restrictions.
But I'm sure the likely outcome to the Police Chief's talks is that more than a few people will start spying on their spouses.
Re:cue 100% of comments... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, you're not living on through your children, you're beginning the process of iterating; you will die and someone else will take your place. Iterative design is all about fixing mistakes in the previous version (you) and trying to find a way to create adult humans who are capable of dealing with any problem that crosses their path (your child).
If you're trying to create adult humans that are the same as you instead of capable in general, you probably believe one or more of:
* That you're perfect (in which case you're wrong, especially if you're doing creepy things to your children)
* That you're not perfect, but they're not going to come across any problems you didn't (in which case you're 99% likely to be wrong, unless you're a fifth-generation coal miner or something)
* That something you needed to do is left undone (which is a shitty thing to leave your kids burdened with, especially without their consent or approval, and by the way you're not even dead yet)
* That life doesn't allow people to make any progress anyway so we should all just be shitty people like you
* Your children don't really have feelings anyway and as long as you play the game of parenting right you can make them into whatever you want
* That your way of life gives you a unique way of dealing with things that is far superior to all others (a view shared by both too-rich people and scam artists)
As far as I know, all of those are legitimately unhealthy psychologically.