Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it

They used to use managed iPads with Google classroom. They now use managed windows Lenovo with multiple layers of spyware.

I bought my iPad and don’t allow installation of any apps with system privileges. This required a sit down with the principal, vice principal, county school board rep, and “tech manager” (who was just a random teachers aide with no training or specialized education and didn’t know much about equipment).

It was a real hassle, but they agreed to a personal device and they give out a school “loaner laptop” for exams. The loaner has goguardian and lots of other stuff installed.

Some surprising things I learned: -the school principal chooses the technology without any real evaluation criteria. He said multiple times “I’m not a tech expert, I just do my best” and claimed to not know how all this stuff works -my child was threatened with expulsion if they didn’t comply with the policy and only got around the school policy through a loophole because it was me who wouldn’t sign the contract yet it was the child who was being punished (contract required me to maintain the laptop, pay penalties for any damage, even if accidental, assume liability for theft, pay for my own insurance through a single vendor negotiated by the school, and learn and carry out administration since the school didnt have trained admins and only had an 800 number for tech support)

I hope they never make a competent policy because it is so kafkaesque and draconian. The standard laptop is completely locked down and monitored by the school by people who don’t have any training on when to access data, including video from inside my home.

I have quite a bit of experience with hardware and software and it’s hard for me. I can’t imagine how typical parents are supposed to protect their kids’ rights.

Our highschool had a bunch of laptops. They were the firstish gen of mac laptops with built-in webcams. This was all very new.

These laptops would take a picture of the user at every login and then once an hour or so after that. I guess the principal wanted to know who was using each machine in case anything unclothe was done with the laptop. The pics were stored on an FTP server (not FTPS. Not SFTP. FTP.). The FTP account had RWX on the directory where all login pictures were stored, and the FTP server was exposed to the internet. A simple MiTM on any network where this laptop connected would give the attacker full read access to these login pictures.

The problem: these laptops could be "checked out" for an evening or weekend. So they got around. Hotels, restaurants, libraries, coffee shops, etc. But also student's bedrooms. This was in the days when most public wifi was just a commodity linksys router behind the register and you could more-or-less safely assume you were being MiTM'd when connecting to a public wifi network.

So, long story short, a principal with bad judgement and an IT admin with just enough googling skills were uploading pics of students in their bedrooms to an FTP server that was almost certainly hacked into by dozens of different people. Without consent or knowledge of the students or parents.

When I raised this issue, the principal suspended me. Getting the suspension reversed required going to central office, who were totally unaware of what was going on and were, obviously, appalled at the picture taking script.

School IT staff are often knowledgeable enough to be dangerous, and individual school administrators often demonstrate remarkably horrible judgement. I understand the "be kind" sentiment, but there really is a lot of inexcusable incompetence and poor judgement in K12. We should hold those systems to a much higher standard than we do.