IT is a warning to all young computer hackers, as five Sydney high school students have been made an example of following their four day suspension, after compromising the security settings on their government supplied laptops only weeks after they were first issued by the Department of Education and Training.

According to a NSW Department of Education and Training spokesperson, “These devices have internet filters and other security measures…breaching the Charter can result in disciplinary action”.
As part of Prime Minister Rudd’s Digital Education Revolution, ’state-of-the-art’ laptops have been made available for all current NSW Year 9 students to own, for use at school and home.

The laptops are distributed to each student on the condition that the student and their parents sign the Charter Agreement, after which the device then becomes their property.

Section 4 of the NSW Laptop User Charter outlines acceptable computer usage, “Students are not to create, participate in, or circulate content that attempts to undermine, hack into and/or bypass the hardware and software security mechanisms that are in place.”
Within the first week of receiving their personal laptops, many students communicated with each other outside of school hours and shared ideas about how best to ‘hack’ into the locked laptop settings.
One suspended student explained, “After the government said all the stuff they were going to set up on it, it seemed impossible [to hack]…but the first thing that came to my mind was that ‘I want to hack it’…so I looked up the forums, and heaps of people had different ideas.”
Students facilitated conversations on hacking techniques through various online gaming and video streaming websites; popular online youth spaces that the government cannot control.

One student organised to meet a fellow gamer and experienced hacker on MSN Messenger for advice, “It was first hacked by a student…the guy I spoke to apparently figured all the stuff out days before he even got the laptop.”
The attraction to hack into these particular laptops stems from their design to be locked to the Department of Education and Training network to prevent access to sites that are not pre-approved by the Department.
“If the government doesn’t like the website, they block it…not just because they think it’s un-educational but some of the websites say bad things about the government…it was all blocked. You can get like 1% of all the internet” claimed one annoyed Year 9 student.
Whilst at school, the students were visited by a Department of Education and Training official who notified them of their contractual breach

According to one student, they were told, “It might take us ages to get to your school, but we already know everyone that hacked…there’s no way you can get through us”.
A total of five students were found to be in breach of their charter as they ‘vandalised’ the laptop and ‘performed illegal operations’ by altering the computer operating system and installing their own software,
“What we did didn’t really require much skill. It required you to know how to use a screwdriver and use a cable to attach external software. Actual hacking and programming requires knowing how to read and write scripts”.
The students were suspended for less than a week and their laptop contracts considered void.
On the opening page of the User Charter, “The NSW Department of Education and Training is providing students with a personal laptop on the expectation that they will make good decisions with regard to their personal use of technology.”

According to one student, within the first week of receiving laptops, “The general year niner was watching movies and playing games in class”.

Although the government has supplied a $550 million budget for teacher training, many may still struggle to lead a class with the distraction of so many buzzing screens.

One suspended student claims that providing all Year 9-12 students with a personal laptop is not only for show, but a waste of class time, “Some of them [teachers] don’t even know how to use the softwares…so kids are slacking off in class…by the end of the first week half of the class had emulated old Nintendo systems and games on their computers and the teachers couldn’t do anything about it.”

Two of the students guilty of hacking into the system feel their punishment was not fair but share no regrets for their actions, “I asked my mum if she was proud of me at all, for what I’d done, and she didn’t actually reply…so maybe she was”.