An urgent question, please help,

[GrumbleDook]

When I notice the Internet speed is suffering and look thru the internect connections and spot a child is by passing our proxy server via a video proxy avoidance service what can we do ?

 

When the staff member is supposed to be in charge of what the students are doing!

 

 

Note the key words ... arbitrary and unlawful. As part of your published day job (i.e. you have a job description) you are expected to investigate and deal with technical problems, which may involve traffic analysis. What you are doing is not subject to individual whim, but part of an established procedure. You are accountable for your actions. You are not just 'snooping' for gossip (for a very simplistic example).

[Davit2005]

Note the key words ... arbitrary and unlawful. As part of your published day job (i.e. you have a job description) you are expected to investigate and deal with technical problems, which may involve traffic analysis. What you are doing is not subject to individual whim, but part of an established procedure. You are accountable for your actions. You are not just 'snooping' for gossip (for a very simplistic example).

 

Will never pass on any findings or what I see to anyone I shouldn't and always respect end users privacy.

[GrumbleDook]

Will never pass on any findings or what I see to anyone I shouldn't and always respect end users privacy.

 

No ... sorry, I probably didn't explain that fully. As part of your job you might come across things when trying to deal with something else. These things, if they are a concern, may need to be reported to others (bullying, illegal images, attempts to breach security, etc) but they should be reported to the relevant people as per your school procedures. You are not specifically going out looking for things and snooping on internet traffic or email for no reason whatsoever, but you come across things as part of your job. There may be times when you are required to investigate things (emails due to alleged bullying) but the ability to check these is generally automated (key word checks which flags questionable activity ... often tied in with other filtering / logging options) or is done on request of an authorised person at the school (which is part of a published procedure) and appropriately logged and is fully accountable.

 

A good example to equate this to would be the school's CCTV system. If you have a look through the wiki at the sample CCTV policy it will run down how to explain what you use the system for, how it is kept running and maintained, how people are authorised to request to look at the CCTV footage and how this gets logged.

 

The principles are pretty similar and with the changes due to The Education Act 2011 there are likely to be other examples of these principles being used (e.g. logging searches, etc). SWGfL and UK Safer Internet Centre are doing more work to look at that aspect of things so keep an eye on their sites, as well as the sticky on the eSafety forum for more resources.

[Davit2005]

No ... sorry, I probably didn't explain that fully. As part of your job you might come across things when trying to deal with something else. These things, if they are a concern, may need to be reported to others (bullying, illegal images, attempts to breach security, etc) but they should be reported to the relevant people as per your school procedures. You are not specifically going out looking for things and snooping on internet traffic or email for no reason whatsoever, but you come across things as part of your job. There may be times when you are required to investigate things (emails due to alleged bullying) but the ability to check these is generally automated (key word checks which flags questionable activity ... often tied in with other filtering / logging options) or is done on request of an authorised person at the school (which is part of a published procedure) and appropriately logged and is fully accountable.

 

A good example to equate this to would be the school's CCTV system. If you have a look through the wiki at the sample CCTV policy it will run down how to explain what you use the system for, how it is kept running and maintained, how people are authorised to request to look at the CCTV footage and how this gets logged.

 

The principles are pretty similar and with the changes due to The Education Act 2011 there are likely to be other examples of these principles being used (e.g. logging searches, etc). SWGfL and UK Safer Internet Centre are doing more work to look at that aspect of things so keep an eye on their sites, as well as the sticky on the eSafety forum for more resources.

 

I had issue at a previous workplace where a student user had somehow stumbled across image on the Internet which bypassed both the LEA's filtering and our own filtering system the image was however picked up by our system somehow that highlighted it. After speaking to my line manager in the utmost confidence I was asked to proceed and to get reports on trying to find where this image came from, what was clicked on or typed in search engines. I was then informed to pass this information onto a vice principle who dealt with child protection issues he dealt with it from there onwards. I believe I acted right and professional in this situation no one else was told about this instance.

 

Can I addI had to look through 45 pages of reports outputed by our filtering system and handed the whole report to the vice principal by hand.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Davit2005

[GrumbleDook]

I had issue at a previous workplace where a student user had somehow stumbled across image on the Internet which bypassed both the LEA's filtering and our own filtering system the image was however picked up by our system somehow that highlighted it. After speaking to my line manager in the utmost confidence I was asked to proceed and to get reports on trying to find where this image came from, what was clicked on or typed in search engines. I was then informed to pass this information onto a vice principle who dealt with child protection issues he dealt with it from there onwards. I believe I acted right and professional in this situation no one else was told about this instance.

 

Can I addI had to look through 45 pages of reports outputed by our filtering system and handed the whole report to the vice principal by hand.

 

Ideally, if you can have this sort of process down on paper as a workflow (and yes, before the collective members mention it, I know that you were just following common sense anyway) then it means that you can log down what you did, when, who authorised further investigation, etc. Also remember that if the image is questionable as to whether it is illegal or not then you should contact the police about it, but if it is isn't then you also need to be sure you are happy to continue in case you come across something *you* might find disturbing too. You cannot be forced to look at images which you might find disturbing.

 

The log is your audit trail in case anyone asks why you were looking at these images, as well as being helpful to the police if they need to take the investigation further.

 

The procedure / workflow / log is their to make sure you do the job the way it is needed to be done, but also to cover your backside in case you are accused or investigated for something.

[IanT]

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