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Comment by RealStickman | Hacker News Reader

If I were a student and knew about that I'd purposefully put in a variety of words and phrases that might get flagged in every email

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And if I were your parent, I'd seriously look into moving you to a less abusive school.

In small towns there's often no choice. There's only one high school in Santa Fe.

Yes, this is true. Sometimes doing right for your kids requires a great deal of sacrifice.

When my eldest was in primary school in a very small town, they implemented a surveillance system that I (and a lot of other parents) objected greatly to. There was no other school in the area, and home-schooling was not an option for us.

It took a year or so, but we resolved the situation by moving to another city.

Time to do a report on Scunthorpe

Funny story.. back in 2000 a new boss starts at UK govt agency with student focus. This is around University entrance time. He wants to stamp some authority and show he knows better than the last boss. To add some context he was a Londoner in Scotland who obviously knew better than the great unwashed north of the border. Pretty much the first thing he does is look at the flagged words list on incoming emails. Why he felt this level of micromanaging would endear him to his Scottish team is lost to time. Anyway, he snorted and with a smirk berated the admin team for leaving out "cunt" and told them to add it in. The admin team, said nothing and did what they were told and waited.... Over the weekend over 10000 emails were flagged and had to be manually read by the small admin team, who were used to a small amount every week. Our London friend handed his notice in within 6 months :)

Does the word have a different meaning in Scotland or is it just not considered offensive?

In Scotland, the north of England, and Australia, you'll often hear 'cunt' used as a term of endearment between good friends. It's a banter thing.

Then you'd be doing a "violation" and get a warning. Presumably some in-school punishment for repeat violations.

In this context, I'd be encouraging my children to do this (and certainly take the blame for them); false positives ftw! It'd be a great, teachable moment where I can discuss many sociological, technological, and ethical issues at once. On top of that I can teach them a thing or two about opsec.

The school is really at a loss here for retribution: in many instance the students are required to use the school's equipment for completing assignments and projects. So the worst they can really do is "restrict" usage -- but that isn't really any different than what they already do. So it's a bit of a headache for me and the kid(s)? A small price to pay for demonstrating the hilarious shortcomings of implementing a technological solution to a purely human problem -- one that requires specially trained humans to fix.

(Of course I'd make sure the kid(s) give me their blessing before messing with the school)

On another note: I have extensive experience working for school districts. This is absolutely a CYA attempt with no foresight into what the outcome of this terrible experiment will be. These solutions tend to be hacked together, easy to circumvent, and poorly implemented. While I have no direct experience with the product mentioned, I do have experience with school-focused solutions. We had to pay the extra money for purely commercial solutions to get anything that was worth the money.

This is not a false positive, attempts to subvert or sabotage surveillance clearly indicate latent antisocial tendencies and should be punished to the full extent of the law. Please report yourself to the nearest Malcontent Utilization Facility, citizen!

While this might sound like a joke or an exaggeration, this kind of authoritarianism is spreading like wildfire in the US.

i got it. not sure why you're being downvoted.

Hacker News doesn’t like jokes.

Or rather, if you’re going to make a joke, it had better be as part of a substantive comment that exists to do more than just tell a joke.

That wasn't a joke of the, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" sort. Satire can be used to illustrate a point, often more effectively than plain-old words; hence, the comment is no longer grayed out.

Technically only second part was intended as a joke. First part is how I honestly expect the school to take such interference.

There's plenty of space for triggering false positives.

"I wonder if I'm gay.", "I read that if you drink bleach it could kill you", or just meta "what happens if I put the phrase XYZ here?".

Sounds like a good opportunity for a civics lesson. Today's subject: mass civil disobedience.

Given the article's description of the company's hiring process, it seems like it would be straightforward for a group of high school students to become ‘Safety Representatives’ and… act creatively.

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