Something’s Watching You Online
The recent arrest of a Pikes Peak Community College student accused of viewing child pornography in class got us wondering about internet security to prevent WiFi downloads of child porn or anything else illegal or inappropriate. Since 2008, universities and colleges in Colorado have to follow what’s called the Colorado Opportunity Act. It was a measure put in place to teach students you can’t download everything on the internet universe.
PPCC’s Allison Swickard tells me, there is a sort of grading system for what’s being downloaded on the WiFi system. A third party software system tracks everything from illegal downloads of copyright material like music, Ebooks, and porn. The more points you accumulate means you could eventually be thrown off the Pikes Peak Community College’s WiFi network. You would see a warning pop up on your screen. You would have to explain to IT experts why you were downloading the information from certain sites. Swickard says about the internet watchdog, “Every day they send us a report and say these are how many violations have happened and these are the mac addresses where they happened.” Potentially, law enforcement could be contacted to deal with the situation.
Swickard also says that sometimes there are inadvertent tracking errors. That could include viewing what could be deemed inappropriate material like artistic nudes or explicit crime scene photos. Swickard says this happened recently because a student was doing research for a class. She says, “The warning popped up as something inappropriate, but when they explained what they were doing and the classes and course, we told the student, ‘please view that material where it doesn’t offend other people.'”
