[OLPC Security] A mom's worries

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Nov 28, 2007 1:47 PM, alien <alien at mit.edu> wrote:

> > You can just ask to see what is on the laptop.
>
> I would like to see a built-in, very easy-to-use interface where parents
> can browse logs of web site surfing, email use and IM conversations.
> Parents should have the ability to easily restrict their child's web
> surfing and conversations, especially for young children, and to block
> emails when they do not think the communication is appropriate.
>

This is going to break down to the standard Liberty versus Statist
arguments. The Liberty people are going to say that children are more
likely to be molested by someone in their 'family' circle than by
someone on the internet and protecting their privacy could allow them
to report those acts.. The Statist people will say "I have a
responsibility to know what my child is up to and should have the
tools to do so." This will cycle for sometime after someone tries or
does invoke Godwin's laws and its various corollaries. So lets try to
avoid both traps and go with the following:

1) Parents want to know what their children are up to for multiple
reasons. Some are child molesters who want to make sure the kid isnt
ratting on them, and some are worried that their children are
constantly being abused by child molesters. The middle road is that a
parent has legal and various other responsibilities of their child's
activities and want to try and keep their children safish..

2) No computer that is 'working' is 100% safe. No 'working' computer
is going to be safer than its users, or the environment that it is in.
Viruses, worms, etc are going to happen and they will affect some
population of the owners of the computers. The best that can be done
is lowering that percentage to some reasonable amount.

3) Even if the XO project had the budget of the CIA, NSA, Microsoft
AND Google.. it would not be able to make a computer that is safe
enough for some parents.. [ or depending on how salacious the news
reports are on the latest bad guy threat most parents].

4) The XO has a number of volunteers who can do some amount of
protection and reassurance. The best that can be done is detailing out
what those are.

-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"