Hurray! It’s finally catching on.
Apparently little Jimmy Harris accessed his school’s wireless network using his PSP and downloaded pornographic pictures. Moreover, he displayed them (on a dare) in his school library to a gaggle of his friends. Not the brightest move, as he has now been grounded for a month and given an in-school suspension.
I love Fox’s coverage on it though. I mean…pulling the pictures “out of thin air” sounds like quite an impressive feat, and seems to really be hammering home a bit of tactical scaring. Yes, the PSP can access dirty pictures over a wireless network. So can a laptop, or computer. A kid can also see “girlie magazines” in convenience stores. Hell, we carry Maxim, FHM and others at Zellers, and 10-14 year old boys are always stealing them. If kids stay up late enough, they can see porn on CityTV. Porn is so easily accessible to children that the PSP would be the last place I’d expect them to go to. I mean…as far as using a 7” screen on a portable gaming system to access your schools wireless network seems kind of…tedious. Set your VCR to record CityTV between 1 and 3, and you’re golden. :P
I’m just wondering why the school doesn’t have an encrypted wireless network. Or, why accessing pornography on their network wasn’t halted by some sort of firewall service, or something retarded like NetSweeper. They’re elementary school kids…I’m sure they couldn’t figure out a McGyvered way to bypass things like NetSweeper. Also…wouldn’t they want their network protected from outside wireless access? What prevents some pedophile from coming along and lifting all of the kids addresses from the schools network files? If you ask me, parents should be worrying about that a bit more.