Cyber Safety for Teachers: a potential nightmare

Zeus gave a box to Pandora with instructions thatshe should not open it, but she gave in to her curiosity

and all the miseries and evils flew out to afflict mankind.

Teachers use the internet to obtain all kinds of images and there is a variety of search engines and image hosting sites available. Google, Yahoo and Bing are very popular and can locate thousands of images very quickly. What many don't realise, however, is that they could be opening a Pandora's Box of unsuitable, unrelated and potentially incriminating material because the retrieval system will often return images that are unrelated to the search but which happen to be adjacent to the search keywords in a document or website.

The moment you input your search term, dozens of images pour into your hard drive and stay there until they are wiped off or are overwritten by new material. This may be demonstrated by a search on Google Images for an image of US President Obama. The search engine produces the following page and reports that there are millions of images related to the search term ‘obama’.

Scrolling down the page reveals a large number of images of President Obama, including a few that are not too complimentary. Even if you choose not to download any of them, they have made themselves at home on your hard drive in case you decide to do so at a later stage. This ensures that they will load quickly.

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By searching the hard drive with a program designed to recover any images or documents which have been saved but deleted, you will discover thirteen pages of Google Images featuring President Obama, yet you may have only seen a handful of them. Unless you are a particular admirer of the President, the only reason you have collected over two hundred images of him is because of your search, and they will stay there until you wipe them with drive cleaning software or the computer overwrites the space they occupy. Cleaning the cache will not remove the images, just the reference data about them. Incidentally, the same search on Bing Images, stores nearly one thousand Obama related images on your drive, and, if you have a lot of free space there, these uninvited visitors may stay for months or even years.

One of the many Obama images stored on the hard drive

So far, there is very little risk involved in searching for images of the President of the United States, but the next example illustrates the problems that can arise from the most unexpected topics. As a youngster, a friend was stung by a scorpion and recently told one of his grandsons about it. Though the sting was not serious, the boy wanted to know what a killer scorpion would look like and how large it would be. Turning to the internet, my friend entered the search term ‘killer scorpions’. The image search

responded with a display of rather menacing looking creatures, the exhaust of a motorbike, and images of a naked prepubescent girl in an erotic pose. Scrolling through the array of images, there were almost as many images of this young girl as there were scorpions. Her presence on this search is explained by the fact that she had been used to illustrate the front of a record album by a group called the Scorpions.

Later, when this search was repeated on another computer and the hard drive inspected using the software mentioned earlier, over one hundred images of the girl were discovered. Legally, these would be classified as indecent images of a child and

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the computer user could be prosecuted for possessing them. In 2008, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) blacklisted the image on Wikipedia, an action which resulted in a worldwide escalation of internet searches for scorpions. A few days later, the IWF reversed its decision "in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability". Yet, if an image is illegal, why should its age or popularity excuse its publication?

Most image searching systems offer an option called safe search and this usually operates as the default setting. Automated methods and algorithms are used to identify objectionable content, but it is never entirely clear how a system decides that a particular image is suspect and must be blocked. For example, on Google, the search term ‘fat lady’ will produce will produce a host of images, some tasteless, straight away. On Bing, however, no such search is possible until the safe option is removed, only for the user to be confronted by a considerable amount of serious pornography. Neither rely on, nor tamper with, the ‘safe’ search setting.

To illustrate an article on corporal punishment in a military school during the 1950’s, I found an image of a rather unhappy boy in uniform about to be caned.  It was the second image to appear in the search and met my requirements perfectly. What was not seen, however, was the torrent of obscene and disturbing images that followed it onto the computer’s hard drive. A lawyer who inspected the retrieved images suggested that the computer be destroyed because their possession on the hard drive could lead to a jail sentence! And this was a safe search.

There are many search terms which can give rise to ambiguities. Pageant, for example, has a rather different meaning in the USA and a searcher in the UK will not normally expect to retrieve images of little girls dressed like hookers. Similarly, a budding chef wishing to illustrate a recipe of a delicious bombe surprise will certainly get a surprise when confronted with the contents and workings of an individual explosive device.

The 21st century has brought widespread internet surveillance and monitoring of personal communications by government and other organisations. Indeed, almost all internet traffic is closely monitored for clues of illegal activity. Teachers, more than anyone, need to be particularly careful about their personal internet communications and searches. The recent case of a teacher who joked on Facebook that her pupils were less intelligent than pigeons - causing an outcry from parents - is a case in point.

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Vent your frustration in immoderate terms on Twitter, or an internet forum, about someone or some organisation, or send your computer for repair or transfer it to a new owner, and any of these scenarios, no matter how innocent, could result in an search warrant being issued and an unmarked police car calling at daybreak. Not only would the computer be seized, but any cameras and memory cards could also be confiscated and held for many months, thus denying your access to important family documentation and financial records. This is not a fantasy; it is happening all the time and, nationally, there is a huge backlog of seized computers awaiting inspection. Some of those who have aroused suspicion have eventually proved their innocence, but at considerable cost to their finances, reputation and freedom. In a recent case, Hertfordshire Police had to pay out £750,000, of which £20,000 was for damages and the rest in legal costs.

So while you believe it to be an innocent search for images to illustrate worksheets or revision notes - be careful. To ensure that you are not harbouring uninvited guests on your computer, use a private browsing facility to block unwanted images, invest in some drive cleaning software and use it regularly to shred the free space. Be vigilant. Think about that search term, and check for any typing errors before you press Go.

Mudsailor

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