Anonymous Takes Down NISD Over Student Tracking Ⓐ

Hacker group Anonymous claims he took down North-side Independent School District's website (www.NISD.net) on Saturday to protest the district's use of tracking badges.

On Sunday, Nov. 25, the same hacktivist released a statement via Pastebin giving the school district “1-3 days” to meet with parents and explain the student tracking program in detail. If the district fails to comply with the request, hacktivist promise to “simply shut down” the school district website once again.

 The hacker group also sent a Twitter message to the NISD account on Thursday, teasingly notifying them that their site was down. "They're tracking students! They have rights too. I want a statement about this, nobody agrees with that, even the parents!" Anonymous said.

NISD said it wanted to expand the Student Locator Project to 112 Texas schools and around 100,000 students to curb truancy, apparently a major problem at the school district in question. It was reported that by improving attendance, NISD could receive as much as $20 million in additional state funding, which would more than offset the cost of implementing the program (pegged at over $525,000 for the pilot program and a little over $136,000 per year to maintain).

“Now it is your school and your rules, but you seen what I did to your website, and have a simple deal for you, weather you accept it or not, is up to you,” the statement reads. “If you still want to do this tracking idea on the students, at least have a meeting with each and every students parents, so they know what is going on.”