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by dooglius 2624 days ago
Poor choice of term maybe... you want to get information about communication between endpoints without their consent.
1 comments

Well its a school. They (or their legal guardians) consent as a condition of using the network.
It sounds like they have root access on the computers in question. There's plenty of options thus available to them.
The OP talked about BYOB, which rarely includes "root access" (either via a root cert for decrypting traffic or admin level access to the machine)..
I was referring to the machines they were preventing the installation of Firefox on.

For BYOD, I don't know what you're gonna do. Many students have smartphones too (some with tethering), and you can't control what they look at on those either. Plus, even if the school could somehow magically lock everything down 100% within the confines of the school building, the students can still get access to whatever at home, or using coffeeshop WiFi, or whatever.

> the students can still get access to whatever at home, or using coffeeshop WiFi, or whatever.

That's fine, these are not school responsibility. Once the parents complain, you can redirect them to their home or coffeeshop.

What stops them from downloading this stuff and still bringing it to school?
You can use special paint on the buildings that blocks RF. There are also cell phone jammers. They require a license and approval from the FCC and have legal implications / risks.
This use case wouldn't get approved. It's very hard getting an exception and this doesn't come close to meriting it.

Preventing cell phone calls could have dire consequences in an emergency, and stopping kids from looking at porn doesn't remotely merit taking that risk.

Blocking RF is illegal if it's done with the intent you describe. It's fine if your building gets terrible or no reception but if you purposely design it that way you're not protected.
... where using the network is required for participating in school? That would be an interesting notion of consent.