Young Children Had Access to Dark-Web Materials on Cy-Fair issued Chromebook

Texas Messengers were alerted that young children were accessing dark-web materials on their school-issued Chromebooks during school hours when an elementary student described being shown disturbing videos during downtime at school. Students could gain access while visiting YouTube.com on their school-issued Chromebooks ever since they were distributed during the pandemic in 2020 through November 2021. The district had not restricted YouTube.com when it gave all students Chromebooks during the pandemic, which is odd because most parents would restrict access for young children. Also, students were allowed to surf YouTube.com during class downtime without much teacher supervision. How could such an obvious danger to young children be overlooked for years?

It gets worse as we made the district’s administration aware of these problems. During a meeting with an associate superintendent of Cy-Fair ISD, it was not confirmed the district would make parents aware children had access and may have seen trauma-inducing videos. This would leave children to deal with these images in their minds all alone. That is not okay, so we wanted to get the report that detailed how minors had access to dark-web materials to prove to parents this happened, but Cy-Fair ISD says the reporting took place over the phone, thus no physical proof is available. We didn’t believe this, since we think these kinds of reports are severe and usually have the FBI involved, so we took it up with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Ken Paxton's office gave Cy-Fair ISD 10 days to supply the correspondence under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Still, Cy-Fair ISD did not produce written correspondence, claiming everything took place over the phone. Ken Paxton’s office said they didn’t have authority to conduct an on-site inspection of Cy-Fair ISD. We called and Harris County could conduct an audit, but the timeline is unknown. Texas Messengers has enough correspondence to show parents and the community that minors had accessibility to dark-web materials on Cy-Fair ISD issued Chrome Books:

Below is a summary of what transpired:

• the social media post we made about students accessing the dark web materials on YouTube

• the letter from Ken Paxton’s office giving Cy-Fair ISD 10 days to supply request for correspondence that includes minors having access to dark-web materials on Cy-Fair ISD issued electronic devices

• Cy-Fair ISD’s response confirming Cy-Fair’s internet safety filters were bypassed and stating it’s not the first time the search function on YouTube bypassed filters the district maintains to protect children

• Ken Paxton’s denying authority to conduct onsite inspections of records held

Parents, be the judge: do you want your children’s internet safety in the hands of Cy-Fair ISD, that continually allow children access to the internet so frequently and without proper safeguards? Could students be better served with a device that had their curriculum loaded without access to the internet?

SOCIAL MEDIA POST

We made this post on November 14, 2021 and it was seen by a member of Cy-Fair ISD’s IT staff. The IT member took corrective action immediately and YouTube changed their search algorithm so when students typed a period in the search, they would not see links to dark-web materials.

LETTER FROM TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL KEN PAXTON’S OFFICE TO TEXAS MESSENGERS

Below shows the Attorney General of Texas giving Cy-Fair ISD 10 days to supply request for Texas Messengers founder’s request for a report that includes minors having access to dark-web materials on Cy-Fair ISD issued electronic devices.

Cy-Fair ISD’S RESPONSE TO KEN PAXTON’S LETTER

Highlighted below in yellow is Cy-Fair ISD confirming correspondence took place over the phone regarding the search engine function on YouTube that enabled children to view dark content.

Circled in yellow below, Cy-Fair ISD notes, it’s not the first time the search function on YouTube bypassed filters the district maintains to protect children. Access to YouTube was subsequently blocked, but not before this egregious error in judgement was allowed for years.

KEN PAXTON’S RESPONSE OF FAILURE TO PROVIDE INFORMATION ACT REQUEST