Bells
Staff member
Imagine the year is 2004 and this is you...
Sadly, this is not fiction but reality for Julie Amero, a substitute teacher from Norwich Conneticut. And she has recently been found guilty and faces the possible prospect of 40 years in jail for her crime. Now I would imagine we have all fallen prey to the madness that are pop-up's. You know the type. The more you close, the more keep appearing in a mad stream across the screen. This is what Julie Amero was faced with.
Now the school had failed to protect their computers with up to date spyware and anti-virus protection systems, having not kept up with the payments required to ensure their system was protected. However instead of being held liable for their negligence, the prosecutors have instead argued (successfully it seems) that she Julie Amero was actively looking at pornography sites while teaching the class and they have said that she had just not shut down the computer fast enough. Keeping in mind she had been specifically ordered to not shut off the computer. While she could have simply shut down the screen, this was a woman who had no idea about computers and was using an unknown computer (she was a substitute teacher) and she panicked. Having had a stream of pop-up's happen to me a while back, until it effectively locked up the computer with a screenful of a woman's vagina and a male penis in very close proximity. I could not even shut down the computer. My husband, who thankfully is a programmer, managed to get rid of the viruses and the ridiculous amounts of trojans that had existed on my computer for a while and I had failed to update my spyware and trojan protection for a couple of weeks (something he had kept reminding me about and I had just shrugged off thinking he was paranoid). I had no idea what to do or how to get rid of it. So I can understand how this poor woman would have reacted. I was lucky in that my husband was near (fast asleep in bed early on a Saturday morning) and it seems some of the research into a case that I had been doing set off the crap on the computer. It happens and it happens easily.
However Julie Amero's case is one that shows a complete failure of the justice system. The only "expert" allowed to testify at the trial was a police detective:
Hmmmmmm...
Sadly for Amero, the expert for the defence was not allowed to testify at her trial due to her lawyer having failed to tell the prosecution what they intended to argue. So the prosecution just shut them down.
It stands to reason that the "expert" for the prosecution would have looked at the school computer and realised that it had been infected by spyware and trojans. But amazingly enough, they did not. Instead, they came to their conclusion that she had actively sought out the pornography because they appeared in the web browser address and history.
You'd think it was common knowledge. Even I, in my computer zero knowledge capacity, am aware that pop ups do put their addresses in the browser logs. Sadly, had Horner and other experts who actually understood computers been allowed to testify, the jury might have heard that you don't actually have to click on the images for them to appear in your browser logs. Trojans and pop-up's such as these are known to list themselves in the browser logs, even if you are just closing them down. It's what they are meant to do.
Horner, the expert with 40 years experience under his belt lists how the classroom computer had gotten infected. Lets not forget, there was no protection at all on this computer and it was running an outdated software package. The school did not even have any net nanny type of program in operation on their computers:
Amazing isn't it? I thought this was all a joke when I first heard of and read into this story. Her possible 40 year sentence is the result of a technologically illiterate Kelly Middle School, technologically illiterate police, a technologically illiterate prosecutor, and a technologically illiterate jury.
Lets all bow now to justice and its failures... :worship: ...
Hopefully true experts will be allowed to testify when her new lawyers appeal her conviction. Andrew Kantor put it best when he said:
Imagine you know next to nothing about computers. You're a substitute teacher for a seventh grade class. There's a computer in the classroom and, knowing you're going to be sitting there for a while, you ask a fulltime teacher if you can use it. He logs you in with his password and tells you not to shut it off because you couldn't get back on.
Not that you have a clue about this stuff, but that computer is running Windows 98 and the outdated Internet Explorer 6.02. Its filtering and anti-virus software have expired, and it has no anti-spyware software.
You step out of the classroom for a moment. When you get back the kids are clustered around the computer, checking out hairstyle websites. But one is actually a link to porn sites, and it loads a Trojan onto the unprotected computer.
Suddenly, pop-ups start appearing — X-rated popups.
You start to panic. You're not supposed to shut the machine and you don't realize you can just shut the monitor. You try to block the screen, but — like normal seventh graders — the kids are curious and pushy.
You run to the teacher's lounge for help. Finally you get some and the crisis ends. But the kids have seen the porn. They tell their parents. The parents tell the school.
You tell the school administrators what happened, but they don't bother (or don't know how) to check the computer for the adware you described. Instead they fire you.
And soon you're arrested and charged with four counts of "risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child." You're facing 40 years in prison.
Link
Not that you have a clue about this stuff, but that computer is running Windows 98 and the outdated Internet Explorer 6.02. Its filtering and anti-virus software have expired, and it has no anti-spyware software.
You step out of the classroom for a moment. When you get back the kids are clustered around the computer, checking out hairstyle websites. But one is actually a link to porn sites, and it loads a Trojan onto the unprotected computer.
Suddenly, pop-ups start appearing — X-rated popups.
You start to panic. You're not supposed to shut the machine and you don't realize you can just shut the monitor. You try to block the screen, but — like normal seventh graders — the kids are curious and pushy.
You run to the teacher's lounge for help. Finally you get some and the crisis ends. But the kids have seen the porn. They tell their parents. The parents tell the school.
You tell the school administrators what happened, but they don't bother (or don't know how) to check the computer for the adware you described. Instead they fire you.
And soon you're arrested and charged with four counts of "risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child." You're facing 40 years in prison.
Link
Sadly, this is not fiction but reality for Julie Amero, a substitute teacher from Norwich Conneticut. And she has recently been found guilty and faces the possible prospect of 40 years in jail for her crime. Now I would imagine we have all fallen prey to the madness that are pop-up's. You know the type. The more you close, the more keep appearing in a mad stream across the screen. This is what Julie Amero was faced with.
Now the school had failed to protect their computers with up to date spyware and anti-virus protection systems, having not kept up with the payments required to ensure their system was protected. However instead of being held liable for their negligence, the prosecutors have instead argued (successfully it seems) that she Julie Amero was actively looking at pornography sites while teaching the class and they have said that she had just not shut down the computer fast enough. Keeping in mind she had been specifically ordered to not shut off the computer. While she could have simply shut down the screen, this was a woman who had no idea about computers and was using an unknown computer (she was a substitute teacher) and she panicked. Having had a stream of pop-up's happen to me a while back, until it effectively locked up the computer with a screenful of a woman's vagina and a male penis in very close proximity. I could not even shut down the computer. My husband, who thankfully is a programmer, managed to get rid of the viruses and the ridiculous amounts of trojans that had existed on my computer for a while and I had failed to update my spyware and trojan protection for a couple of weeks (something he had kept reminding me about and I had just shrugged off thinking he was paranoid). I had no idea what to do or how to get rid of it. So I can understand how this poor woman would have reacted. I was lucky in that my husband was near (fast asleep in bed early on a Saturday morning) and it seems some of the research into a case that I had been doing set off the crap on the computer. It happens and it happens easily.
However Julie Amero's case is one that shows a complete failure of the justice system. The only "expert" allowed to testify at the trial was a police detective:
Detective Lounsbury has completed two two-week FBI training seminars on computer security and other continuing education programs. He is also a certified user of the computer monitoring software ComputerCOP Pro.
Allison Whitney, ComputerCOP's director of communications, explained how her company certifies police officers to use the software:
"They get a full hour of training, and then they're tested," Whitney said. "A lot of these people don't have any kind of training. Their [superior] officers may give them some kind of low-level training. Most of the time we do the training over the phone."
Link
Hmmmmmm...
Sadly for Amero, the expert for the defence was not allowed to testify at her trial due to her lawyer having failed to tell the prosecution what they intended to argue. So the prosecution just shut them down.
If this wasn't so damn tragic, it would actually be funny. Like one of those bad movies where a poor soul is being prosecuted and tried by a bunch of bumbling fools in a poorly written comedy. Sadly, this is not the case and Amero now faces a possible 40 years in jail for her supposed crime.Furthermore, the defense's expert witness was not allowed to share with the jury more of the evidence he had amassed. Herb Horner has 40 years of experience as a software engineer and an IT consultant. Over the past few decades, Horner has traveled the world to investigate computer glitches. His clients include a Swiss bank, a major airline and a national chain of hardware stores.
"I like to get to the bottom of things," Horner told AlterNet. "If there's a plane crash, I say don't just bury the bodies and take the trash to the dump. Find out what happened."
If the defense had told the prosecution about Horner's findings earlier, the prosecution might have been able to forestall problems by choosing an expert witness who was qualified to address Horner's testimony. Instead, the prosecution moved to suppress evidence that it wasn't prepared to handle.
Link
It stands to reason that the "expert" for the prosecution would have looked at the school computer and realised that it had been infected by spyware and trojans. But amazingly enough, they did not. Instead, they came to their conclusion that she had actively sought out the pornography because they appeared in the web browser address and history.
Norwich Police Detective Mark Lounsbury, testified that the computer logged deliberate visits to porn sites. Had Lounsbury actually been an expert, he would have known that a browser's log doesn't record whether a site came up because you clicked on something or because adware opened the link.
Link
You'd think it was common knowledge. Even I, in my computer zero knowledge capacity, am aware that pop ups do put their addresses in the browser logs. Sadly, had Horner and other experts who actually understood computers been allowed to testify, the jury might have heard that you don't actually have to click on the images for them to appear in your browser logs. Trojans and pop-up's such as these are known to list themselves in the browser logs, even if you are just closing them down. It's what they are meant to do.
Lounsbury says he is satisfied that Amero intentionally viewed porn in class because the logs show that her computer accessed various inappropriate sites while she was sitting at the computer.
"I take that at face value," Lounsbury told Alternet. "It's evidence. It speaks for itself. The pop-up defense is a Twinkie defense."
Lounsbury said that Amero must have navigated to pornographic sites in order to have infected her computer with obscene popups. "You've got to get that ball rolling," he said.
Horner's analysis of Amero's hard drive cast doubt on Lounsbury's conclusions. Horner found that the computer had been infected with malware before she arrived.
"She was set up days or weeks before she ever sat down," Horner said.
Link
Horner, the expert with 40 years experience under his belt lists how the classroom computer had gotten infected. Lets not forget, there was no protection at all on this computer and it was running an outdated software package. The school did not even have any net nanny type of program in operation on their computers:
Here are just a few of the red flags Horner discovered in course of his laborious forensic reconstruction: Anti-virus software triggered security alerts as soon as he started copying the hard disk for testing. The computer's Norton activity log showed that by the time Amero came to Kelly, her computer was already infected with spyware from notorious websites including marketscore.com and new.net.
One piece of spyware had been already been tracking the computer for about a month.
Horner also discovered that someone, presumably the computer's regular user, had been accessing eHarmony.com before Amero's visit. As he noted, dating sites are notorious for spreading porn-related adware.
Another program called Pasco showed that malware had automatically redirected Amero's browser. Horner stressed that this particular form of hijacking is invisible to ComputerCOP Pro.
On Oct. 19, someone did an online job search shortly after 8:00 a.m., activating several different malware apps. At approximately 8:15 a.m., someone accessed www.hair-styles.org, Horner suspects student involvement, in part because the next visit was to Crayola's homepage. Over the next several minutes, still more malware came alive, most likely triggered by the hair site.
The user kept surfing, and by this point, "crap was pouring into the computer at the speed of electricity," Horner said. The real point of no return was when the computer received a huge porn-filled Java file. From that point on, the machine was locked in an endless porn loop.
Note that Amero's class started around 9 a.m. Neither the prosecutor nor detective Lounsbury was able to tell AlterNet whether the room had been locked before class, or exactly what time Amero sat down at her desk.
At trial, it emerged that the school IT department offered no protection against obscene content or invasive software. The Kelly Middle School's firewall license had expired, leaving the whole system unguarded. To make matters worse, Amero was working on a very old Gateway PC running Windows 98, an extremely vulnerable setup.
Link
Amazing isn't it? I thought this was all a joke when I first heard of and read into this story. Her possible 40 year sentence is the result of a technologically illiterate Kelly Middle School, technologically illiterate police, a technologically illiterate prosecutor, and a technologically illiterate jury.
Lets all bow now to justice and its failures... :worship: ...
Hopefully true experts will be allowed to testify when her new lawyers appeal her conviction. Andrew Kantor put it best when he said:
Indeed..The parents of the kids in Kelly Middle School should be demanding that school official explain why they let its Internet filter expire, why no one bothered to update the anti-virus protection, and why no one took the time to install free anti-adware software.
Julie Amero was a victim of a school that couldn't be bothered to protect its computers, of a prosecutor without the technology background to understand what he was doing, a police "expert" who was not, and a jury misled by all of them. "Miscarriage of justice" doesn't begin to describe it.
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