Great ruling. Thanks for the update, Brian.

The real issue here is the prosecution. How could they be so uninformed about the malicious code that can install itself on pcs? That computer was running Windows 98, for heaven's sake. And the unbridled arrogance to not even listen to the computer expert supplied by the defense. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. Her conviction was a travesty of justice, and rightly overturned. I wonder how much money she owes her lawyer for defending these ridiculous charges.

That prosecutor wanted to make an example out of poor Mrs. Amero. This person's abject stupidity and closed mind is now enshrined in a very special place, for all to see.

Do you have this person's name? I think its publication would be the start of justice for Mrs. Amero, and a lesson to prosecutors that if they don't do their homework, their reputation will suffer, as Mrs. Amero's no doubt did.

As always, thoughtful and well-researched article. Thanks Brian.

I could not believe this case. If a person was actually surfing porn sites, there would be a definite record as it would be different from a pop-up.

Pop-ups get information directly from their sites....no keys entered site address it just pops-up.

If the school systems are going to use computers, then they should have the hardware/software & IT professionals to support them (Firewalls, anti-spam software, Anti-Spyware software).

Surfing the web today without these tools is like having unprotected sex with a street hooker. The School system needs to get their heads out of their a$$e$!!

I'm an IT guy... And one that has fixed many PC's like this. Google the words Ad-Aware or Spybot and you'll see that there are hundreds and thousands of pages devoted to fixing this type of nuisance.

And so you are all up on the lingo... it actually has a name. It is called a PORNADO. Be careful, you could get caught in one too!

McAfee just published a state of the search engine safety:
http://www.siteadvisor.com/studies/search_safety_may2007

Perhaps we should start jailing every parent who's had a child inadvertently walk into their room while having sex?

I am also an IT professional, and for about 5 years worked in a major corporate law firm's IT Department writing custom software for case and evidence management. The technical ignorance of educators pales in comparison to the technical ignorance of our legal system. Judges who have been on the bench for 20 years, and whose computer experience is limited to sending emails via Outlook, are legislating the future of technology and it's uses in business, education and the home. As much as the responsibility in this situation lies with the school and it's boardmembers, it also lies with the legislators, judges and attorneys, who are often more out of touch with modern technology then most grade-schoolers.

The question here is how can we continue to allow people with little or no knowledge about a subject, legislate and direct that subject? I can write software, and I'm quite good at it, but would you let me perform surgery?

I used to work as a computer technician at a university computer lab, the epicenter of all porn pop-up problems in the entire universe. Pop-ups are completely involuntary, and though we were required to eject anyone downloading porn, we understood that someone who was trying to do work and suddenly had porn on their screen was innocent. Why can't these people understand this very simple concept?

Its not exactly brain surgery here.

Then again, the jurors who found her guilty and the prosecutors are probably the same people who think of the "Internets" as a "series of tubes."

Forty years? This is the modern equivalent of a "witch trial". Justice was grossly disfigured by fanatics with political agendas, in ignorance or perhaps both.

This case has been called a travesty as most reasonable people would agree. However, it is more; it is criminal in its ethics. The state entities bare the responsibility for this misuse of power through deliberate action or by ignorance. From the police, original trial Judge and with special responsibility the state prosecutor they have all contributed to the legal violence unleashed on Ms Amero.

Ms Amero should not only be exonerated of all charges and the matter expunged from her record but personal and published high profile media apologies from the state prosecutor and the trial Judge should be mandated. In addition Ms Amero should be awarded years if not a careers worth of monetary compensation, attorney fees and pain and suffering damages. Sadly, this kind of monetary award would come at the people of Connecticut's expense and not those that abused their power or simply chose to pursue this case out of ignorance rather then listen to experts in the field. Those responsible need to be reminded of the consequences of not doing their homework.

This is the problem with our society. When I first read the article I was appauled that a teacher would be surfing porn on a school computer and yes I too was quick to judge. But I kept reading the article and found the overwhelming lack of technical knowledge by the investigators and prosecutor and now I am thinking that the teacher may now have quite the case against the government.

I don't know why the judge didn't just throw out the case since there is not sufficient evidence to even bring her to trial.

I too am an IT professional in the private sector and viruses and spyware often are the bane of my existence.

I do have to say that judges should not be legislating from the bench but they should seek council regarding technology.

This is the problem with our society. When I first read the article I was appauled that a teacher would be surfing porn on a school computer and yes I too was quick to judge. But I kept reading the article and found the overwhelming lack of technical knowledge by the investigators and prosecutor and now I am thinking that the teacher may now have quite the case against the government.

I don't know why the judge didn't just throw out the case since there is not sufficient evidence to even bring her to trial.

I too am an IT professional in the private sector and viruses and spyware often are the bane of my existence.

I do have to say that judges should not be legislating from the bench but they should seek council regarding technology.

40 years in prison for exposing students to pornography? Are you crazy??!!! Words fail me.

How are they going to give this woman 40 years, irrelevant if she did show the kids that stuff, I think the sentence is larger than what some states give for murder. It is ridiculous to give a woman such a heavy sentence for suposedly showing kids pornography, I think the law in that state has gotten out of hand.

So I assume, as usual, the originators of pornographic spyware and adware are not being pursued? Perhaps shutting down a few websites and bringing charges against the advertisers in question would do a lot more to prevent this kind of situation than a thousand prosecutions of incompetent substitute teachers.
Follow the money. The prosecution of the 'King of spam' was a definite landmark. perhaps not in actual effect since the effect on spammers will be entirely minimal, but making it illegal for the companies to utilize these kinds of advertizing practices within the united states would certainly have an effect. Back in the days when a door-to-door salesman would literally have to put a foot in your doorway they were nothing if not polite, since they could be met at the door with a shotgun. Now, however, that it's pathetically easy for anyone to put a cybernetic 'foot in the door' without fears of reprisal, more and more 'fringe' companies are turning to the kind of reprehensible practices that make situations like this possible.

@Brian,

Remember that trojan that you reported on earlier this year. Did you find any school district computers that were infected?

I seem to recall a different school district in Connecticut that was infected :-)

Unfortunately it won't help Julie, but it does highlight that the school districts sure don't know what is going on with their PCs.

If I were a teacher I wouldn't ever use one for personal business. Just too dangerous....

This is not an isolated case that only happened in Connecticut, it happens every day across this country. There are actually two issues here. The first is that employers are now misusing laws to prosecute their own employees for stupid things such as this. Secondly, the justice system is exploiting the fact that most people, jurors and judges alike, do not understand how a computer actually works. The result is a justice system that brings stupid cases to court, bases that case on "experts" who are cops who don't know crap, and then destroys a person using vague cyber-crime and hacker laws that were not designed to be used this way.

Get used to it, you'll see it more and more. If you don't have the money to get a great lawyer and some experts, you're most probably going to lose.

We might as well have exposed wires with 220 volts in the offices and classrooms. Then if anyone touches them - too bad. Must have been a bad person.

"The prosecution had presented testimony from 10 of Amero's students that she actively was surfing adult Web sites on the computer."

Did nobody else notice this?!?!?!? Ten students all testified that they saw her actively surfing adult Web sites on the computer! Are they all lying??? Did any students testify on her behalf that she _wasn't_ "actively" surfing adult Web sites?

The press articles that I've seen from this case (and practically every one like it) look like they are designed (carefully worded) to get alarmist reactions from us. I don't recall any indication of potential testimony like the above quote in the first articles I read about it.

Did anyone stop to think that just maybe this gal is guilty, and that the press is simply choosing to report the highlights of the case that sell copies??? Remember, in any news article, you are never getting *all* of the facts.

Thank you Brian, for at least having the decency to include that factoid in your article. It certainly introduces much more reason to believe the charges (and verdict) than anything else I've seen.

This kind of blind and wilfull stupidity extends from the halls of "Dubya" on down. How can we really be so surprised?

I live in Connecticut, and have followed this case closely since January. The publicity this has generated, and the criticism of the judicial system have humiliated the state, the Norwich school system, and lastly, the Norwich Bulletin, the local newspaper that has championed her conviction.

David Smith, the prosecutor, will be removed, with the Chief State's Attorney taking over. Mark Lounsbury, the police "expert", will now have to be reassigned from the computer crimes unit. His usefulness as a witness in any criminal proceeding is now destroyed.

Expect, possibly immediately, possibly after another hearing or two, that all charges will be dropped. No one wants this to go away more than the State.

I also wondered about the lack of support from the Connecticut Education Association. I spoke with one teacher I know who is a union representative. He shook his head in disgust, saying that the top leadership of the union wanted to have nothing to do with the case, simply because she was a substitute, and not a union member. Talk about shortsighted!

It doesn't sound as if the state will be able to prove beyond a shadow that this lady was responsible for the surfing that took place.

If the school district could actually afford competent IT staff and the latest anti-spy software, the outcome might have been different.

I read in another article on this same occurence that when questioned about the possibility of pornographic popups on the schools computers, the school's IT administrator claimed that it wasn't possible.

It really makes me wonder if this IT guy made his diploma with crayons, colored pencils, or paid a college kid to make it with PhotoShop.

Also in the article, the adware program that invited the popups was sourced from a screensaver downloaded previously by the classroom's real teacher. So who's fault is this really? The sub, Ms. Amero, actually ASKED other teachers about it, and asked for advice on what to do, and how they dealt with it. The other teachers told her not to worry about it, it was a common problem.

What then? Ms. Amero was a scapegoat. No one will miss a substitute teacher, eh?

Dear Brian Eckman,

The vast majority of articles and commentaries have mentioned the testimony of the students, so I don't know why you think it's being hidden. You can even find the transcripts online, and they are quoted in the articles during the trial. Although in this case, this blog's Brian may not have summerized their testimony in a most exact way. According to Norwich Bulletin, that was the exact testimony of only one of the students.

Most of us have been following the trail closely and are far more acquainted with the facts than you seem to be. Getting into the technicalities of what triggered the popups, the evidence that was not allowed at trial indicates it was triggered by students surfing the web when they weren't supposed to after Amero had to step out of the classroom. Anyone who has ever been attacked by adware before can easily see how this unfortunate situation occurred.

omelas,

Thanks for the insight.

Another thing that I haven't seen much of is any criticism of the defense. Their expert witness wasn't allowed a live internet connection in court to show what happens. So, did he try to improvise, say, perhaps make a PowerPoint slide of the events as they occurred?

(I assume the browser in question was Internet Explorer...) Did he bother looking at the TypedURLs registry setting? Did he try to testify about that, but a technicality got in the way? Or did he find that they were typed, at a time when the teacher was reported by eyewitnesses to be present, so he decided to ignore that evidence?

It seems to me that the defense "expert witness" perhaps isn't qualified to be one. Someone versed in digital forensics should have a much more thorough defense prepared than a live demo of how pop-ups work. While that doesn't give the prosecution the right to foul up, it certainly looks like there is plenty of blame to spread here...

Brian Eckman:

Have you read all the facts? The defense witness was not allowed to testify because the defense did not notify the prosecution that he would testify. It had nothing to do with his expertise.

Second, this was a Windows98 PC not an XP PC. Are you even sure Windows98 has that registry string?

Finally, just for giggles, I regedit'd my PC and looked for that string, guess what, the majority of what comes up are NOT in my address bar. I never typed them in and some of them I know I have never visited. They could have been banner ads from other pages I visited for all I know. I few of them are from Google searches I did and clicked on a link from google, again, never typing them in myself and they do not show up in my pulldown menu as sites I recently typed in. As you see, if you look at just one peice of the puzzle without looking at the whole thing you will be quick to judge and turn out just like the "expert witness" the prosecution had.

Don't prosecutors have an obligation to only prosecute those they believe are actually *guilty*? This circus of a trial has put doubt and uncertanity in a legal system that is founded on trust. At least this case has had the national focus, and hopefully will be corrected.

As per computers running Win98, at my old high school, we were running Win95 for everything. Talk about a mess. A couple of my frends used the "net send" command to mess with the entire network, etc, etc.

Anyways, keep up the blogging :)

wng

Ace,

I read his testimony. Being someone who is versed in digital forensics, I can honestly say that I believe that, after reading his testimony, Mr. Horner had no business being the expert witness as far as digital forensics goes.

I also read the testimony of the students. It is very interesting, and very much at odds with what I'm reading in blogs.

Norwich Bulletin has links to the transcripts at http://norwichbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070225/NEWS01/702250334 for whoever is interested in the truth.

Ace,

"TypedURLs" does not mean the user typed them. Please feel free to use your favorite search engine for an explanation of this registry key.

This is a modern "witch trial" as somebody mentinoned and it's really too bad that the facts got so mixed up due to a lack of technical knowledge or expertise, but I just want to throw something out there.

I'm sure (I hope, actually) that this teacher would not be sentenced to the full 40 years or even 4 years if the sentencing had continued. There are so many messed up people in this world who get next to no jail time.

Lets assume that she had showed the kids some porn and lets assume that she's not a pedophile. At worst I think she should be fired and perhaps given some minimum jail time (like Paris Hilton for driving under influence...an offence that may end in a death mind you) or community service and be scorned for terrible judgment. How is it even possible to get 40 years?

One more reason schools should look into using the GNU/Linux operating system, really.
Not only is it FREE, but it is not affected by viruses, spyware, malware, and adware that runs on Windows machines, infecting them with these programs that can bombard the machine with pop-ups of this or any other variety.
(Besides which, it´s stabler, more secure, and, did I mention, it´s FREE. And, it IS easy to use. While teaching 7th and 8th grade LA in the state, I installed several computer with Linux in my classroom, and the children used them to conduct internet research, write papers, and create presentations, just as they would on Windows or Mac systems, without a single difficulty).
Oh, and Linux can run on older, slower hardware, which also potentially saves money.
The machines I used were built from donated parts, and not one of them had anything faster than a 450mhz cpu.
I suppose that´s all rather digressive.
I agree that this woman is being needlessly prosecuted, and scapegoated in the most revolting manner.

Oh yeah...40 years...
I recently interpreted in a court case (what I do now I am no longer teaching) where a guy got 28 years for brutally stabbing his wife to death.
But we´ll consider giving a hapless substitute teacher 40 years for pop-up ads...
Sure...that makes sense.

The judge is complaining because "bloggers" tried to influence the case. I doubt that this retrial would have happened without the huge stink that has been made by the online community, which served justice far better than any of the lawyers, judges or police involved in the first trial.

And 40 years for anything short of murder is ridiculous.

How could this case be even tried let alone got a conviction. Anyone with at least a decent amount of knowledge should be able to tell that open computers that are connected to the internet will get affected by trojans and other malwares. 40 years for not knowing what to do when all these ads start popping up is a witchhunt. The DA in this case should be replaced for wasting the tax payers money and being a big idiot

The teacher in question should sue the hell out of the state, and any institution or person(s) who otherwise slandered her name!
I am so glad I am not an American, "land of the repressed, home of the brainwashed into fear".

Jail inmate: So, how long are you going to be in here for?
Julie: 40 years..
Jail inmate: Wow, what did you do? Killed someone?
Julie: I had internet popups.

I've been waiting to see a reaction from Attorney General Blumenthal about this but no word yet from him or his office. This may haunt him in his efforts to acquire higher political positions.

They were 7-th graders, right? Is this means they were 14 years old? If this is true , the students itselfs were looking for porn. Every normal 14 years boy is already interested in the porn. Is someone who is stupid enough to believe some guy or girl may be 17 years, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds old and know nothing about the sex; and after just a second they suddenly will start making sex and having children and such?

All here are missing the crux of the issue. Namely that parents have lost control of what their children see, hear, and do by abrogating their responsibility of educating them. They just turn it all over to the state and sigh, "Shew the kids are finally at school!"

If our culture would realize that it is not the role of the state to educate our children, we'd start getting somewhere. And for those who say, "Then how do I educate my children? What can I do other than send them off to school?"...you're the fish who doesn't know he's wet and part of this critical cultural problem.

Take responsibility for the life (or lives) that you brought in to this world. Or is there such a thing as responsibility in America these days?

The prosecution cited 10 students saying she showed them porn?

Considering the nature of highschool kids these days I would say the possibility of them lying was pretty high. If any of these kids wanted to show off or get rid of said teacher that would be the perfect opportunity.

For one the teacher would have to have the mental capacity of a squid to not be hiding such acts.

40 years. Nice to know what constitutes a serious crime these days.

So whats the sentence for a father who's son manages to find a hidden issue of playboy?

The moral of the story is don't be a teacher, substitute or not.

Yes, it's a travesty they want her to go to jail for 40 years for being ignorant.
However.
She could have asked the students how to change the screen (trust me, there are kids that know and would be glad to tell her- my 10 year old is one). She could have told the principal there was porn on the screen, or sent a student to tell the office. She could have placed a coat, piece of paper, or somthing over the screen. This poor woman was not just ignorant, she was stupid. Fourty years?! No way. Barred from substituting? Yes.

I can't believe this poor woman almost got 40 years in prison. That's the kind of sentence a murderer might get, even violent rapists never serve that many years behind bars. Isn't Libby only getting 30 months (and then maybe a presidential pardon at that?) It seems unconscionable to have sentenced her so harshly and ridiculously, and thank goodness she has a new trial. Yet another American disgrace.

Brian Eckman,

The students did not testify that Julie was actively surfing for porn. They testified to having seen images on the screen. The claim that Julie was surfing for porn were made by the prosecution on the basis of their now discredited examination of the computer, and on a cursory examination of the websites "visited" by pop ups.

The claims of deliberate surfing have now been contradicted by four separate forensic examinations. Herb Horner's court room skills were lacking- not his forensic skills.

The nature of the prosecutions list of sites visited has never been questioned: it includes sites selling sex toy, sites giving information on sexual technique and a lesbian porn sites aimed at men- "no boys allowed, except you!" which the prosecution described as a forum for lesbian issues.

The forensic evidence does not support deliberate web surfing; the list of URL's is obviously a series of sites triggered by the key word on the original hair styles site, which as Brian pointed out, contained a link to the site orgasm-mystery[dot]com.

Please take the time to read up on the details of the case. There is simply no reason to imply that Julie is or ever was guilty of deliberate web surfing in the classroom, as the court has recognised.

The whole law is screwed. I guess at the beginning it was introduced to bar some pervert of showing porn to underages and this seducing them; but later some moronic politicians decide to get credits for doing *anything* so the law was changed to the extent is is impossible to be kept.
If a 16 year boy and a girl make sex who will have to go to the prison? Both? The guy? The girl? Which one is the older?
Actually the parents *must* be very troubled if their 14+ old boys are not interested in the porn. This is a strong sign something is wrong with their mentality. (Talking about the boys only because I have 2 boys; don't know about the girls)

I couldn't help but notice that on an issue so important to teachers, and education overall, some left wing nut had to get in a dig about President Bush who is not even remotely involved. These nuts will never get beyond their obsession. Anyway, good article and I hope the outcome opens educator's eye to the danger of giving up teaching to information transmitting msachines.

40 years for most likely accidentally letting kids see porn... well in Illinois they just sentanced a guy to 8 years (3 if he keeps his nose clean) for a hit and run where he killed a child hit the mother and another child. He showed no serious remorse.

Boy, our legal system is just like FOX: fair and balanced!

So this girl is given 40 years? Lets say she did it. Let's say she is a sick wacko who looked at porn in the classroom with kids around. So she gets more years than someone would if they sexually assulted one of those kids!? That is twisted. We really need some sanity injected into our legal system. Cases like this and the Duke case show how we have mistakenly put WAY to much power in the hands of DAs. How many serious cases in Durham, NC and in this Conn town have not been tried while the prosecutor runs through these trials? How many murderer, rapists, armed robbers, etc are out on bail waiting for trial while he goes on his witch hunt?

What a crock. At home I surf for porn, but when I amd not surfing for porn I never get a popup or unwanted porn, Spam etc. At work I would never think of doing anything inappropriate using company resources or on company time but often get pop ups and inappropriate spam. What is the difference? At work IT dictates what we can install on the computers - search engines virus protection and the like. At home, I choose, and everything running on my personal machines is free software - Oh also all of my home machines go through 3 layers of routers (I am a hardware guy not a softy.) People get what they deserve (I do not mean the teacher - the school administration sets the policies for the school so they are the guilty party and should go to jail for making policy that endangered the children.) People need to know what they are qualified to handle and current school boards, principles and judges are not qualified to set policy for computer use. And no one with an IQ low enough to be a police officer is qualified to do anything except drive a vehicle dangerously and shoot people. Certainly no police officer is qualified as a cyber expert or he would not be a police officer.

It got this far because it had political gas! even a moron could have determined there was plenty of evidence to suggest and/or prove her story, they were just
hoping she too poor to fight their lame
case.

I became aware of one such "pornado" taking place about seven years ago in a California middle school library. The student user was sitting there in panic while successive pages opened in rapid succession, without him touching the computer. He was at real risk of being suspended from school until he was able to make his case to the school administrators and they were smart enough to ask around until they found a tech user who had experienced the exact same phenomena. Which importantly, is far from a new one. I am afraid that I must fault the school administration itself for not doing their homework before calling in the local police, a group not normally required to have high tech skills. I was one of those who sent an e-mail to the prosecutor, describing the situation that I was aware of. If the Judge got overheated e-mails from "bloggers" I am sorry to hear that. I am even sorrier that nobody listened and saved the cost of an unwarranted prosecution. The best that can be said about the situation is that (hopefully?) the publicity will be sufficient to alert other schools, other police departments, other prosecutor's offices, that the teacher's claim of innocence was credible.

Part of the problem is lack of money. For the school district to do things like keep the virus scanner up to date, and have an OS in the classroon that's younger than 9 years old, they need money. They also need enough money to hire a system admin who knows how to secure an enterprise.

I work as a substitute in an excellent district which actually takes great care to teach the students from the earliest grades on about Internet safety, etc. Nonetheless there are plenty of MACs around running OS9. You IT people out there know what that means--no browser exists other than an outmoded, un-updateable (is that a word?) version of IE. Not cool!

All computers need to be running at least OSX or Windows XP, and as a matter of network wide policy the systems admin needs to be blocking third party cookies (correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe only IE6 and 7 can do this). Also cookies need to be erased and the system--meaning all machines and the whole network--scanned nightly. Only a chosen few teachers or staff should have admin rights.

I have never seen this scenario outside of the corporate world.

The cops and prosecutors obviously knew better but were playing the masses. Shame on them, I hope they get sued for wrongful prosecution. Likewise where was the school district in all this? As for the gutless teachers' union - what do you expect?

Read "The Innocent Man" by John Grishom (nonfiction) to really understand just how our legal system can be abused by people hired to protect the rest of us. Those Ada, OK cases involving violent rape/murder & mental illness were based upon even less tangible evidence & convictions carried the death penalty. After a decade on death row, the Innocence Project used DNA to finally bring out the truth & free the two men. Grishom also gives credit to the attorneys & federal judge who's careful examination of the case finally brought about justice. Yet the local prosecutor continued to use the local newspaper to pronounce his belief in the men's guilt. The people paid for the cost of all those mistakes - investigation, expert witnesses, prosecution, trial, incarceration, appeals, & later on damages suffered by the defendents. It ought to scare hell out of most people!

1. She was told "not to turn the computer off in any case" And that was obedience imperative. She did not turn the computer off.read about Milgram experiment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

2. You can not close pop-ups when they start. It's like an avalanche. So you are trying to, you are clicking rapidly, looks like you are surfing frantically, but you can not prevail.

3. Twelve and thirteen old children - they can give you and your prosecutors and judges lessons on internet browsing and porn websites. It is most probable that they use computer for what puritans don't even imagine. It is also possible that they know about sex a lot more that you would like to. If they are properly educated they will possibly ignore porn on a school computer as obscenity. If not they will be curious and there you have problem of students using school computer for porn surfing.

4. Lets say that the substitute teacher intentionally (she was pushing students face off of the monitor) but lets say that she showed porn intentionally to her students in one occasion. Four days of jail? Isn't that a little bit too much? Forty years? Oh you Americans... it seems that you have a lot of teachers showing porn on internet to students and you want to deal with that once and for all. Oh you Americans...

I am so not gonna be a teacher O.o

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What everyone has failed to realize is that a trial is a contest between two lawyers supervised by a third lawyer. It is not a pursuit of justice. The participants will do whatever is necessary to win. That is all they care about. The Judge simply wants to avoid the trial from being thrownout because he blatantly screwed up, because that damages his reputation. To fix the problem (with the computers), the computers need to be automatically re-imaged everytime they are turned on. This removes all vulnerabilities. If the teachers wish to save something, get a flash drive or use their own laptop, for which they would ultimately be responsible.

I taught in high school over 15 years and worked in libraries for over 20. I remember looking for a strawberry jam recipe at home on my p.c. and pulling up a porn group "Strawberry Jam." My home computer is not filtered. Woodburn Library in Woodburn, OR, had filters on the juvenile side of the library but no filters on the adult side. Some of the kids, old enough to know better, loved pulling pranks on the staff where the computers were concerned, upping the volume so you were blasted out in the morning when you logged on, inntentionallY unplugging the cords, etc. Teenagers test rules--especially in the classroom, and in the library parents were to be with their kids on the computers if the kids were under 12 years of age. Librarians should not have to be baby-sitters, however, we often were. Parents would leave the building without our knowlege and expect to come back after a couple of hours of grocery shopping or who knows what. Many times the children's librarian
had to wait by the front door after closing for some irresponsible parent.
PARENTS, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY!

Thank you "Freud".

Along with all the other good points made so far, I want to add two other points:

- I am glad to see that the broken and abused justice system is finally being exposed in a way that more people will pay attention. When these travesties are committed against the lower class, the rest of you just close your eyes and mumble "he must have deserved it". Now that it's used against one of your own, you are all up in arms. Wake up and pay attention. "Freud" obviously knows what I am talking about. The court systems operation is NOTHING like on TV. I was amazed that most people were blind to that in the OJ trial, not as a question of guilt or innocence but in the incompetence, bias, conspiracies between cops and the labs, lost real evidence and manufactured fake evidence, lies, competition between lawyers overshadowing their cases, and political agendas that torpedoed the government's case.

- What is wrong with our school's and local hiring practices that they seem to get so many incompetent IT people? We have the same problem in our school and government networks here which almost always leads back to the administrator's lack of competence.

Thanks for naming the prosecutor, Mr. Krebs.

To all of the David Smiths around the world I must say I'm so sorry.

That Connecticut prosecutor David Smith must have been so concerned with his win/loss record that he lost sight of the 1st principle of his job...Justice (duh).

I commend you for your writing on the subject. I continue to read Security Fix daily, although I don't yet use a limited account to ward off malicious software...but next time I wipe my pc I think I will.

Peace.

I have several, not entirely coherent, reactions to this story.

Not having been on the jury, I can't judge the veracity of the evidence against the defendant, although from your article, I would say there was certainly 'reasonable doubt' as to Ms Amero's guilt. Of course, that's all the defense needed--reasonable doubt. But, again, I wasn't there.

Still, 40 years does seem an excessive sentence in this case. I doubt she would have got that long a sentence if she had done a full striptease right in front of the classroom. She was the proverbial 'low hanging fruit' and the prosecutor gleefully plucked her from the tree.

The truth is that much of society does not understand the internet, and is, through ignorance, afraid of it. Thus, their reactions to its misuse are greatly out of proportion to the actual harm done. A surprising number of educators fall under this description. They are uneasy about technology in the first place, and need someone to blame when things go wrong.

Telling someone to 'never turn off' the computer, itself, belies such ignorance. No person who actually knew what they were talking about would give such an instruction. Perhaps a careful review of this school system's utility bills would be in order. (Obviously, this is not a school where global warming is a part of the coursework.)

I know from the experience of several friends that substitute teachers are often used as scapegoats by school systems when things go wrong in some way. Children, more often than not, lie and embellish stories, often to protect themselves from punishment. An old friend of mine, a forty + mother with an Ivy League degree once actually got arrested for allegedly striking a student. (It was an entirely made up story.)

What is the world were they thinking? is my question. All her rights as an American citizen were violated and the justice system that we have come to think of....failed. I am also an IT person and work for a very large company. There are many different protection software installed on the computers that I work on. If the public School system does not have the proper means to protect its technology then the city officals should be to blame. If i were her a HUGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!law suite would be headed back to the people that accused her of this crime. Ignorance is not bliss in this case. Anyway thanks to the people who broke the story.

Amazing !

I wonder how the students who complained will ever grow up enough to have relationships with other than over protective parents who haven't a clue what ALL kids do between classes. Maybe we ought to outlaw computers and adult teachers in schools.

Amazing, indeed !

One additional point, made in the article but apparently not noticed:

"Willard said schools place too much faith in Web site filtering software, which can do little to block adult-themed pop-ups generated by invasive adware and spyware programs.

"'There is this misperception that filtering software is a totally effective solution that gives schools a false sense of security,' Willard said."

This is yet another example of how bad security is worse than no security at all. If you think you're protected, you tend to quit taking even the most elementary precautions.

It's time to start casting the characters for the inevitable movie based on the unfortunate Julie Amero affair.

For starters, we have the hapless Julie, an on-call substitute teacher:
Julia Louis-Dreyfus. - I don't know - cool name, I guess....

The conniving little monsters students that undoubtedly relished the opportunity to torture their sub - after all, that's what everyone does to substitutes, right?
Take your pick - they're pretty much all evil at that age. Hell, maybe as part of her probation, Paris H. will act like one, pro-bono.

Scott Fain, the take-no-responsibility principal of the school where Julie taught:
John Lovitz (She's guilty! Yeah, that's it!)

Pam Aubin - Superintendent Norwich Public Schools:
Lily Tomlin - "We're the school board. We don't have to care!"

The no-clue school network administrator:
Francis Pharcellus Church (Yes, Virginia, 'trial versions' do expire)

Mark Lounsbury, the 'off-the-edge' police officer who investigated the crime:
Bobcat Goldthwiat - enough said.

Julie's defence lawyer, who for various reasons, seemed unable to mount a suitable defence.
1st nomination: Phil Hartman's Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, aka Cirroc, who 'speaks in a highly articulate
and smoothly self-assured manner to a jury or an audience about how things in the modern world "frighten and confuse" him.' Wikipedia
There's no doubt that personal computers would completely confound him.
2nd nomination: Hyperchicken (Futurama). "I'm just a simple country lawyer". From Wikipedia:
"The hyperchicken is a parody of many incompetent attorneys from many movies such as My Cousin Vinny and indeed the Hyperchicken's complete and total lack of legal skill bears similarity to Lionel Hutz from Groening's other series The Simpsons."
3rd nomination: Lional Hutz. Hat tip to Groening and Hartman.

Prosecutor David J Smith: - Nasty bastard with no regard for the well-being of others during the pursuit of career advancement
Larry Hagman - Just take up where JR Ewing left off....

Superior Court Judge Hillary B. "Let's get this done before quitting time" Strackbein:
Uh, just find anyone with their head WAY up their arse, and you're done.

The jurors:
We'll have to 'IMDb' the list of folks who played the yokels on Deliverance - they'll do just fine.
Cue banjo music: 'deer neer neer - neer neer- neer neer- neer neer'.

The bloggers:
As yourselves. Marvelous job - just be sure to wash up and comb your hair.....

Chilling tale on the level of security educational institutions enforce and the consequences to those left at the mercy of this incompetence.

Brian Eckman:

The instant you boot that computer up and do anything with it, you are doing the equivalent of tampering with the evidence. The reason why is that anything you do on a live system is *altering* it whether you want it to do it or not. If you have worked with enough computer systems, the way you do it is to attach the drive in that computer to *another* computer system with the drive from the suspect machine in read only mode, thus preserving the evidence as is. That is a proper computer forensic examination.

Pornado? A new word enters the lexicon. I have observed how bad it can get - antivirus is deactivated, entries are made in the hosts file that redirect you to porn sites when you try to go to Google, Yahoo, MSN or other search sites, etc.

As to the statement that you can go to porn sites safely - maybe, but not with any version of Microsoft Windows. You will need Linux, Mac OS X, or some other more secure OS and you will still need some filtering that prevents some hosts from ever reaching you. You are approximately 2-3 times more likely to be infected at a porn site than the Internet at random. With Casino / Gambling sites you are 5-20 times more likely to be infected.

Google search for "Julie Amero" just gave me: Results 1 - 10 of about 324,000 for "Julie Amero". (0.13 seconds). Her case even has her own Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Amero

I think it is time to take all of these legal people out of the court-room and give them a good education on computer systems so they can see just how bad the infection problem is now. Millions of bots (compromised machines)! Only hardware protection? The person who says that is an idiot. Blocking certain ports (135..139, etc.) can prevent the infection from spreading, but if you didn't have any protection on your machine, more likely than not the infection rode in on Hwy 80.

I am completely and utterly amazed. What sort of backwater ignorant hick village is this Connecticut place? Well, I will certainly be sure that I stay well away from the crazy witch hunters of that state.

C.Hanratty, CISSP.

40 years? Yet a Preacher's wife shoots him in the back with a shotgun while he slept, kills him and faces only 6 years.

HMM,

If you are teaching a class full of 14 year olds and get caught by a "pornado," I am pretty sure you would get flustered and begin to panic. In other words you probably aren't thinking straight, and will begin to just start clicking things out of a desperate attempt to get your screen cleared. Yo9ur wonderful ideas of "just hide the screen" don't come to you until after the incident has passed.

Unbelievable that (a) the proof that the teacher willingly accessed porn is so weak, (b) that the school doesn't hold any blame in this case despite them deciding what software is installed (i.e. the operating system, the content filtering, the firewall, the proxy server, the virus software, etc.), and (c) that not showing kids porn on purpose could possibly warrant a 40 year sentence when so many other crimes end up with shorter sentences and these kids will probably take a class at that age with detailed drawings of human genitalia in sex ed, go home and watch graphic music videos, and play a video game where you kill people and steal cars.

This revels the state of our public education system.

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I have been following Julie's case and I am so relieved that AT LAST someone has exercised common sense over "techno-paranoia!" and ordered a re-trial. (where this case should be thrown out, kicked down the street and flushed away.)
Come on folks - in such cases - get experts who know Law to pass sentence upon the evidence of experts who know IT. But don't base judgment on the basis of a 'jobsworth' technician ("it's more than my job's worth" - you know the sort) at the school who was only protecting his own backside!
The Principal at that school should be ashamed (and held accountable to staff, and parents) for not keeping the IT kit up-to-date, protected and managed by competent IT staff.
Poor Julie will be relieved to see all of this behind her and she should be appropriately exonerated and compensated.
Dig deep education system - shame on you!

Oh boy! Please do not think that i stand for showing pornography to children :-) However, I really think that 40 years of prison for that is nonsense!!! Whatever we do to hide it all from them, does anybody think they will not find it anywhere? And the more we try to "save their souls", the more attractive it seems to them. I believe we should better think of providing them with just enough information so that they would then act in a sound way.

Any comments are welcomed :-)

Andy Moore
School teacher
http://www.dalloway-school.com

Before heaping blame on an individual prosecutor for not dismissing the case, remember that individual prosecutors often have little discretion to dismiss a case once there has been an indictment and once it is at the trial stage. I am sure that the parents of these 10 students were pressuring the district attorney's office to go forward so that the district attorney's office, even if it had doubts about the case, did not want to take the political hit for dismissing. It is much easier in cases like this for a prosecutor's office to rely on the defense rather than dismiss in the face of parents who would seek to make the district attorney appear "soft on crime," especially when the allegations involve sex and minors. It is a shame that the judge in the trial did not allow the defense evidence, but even judges in cases like this are susceptible to community backlash.

Mr. Horner's analysis was absolutely correct. Malware infected the computer days before Ms. Amero arrived,

As he stated, her computer was redirected to a site with porn links.

Keyser