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The Teacher, the Technology and the US Legal System
Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 11:39 pm
by kinvoya
I don't follow the news very closely so I'm not sure how widely this is known but I think it's a really interesting issue involving a jury's lack of technical knowledge and how it can impact a verdict.
Here's the initial story with some links to more extensive info:
Julie Amero, a substitute teacher in Norwich, Connecticut, has been convicted of impairing the morals of a child and risking injury to a minor by exposing as many as ten seventh-grade students to porn sites.
It's a short story: On October, 19, 2004, Amero was a substitute teacher for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School. A few students were crowded around a PC; some were giggling. She investigated and saw the kids looking at a barrage of graphic, hard-core pornographic pop-ups.
The prosecution contended that she had used the computer to visit porn sites.
The defense said that wasn't true and argued that the machine was infested with spyware and malware, and that opening the browser caused the computer to go into an endless loop of pop-ups leading to porn sites.
Amero maintains her innocence. She refused offers of a plea bargain and now faces an astounding 40 years in prison (her sentencing is on March 2).
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,12867 ... =nl_sbxcolhttp://eset.com/threat-center/blog/?p=42A juror's comments (additional comments are by the columnist):
"I was on the jury and yes we did find her guilty.
"But everything seems to be misquoted by the papers and reporters involved. The bottom line was that it didn't make a difference who or how the porn sites showed up on the computer."
[According to the trial transcript, Amero testified that she made every attempt to keep the children from seeing the images. In fact, a number of children testified that she had attempted to block them from seeing the screen. Also, another substitute teacher testified that Julie had asked for help in the teachers lounge.]
"The fact that a teacher in a public school system did absolutely nothing to keep it away from the children is what was wrong. Yes, we were told that she was given no permissions to turn off the computer. She also said she was not allowed to use any other school equipment.
"If a 40-year-old school teacher does not have the sense to turn off or is not smart enough to figure it out, would you or any other person wanting her teaching your child or grandchild?"
[At the trial Amero testified that she didn't, in fact, know how to turn a computer on or off.]
"If you and your wife were watching an xxx rated movie the you put into the dvd player, powered it up and hit play, and then went into the other room for a snack, and your child or grandchild entered the room, would you expect your wife to stop the dvd or just let it play because she didn't start it. No, you would be upset as all get out.
"Even giving Julie the benefit of doubt, not knowing enough about a computer to be able to turn it off. Some paper and tape would have covered the screen or a coat or sweater. It was October after all.
"Finally she was pronounced guilty because she made no effort to hide or stop the porno, not just because she loaded the porno onto the machine. Going to the history pages it was obvious that the paged were clicked on they were not the result of pop-ups.
[Actually, the defense expert at the trial testified that the sites visited were from pop-ups.]
"Each web page visited showed where links were clicked on and followed to other pages. Pop ups go to sites without change ink colors, as in used links.
[That's incorrect. Pop-ups show as a changed type color, just like a normal site visit.]
http://blogs.pcworld.com/tipsandtweaks/ ... 03741.html
I just don't believe this woman used a school computer to surf hardcore porn and then deliberately exposed children to it. This link has info on helping her:
http://blogs.pcworld.com/tipsandtweaks/ ... 03746.html
Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 12:09 am
by SekoETC
If a person is so ignorant that they do not know how to turn a computer off then I doubt she would know how to search for porn either. That school should train it's staff better. And of course there was no firewall or virus protection... Goddamn idiots. And I bet the kids could easily find the porn at their homes-- maybe it even WAS the kids who originally visited porn sites, getting the computer infected. It happened to me as a teenager, late nineties, many sites would open an endless loop like that. It's pretty hard to stop.
Teachers should pull their heads off their arses and realize that today kids from the age of ten get introduced to sex, and might be searching for porn etc. So they should be told about viruses and how to stop pop-ups and stuff like that. The adults or some of them are too fossilised to learn, and many of them do not even want to learn any new technology. Adults should be told that surfing the web without a firewall and virus protection is like having sex without a condom. Adults are stupid enough to click on a picture of a link because they don't know that the cursor changes. They cannot tell an ad from a legit system button. Awareness... Hmm. I could make money with teaching old people how to recognize ads from proper content.
Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 12:21 am
by kinvoya
After reading this excellent article by a security expert...
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/434
...it seems most likely that a student looking at a hair styles page accidently stumbled onto a series of Russian porn disguised as hair styling info.
Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 12:27 am
by SumBum
40 years?? She would serve less time if she pulled a gun on those kids.
Most schools have things set up to prevent stuff like that, but kids are damn smart with computers. Even with updated security features I bet a 10yo could get past it. That school didn't even bother with the most basic computer/network protection.
Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 1:14 am
by SekoETC
I think the school should be charged, not the substitute teacher. They're just rolling the blame on her. And if she had to leave the computer on while leaving class, then of course kids could go play with it. Also it was said in one of the articles that it was to be left on for the teacher and the students to use. I wonder how big of a hurry they were in, not to be able to create a user account for her. Or why not to have a shared one for all substitute teachers, that's better than leaving the computer open and logged in while leaving class. People can be so stupid... I don't remember if we were taugth in school to always lock the computer or log out when you leave class, but it seems like a logical thing to do. Yet I have seen people leaving their computers logged in and sometimes simply forgetting it on while going home. They ought to be taught a lesson for such stupidity.
Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 1:47 am
by Racetyme
That is unbelievably frustrating. I can't believe that someone is doing time for this. Honestly, 40 years? She did everything she knew how to do, and still.....
Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 2:00 am
by kinvoya
She isn't doing time yet. She won't be sentenced until March and she will most likely receive probation but she will probably also be required to register as a sex offender.
Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 2:39 am
by Nixit
She's 40 years old.
Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 10:23 am
by formerly known as hf
There's so much hype around children and sex. I imagine there are hoards of people outside court baying for her to go down?
This hype around children and sexuality does so much more harm than good. So what, they saw porn. Big deal, it gave them a giggle. I doubt many of them hadn't seen something similar before.
Having said that, she coould have switched off the screen, covered it up somehow. Even so, a sentence of that strength is just plain stupid. And frankly disgusting. We are truly screwing our kids up with this totally messed up attitude to sex and sexuality in our society, attitudes to children and media.
A drunken driver would get less for mowing one of those kids down.
Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 5:43 pm
by Redbeard
Misdirection and other such strategies are part of the internet porn process. You spend even a little time on the web and you will find lots of this. Here is a real story:
I began working in the Internet business in 1995. When the WWW was just beginning, so nobody knew what it was or what to expect. I was so excited about the possibilities, I told my wife about the wonders it offered, and when she finally came to visit me at our office I told her I would show her the Lovre.
Typing the URL into the Netscape browser... up popped a strip club in New York called TheLovre... You think she was impressed? I still don't think she trusts me entirely not to surf those sites.
I believe this teacher didn't purposely take her student to porn sites. but she should have known how to shut off the monitor at the very least. And the school system needs to do much more to protect the kids from this kind of material...
Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 3:20 pm
by DELGRAD
I am sorry, but how hard is it to say "everyone out in the hall NOW"?
The Sub should not have got what she got. Moronic as she may have been.
Still listening to Sabbath. Blame the unblameable.
Listen to Sabbath, early Sabbath, war Sabbath. May give you some insight.
Sabbath was said to be satanic. *laughs off balls literally*
"Politicians hide themselves away.
They only started the war.
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah."
from Black Sabbath. War Pigs.
Looks like the bitches are still hiding.
I do not belive this in anyway what so ever, but seems most everyone, even Americans hate theselves anymore.
If I did not have a physical disability I would go to Iraq and die for the United States of America. Tried three times. Came to the physical and they saw the scar ask what is was from and they said thank you you are unable to be a United States Soldier. Each and every time.
Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 8:38 pm
by kinvoya
I actually thought the bigger issue here that people would find interesting and frightening is that, if someone is accussed of a crime which involves being on the internet, they are probably going to be facing people who have little to no knowledge about how computers and the internet work.
In this case the detective who investigated, the prosecutor, the judge and the jury were not knowledgeable enough to understand the intricacies of how the porn sites came to be on the computer and, thus, decided that a 38-year-old pregnant woman surfed hard core Russion porn in a room full of students. No one seems to have understood that perfectly innocent student surfing could have resulted in the pop-ups.
In one of the articles I linked another example is cited where a someone working on a University computer was prosecuted for trying to hack into the University's system. It turned out that a virus had gotten into his computer and was trying to send a message out to it's home base (or whatever, I forget the details) and this made it look like he was hacking.