Part 3: 40 Years for Porn-Infected PC
For the last two days I told you about a substitute teacher convicted of exposed students to porn sites. She faces 40 years in the slammer.
Guilty: The School or the Teacher?
The question is, who should be held responsible -- Amero, the class's regular teacher, or the school district? After reading articles in the Norwich Bulletin, the area's local newspaper, and a chat with someone familiar with the case, I've come to some conclusions. (And if you've ever helped a computer novice deal with a PC loaded with spyware, I think you know who I'm siding with...)
First, it would be a good idea to take a look at newspaper articles covering the trial. Read the January 5 article, the next on January 7th, and the January 11th, 2007 editorial supporting the conviction.
Now, back to our story. To begin with, the prosecutor pointed his finger at Amero because she didn't turn off the computer.
If I faced the same situation, I'd probably panic and do the same as Amero did -- shield the kids from seeing the monitor and move them away from the computer. Then I'd reach over to an unfamiliar system, fumble around looking for the on and off switch, and turn off the monitor, or computer, or both.
I imagine Amero was also flustered because she was told by the class's regular teacher, quite adamantly, not to turn off the computer. That's a lame excuse, I agree, because questioning authority is sometimes the right thing to do.
But I've learned from my source that Amero is a rank novice. About the most she can do is check e-mail on AOL using her husband's home computer. That says lots, no?
For instance, when faced with the classroom PC's pop-ups, her reaction was to click the red "x" in the corner of each box--which, as anyone who's faced spyware knows, often results in another pop-up.
More important, though, if the school had done its part in protecting its students, it would have up-to-date anti-spyware and antivirus programs installed on every PC.
On January 24 the Norwich Bulletin reported that the school district's technology administrator, Information Services Director Bob Hartz, said, "from August to October 2004, the district's filtering system didn't regularly add newly discovered pornographic sites to its restricted Web sites database." Oddly enough, they upgraded the software just after Amero's incident.
In my opinion, Amero is the victim here.
The blogsphere has been following the story carefully, though the mainstream media still hasn't picked it up yet. My guess is when it does, the bits will hit the fan.
Monday: How Spyware Happens.
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This is absolutely insane. Obviously the school administration knows nothing about computers, and obviously neither do the forensic teams that looked at the PC. It shouldn't be that hard to find out what site started the barrage of porn pop-ups. At one point I read that it was some hairstyle site that the teacher was looking at.
The bottom line is any thinking person should be able to tell that the teacher was not sitting around in a classroom surfing for porn. There are a lot of people to be held accountable here, including the people in the administration that decided to not keep the porn filtering software up to date.
We have talked about this case on Alt-This, a tech podcast, and we're in total disbelief that this case has gotten as far as it has. It's astounding to me that this teacher was actually convicted based on the evidence that I've read.
Let's hope that somehow justice comes through for this teacher's sake.
Darren - http://www.alt-this.com
Very simple solution and someone makes such big deal. She's INNOCENT!!! The school is 100% guilty. They should filter the sites by url/ip. Configure proxy server to allow trusted sites only. I don't care if there're zillions of sites. This is a school, and I'd have a whitelist of websites.
Example of whitelist
www.microsoft.com
www.apple.com
Yep, only 2 sites hahaha that will take care of the porn sites. If microsoft.com has porno in there, tell me so I can look at it. lol.
So if you can't get to www.google.com too bad!
Perhaps someone might be correct in inquiring who is really responsible for this and ask them why they would put a so obliviously innocent woman in prison.
Is it the District Attorney who brought the charges forward?
Is it the Jury who found her guilty?
The Judge who allowed the case to continue?
Or someone else?
I for one ,would like to see the DA and members of the Jury defend their decision to make this woman spend the greater part of her life in prison.
How idiotic. If the judge knew anything at all about the web and computer security, this case would be thrown out.
One false click on a web page or one misspelled word in a URL can send you to a porn site. Then, the PC is usually infected with malware or trojans that will allow the porn to keep popping up.
Nobody should go to jail for this one, but I'm thinking the school IT department needs to replace a few people.
This is as bad as the story of the teenager facing 90 years for being accused of distributing child porn. He was innocent, as an expert proved the PC was a zombie downloading and serving porn without the user's knowledge. Anybody heard about that one?
Grow up, people.
bares the guilt? There are several organizational Internet filters that are available for school districts and they should be required for school districts who wish to have access to the Internet.
I believe it was intent that convicted Julie. If her intent was to expose the children to porn then of course she should serve time. But after having dealt directly with teachers and technology, I believe that there is little chance she intended for this to happen and without the proper safe-guards she too fell victim. Unfortunately there her lack of understanding could cost her her freedom and I for one believe this not to be justice but a gross misunderstanding.
We had a similar incident at the tech college where I teach. One of the students was helping with a night study session. He was showing the others how to access downloads.com, but he mistyped it as dowmloads.com. This unleashed a stream of linked porn sites, and would not allow him to close out. Fortunately, it was only visible on his monitor, as he hadn't turned on the projector yet. When he told me about it the next morning, he was still shaken. I'm just glad the cops didn't show up and haul him off to jail.
The judge & jury should substitute teach, so they can get 40 years, too.
This is terrible and absurd. It is NOT JUSTICE.!
The stupidest person on the case has to be that smith guy for saying "you have to physically click to visit those sites". NO YOU DON'T F'IN IDIOT! SPYWARE CAN JUST HAPPEN. To say that you have to click is weak at best. If spyware infects the computer, all it takes is a restart to unleash all internet hell on a computer. It was openly admitted that they did not look for any malware on the computer, which means that there is no evidence that she did anything wrong. Cases that have no evidence are supposed to be thrown out or go on hold until more evidence is found. I hope that she is found innocent. If she isn't, I hope she gets a lighter sentence. And if that doesn't happen, I hope she is alive in 40 years so she can sue everyone involved in this case for wrongful imprisonment.
As one who has (repeatedly) scrubbed spyware from the PCs of internet-challenged friends and neighbors, it is absolutely ludicrous that this teacher has been subjected to this kind of treatment. This so-called case should be summarily dismissed along with an apology from the prosecution and the judicial system which has permitted such an atrocity as this to occur in our country.
Even if a teacher surfed porn all day, it is a horrific mistake to allow government to enforce 'morals.' Our government is committing atrocities against children by defeating universal health care at home, and in murder for oil abroad. It’s ok to sell pics of 18yo kids from poor nations having sex w/animals for food, but an old b/w pic of a 16yo girl on a beach gets you prison time.
We use jail as a political device, and 'sex crimes' to scare & control citizens who are already afraid of sex, and who don’t see larger world issues. Do these 'kids' suffer from sex, which contrary to archaic religious views is actually a normal part of life? Or do they suffer from foolish ‘protections’? Make sex (or beer, or pot) ‘abnormal’ and now it can’t be discussed rationally.
Will our fragile society blossom by locking websurfers in cages? We don’t catch real rapists. Kids feel they need to take weapons to school, and we want to protect them from boobies. And nobody knows where Osama went. Demos
Today, it is so easy fo find internet related sites (just make a google search with words like woman, beauty) that can lead one to see porn websites (sites with strange titles). Many of these sites are tricky in the sense that if you try to close the browser another porn website will show up. I believe that this teacher got one of those sites and -in order to protect her students- tried to close them and, undortunately, after pressing the X button the website showed more porn websites.... Teachers frequently are non well experieced with computers and this situation should lead the school to training programs to deal with this kind of situations, not to a prosecution (this case make me feel that some USA laws are closer to a kind of religious fanatism or Ku-klux clan behavior). Moreover, frequently schools doesn't have proper or enough IT personnel to help teachers with computer issues -because of costs-. HELP TEACHERS, SAVE THE U.S.A. FUTURE FROM FANATICS
I know that I will be criticized for this but...as a mom of an 11 year-old boy and as a public librarian, I just have to say, although I in no way support showing porn to children on taxpayer supported computers, no one ever died from looking at a naked lady. And I know--it's worse than naked ladies. But these are still pictures. Pictures. Not guns, not even hate speech.
I hate porn, violence, and computers sabotaged by criminals. Still, the real crime is the (in my opinion) overreaction to sexual images. Still, children have no right to see these in any context. The school is responsible for maintaining its computers and network security. They are liable for the pornography and malware getting through to the kids.
This is not even funny. She better be found completly innocent.
I find it amazing that in today's tech society, that this case made it as far as a jury trial. Anyone with a modicum of computer knowledge knows that this teacher did nothing wrong and yet is being railroaded, yes I said railroaded, into a possible 40 year prison sentance just so the administrators of the school district don't have to cop to any responsibility at all.
I feel truly sorry for this woman and her family. This is a needless prosecution and my hope is that cooler heads prevail before her March 2nd sentencing.
This obviously is a miscarriage of justice caused by blatant ignorance of the internet by all involved. An appeal to a court having tech aware judges is obvious however her defense must have been terrible. If ANYONE is stupid enough to work for that district after this they should all be aware they will be next in jail. I sure would like to see the multimillion dollar settlement they will be forced to pay upon appeal. Moral of story - DO NOT SUBSTITUTE TEACH - you will be responsible for things you have no knowledge of or training for. I apparently wasted my 35 year as an educator and technology coordinator.
OK So what do WE, in this great country of ours, DO to help this innocent teacher. If we sit back and watch, we are just a guilty. I would like to see, for example, PC World go right to the Governor's office and get this poor teacher a pardon right now!
Doug Brooks
Incidentally, the URL for the Seattle Public library is www.spl.org. Once I made the mistake of typing www.spl.com. Don't try this at the office! At least if anyone is looking. These things are so easy to have happen.
It's been a while for me, but I got tricked into one of these endless porn pop ups too. You don't intend to go to such a site and when you discover you're there, the pop ups cascade.
I was flustered too and clicked the red X which didn't help. It wasn't until I contr-alt-del to get windows task manager and went to the shut down application--I E browser, that I stooped the cascade. This substitute teacher didn't know that trick and got burned bad. The school and prosecutor are way wrong in setting her up for jail.