This entry is going to be kind of long, but I feel it’s imperative that as many people read it as possible. I began this by writing my own summary but I found a more succinctly-writting account of the events. As such, I’m going to take snippets from this PC World article written by Steve Bass, and I’ll add my commentary to each quote.
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).
Having been in middle school and high school not all that long ago, I can attest to how students will just take over the teacher’s computer before the teacher even knows what happened; it’s especially easy if the teacher leaves the room. So I can’t exactly hold the teacher too responsible here for allowing the students to get on the computer.
And if the prosecution was so sold on her visiting porn sites while at the school, did they ever think to check her home computer to see if she has a habit of surfing porn sites while at home? Or maybe they did and they didn’t find any evidence of it so they conveniently left that out of the trial.
But that’s all besides the point …
I’ll admit all my don’t haves right away: I don’t have access to court records; I don’t have first-hand evidence of what occurred; and I haven’t examined the computer’s hard drive myself.
What I do have is a working knowledge of spyware and plenty of experience cleaning infected PCs.
I also have a copy of the report written by computer forensic specialist W. Herbert Horner, the expert witness who testified in Amero’s defense. You can read it, too; it’s on the NetQos site.
Like Mr. Bass, I have been in countless situations where friends and family call me, sometimes frantically, because their computers are uncontrollably infested with pop-ups, many times pornographic. It is extremely clear to me at least, and I’m sure to many of you as well, just how easy it is to get infested with malware and pop-ups without even knowing it.
Horner made an image of the computer’s hard drive. He saw that there was no firewall and that the antivirus program was outdated. He also found 42 active “spyware/adware tracking cookie/programs.” Most important, Horner said that 27 of the spyware apps were accessed before Amero had access to the computer.
To me, the implication is clear that Amero hadn’t used the PC for browse for porn, as the prosecution claimed.
So the defense expert comes on to say that several of the malware programs and popups were installed even before Amero used the computer? Fancy that …
I can also attest to just how surprising it is that somewhat innocent-looking websites are linked to or run by sex sites. These sites do this just so they can install this malware onto unsuspecting computers.
What I learned in other articles is that the kids who took over the computer were looking at websites about hairstyles. I’m not going to link to any sites because I don’t want those sites getting any exposure, but I easily found several hairstyle sites that were actually run by sex sites. These seemingly-innocent websites contained self-installing software that you don’t even know about until popups mysteriously start appearing.
The defense wanted Horner to have Internet access at the trial in order to re-create what happened to Amero in the classroom. The prosecution objected, claiming they hadn’t had “full disclosure” of Horner’s examination.
In my opinion, had the defense attorney been on his toes, and had the jury seen the demonstration, Amero would have been found innocent.
Agreed 100% again. Anyone care to argue?
It should be pointed out at this point that the computer the teacher was using was a PC running Internet Explorer 6.02 on Windows 98. Any person who has had 10 minutes of experience with Windows and Internet Explorer knows that this situation has the explosive potential for disaster. Not just that, but the internet filtering software that filters and blocks inappropriate websites at the school was out of date, as was the antivirus software, and there was no anti-spyware software installed at all.
The question is, Who should be held responsible? 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.)
…
To begin with, the prosecutor pointed his finger at Amero because she didn’t turn off the computer right away.
Wait, what? So now we’re not just saying she purposely visited these pornographic websites, but that she didn’t do enough to keep the students from seeing these popups? Okay …
Except several students testified in the trial that she did try to keep the kids off the computer by covering up the monitor. But guess what? 12-year-olds are curious and pushy and if they know something is there, they’re going to try to see for themselves.
Amero even tried to enlist help from another teacher in the teacher’s lounge, and that teacher helps her and crisis averted, right? Wrong. The kids have already seen the porn, they tell each other, and then tell their parents. The parents get all up in arms and want blood.
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.
So put yourself in her situation: you’re a substitute teacher who is not very comfortable around PCs, using an unfamiliar computer, when all of a sudden you start seeing explicit popups. You’ve been told not to turn off the computer itself, so you panic. You don’t know enough to just turn off the monitor. You try to click on the X in the upper-right corner and it just spawns more popups. What can you do at this point?
But wait, it gets better …
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.
No kidding. The way I see it, the school is ultimately the one culpable in this situation because it was due to their negligence that this was allowed to happen. If there was anyone that put these children at risk, it was the school by not updating their protection software. The school must know this but they’re just using Amero as a scapegoat and destroying her life to protect their own hides. The parents of the students are calling for the wrong people to be prosecuted. They should be going after the school, not the teacher.
So let’s recap. A substitute teacher is teaching a class when she finds her students on the computer giggling. She sees what’s on the screen and immediately kicks the kids off the computer and tries to cover the screen, because it’s all she knows to do. The school finds out, they fire her, and the DA brings charges against her. The judge doesn’t allow key defensive evidence, and as such, the jury wrongfully convicts her.
Now she is facing 40 years in prison when sentenced on March 2. In case you haven’t figured it out already, I personally feel what has happened to this teacher is an absolute travesty. An appeal is already in the works and a support fund has been set up by the family. There is also a blog set up by the teacher’s husband with information about the case.
I’m normally against most lawsuits and feel this country is entirely too sue-happy. However, if and when she wins her appeal, I feel Amero should turn around and sue the school district and the city. The school for negligence in allowing this to happen in the first place, and the city for wrongful prosecution.
That’s my take. I want to know what you all think. Let me know in the comments.
