javaMan
Premium,MVM
join:2002-07-15
San Luis Obispo, CA
| reply to Blue2
Re: Teacher could get 40 years because of spyware porn pop-ups
said by Blue2  :. . . This perhaps shows that a prosecutor wanting to set an example or make a name for himself, a computer-illiterate judge, and a bad defense lawyer can be dangerous to your health. That sounds about right to me. 
--
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness. . . Isa. 5:20 |
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winsyrstrife
River City Bounce
Premium
join:2002-04-30
Brooklyn, NY
clubs:
| reply to wehooper
Re: Teacher could get 40 years because of spyware porn pop-ups
I can hear the IT dept. huddling in the server room, trying to get over the shock of the middle school students easily disabling their "secure" system.  Kids are too smart for their own good these days.
There are frivolous lawsuits everyday. This is definitely not one of them. I'd sue someone for all they're worth.
--
"Suddenly everything is fainting, falling from a broken ladder's rung. There's a jolt exhilarating from the phone I'm holding...I hear the words of what I'll become, how eager the hands that reach for love." - Blind Melon - New Life |
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KTW35
join:2003-01-12
Port Saint Lucie, FL | reply to wehooper
Unless aliens take over the proceedings: she will be found not guilty. "If" she has a good lawyer she will get "paid". All I have to say.  |
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ElJay
join:2004-03-17
 ·Great Works Internet
| reply to wehooper
This is nuts... No search for adware? What sort of justice is this? Too bad the jury and the school's IT people can't be put on trial for being idiots.
My experience in school was that the "computer" people there were incompetent and could barely figure out how to plug an ethernet cable into a computer. I bet it is no different at this school, and it's really ridiculous with tools like group policy and on-access virus/malware scanners that they apparently allowed a computer to get owned by adware. |
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Blue2
Premium
join:2004-04-14
France
| reply to wehooper
Innocent people do sometimes get faulted, ESPECIALLY when the people making these decisions have no clue as to how technology works. Someone has to be held responsible: the school/bank/institution (unlikely), the kids (not a chance), the user (bingo!).
Before making a ruling on a computer related case, every judge should be forced to (a) pass a basic computer literacy test and (b) spend a week behind an unprotected computer.
After that, there would be a lot less chance for misapplications of justice. |
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nonus
@netvigator.com | reply to wehooper
this kind of ridiculous case can only happen in US, every minute thing can exaggerated to lawsuit in court. |
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Kurts3Kids
join:2006-09-14
Henderson, NV |  »www.norwichbulletin.com/apps/pbc···2/NEWS17
TEACHER HAS BEEN FOUND GUILTY |
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Blue2
Premium
join:2004-04-14
France
| Voila: Garbage In, Garbage Out |
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Jason Levine
Premium
join:2001-07-13
USA
| reply to Kurts3Kids
said by Kurts3Kids :TEACHER HAS BEEN FOUND GUILTY I really feel sad for her and hope that she wins on appeal, but now that she has been found guilty, her career is likely over. Even if she's acquitted on appeal, she'll be known as the teacher that showed porn to her kids. No school district will want to hire her. |
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TeMerc
join:2004-01-22
Phoenix, AZ
1 edit | reply to wehooper
Sunbelt Software blogged about some idiot who said that 'justice prevailed' in this case. Most seem to disagree. To that extent, upon offering some basic information about how malware works, which most all know about here, they have offered their computer experts for the appeals process.
Alex Eckelberry:
I also should note that in a conversation with the defense attorney today, he did tell me that his computer experts were not able to provide all the evidence in court. For the appeals process, we have made our own experts available to the defense on a pro-bono basis for any analysis of the infected machine.
»sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2007/01···lty.html
That's awesome!! There may be hope for this poor woman after all. Goodness knows she has been railroaded. |
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MGD
Premium,MVM
join:2002-07-31
Fort Lauderdale, FL
| reply to wehooper
quote:
"But Smith countered Horner's testimony with that of Norwich Police Detective Mark Lounsbury, a computer crimes investigator. On a projected image of the list of Web sites visited while Amero was working, Lounsbury pointed out several highlighted links.
"You have to physically click on it to get to those sites," Smith said. "I think the evidence is overwhelming that she did intend to access those Web sites.""
Unbelievable !!!
If it did not involve the total devastation of an individuals life.. the sheer incompetence would be amusing.
Before being let loose in the field, "Malware 101" should be a pre requisite for any computer crimes investigator.
Kudos to Alex.
MGD |
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KyeU
join:2003-12-31
Canada
| reply to TeMerc
My response to an article posted by an individual who seems to be on the prosecutors' side ( »www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/4346 ):
quote:
Kye-U wrote:
"For once, justice prevails."
You have no idea how much this sentence agitates me.
"But it wasn't just pop-ups students saw. Web sites were visited, noted the prosecutor, and the teacher clicked on links to pornographic images."
They're children for God's sake. How can they tell if the teacher actually clicked on the links or if spyware loaded them up automatically? How far away were they from the computer? Maybe they just saw windows popping up and assumed the teacher was clicking when, in fact, they were being opened by spyware.
Did the prosecutors scan the computer for spyware? Do they even KNOW what spyware is?
Is it right for the prosecutors to AUTOMATICALLY assume that the supply teacher deliberately visited the sites WITHOUT performing a thorough analysis of the computer(s) in question?
If I had enough resources and time, I would be willing to help this poor woman from the incompetencies in the justice and education system. I thank Alex Eckelberry for his willingness to offer aid in the appeals process.
A question for all who see this as a case where justice has "prevailed": What if you were the supply teacher in question? How can you say that justice has prevailed with such abysmal knowledge and evidence?
Posted on Fri, 01/12/2007 - 5:32pm| reply
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dpt67011
@t-dialin.net
| reply to wehooper
Not that I really think she is guilty, but it does seem some here may be automatically assuming that just because she's female, that means she could never be surfing at a porn site. Like for some reason only guys do that, but a woman? Such a thing couldn't be possible.
Well maybe there are some women who surf those sites after all. Maybe she really did go to a porn site and the popups are due to her nasty habits. Just maybe some women do like porn after all. 
But even if she is guilty, 40 years is a joke and with all the holes in this case I wouldn't doubt if she gets off clean. |
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MrBradTX
join:2001-05-23
Carrollton, TX | reply to wehooper
Whole thing reminds me of a recent event in Texas where a teacher was dismissed because a parent complained that a student saw a depiction of a nekkid body part during a field trip to a museum. |
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Blue2
Premium
join:2004-04-14
France
| said by MrBradTX :Whole thing reminds me of a recent event in Texas where a teacher was dismissed because a parent complained that a student saw a depiction of a nekkid body part during a field trip to a museum. Yes, let's not forget, the irony in the Justice Department itself:
Curtains for semi-nude justice statue
No longer will US Attorney General John Ashcroft appear in public with a semi-nude statue towering above him.
The US Justice Department has spent $8,000 on curtains to hide the statue from the cameras....
The drapes are reported to have been hanging since Monday, drawing to a close the sport of photographers who infamously sprawled on the floor to snap the former Attorney General Edwin Meese holding aloft his report on pornography in front of the female statue.
»news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1788845.stm
The sculptor is probably working on a chain gang now. |
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EGeezer
Go Bobcats
Premium
join:2002-08-04
Country!
 ·Callcentric
 ·RoadRunner Cable
·AT&T CallVantage
| reply to wehooper
Another argument for appeal or retrial here.
I believe this is a case of incompetent counsel, not qualified to counsel in IT -related cases.
Judge Hillary Strackbein, who is overseeing the case, said she could not understand why Cocheo did not have witnesses ready to testify at the completion of the state's case.
It would be interesting to see the credentials for the state's "expert", apparently a local cop with enough computer knowledge to do things like look at the index.dat files with a utility, and little more. The lack of seizure and evidence preservation and analysis knowledge I've seen on the part of some local LE's is scary.
A law firm specializing in electronic discovery and evidence handling should be able to blow this case out of the water, assuming there are no significant facts we haven't seen in the news. Unfortunately, the defendant will have to shell out big bucks and time to deal with this.
--
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
Aristotle |
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swhx7
Premium
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to wehooper
Just a few observations...
1. Prosecutors and police are often motivated to convict someone rather than to do justice. (See this editorial for example.)
2. 40 years is excessive (to an extreme) for allowing children to briefly see a few pornographic images. The harm is minimal.
3. If this is not overturned, and the typical level of IT competence in schools continues, any clever student with access to a classroom computer will be able to get any teacher fired and prosecuted. |
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Link Logger
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
Calgary, AB
·Shaw
| reply to wehooper
This is proof that there is something very wrong in the US as this is either a very bad misrepresentation of justice by what could only be describe as unfathomably incompetent judge/lawyers/law enforcement/etc, or the media has grossly misreported the case and its details (I suspect the former), but either way this is highly bogus.
So we do we sign up for her appeal fund or otherwise provide resources to correct this mistake.
Blake
--
Vendor: Author of Link Logger which is a traffic analysis and firewall logging tool |
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Mele20
Premium
join:2001-06-05
Hilo, HI
| Alex Eckelberry has promised experts pro bono but I would think that the more help available, the stronger the appeal will be. The defense attorney admitted to Alex that he is computer illiterate. I've been reading the forum at Norwichbulletin.com and one poster today announced that he has set up a fund to help Julie Amero pay for an appeal:
"If teacher's salaries here in Western Europe are anything like the salaries of US teachers, she will not be able to afford an appeal. I haven't seen any comments from either the ACLU or the EFF, let alone a pledge from them to pay for her appeal (although admittedly, I may have overlooked it). So, I have taken the liberty of setting up a fund for it.
Donations can be made through PayPal to help.julie.amero@gmail.com . I promise that I will not use this account or any donations to my personal advantage. I would greatly appreciate it if someone could forward this message to Julie Amero and her attorney, and ask them to contact me through the email address mentioned, so that we can make sure the fundraising is handled properly and the account can be signed over to her. "
»forums.norwichbulletin.com/viewt···7ef9e6ce
I hope that fund gets set up properly soon so that people can feel comfortable in contributing and knowing it is going to her and her attorney.
A computer consultant today posted at the Norwich forum and he thinks the school was using W98! He says that even if they were using XP that this incident occured only two months after SP2 was released and before it was force fed to users and he doubts seriously that the school would have upgraded at that time.
What would be nice would be if we had access to the trial transcript. I'm wondering, like many at the Norwich Bulletin forum, why the ACLU and EFF are silent.
--
"If you want to do DRM on a PC then you need to treat the user as the enemy." Ross Anderson in "`Trusted Computing' Frequently Asked Questions"
»www.msfirefox.com/ |
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