Sunbeltblog comments
Bet It was Zango!
This is certainly troubling. It's not uncommon for spyware to serve explicit images entirely unrequested. I provided several examples on http://www.benedelman.org/news/0...s/062206-
1.html , and I continue to gather more evidence in this vein. In fact I got another such example mere moments ago.
Withoout analyzing the forensic evidence ourselves, it's hard for readers to figure out what actually happened. But certainly the allegation of spyware showing explicit images -- and even faking clicks to do so -- is entirely believeable, and consistent with repeated independent first-hand observations.
Only in the US do these absurd court cases take place.
If she's conficted, she'll become a martyr. They'll be a new push to fight malware and lay criminal charges and invistigations of their producers and distributers.
I'm a little suspicious of the details surrounding this case. The facts just seem wrong, with the dozing judge and unprofessional jury. Then the school's content filtering software being expired, and clearly not having any virus/spyware cleaners on the workstations themselves... Heck, I'd blame the computer admin for that sloppiness, but it's still not a reason to go to jail for 40 years. That's just plain retarded, even in a god-fearing sexually repressed fear-breeding nation of hypocrits.
I'd like to see every parent start suing every other parent's for their kid's bullying, or for swearing at recess, or for wearing the wrong kind of sneakers. In fact I'd like to see the court system get abused ten times worse than it is today; eventually it will collapse and we'll come up with something new and improved to replace it.
The internet itself should be on trial here.... its hypocritical i think when kids can easily access porn on computers on their own.
When I was in highschool just a few years ago (7) the school district sprung for all new computers and server equipment. We did not have any antivirus or content filtering. On top of that, all the network's default login/passwords were still in place.
I causally mentioned the login/password issue to the admin and he freaked out.
On another occasion I was in the lab on my own without authorization and found porn on his computer.
So it's not uncommon.
Having been on the recipient end of the Canadian criminal justice system (falsely accused of assault), I can speak first hand to the fact that the system is seriously flawed. The charges were laid by police who refused to listen to the "victim". I was kept in jail for 3 days and the FIRST telephone call I actually got was AFTER I was released! In the end the charges were dropped because the police failed to supeona the "victim" (who was nearby the court and would have appeared on MY behalf if need be).
The stories I heard from other people in the system and from lawyers has lead me to a total lack of faith or belief in the validity of the "justice" system.
Once this information gets into the hands of police lots of luck.
Lack of technical depth.
There was that case in Texas where the police were able to grab billing records ( after routine trash bin searches).
Government mail regulations / post office investigation.
The collections were for billings of 100s of Russian porn sites.
The names attached to credit card records were reported to police around the world who took action.
People had their kids taken away from them. There were suicides even.
No apologies or any authorities held to account when it turned out many of these victims were being charged wrongly and that the information was either wrong or taken out of context.
In most cases the victims were afraid to act lest attention be drawn to them.
Wow, america. what a strange country. what is it about pornography that scares them so much? I'm sure most boys in the world has been exposed to porn as kids, and are they all brain warped rapists now? Like a comedian said, i'd rather have my child watch 2 people making love than 2 people killing each other.
Let's say the teacher intentionally exposed the kids to porn. 40 years? isn't that more than killing a kid?
I just had a quick read of the news article. This caught my eye:
Oct. 19, 2004, while substituting for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School...
The key word being SUBSITUTING...in other words probably in an unfamiliar environment not used to the way the school works etc.
Now thats not an excuse for her, but 40 years is a very long long time as many have already commented for exposure to porn.
In my experience, just becoming a substitute teacher required more hoop-jumping than any other job I've ever had, and I know that it's more complex in other places than where I worked. Once in the job, one must walk on eggshells because if any student or faculty member decides to not like you, you're out without a chance to defend yourself (thankfully never happened to me, but I've seen it happen). With such small compensation for such high risk, don't expect there to be a large contingent of substitutes waiting to fill in for the dwindling teacher population.
And even if the defendant is guilty in the worst possible way, why is the punishment so much greater than, say, manslaughter? As Jimbo already commented, the teacher could have killed a student and received a more lenient penalty.
This is absolutely rediculous. Even if the teacher IS guilty, 40 years for a porn pop-up? You've got to be kidding! I just read in my local paper how a woman ran a guy down, (it was her fault) and she had several warrants and no driver's license and she's getting off with probation! She is literally in more trouble for the warrants and the expired license than for running over the poor guy! The laws in this country are just insane...
That's why I say...if you are substitute teaching and porn pops up on your computer and kids see it...you have to kill them. You'll get a much lighter sentence plus we won't have to put them to death years later when they become rapists for having viewed porn pop ups as a child--everyone wins.
Yea, you are better off killing kids. Better yet just give them guns to kill each other. Well I say if she can get a good lawyer she will have quite the legal fight against the system. Long live Cult of the Dead Cow!!!!!
With public pressure to get people who distribute porn under the law (example: http://www.grassfire.org/ ), along with justices with an attitute where they "wanted the case over by the end of the week", it's no wonder such a ruling occurred.
Several points need to be made though:
1) There is an appeals process. This allows stupid rulings like this to get corrected and gives justice a chance to get it right. Not all justices are bad like this one (and that's assuming the report on this one is true, which is actually unproven), and the minority that are bad give the others a bad name. They're human too, you know.
2) Why is the TEACHER on trial and not the SCHOOL? A) As an employee of the school, her actions while on duty are on behalf of the SCHOOL; B) Things like no Antivirus and expired content filtering also points to the school - either the a) admin being negligent, or b) the senior staff refusing to provide support and finance to proper security software. This smells of wrong target and the teacher being a "fall guy". This could have happened to any school staff.
3) "Why didn't the teacher simply pull the plug?" Honestly, as a systems engineer/architect/(substitute current buzzword here for designing, establishing, administering and securing a network), even I might have been too shocked initially to react in the manner suggested. It is easy to come up with a common sense handling when you are NOT in the "fire" as it happens but can study it from the coziness of one's office for days on end. Give me a break.
4) Why doesn't anyone hold the jury responsible anymore? THEY made the ruling. One law firm I supported had one of it's lawyers come back to the office looking drained and shaking his head - why? A case that should have been open and shut - one hour at most - took all day. Defendant hit the Plaintiff's car, ADMITTED it in court, ADMITTED he owed full damages, but simply didn't WANT to pay - and the jury let the Defendant off scott free. Reason: One lady on the jury came on with the attitude of "no one is being awarded money today, I don't care what the circumstances are" - and the other 11 spent most of the day pleading with her to do the obvious, only to give in to her - wait for it - "so they can be home in time for dinner". OMG!
#4 is one reason why I don't try to get out of Jury Duty when I'm summoned. While rare (I hope), if someone like that gets on a Jury that I'm on, I WILL hang it by insisting on the right thing - and actually give Justice a chance. The old saying holds true: "the only thing required for evil to flourish is for good [people] to do nothing." To make a difference, one needs to participate.
From http://wcbs880.com/pages/
179694....ontentId=285575
"During the trial, Amero said any inappropriate images on her computer screen were from adware, which can generate pop-up ads and not from sites specifically keyed.
Prosecutor David Smith contended Amero physically clicked onto the graphic Web sites."
So what? If anyone's seen the speed at which the pop-ups fill the screen, it's entirely possible she was aiming at the big red X on one before another window piled on top and guess what? - you've clicked on something you did not intent to. Sheesh - leaves you to wonder how qualified the defense lawyer was.
The comment from the Prosecutor from the story in the Norwich Bulletin was:
"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.""
Both he and the detective are morons. Regardless of whether you physically click on a link or are taken to a site via a pop-up, both show up as visited sites. You DO NOT have to physically click a link for a site to show up as visited.
The fool that offered "evidence" to convict her can be emailed at, crimeprevention@norwichpolice.org or *maybe* even mounsbury@norwichpolice.org
This is depressing. "I think the evidence is overwhelming that she did intend to access those Web sites"... WHAT!?!? I'm truly sick of this kind if idiocy.
I found just LAST WEEK and infection that installs a rootkit AND displays pornographic pop-ups, and this was found while searching for "assicurazione casa online", which is italian for "online house insurance".
It's times like these I wish a hammer would appear out of nowhere and bash some sense into Preston Gralla.
Yes. It's miscarriage of justice.
Wow, I can't believe this is getting this far. This defense could call up ANY IT admin as a technical reference in this case, since we have all seen it. If you are getting a ton of popups, and anti-spyware software of any legitimacy is run, it will clearly show what has happened.
Alex, you should FedEx a free copy of CounterSpy to these people, informing the local media that you are doing this. Include a sternly worded letter explaining the usage of the software.
Also the assertion that a link was clicked, and meant to be clicked is ridiculous. If this is a pre IE6 SP2 version with no pop-up blocker, I know first hand that it would be very easy to click on links that would make the problem worse rather than better. And with graphics designed like windows with the close button, it is even more likely that a link was clicked that shouldn't have been clicked.
Thank T Man. This was almost certainly a pre SP2 browswer. The incident happened in 2004 and I doubt the school updated their PC.
As a Software Engineer that works for a company that rimes with TycroSoft I can confirm that you don't have to click on a link for it to showup in your browsers cache/history. In fact programs are free to add any entries they want to your history without you having even been shown the page at all. Not that I've ever seen a program do that, but it is possible. Furthermore I can tell you it's pretty much impossible to tell which items were the result of clicks and which weren't. The cache simply doesn't track this kind of information.
And as someone stated above these popup loops can get displayed so fast sometimes that it's very easy to accidently click the image when you're trying to close the window.
Given that they found the site she claimed the kids were viewing and also verified the sight triggered a popup loop they should have given her the benefit of the doubt. It's a real shame that they didn't have a better set of expert witnesses...
-Steve
Bonjour,
Dans l'affaire de "Julie Amero", l'erreur semble avoir été d'accepter que l'accusation ne traite que du thème exclusif de la moralité. Cela a permis d'évacuer la responsabilité des États. Pourtant, ces derniers encaissent des millards de dollards grâce à l'internet et n'ont aucun intérêt à engager une réforme sévère sanctionnant les auteurs des sites pornographiques utilisant toutes sorte de méthodes pour s'imposer sur la toile. L'argent n'ayant pas d'odeur, les États n'ont pas envie de tuer la source essentielle de leurs revenus dans l'oeuf afin de répondre à une régulation nécessaire des pratiques sur le net.
Alors, ne serait-il pas normal de poursuivre plutôt les juges en justices dès lors que, sur de tels sujets, ils ne sanctionnent que les victimes des partiques délictueuses des sites pornographiques ?
En effet, en ne sanctionnant que l'institutrice, le juge ne commet-il pas les délis de complicité et d' apologie du crime, permettant ainsi à ces sites de poursuivre leurs activités par des méthodes portant atteinte à l'intégrité des personnes morales et physiques ?
Cordialement,
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