Julie Amero - Sentencing delayed again in substitute teacher porn case

[RamboLiberal]

Anyone following this case? I'm an IT manager and IMHO this teacher got screwed by the judicial system. I feel so strongly about this case I contributed to her defense fund.

A sentencing hearing for a substitute teacher, convicted of exposing a classroom of children to pornography has been postponed for a fourth time.

The case against 40-year-old Julie Amero drew worldwide attention after she was convicted of exposing her students to internet pornography. The reason for the uproar is that she faces up to 40 years in prison.

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Some computer experts say Amero should not be held responsible because pops can take over a computer if anti-spyware and firewalls are not updated.

A group of Connecticut College professors also came to Amero's defense calling for an independent investigator to take a closer technical look at the case. Still some continue to ask why she did not just shut off the computer or unplug it.

http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=6533024&nav=3YeX

Some info from Herb Horner an IT Security Expert.

On October 19, 2004, around 8:00 A.M., Mr. Napp, the class' regular teacher logged on to the PC because Julie Amero being a substitute teacher did not have her own id and password. It makes sense that Mr. Napp told Julie not to logoff or shut the computer off, for if she did she and the students would not have access to the computer. The initial user continued use of the PC and accessed Tickle.com, cookie.monster.com, addynamics.com, and adrevolver.com all between 8:06:14 - 8:08:03 AM. During the next few moments Julie retrieved her email through AOL.

http://www.hair-styles.org was accessed at 8:14:24 A.M., based upon the hair style images uploaded to the PC we were led to believe that there were students using the computer to search out hair styles. The user went to http://www.crayola.com at 8:35:27 A.M. The user continued accessing the original hair site and was directed to http://new-hair-styles.com. This site had pornographic links, pop-ups were then initiated by http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com. There were additional pop-ups by realmedia.com, cnentrport.net, and by 9:20:00 A.M., several java, aspx's and html scripts were uploaded. A click on the curlyhairstyles.htm icon on the http://www.new-hair-styles.com site led to the execution of the curlyhairstyle script along with others that contained pornographic links and pop-ups. Once the aforementioned started, it would be very difficult even for an experienced user to extricate themselves from this situation of porn pop-ups and loops.

All of the jpg's that we looked at in the internet cache folders were of the 5, 6 and 15 kB size, very small images indeed. Normally, when a person goes to a pornographic website they are interested in the larger pictures of greater resolution and those jpgs would be at least 35 kB and larger. We found no evidence of where this kind of surfing was exercised on October 19, 2004.

Testimony and Trial
We asked the prosecution to arrange for the defense to have unfettered access to the internet so that we could reenact the events of October 19, 2004. It was not granted. I went to court with two laptops and a box full of reference material prepared to very clearly illustrate what happened to Julie Amero. But, the prosecution objected because they were not given "full disclosure" of my examination. I was allowed to illustrate two screens, that of the www.hair-styles.org , and www.new-hair-styles.com sites.

http://www.networkperformancedaily.com/2007/01/the_strange_case_of_ms_julie_a_1.html

[donco6]

1. This whole thing is assinine.

Anyone who has ever touched a computer has had this happen at some time. Not only is it easy, it's the INTENTION of many spammers to make this occur. The whole thing should have been dropped at the beginning.

[Jed Dilligan]

2. Yeah--she was royally fucked. Not her fault in any way.

If anything, the school should be suing their anti-porn software provider... Or (more likely) the parents should be suing the school for not having anti-porn software.

[hlthe2b]

3. yes... I've been really disturbed by this...

The courts and law enforcement are almost always steps behind current technology, but this is really hard to take...

[JerseygirlCT]

4. This whole thing is such a crock

I cannot believe it wasn't thrown out of court at the very beginning.

[LisaL]

5. I feel really sorry for that woman.

I've seen computers get hijacked, infected, etc. Happens all the time.