Teacher faces jail time for porn pop-ups

[Jared Moya]

Who is responsible for keeping the computers at school clean and child-safe? A Connecticut court is siding with the school system in the case of substitute teacher Julie Amero, who has been convicted for four counts of "risking injury to a child." Amero now faces up to 40 years of jail time for pornographic pop-ups that appeared on a computer she was using in a classroom—pop-ups that she and her lawyers argue were a result of spy and adware on the computer, out-of-date virus software, and an expired firewall license—the perfect storm for pornographic pop-ups, all on a Windows 98 machine running Internet Explorer 5.


The story goes something like this: Amero was substituting for a middle-school English class and asked the regular teacher permission to use the computer to e-mail her husband. The teacher granted her permission, and asked her not to log him out of the computer. Amero, the self-professed techno-noob, then left the room to use the restroom, and upon her return says that she found several students gathered around the machine looking at a web site.



A series of unfortunate events occurred from this point on, resulting in a slew of pornographic pop-ups appearing on the screen. The onslaught continued despite Amero's attempts to close the windows. Amero ran to get help from the teacher's lounge, where she told four teachers and the assistant principal about the problem, and where another teacher reportedly told her to ignore the pop-ups. At some point, students attested to Amero's attempts to block the screen with her hands and push students away.


In court, school officials testified that the school's firewall software had indeed expired, that the anti-virus software on the computer was long out of date, and that there were no anti-spyware tools on the machine. A computer expert hired by Amero's lawyers—who was ultimately blocked from presenting his testimony because it was not made available to the prosecution before the case went to court—claimed that there was evidence that spyware/adware was, in fact, installed on the computer for weeks before Amero's arrival at the school.



The prosecution's computer "expert," a local police officer who investigates computer crimes, testified that the computer's logs showed that Amero had voluntarily accessed pornographic sites. The prosecution also faulted Amero heavily for not simply shutting off the computer if she found the porn loop to be as never-ending as she claimed. Amero's answer to the accusation was that she knew so little about computers that she didn't know how to turn it off. "I absolutely have no clue about computers," she said in an interview.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070214-8850.html

[testicles]

The story goes something like this: Amero was substituting for a middle-school English class and asked the regular teacher permission to use the computer to e-mail her husband. The teacher granted her permission, and asked her not to log him out of the computer. Amero, the self-professed techno-noob, then left the room to use the restroom, and upon her return says that she found several students gathered around the machine looking at a web site.

A series of unfortunate events occurred from this point on, resulting in a slew of pornographic pop-ups appearing on the screen. The onslaught continued despite Amero's attempts to close the windows. Amero ran to get help from the teacher's lounge, where she told four teachers and the assistant principal about the problem, and where another teacher reportedly told her to ignore the pop-ups. At some point, students attested to Amero's attempts to block the screen with her hands and push students away.

What really happened here should have been obvious to the court. Those blessed students jumped up the moment she left the room and started looking at sites on her account.

In court, school officials testified that the school's firewall software had indeed expired, that the anti-virus software on the computer was long out of date, and that there were no anti-spyware tools on the machine. A computer expert hired by Amero's lawyers—who was ultimately blocked from presenting his testimony because it was not made available to the prosecution before the case went to court—claimed that there was evidence that spyware/adware was, in fact, installed on the computer for weeks before Amero's arrival at the school.

That's a suit against the lawyer. He/She had the responsibilty to follow procedure to ensure a proper defence.

[Potato]

Has anyone seen cheapprick lately?

[testicles]

I believe he had a makeover.

You want to use the name?

[DigitalJunkie]

You can't expect every teacher to be savy on computer, schools should have a network adm. to oversee computers in a school!

[fargif]

I bet her students have more pc info then herself.I find it hard she can get 40,that´s not right.Rapists get freed every year and they wanna give 40 year to a teacher that went to a porn site?Who hasn´t?

[rekanto]

Hope they don´t put her in jail for that long.Hell if she deserves 40 year,what about the childporn addict?Rapists?Murderes?

[mr. hisser]

I know a frightening number of teachers that are porn junkies. They need to be held responsible and punished if they dare bring it into the classroom.

[mountain_rage]

Do they actually have any way to prove that she voluntarily visited the site? Is their any location that would store keystrokes? Otherwise I seriously can't see how they can prove this. Fact of the matter is most kids will see this eventually and it probably had little if no effect on the children. Heck as someone pointed out the kids probably went to the site themselves.

[whitenoise22]

I wish my teacher did this.. (fuck short messages)