3/02/07 (CT):
Supply Teacher Faces Jail Over Pop-Up Porn
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A substitute teacher faces up to 40 years in jail after pornographic website images were displayed to her seventh-grade students. But the conviction of 40-year-old Julie Amero - for four counts of risking injury to a child - has sparked mass outrage in many quarters.
Amero, who worked at Kelly Middle School in the US town of Norwich, Connecticut, argued that she was the victim of adware and spyware - malicious computer code that causes pop-up advertisements to appear spontaneously.
The prosecution, on the other hand, said Amero loaded the porn deliberately, and faulted her for not shutting the computer off fast enough once the children had witnessed it. Since the conviction a legion of security experts have sided with Amero. They say the jury's lack of understanding of computer security technology blinded them to the presence of adware, which Amero - a computer novice - could not control. She was originally scheduled to be sentenced on Friday, but this was postponed to March 29 to allow her to beef up her defense team. Meanwhile, security researchers at a Florida-based anti-spyware firm have pledged to get to the bottom of the mystery by conducting their own investigation, SecurityFocus.com reported.
Alex Eckelberry, president of Sunbelt Software, reportedly obtained an "image" of the contents of the computer's hard disk drive. Earlier this month, he put out a call to the security and forensics community for help in analysing the image.
The goal was to determine whether the porn pop-ups were deliberately loaded by Amero, or if they were caused by spyware. Eckelberry, along with other security experts, dismissed the police and prosecutor's claims that a forensic investigation of the computer showed the teacher was actively browsing porn websites the entire day on October 19, 2004, the same day she was accused of displaying porn to her students.
The defense claim that two independent forensic investigations had concluded that malicious code had caused the pop-ups, not a deliberate act by Amero.
In a blog post, the director of technical education at security software maker ESET, Randy Abrams, posed the question: "Can a legal system unversed in technology result in a fair trial?" He said the prosecution's "expert witness", who presented evidence against Amero at the trial, was "incompetent".
"The prosecutor in this case hired a police detective who was entirely unqualified to investigate the case and incapable, through intent or ignorance, of sticking to factual testimony," Abrams wrote.
"The jury was told that Amero had to have clicked on links when there was absolutely no evidence to support the conclusion."
Amero now has a new attorney - criminal defense lawyer William Dow - who has offered to defend her for free and will reportedly pursue an appeal.
© X-Pro 2007
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