Teacher Found Guilty of Endangering Kids Due to Spyware

nursegirl writes "Norwich, Conn seventh grade teacher, Julie Amero has been convicted of four counts of risk of injury to a minor after her classroom PC displayed pornographic pop-ups in class. While an expert for the defendant said he had discovered spyware on her PC that had been downloaded from a hairstyling site, the local police investigator claimed that the spyware had been downloaded from actively visiting porn sites. Amero testified that she had told four other teachers and the assistant principal about the popups, but received no assistance. The school's internet filtration software was not working because it's license had expired. Amero faces up to forty years in prison."

you know....

Amero testified that she had told four other teachers and the assistant principal about the popups, but received no assistance ... Amero faces up to forty years in prison.

If only we had some... amendment... a "bill of rights" if you will... that ruled out "cruel and unusal" punishments like this.

Nah, that's crazy talk.

Re:you know....

It's not the punishment that's cruel or unusual, it's the charge. "Risk of injury to a minor" can stem from accidental viewing of a porno ad?

Injury? It's not a financial loss. The kids weren't physically harmed. The only potential injury is to the parents plans for educating their children. The children themselves certainly weren't scarred for having seen it. If they're scarred at all, it's because they were raised to take offense to the material.

Re:you know....

The kids weren't physically harmed.

Does anyone know what the sentence would be if she actually attacked one of the kids? I'm guessing even that would be a lot less.

Re:you know....

Attacked?

It'd probably be less than 40 years if she'd have murdered one of them.

Re:you know....

what is this called again

American freedom that needs to be shared with the world :)

Re:you know....

Actually they do. I work in the prison system and there are two types of sentences inmates get. Concurrent and Consecutive, funny that they both start with "Con" but I digress.

I frequently see their sentence structure on their file and it is not uncommon to see an inmate with a sentence like:

murder-Life with CC

murder-Life with CC

UDW (use of a deadly weapon enhancement) 48-72 months CS

So, what this would work out to be like is this. The inmate would have the 2 life sentences running at the same time, He gets his parole on both. They were running concurrently so they are both complete. NOW he starts serving the 48-72 month sentence that was consecutive to the initial sentence.

It does not happen this way all the time, but it is quite common.

So, She could conceivably wack the kids and the idiot judge that actually let this go to trial in the first place and serve less than 40 years.

This scenario is extremely unlikely but within the realm of possibility.

Re:you know....

I think you do understand the harm that can be done by looking at a female nipple. Ok, seeing people get shot might be pretty bad, but a female nipple is much worse. People should be SHOT if they willingly expose them or look at them.

http://tinyurl.com/yfdv5j [tinyurl.com] is just a disaster waiting to happen

Re:you know....

The children themselves certainly weren't scarred for having seen it.

I take it you didn't get the memo.

If they're scarred at all, it's because they were raised to take offense to the material.

There is that, of course, but there is the corallary as well. It is my observation that kids that are scarred by the experience get this scarring from having to deal with all the fucked up grownups around them going completely apeshit about their having seen a little exposed skin.

It's a self fullfilling prophecy that kids are harmed by it if you insure they come to harm yourself.

Yo! People. Under our clothes? We're naked. Get used to the idea, 'k? I'm getting a bit tired of living among psychotics.

KFG

Re:you know....

There's lots and lots of mentally scarring porn out there. Take the goatse man, or tubgirl, as an example.

Hi, my name is Mike, and I was exposed to tubgirl 4 years ago. I have to say that since that night, my life hasn't been the same. Every time I defecate, I have to put duct tape over my mouth first, and then I have to hold my breath. I can't take a bath anymore without crapping. Damn you, tubgirl. I'm so happy about the support I have received in this group, however. You guys are wonderful.

obligatory:

*** Topic in #doghouse is 'Our hearts are extended to the 17 victims of the recent internet fraud'
* Anubis has joined #doghouse
<Anubis> what fraud?
<Kadmium> You haven't heard about it?
<Anubis> no?
<Kadmium> You can read the full story at http://www.tubgirl.com/ [tubgirl.com]
<Anubis> omg wtf!
*** Kadmium changes topic to 'Our hearts are extended to the 18 victims of the recent internet fraud'

from bash [bash.org].

Re:you know....

Is that so? As a kid I once saw a blowjob picture and I found it exceedingly gross. Did I recover? Sure... Even goatse, bestiality and tubgirl do nothing to me anymore. Would I enjoy doing anything of those things? Hell, no! But, hey, other people can do what they want.... Tolerance is something you learn over the years.

You want to know the one thing that scarred me as a kid, which I still remember with disgust to this day? I saw a charred corpse on TV. (I think it was on the news) I had nightmares for months after that. Still today, I ca't stand watching pictures of charred corpses.

Re:you know....

You touch upon that strange thing in western society (or perhaps everywhere, I am not sure). Why is seeing sex considered so harmful to children, compared to quite disgusting violence (that can and will give nightmares, etc)? I have a hard time seeing how seeing sex could really harm a human child... especially such a short exposure such as this. I mean, many children must at least have walked in on their parents having sex at some point... and I think most of those children turn out ok anyway. And I'd wager any healthy boy (and girl more likely than not) have seen some kind of porn at 10 year old (and said "ewwww", too).

I just don't see the reasoning there. Anyone know why or how this "sex is harmful to see for children" came about?

Re:you know....

The problem with your reasoning is:
A) You're using reason. That's the first sign you're an immoral heathen.
B)Violence is natural. Sex is not. If God wanted us to have sex, we would be born with some kind of genitals which would develop over time, allowing us to perform and desire sexual acts, not the submachines guns babies come with out of the womb. ...Hey, wait a minute...

When I was a young boy (probably around 10), I'd just gotten out of the pool and while walking around, I saw my 5 year-old-cousin drying off. She had her towel open in the front.

That's right: I, a boy as young as 10, saw my first naked girl. So terrible was the sight I went on a killing spree for weeks to calm my troubled mind. And did you know the assassin who killed Archduke Ferdinand, which launched WWI, became an assassin after walking in on his parents having sex?

Seriously, there is no logic. Sex is natural. It's about the most natural thing there is. And plenty of young children, get this, even like to play with their genitals. They may not understand why, but they think it feels good. So, why some people think it's okay to see the aftermath of a carpet bombing but not a pair of breasts I'll never understand.

Re:you know....

Anyone who considers goatse and tubgirl to be porn are already "injured" IMHO.

=Smidge=

i dont see

how that is teachers fault? Unless the teacher installed the spy-ware intentionaly, which is probably not the case.

Re:i dont see

It is the best news of this week. I am 13 years old and now, I know how to send my teachers in jail.

Yahoo!! Long life to the spywares!!![sardonic laugh]Revenge!

Artemis Fowl

pr0n pop ups a cost cutting measure?

There we go, slash the budget for Personal Health and Development classes. The kids have already gotten all their ill-advised Sex Ed from the friendly people at Backdoorsluts9.com.

Idiotic at higest levels

I don't see this is the teacher fault, it is well known that spyware can install it self with viruses and other nasty things. It is also interesting to note that the software that is meant to keep this out was not working, becose it's license was expired. That can only be the schools fault. But I don't expect conviction greedy Prosecutor to understand that. Since, based on the news I am reading here. He is a total idiot, and rightly so. Who the hell sues over spyware, even if these kids did see some porn on the computer screen, I would think that the Tv is twice as worse then that.

I guess few people in the US needs to be connected back to reality.

Whoooaaaa...

Amero faces up to forty years in prison.

With laws like that... why don't you let the terrorists win?

40 years prison for not installing Firefox...

40 years prison for not installing Firefox... duh!

This is the tip of the iceberg.

It is trivial to write a piece of software that, when installed on a person's computer, will visit web sites of the attacker's choosing. The software could be programmed to do this covertly and with the specific intent of incriminating the victim, e.g., by only visiting illegal/immoral sites at such times when the person was using the computer to browse the Internet. The offending sites would be in the victim's browser history, having been visited at times when he/she was using the computer. The software could be programmed to destroy itself after a duration, with the attacker then providing information to authorities with regard to the victim's illicit surfing habit. Getting the software onto the victim's computer is also trivial, given the number of exploits available, open wireless networks, etc.

I'm expecting this to happen soon, if it has not already. Perhaps even as targetted attacks rather than simply random misanthropy.

Its, not it's

Its license. Its.

Seriously...

A clear case of US double morale?

I get so fed up with the duality of American society where, on the one hand you are so exceptionally uptight when it comes to nudity, tolerance of other peoples sexuality etc - and on the other hand you are the worlds largest producer & market for pornography.

This leads to sad, sad examples like this where Prosecutors need to find a guilty party or person at any cost to pin the blame on for having some kids unintentionally see some porn pop-ups. I feel really, really sorry for the poor teacher for getting caught in this mess.

Its tragicomic for us living outside your country watching this - I sincerely hope you are able to fix these issues in a fundamental way.

Re:A clear case of US double morale?

Agreed. What also makes me wonder is *who the hell got the idea to sue her over this*. Here in Europe, things like this would never, ever, ever go to court. What is with Americans that they need a friggin' court to deal with each and every trivial, minor and major event they don't like?? What happened to the idea of just talking to each other and find a solution all can live with, without destroying someone's life and career? If this teacher gets convicted, even if she only gets 6 months probation, she can kiss her job and any opportunity to get another one in the field goodbye. Years of education wasted, and maybe if she's not that mentally stable she might derange completely, become an alcoholist or even kill herself...

What should've happened is that this 'incident' (yes: incident, it's nothing more than that) should have been reported to the school principal, and dealt with internally. In the *most extreme* case, in which she deliberately visited porn sites and got the spyware from that, she should be fired. In *any* other case (the spyware came from somewhere else, someone else installed it, etc), there should be *no* repercussions. Maybe only a 'warning' to send out the message to the children's parents that someone was blamed and it won't happen again.

How you Americans can even consider something like this to be a crime is beyond me... Also, sex is something natural, it does not hurt children. That's not to say you should show your 10-year olds pornography, but if they ever see it accidentally, that's probably a good thing. It opens opportunities to explain some things about life and actually educate and prepare your children for the real world, instead of teaching them denial, hypocrism and an unhealthy and overprudish attitude towards sexuality.

USA: Get over your problem with sex.

It's high time conservative Americans got over their problem with sex. It's clear these hypocrites have sex, otherwise they wouldn't be breeding the children that need to be "protected" from these images. No-one can be harmed by viewing pornographic images, certainly not grade seven students.

There is nothing wrong with sex. There is nothing wrong with nudity. There is certainly nothing wrong with naked female breasts - those of us in the rest of the world were left laughing our heads of at the utter ridiculousness of the outcry over the Janet Jackson "wardrobe misfunction". In fact, women should be free to walk around topless, as men can, if they so desire. The double-standard is simply mind-boggling.

I wouldn't mind betting that the same children that saw the images on this poor woman's computer also saw a number of acts of mindless violence on television that same evening, and not a soul complained. How's that for stupidity?

Re:USA: Get over your problem with sex.

Perhaps we should all be able to walk around naked? How about sex in public?

Uh, sure - if you feel like it. Who's stopping you? You might get stared at, but that's about it (unless you live in some country where religion is still widespread, such as the one being discussed here. So yes, the question is rhetorical).

But why would you want to? Clothes has been used since paleoliticum, not for moral reasons but for practical ones. As for sex, unless you happen to be exhibitionist, why would you want to have sex in public?

Chilling effect?

I see this as fairly huge. If I was a schoolteacher, as soon as I heard about this, I would immediately stop teaching anything to do with computers or the internet in my classroom. Setting aside the question of whether or not the images in this case resulted from the teacher's actions or from spyware, the case sets a precedent that if students are exposed to pornographic images in your class, you become responsibly, criminally. And, just for gravy, you get to be a sex offender. The cost of this is way too high to make it worth the risk of an accident (say, if a malicious student installed something nasty to set me up), so I would just treat my class as if computers and the internet didn't exist. And so my students wouldn't gain the benefits of these tools, nor any education in their use.

One would think the possibility that the images were the result of spyware would create reasonable doubt, but since it doesn't...

How many idiots for it to go this far?

Assuming that the fact of the case is:

A substitute teacher had been using a school computer for surfing porn (although the site names sound more like dating sites), one of the sites installed some malware with porn pop-ups which were activated at a point in time where the pupils could see it.

She is most likely not allowed to use work computers for private purpose (although everybody does), and using it for porn is worse as the risk of malware is higher. This is something that would in a sane society be a cause of a "serious talk" at the boss office. So how did this get this far?

1) Someone, either the school principal or a parent, must have decided that watching porn pop-ups constitute injury to the pupils.

2) The prosecutor must have agreed.

3) The jury has agreed.

This point to a society whose norms are seriously sick, not just a few twisted individuals.
 

No wonder...

there is a shortage of people willing to be teachers in many parts of the US!

Here's the checklist of benefits of becoming a teacher:
-Relatively low wages
-Dealing with spoiled kids
-Dealing with the parents of spoiled kids
-Facing 40 years in prison because your school has an IT department consisting mostly of monkeys

Where do I sign up?!

Re:The case probably has merit.

They wouldn't bother with this one unless they really did have a case against the teacher.

Nice fantasy you have there. School teachers are public enemy #1, they are seen as more of a threat to America than terrorists. Plus there's the thousands of cases that prosecutors take up every year in which they don't have good cases. And then there's the politicians and police wanting to look "tough on pornography" for the votes and funding.

Indeed they are, here's why:

The gouverning elite has a very high incentive to keep the status quo, or even widen the separation between the 'classes'. If the poor underclass is big, that means more options for the upper class to exploit that. The method to produce more poor is to make prevent less children from middleclass families to establish themselves as such, and to keep the children from poor families from rising the social ladder. (Talking about groups and averages here, not induviduals). Good teachers that teach to these classes of kids actually stand in the way of these objectives, as their aim is to have their pupils to achieve the best they can and get the best follow-up education, essentially raising their social status. So what needs to be done is to frustrate those teachers so much that they give up.

Cynical? yes.

Re:The case probably has merit.

I think you may be right, and the clue is referenced in the story:

while substituting for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School

She's a substitute, which means she was only in that class a day or so. For her to have installed spyware and be duped into clicking on it multiple times may be feasible, but is it likely? Besides when you read TFA, the investigator also points out that the jury viewed a list of sites accessed, many of which could not be reached without actively clicking on the ads:

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."

Among the sites Amero visited were meetlovers.com and femalesexual.com, along with others with more graphic names.

Hitting one or two could be a mistake, but several? It really sounds more like she was surfing for pr0n in the classroom, and using "teh spyware" as an excuse. And of course, Slashdot fell for it. Again.

Re:The case probably has merit.

Well if she was actively looking at porn that changes everything, why a 40 year sentence is too lenient I say!

Re:The case probably has merit.

Hitting one or two could be a mistake, but several? It really sounds more like she was surfing for pr0n in the classroom, and using "teh spyware" as an excuse. And of course, Slashdot fell for it. Again.

Even if she intentionally showed porn to children, a more appropriate response would be to fire her. A felony charge for multiple counts of endangerment of children is very far over the top. Forty years in prison, for accidentally exposing some children to dirty pictures is just insane. That's a roughly equivalent to a murder conviction. It this, even if it were intentional, really as bad as murder?

Re:For the benefit of the vast majority...

How old are we talking about here?

      Around 12-13 years old.

Re:For the benefit of the vast majority...

I have personally give a porn linking website to a 13 year old

      Gasp! How dare you! Little Johnny doesn't think about sex, and never will, until the day he gets married. Then he will have sex only in the missionary position, and only in order to have children. And he will NOT ENJOY IT.

malware can drop child porn , not just reg. pr0n

This dude [go.com] apparently had kiddie porn found on his computer(that most likely got there via virii/trojans) and was facing a sex offender label/jail time for it. The defendent's family hired a computer expert who analyzed the said computer's harddrive, and found many, many backdoor programs that would have allowed hackers into the comp. While the article doesn't exactly give technical details, it does make a good point in that this country's prosecutors/legal system are well behind the times in terms of technology issues.

And, this isn't the only case where this has happened before (2003) [zdnet.co.uk]

Re:malware can drop child porn , not just reg. pr0

It has nothing to do with prosecutors being tech-ignorant.

It has to do with prosecutors seeking to make a name for themselves by jumping on the "child porn" bandwagon - a guaranteed way to get re-election.

It's a career move, nothing more.

It's what you get when "law creates crime".

Look at the "Drug War" sometime. It's a way for the Feds to get money and power while suppressing minorities - nothing more. The Feds regularly arrest people for things that shouldn't be crimes in the first place, threaten them with massive jail time in exchange for ratting out all their relatives and friends with lies, then arresting everybody else and repeating the procedure ad nauseum. This is how they get their 98% conviction rate - and their budget money and career path in the DoJ.

This is why the US has the most incarcerated population in the world.

The entire system has utterly NOTHING to do with the vague abstract term "justice".

Re:malware can drop child porn , not just reg. pr0

Police get rewarded for arresting people and prosecutors get rewarded for convictions. Because of that, they'll tailor thier processes to that end. The fact that computers and the interenet are not secure, and unfathomable to most people is irrelevant. They can't arrest the interent or convict your computer. But they can arrest and convict some poor sap who has no idea what a root-kit is or how his computer can be made into a zombie. So they will.

Police and prosecutors don't care what really happened because their job is to arrest and convict - that's what we reward them for. We'd be silly to expect anything different.

Re:malware can drop child porn , not just reg. pr0

This is one reason why 'malware did it' defenses should be taken seriously by the courts. Most pedophiles are collector types. For example, the FBI profiling guidelines for law enforcement officers who have discovered child porn, whether on or off a PC, just assume the perp is sn obsessive collector, likely to have dozens of CD photo collections burned, whole cabinets of VHS tapes, or similar sized caches in whatever forms they collect. Pedophiles almost invariably want tens of thousands of photos and hundreds of films, perhaps to validate their orientation ("See, lots of people do it, so I'm not a lone weirdo!"), or perhaps from a fear that the supply will dry up and whatever they have managed to collect will be all they see for the rest of their lives. That really creepy guy you mentioned is very typical.
        If all the material is on the PC, and good searches of the suspect's home or workplace don't find back ups and additional material, it's time to look at the alternatives before rushing to convict. Conversely, local law enforcement ought to be trained that finding a back up cache or other off device child porn is one of the best ways to ensure solid convictions.

Re:The other sad thing.

Yes. We ask them before we install antispyware and antivirus utilities, through our intake process.

As for undesired behavior...I run a free PC Clinic [grc4.org]. People bring in their desktops and laptops for cleanup and repair, and we send them back the same day. With a good number of volunteers, we've fixed as many as 35 computers in a six-hour period.

Since they're peoples' personal machines, there's not a great deal of risk of adverse behavior from the tools we use.

Re:The other sad thing.

What sort of medical imaging device is connected to the greater Internet, rather than a secure WLAN
of some sort, if it actually needs networking?

Re:The other sad thing.

i used to work in pathology, and the answer is ALL OF THEM.

Re:Protecting the kids

An important difference between the case and your analogy is that it were not her private pictures.

In my opinion a better offline analogy would be if she was responsible for collecting the school's mail. On the way to the classroom she emptied the school's mailbox and during her lesson some sex advertisement slipped out from that stack of letters.

Suing a teacher for something like that is unbelievable. It ruins your education system in the long term for sure if you have to work in such a climate.

Re:Protecting the kids

Suing a teacher for something like that is unbelievable.

The REALLY important point here. They're not suing her. They've convicted her of a criminal felony There is a HUGE difference. Most importantly, she faces prison time. Hard time. This isn't 50 hours picking up trash on the side of the highway. She will likely go to pound-me-in-the-ass prison. She will be placed among society's worst. Then when she gets out, she'll have to register as a sex offender so that she can be publicly rediculed and forced not to live near schools, churches or daycare centers. In addtion, wherever she moves, all residents within a mile of her home will get letters telling that a pervert is living near them, so be sure to keep their kids locked up. On every job application, she will have to list herself as a perverted sexual deviant, and she really stands little chance of ever having a normal life.

The most important distinction, however, is that it's not some hairbrained idiot at the school that decided to levy these charges. Anybody can sue anyone at any time for any reason. No, this charge was levied by the people. By people representing you and me. The real responsibility for this miscarriage of justice rests on the prosecutor that was elected by the people, and who decided to prosecute this case. He or she needs to be held accountable for ruining the life of another human being.

Don't talk about this like it's something that could really suck for this woman. It already does suck. She's already been convicted. Sure, she can appeal, and based on what I know from this case, she stands a chance of winning, but that black mark is on her record forever. Appeals are not based on the merit of the original conviction, but rather on the fact that she had a fair trial. Until you are convicted, you are innocent until proven guilty. Once you are convicted, you are guilty until proven innocent. It's a whole different ballgame.

As someone who regularly uses a computer in front of children as an educational tool, and as an IT professional, this story scares the hell out of me. Although I know how to keep my computer free of spyware, there isn't one person on /. that hasn't been stuck in a random porn loop that they themselves didn't cause. I don't visit bad sites, and I don't open up bad emails, but more than once I have had a porn loop pop up on my PC. Now, after this story, I am seriously faced with the prospect of never using the computer as an educational tool again.

Re:Excessive

I can't see her getting any serious jail time. America is crazy but not that crazy.

      Doesn't matter if she gets ANY jail time. She is now officially a "sex offender", and her life is over.

Re:Excessive

We agree on that. I just don't think it's even her responsibility to secure the computer; she's a teacher, not an IT tech. It's like asking her to make sure the sink drain doesn't suddenly smell like sewage during class. It's just not her job or something she knows anything about. In these days. In 30 years everyone *should* have a basic understanding of these things.

It would, of course, have taken the school/district's IT people 10 minutes to install AVG, Adaware, and and Firefox. And that is their job, while she is busy teaching or making lesson plans... (or surfing for porn, which would be extremely hard to prove, especially if students were on the computer.)

Re:40 years ?

And in Denmark, in my freshman year of high school (equivalent to 10th grade, youngest pupil 15 years) at a school meeting some of the seniors set up a TV with a Peter North video and let it run for 5-10 minutes, before the teachers demanded it stopped. Not because of the porn, but mostly because we had to get back to class. Note that the principal and almost all teachers were present those 5-10 minutes.

The US seriously needs to prioritize.