Teacher Found Guilty of Endangering Kids Due to Spyware 597
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."
The other sad thing. (Score:2, Insightful)
When I service customers' computers, I like to install Spybot, configure it to auto-update, auto-scan, and set its scan priority to "Idle", so it doesn't interfere with the user's activities.
Re:you know.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Stupid (Score:0, Insightful)
Seventh grade. I'm sure some of the kids have seen their fair share of porno popups already...
40 years is ridiculous. No kid will be "damaged" in any real way, there's no need for a moral panic here just fire the teacher and you're done.
Idiotic at higest levels (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess few people in the US needs to be connected back to reality.
Re:you know.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The other sad thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
I know on average it will probably help. But 'on average' and 'probably' are not good enough as-and-when Spybot makes a medical imaging machine behave in a way other than designed, for example.
Get that permission, and if it's not given then do not put any software on.
Re:The case probably has merit. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
She should've been a gangsta instead` (Score:1, Insightful)
that went there? And the fact that she asked *4 times* and no one helped her seems to indicate that the responsibility belongs to those who are in charge of this system.
Whoooaaaa... (Score:5, Insightful)
With laws like that... why don't you let the terrorists win?
Re:you know.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
This is the tip of the iceberg. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm expecting this to happen soon, if it has not already. Perhaps even as targetted attacks rather than simply random misanthropy.
Re:you know.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It'd probably be less than 40 years if she'd have murdered one of them.
Re:Protecting the kids (Score:2, Insightful)
except it's NOTHING LIKE THAT, it's not her pictures, they were from software installed in secret without her knowledge, and when she discovered what had happened she attempted to get them removed and recieved no assitance. you can not remove the technology from the argument simply because your too dense to understand it, it's intergral to what happened.
A clear case of US double morale? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
USA: Get over your problem with sex. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Protecting the kids (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Excessive (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't matter if she gets ANY jail time. She is now officially a "sex offender", and her life is over.
This is our collective responsibility (Score:2, Insightful)
Botnets are huge and well known to anyone who ever glances into their spam box.
Some collection of security experts claim that they are tracking 400,000 infected machines
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/technology/07ne
These machines are sending out spam, and a fair amount of it is porn spam. The obvious conclusion
is that most every Windows-using school in America has porn on the disks of its classroom computers.
Actually the percentage of infected machines in schools is probably higher than the general percentage,
because schools typically don't have much budget for IT staff, and they often have older computers.
vroom (Score:2, Insightful)
i definitely blame the support engineer (damn techies, giving techies like me a bad name)
just like if i was lied to when my car had apparently past it's mot, but hadn't, and malfunctioned.
that computer should not have been allowed on the network, the suort should have been there, as should the protection.
just for the record, i don't drive (can't) perhaps it was a bad choice of analogy.
for anybody who's seem monkey dust, driving a car = murder
however i do like norwich, i think there might suddenly be a job opening or two.. woo!
Re:you know.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Frightening .. (Score:2, Insightful)
If it's already there, the last thing you want to do is to publically say that it's already there.
A good lawyer should be able to clear it up (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure counter claims could be presented such as pulling in case examples, etc, but I get the feeling that there's invariably a lot more going on with the "troubled" kids and that generally healthy kids, while being embarassed at seeing such material, aren't going to launch any rape or 'Columbine' campaigns as a result of pornographic pop-ups.
Now that said, the schools should be suing the HELL out of the companies profiting from this form of advertising and in many respects there are plenty of grounds for other legal action against parties outside of the school. I say they should direct their anger and outrage against the REAL parties responsible.
I don't think much needs to be said about "prevention" though. But I will say this: teaching in school is a presentation. And as such, presentations should be fully prepared in such a way that "unpredictables" are kept to a minimum. Live internet in a classroom at a grade school level is just a bad idea.
Re:you know.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:A clear case of US double morale? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The ONLY sad thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:USA: Get over your problem with sex. (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
modern day witch hunt (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The case probably has merit. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Whoooaaaa... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the popular descriptions of the conditions of US jails are true, I'd prefer stoning over 40 years inside one of those.
Indeed they are, here's why: (Score:5, Insightful)
Cynical? yes.
I deal in worst case scenarios (Score:3, Insightful)
1. The teacher was viewing porn on her computer, but she intended it for her own eyes only, messed up and the kids has seen that she viewed porn. She lied to the kids covering up the situation...
reasonable reaction:
2. The teacher was viewing porn on her computer and was showing it to kids because of pedophile intent or as an inappropriate sex-ed.
reasonable reaction: teacher fired, putting her on a list that she can't work with kids anymore. I find the sexual offenders list an overkill though. Disclosing the location of people like this teacher, not letting her go near schools or some such restrictions are an overkill, she is just not fit to be a teacher. She's 40 years old, must have been teaching for a long while now, so you just have to dig in her past to check whether something associated with paedophilia turns up. If yeah, hell sentence her criminally, but if not then there isn't a cause for stronger measures than firing her and not allowing her to work as a teacher anymore.
Criminal prosecution should only come if there is actual harm to children, and viewing a couple of porn pictures is not harm, it's just bad conduct on the part of the teacher, so it should mean loss of job.
Personally I think that criminal prosecution in this case is a joke, even more so the 40 year sentence. What's next, execution for giving "the finger"? When I was 12 I was looking for serial keys on astalavista if my memory serves me correct when a porn popup popped up and it displayed a monster cock. The IT teacher walked up behind me and just told me to turn that off and walked away again. Other kids were directly looking at porn when the teacher wasn't looking and noone made a big deal about it. If the teacher's screen would have flooded with porn popups we would have been laughing at it. I'm not from the USA so I don't get the whole obsession with trying to hide sex. I also received proper sexual education from the school, so I can't complain.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The case probably has merit. (Score:2, Insightful)
Visiting Sites (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The ONLY sad thing. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:USA: Get over your problem with sex. (Score:3, Insightful)
I actually agree with most of what you said, I just find your arrogance astounding. You speak as if your beliefs are the One Self Evident Universal Truth, and that all Americans are fools because some of them disagree with you, even though on a global scale your views are the the minority by a long shot.
Fuck you, your "honor". (Score:2, Insightful)
kids. I suppose it isn't really a "proper" thing to do but what I wonder would she get for
flashing her tits to the class?
10 years of solitary confinement on death row, breast amputation and then being flogged with rubber hoses to a
bleeding pulp and hung from a construction crane??
Re:malware can drop child porn , not just reg. pr0 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
My wife is a teacher (Score:1, Insightful)
Anybody with a little knowledge of the internet knows that, especially with IE, you don't have to click a link to get spyware on your machine. The police "expert" probably has been living under a rock the last few years!
Re:Excessive (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Teacher Found Guilty of Endangering a Child (Score:3, Insightful)
Another thing would be the school policies to consider. She might have gotten in trouble by cleaning the hard drive herself. And as to which sites actually installed scripts to allow porn pop-ups, the sites could be very innocent on the surface but could intentionally have those scripts in the background or they could be sites that they themselves have been infected.
If she isn't a techie type person, she might have been scared to try to do anything to remove the problem without help for fear of damaging the computer.
This idea that she could have been found guilty of porn pop-ups is crazy since it really not her fault, especially since she did seek help to get it removed and was ignored by peers and higher ups.
I do hope this is appealed and a good lawyer (ACLU or another techie savvy group) steps in so a bad precedence isn't put into place and used to convect other innocent people.
What the...? (Score:2, Insightful)
*DINNER TIME*
LOL LOL MOM IT WAS SO FUNNAY AT SCHOOL THE TEACH0R'S COMPUTER SHOWED P0RNS
OH DEAR GOD NO MY CHILD!!!!!!! SOMEONE HAS TO PAY!!! (I need a new car too)
Repeat in three more houses and you're done.
Bah, kids nowadays know what porn is from seven years old onwards, not like they are going to get a life-lasting trauma or become terrible perverts for that.
The years where kids used to play ninjas vs cowboys vs pirates are over. (pirates won, obviously, specially if piratebay gets its own country yarrr)
Re:The other sad thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't be ridiculous. Anyone who is using a "medical imaging machine" isn't going to hire out to a small shop for IT support. They're going to be part of a hospital or other facility that has their own IT support. And most likely there will be a special department dedicated specifically to support of the medical imaging systems. I know this because supporting PACS systems is been part of what I do for a living.
Re:USA: Get over your problem with sex. (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually there is. Who decides what is wrong or right? You? Me? Almost every culture and religion in the world has moral reservations/ideals concerning sex, because it is a matter that involves human dignity, intimacy, and human control over animal instinct. You won't learn this from maths class, you learn this from being brought up with values and ideals instead of just desires.
You think topless is fine...why stop there? How do you draw your lines? Human morality has a lot more to it than the materialist (and frankly disgusting) pain-and-pleasure scale you seem to weigh everything with. From U.S to Egypt to Tokyo, people cover their private parts almost instinctively, and women are a little different from men(clothing wise) because breasts and chests are not quite the same in sexual terms.
Of course jail time for something like this is ridiculous, but people have a right to be upset about what their children are being exposed to. With time they will come into contact with the way society has developed, but that does not mean they have to become habituated to the lack of moral code involving sex OR violence.
Schools filtering system expired? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is there something to actually do to help her ? (Score:4, Insightful)
I read this story earlier on el reg, and since then I really feel sick for this teacher. Facing 40 years in jail for what appears to the most casual internet user as bad luck is so way out of reality touch it's totaly unbelievable.
Her case desserves the world's attention and help ; I'm wondering wether it couldn't be brought to some NGO attention such as Amnesty international, for it looks like a violation of her human rights. This could help her finding a competent lawyer.
I'm really upset a person's life can be shred to pieces that way, just to fulfill some obvious political ambitions.
Re:you know.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:you know.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have been thinking about this too after I saw stupid story about how kids might use their Wiis and PS3s to look at porn on the internet. The mother in the story talked about how her childrens "innocence might be destroyed if they learn something they aren't supposed to know" (I paraphrase) That sure sounds like the garden-of-eden tree-of-knowledge story.
The word innocent is often used to describe ignorance of sexuality. The opposite of innocence is guilt. From a christian standpoint people have original sin and are supposed to feel guilty about their natural desires.
I think it's sad that this artificial self-hate governs the way so many people think.
No wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:3, Insightful)
What you're seeing on this article is common sense. Even if she got to work at 4am and browsed hardcore bestiality porn for 4 hours before work there's no reason to put her through this. It's ridiculous, it's Kafka-esque. If she browsed porn at work and it can be proven, simply fire her. See how easy that was?
Re:you know.... (Score:3, Insightful)
So God made humans have these "urges and desires" all the time, and yet it is wrong if you act upon them before marriage? What a bastard! That's like giving a thirsty man a bottle of water and telling him he cannot drink it. Or a great painter a set of brushes and forbid him to paint.
Re:you know.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A clear case of US double morale? (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Actually, what's tragicomic is people from other countries worrying so much about what is happening in the United States, apparently from an utter lack of things to worry about in their own country. It's also rather -- hell, let's not mince words here -- stupid to think the U.S. is one monolithic, monocultural entity, with the same opinion everywhere. California has a different way of viewing the world that Texas, New York is different from Florida, and the average EU citizen does not have a better grasp on what it means to be an American than a person living in here in the states. Watching a movie made in Hollywood gives you no more insight into our country than my watching anime makes me an expert on Japanese culture. If I were to make wisecracks on Blacks or Asians because of their race, I'd rightly be called a bigot, but somehow doing the same about Americans is +5 insightful.
In other words, get over yourself. Kindly advice should be limited to the problem at hand, not turn into a chance to lecture us on how backward we are.
Yes, I fully expect this post to be modded "flamebait," which is why I'm posting as an AC. Yes, even though I'm an American, I have the foresight not to give my handle to those who think ad hominem is the key to victory in debate.
Re:malware can drop child porn , not just reg. pr0 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)