More Tales of Prosecutoral Excess
Radley Balko | January 17, 2007, 2:50pm
Apropos of Jacob's post below, here's another case of prosecutors gone wild:
A substitute teacher in Norwich, Connecticut with no prior criminal record could get 40 years in prison for exposing a middle school class to pornography. She apparently was using the computer in front of students when a loop of pop-up ads for porn sites began to appear. The loops only intensified as she tried to close out the ads. The woman made the plausible defense that some sort of adware or malware on her computer caused the pop-up ads to appear. She also testified that she notified several teachers and administrators of the problem, and got no assistance.
Over at Boing Boing , several tech-savvy experts weigh in, mostly in the woman's defense. They point to this passage from the local Norwich paper:
Computer expert W. Herbert Horner, testifying in Amero's defense, said he found spyware on the computer and an innocent hair styling Web site "that led to this pornographic loop that was out of control."
"If you try to get out of it, you're trapped," Horner said.
But Smith countered Horner's testimony with that of Norwich Police Detective Mark Lounsbury, a computer crimes investigator. 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."
Strange that local authorities refuse to give the woman the benefit of the doubt (see also the laughable editorial from the same Norwich paper). Seems unlikely that a 40-year-old woman with no prior record would knowingly subject school children to porn -- not to mention the absurdity of the charge itself (is your average middle schooler today really going to be traumatized for life after exposure to pop-up porn?) and the ridiculous possible sentence. I would presume (but I'm not certain) that the conviction would also qualify the woman as a sex offender. Meaning that her life is about to become damn-near unlivable.
Even more troubling, one Boing Boing commenter notes that the prosecution's witness clearly has no idea what the hell he's talking about:
I'm not sure if you noticed this: the Norwich Bulletin article had a VERY troubling quote on it -- the prosecution used an expert witness that said a highlighted link was proof that the accused had clicked on the URLs.
That is simply not true. The expert witness is either lying or a fucking idiot. Visited links are highlighted if a browser had ever loaded a URL-- I've yet to find a browser that highlights visited links on a "source | destination" basis -- every one i've ever encountered highlights links on "destination" alone.
I made a quick demo over here to illustrate my point: Link.
Other commenters note that the school itself could be in trouble for allowing the licenses on its content filters to expire, a bit of information that also suggests the school probably wasn't particularly vigilant about keeping its computers free of malware and spyware, either.
In fact, the same police expert quoted above apparently admitted on the stand that the computer wasn't even inspected for spyware.
Tech geeks at Slashdot also weigh in, overwhelmingly in the woman's defense.
Tym | January 18, 2007, 9:12am | #
"is your average middle schooler today really going to be traumatized for life after exposure to pop-up porn?"
Yes, are there any studies showing harm?
Also, even if so, does she really deserve a prison term longer than if she killed one of them?
And doesn't the fact that they have not proved mens rea (intent) relevant? I am a software engineer and can tell you that you
DO NOT have to click on a link to have it appear in your history, you merely have to visit the link, which could be by redirection.
Example: Put the following text in a text file, and give it a .html extension, shut off your popup blocker and open the file in internet explorer, it will spawn two popups of itself, and a popup each of yahoo.com, reason.com, google.com and msnbc.com. I wish the defense knew this.
Popup
function Load()
{
window.open('someurl.html', '', 'top = 50, left = 50, height = 280, width = 600, status = no, resizable = no, scrollbars = yes, toolbar = no, menubar = no, location = no, directories = no');
window.open('someurl.html', '', 'top = 50, left = 50, height = 280, width = 600, status = no, resizable = no, scrollbars = yes, toolbar = no, menubar = no, location = no, directories = no');
window.open('http://www.reason.com/', '', 'top = 50, left = 50, height = 280, width = 600, status = no, resizable = no, scrollbars = yes, toolbar = no, menubar = no, location = no, directories = no');
window.open('http://www.msnbc.com/', '', 'top = 50, left = 50, height = 280, width = 600, status = no, resizable = no, scrollbars = yes, toolbar = no, menubar = no, location = no, directories = no');
window.open('http://www.yahoo.com/', '', 'top = 50, left = 50, height = 280, width = 600, status = no, resizable = no, scrollbars = yes, toolbar = no, menubar = no, location = no, directories = no');
window.open('http://www.google.com/', '', 'top = 50, left = 50, height = 280, width = 600, status = no, resizable = no, scrollbars = yes, toolbar = no, menubar = no, location = no, directories = no');
}
doofus | January 18, 2007, 2:37pm | #
here is a good overview of the problems with this case:
http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/preston-gralla-class-act.html
And just to recap the facts of the case as we know it:
Julie Amero, a 40–year old substitute teacher, has been convicted of charges related to certain children in her 7th grade class seeing porn on a classroom computer. She is facing up to 40 years in prison.
A forensic examination by an expert, W. Herbert Horne, showed that the machine was infected with porn-spewing spyware. In other words, these were not popups coming from a website, they were popups created by a piece of malware on the computer. Surpringly, the prosecution admits that it made no search made for spyware during its investigation.
The forensic expert also found that here were multiple user accounts on the computer, and porn had been on the computer for quite some time.
David Smith, the prosecutor, said that Amero intended to access the pornographic sites because she had to "physically click" to "get to those sites". The statement is so patently wrong it boggles the mind. When a popup occurs on a computer, it will get logged as a normal website visit (as well as the graphic material itself) and no “physical click” is necessary.
Much of the case apparently came down to the prosecution's self-righteous statement that "she should have turned off the computer". This is ridiculous. Amero was a substitute teacher under strict orders by the school administrators not to turn off the computer. She was arguably shocked and feeling somewhat helpless by the situation, and sources report that she did report this incident to the proper school authorities. Furthermore, she certainly did try to keep the children from viewing this material, at every instance blocking the children from being able to see the popups by physically standing in their way or pushing them away. This was not a case of a "teacher surfing porn". This was an accident caused by poorly maintained computer equipment.
Not that it’s probably legally relevant, but the activities of the court may have cause for some suspicion. One source reports that the Trial Judge, Hillary Strackbein, “was seen falling asleep during proceedings and made comments to the jury that she wanted the case over by the end of the week. It was also reported that Judge Strackbein attempted to pressure the defense into an unwanted plea deal, in place of a trial. The defense attorney for Amero, moved for a mistrial shortly before closing arguments Friday, based on reports that jurors had discussed the case at a local restaurant.” (I believe that the judge questioned the jurors subsequently and they denied having discussed the case.)
The school didn't even have up-to-date content filtering in place. Even the federal government requires content filtering for schools that receive federal funding, as mandated by CIPA — the Children's Internet Protection Act. (I don’t know if they were receiving federal funding, but it’s irrelevant. Adequate content filtering is a basic requirement for any school.)
This thing has to get thrown out on appeal. It’s such an injustice. This case cannot stand, as the precedent it would create would be quite unnerving — not the mention the fact that an innocent woman may very well go to prison for a long time.
Alex Eckelberry
