When Judges & Laws Miss the Mark

Via Hac.kers.org -

This is a really upsetting story about how a teenager was infected by a trojan, used as a fileserver for child pornography, and then attempted to be prosecuted as a sex offender. The sex offender charge was based off of a plea charge after admitting to showing other teenaged boys a playboy magazine. The circumstances are so ridiculous it’s just painful to read. The jist is the boy went to visit a porn site that infected his computer, and then the police detected the computer uploading child pornography.

--------------------------------------------------

Via norwichbulletin.com -


NORWICH -- State Prosecutor David Smith said he wondered why Julie Amero didn't just pull the plug on her classroom computer.

The six-person jury Friday may have been wondering the same thing when they convicted Amero, 40, of Windham of four counts of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child. It took them less than two hours to decide the verdict. She faces a sentence of up to 40 years in prison.

Oct. 19, 2004, while substituting for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School, Amero claimed she could not control the graphic images appearing in an endless cycle on her computer.

"The pop-ups never went away," Amero testified. "They were continuous."

The Web sites, which police proved were accessed while Amero was in the classroom, were seen by as many as 10 minor students. Several of the students testified during the three-day trial in Norwich Superior Court to seeing images of naked men and women.

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.

------------------------------------------------------

I think PaperGhost sums it up well in his blog...

"You do realise, I could probably wander into that school with a chainsaw, kill everybody and STILL get less than 40 years? Yet some kids see a bunch of porn popups and suddenly, a teacher is worse than Hitler. Awesome."

My good friend, Alex from Sunbelt, has a great writeup as well. He doesn't just talk the talk...he walks the walk.

"I also should note that in a conversation with the defense attorney today, he did tell me that his computer experts were not able to provide all the evidence in court. For the appeals process, we have made our own experts available to the defense on a pro-bono basis for any analysis of the infected machine."