Ordinary Gweilo

I came across this strange story today via the Windows Secrets newsletter (WSN):

There’s a good chance that you’ve already heard something about Julie [Amero]. She’s perhaps better known as the Connecticut substitute schoolteacher who’s been convicted of "child endangerment." She now faces a sentence of up to 40 years in prison because porn pop-ups appeared on a school computer.

For background on the case, you can read articles from the New York Times, MSNBC, or SecurityFocus. (Full disclosure: WSN editorial director Brian Livingston is quoted in the New York Times piece supporting Julie. The article at the MSNBC site is also a good read, but I don’t recommend the accompanying video, which starts out with a falsehood and goes downhill from there.)

From what I can understand, it seems that the teacher knew nothing about computers, even to the extent of not switching off the PC when all the pop-ups starting appearing (because she had been told not to do so).  However, the jury seems to have believed the prosecution’s "expert" witness – who was such an "expert" that he didn’t even check for spyware and adware that might have caused this to happen – and decided that the teacher had done this deliberately. 

Obviously a felony conviction is very serious, but I very much doubt that she will get a 40 year sentence, and she will inevitably appeal and surely be successful, but it’s a bit scary that the case was even brought, let alone that a jury convicted her.

Also, it seems clear that the school’s IT department had failed to install or update the appropriate software that would have blocked these pop-ups.  Frankly, even if the teacher had wanted to access these sites (which seems rather improbable), it shouldn’t have been possible, and it shouldn’t be hard to set that up.  It’s crazy to blame the teacher when the school was at fault, and the worrying thing is that there are probably many other cases where people have lost their jobs because something like this has happened.