Felony charges dropped against teacher in porn/spyware case

[Dragonbite]

...agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct, pay a $100 fine, and surrendered her teaching license, according to the Hartford Courant. The ordeal left her hospitalized for stress and heart problems, the report said.

The Superior Court judge in Norwich on Friday tossed out the charges that she had endangered children by intentionally causing "pop-up" pornography to display on her computer and ordered a new trial after computer forensics experts presented evidence about the spyware. Judge Hillary B. Strackbein said the conviction was based on "erroneous" and "false information."

Despite the expert evidence, and the fact that state prosecutors never conducted a forensic examination of the hard drive, New London County State's Attorney Michael Regan said he remained convinced of Amero's guilt and was prepared to take the case to trial again.

The security expert who led a team of forensic volunteers in the case is outraged that officials are dismissing the evidence about the dangers of spyware.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10107743-83.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10107743-83.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20)

Is this an outrage or what?! Anybody have any insight?

[benny bronx]

That is terrible, and I am not sure why she took a plea to anything in that such pleas often result in not being able to sue for false arrest. And they needed a forensics expert to discover the spyware? I can give the hd to most members of a security forum I belong to, and within 20 minutes they will find every instance of spyware. Also, how does one intentionally cause pop-ups?

[perlluver]

I would have thought in any half decent school, they would have had a proxy and parental controls, to block the sites that could possible give spyware and viruses. I know they all can't be blocked. Perhaps if they had been running Linux it wouldn't have happened. But for the teacher to get in trouble over spyware, that is outrageous.

[benny bronx]

Some schools and libraries just run virtualization programs. Even though the hard drive is protected from malware, they can still run in the virtualized hd until a reboot removes them.

[Dragonbite]

A link to the forensic analysis can be found here for interesting reading : http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/julie-amero-forensic-analysis.html (http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/julie-amero-forensic-analysis.html)