Comments are now closed on this post. Thank you all for your support, blog posts, and the heart for justice. I’m working on a roundup of everyone’s comments and a final tally of the donation to Julie Amero’s Defense Fund as a result of your participation.
Julie Amero is the seventh grade substitute teacher in Connecticut who is facing 40 years in prison after pornographic popup ads came up on her computer screen during a class in 2004.
When I first read about this story, Amero was on trial. I assumed that the defense would show that the ads were clearly the result of a spyware/adware infection and she would be acquitted. My shock went deep (along with just about everyone with an ounce of understanding about how malware works) when she was convicted of multiple counts of exposing children to pornography. My outrage is just as keen, knowing that she was not permitted to introduce evidence of a malware attack because the defense failed to do so at the pretrial phase.
Amero and her husband are broke. A sad result of these specious accusations and mockery of a trial: Amero was 4 months pregnant when she was arrested, and lost her baby as a result of the stress. A miscarriage of justice, truly.
Amero has established a defense fund to try and pay for her appeal, which is accessible via her blog. Click the paypal link and give to her fund. If you do Whether you contribute or not, leave a comment on this post and I will add $1.00 for every comment posted in the next 48 hours. I’ve already donated $20 — but would be glad to donate ten times that amount with your help. Please blog about it, too.
If this conviction stands as it is, it will cast a pall on the use of technology in education but more fundamentally, will punish the wrong person — the one who deserves the jail time and firing is the lazy network administrator who couldn’t be bothered to keep the network locked down.
(Hat tip to Liz Ditz for the links to the blog and defense fund. Also for the link to the blog State v. Amero – A Miscarriage of Justice)
UPDATE: I’ve posted links to additional information here. This morning, Steve Bass at PCWorld posted links to two EXCELLENT articles here and here, addressing the duty of the prosecutor to use qualified experts. Had the prosecutor done that, there would have been no case.
Technorati Tags: Julie Amero, criminal law, malware, spyware
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