Got Spyware? Fancy 40 years in Jail?

The_KiD

The_KiD

The_KiD

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Joined
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West Yorkshire
This is utter madness! I have been reading about this story for the last couple of weeks, but thought it was about time to bring it to the attention of the people here too.

When lax cybersecurity meets anti-porn hysteria, an innocent computer infection can land you in jail. Just ask Julie Amero, a 40-year old substitute teacher who maintains she's a victim of a malicious software infestation that caused her computer to spawn porn uncontrollably.

Full Article: AlterNet
Click to expand...

Basically a female substitute teacher is looking at a potential of 40 years in jail after children in her class complained about seeing her with porn on her computer.

The Police and court have ruled that she is a pervert and deviant and charged her with 4 seperate counts of perversion, each of which carry a maximum of 10 years in prison.

What the police failed to note was that her PC was in fact infected with tons of of spyware and adware and that the school network has no firewall or proxy installed. Meaning that in fact what the children saw were a whole heap of porn pop-ups.

Doesn't seem to matter though, she is still looking at jail time.

A world gone mad I tell you!
 
I very much doubt that, her defence would be all over it and it would be chucked of court.
There must be more to it than that.

Edit- well in uk it would be, no idea what the USA legal system is like.
 
I've actually had this on my other pc last year and it was a nightmare, I turned my pc on and windows loaded, then when it got to the desktop active desktop turned into a huge webpage which killed all my icons, and the webpage was full of pictures of childporn and beastaility, all over the page were links to a website where you can download software to erase the crap.. Whole thing was a nightmare so I formatted... Really terrible thing to see though..
One problem could be, if you were the "ignoring type" and just left fragments of websites and spyware on your pc, and someone sees something and calls the police, you could be in a whole world of hurt.
 
DAMMIT.

After a quick search of my Hard Disk Drives, Ive discovered over 500GB's of the stuff.

Pesky virus writers - Damn them.
 
AcidHell2 said:
I very much doubt that, her defence would be all over it and it would be chucked of court.
There must be more to it than that.

Edit- well in uk it would be, no idea what the USA legal system is like.
Click to expand...

Did you even read the story?

In the story it says they brought in a Malware expert who found a ton evidence to state the machine was infected and that it was there before she was on the PC, but the prosecution had it over-ruled as they had had no time to prepare for a "malware" related defense.

The defense also got the police's "expert" to testify that she was looking at porn on the PC (their expert who got an hours over-the-phone training in computer security) as he found evidence of it in the IE history. Err hang on if it came as a Pop-up it would still appear in the history :/

Also chuck in the fact that it was a windows 98 machine, she was a substitute, the spyware and malware is shown to have been on the machine before she started using it and the fact that school had no firewall at all and I think you will find it is bloody unlikely she is guilty of anything.
 
try explaining that to a jury of non-techie bible bashers.

I'd still be worried if I were her.

Infact I think most non technically minded don't really know about spyware and malware to be honest.
 
The_KiD said:
Did you even read the story?

In the story it says they brought in a Malware expert who found a ton evidence to state the machine was infected and that it was there before she was on the PC, but the prosecution had it over-ruled as they had had no time to prepare for a "malware" related defense.

The defense also got the police's "expert" to testify that she was looking at porn on the PC (their expert who got an hours over-the-phone training in computer security) as he found evidence of it in the IE history. Err hang on if it came as a Pop-up it would still appear in the history :/
Click to expand...
]Her defence is crap, if it's anything like the English legal system, then they should have submitted there defence well before the trial. What All she will have to do is ask for a re trial. Then they can submit there defence. As I said this wouldn't happen in the uk.
 
The_KiD said:
children in her class complained about seeing her with porn on her computer.
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What a BS story!!

What Kid would ever complain about seeing Porn :p
 
It's her job to make sure the machine is spyware free or the techys depending on whose computer it was. If there is 18+ popups it's clear that the computer isn't fit for educational purposes.

Having said that, seeing the "picture" isn't much to kick up about since I'm pretty sure he'll have sex education soon or maybe now.

I am almost certain that the kid has seen this kind of 'stuff' before so why would anyone complain, perhaps he was unable to stand and the other kids laughed? BTW I don't speak from personal experience :(

... and 40 years is still pretty heafty, since I've seen rape, pedophilla and a lot of sick things go down for less.
 
Since when was "perversion" illegal? I mean, even in the US that doesn't sound right. Even if she was actually looking at porn intentionally a jail sentence seems harsh provided it wasn't anything seriously dodgy (eg. child porn, rape, etc.). Sure being fired and banned from teaching would be fair, but a jail sentence? Just for looking at some naked ladies (or presumably men in her case)?
 
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