Our Incredibly Stupid and Fucked-Up Society

[filkertom]

It's not that I do not have the words for this latest outrage. Ohhh, I've got the words. I'm just blind with anger, and don't feel like peeling all of y'all's paint at a distance over the internet.
.
Get a load of this:

Have you ever faced a pop-up that wouldn't go away? You try clicking it closed and another pops up in less than a nanosecond. You reboot the system, annoyed that your anti-spyware program let something slip through.

That's a hassle, sure--but chances are, your experience won't land you in jail.

Julie Amero, a substitute teacher in Norwich, Connecticut, has been convicted of impairing the morals of a child and risking injury to a minor by exposing as many as ten seventh-grade students to porn sites.

It's a short story: On October, 19, 2004, Amero was a substitute teacher for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School. A few students were crowded around a PC; some were giggling. She investigated and saw the kids looking at a barrage of graphic, hard-core pornographic pop-ups.

The prosecution contended that she had used the computer to visit porn sites.

The defense said that wasn't true and argued that the machine was infested with spyware and malware, and that opening the browser caused the computer to go into an endless loop of pop-ups leading to porn sites.

Amero maintains her innocence. She refused offers of a plea bargain and now faces an astounding 40 years in prison (her sentencing is on March 2).

Trust me, I do have the words. But I'm not sure I have the self-restraint to keep from doing damage to myself or the vicinity if I let loose.

Update: randwolf has a few more links:

• http://www.alternet.org/story/46925/
• http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/julie_amero/index.html
• http://julieamer.blogspot.com/2007/02/contribute-to-julie.html (this is a link to the Legal Defense Fund)

Comments

[ladysmith.livejournal.com]

There's a reason I left teaching ten years ago...

[ionicaq.livejournal.com]

OK, so, what, there's not actual crime in Norwich to prosecute? I mean, really now!

[crwilley.livejournal.com]

And, adding insult to injury, even if she's sentenced lightly she'll have to register as a sex offender, which will keep her from ever recovering her teaching credentials.

There is a legal defense fund here (http://julieamer.blogspot.com/2007/02/contribute-to-julie.html) - according to Maura at MyLeftNutmeg.com (http://www.myleftnutmeg.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5793), this has been verified with the Amero family.

Worst of all, she was pregnant at the time, and lost the baby shortly after being arrested.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Hell, to make it even better, if she's completely acquitted she'll just as likely never teach again anyway. Schools are, ah, a bit sensitive about their reputations, and even unfounded accusations can destroy new careers.

Axe grinding time. Hearing-protection equipment required.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Frankly, the substitute is lucky to have been born with matching chromosomes. Had she been male, I honestly wonder if there would've even been a trial.

Male teachers must continually straddle a fine, fine line. They must be more benign, more saintly, and to some degree more effeminate than their XX counterparts. Don't want to intimidate the little children, after all.

Of course, if he leans too far in THAT direction...well, I think we can all guess what happens.

[realtegan.livejournal.com]

A couple more details: She was very poor with computers, and was told by the regular teacher before he left that she was NOT to turn off the computer under any circumstances. She didn't realize she could turn off the monitor without turning off the computer.

Furthermore, the district's anti-virus software had expired due to incompetence on the part of an administrator, which allowed the garbage through.

She's a scapegoat for the mistakes of other people. It's both unreal and unacceptable.

[fair-witness.livejournal.com]

That really doesn't surprise me. In my job, I'm managing people who use computers every day for their work duties ... and earlier this year I had to teach someone how to save a WordPad file. Previously I've had to walk someone through how to copy a file from one folder to another, using drag and drop, and the whole time the person complained about how hard this was, was never going to remember it, and so forth.

Simply having a computer available for work doesn't make you a geek.

More commentary on this case: http://www.vitalsecurity.org/2007/02/pox-on-thee-norwich-connecticut.html

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Oh sweet smoking jesus. We really need both legislators and judicial officers who UNDERSTAND HOW COMPUTERS WORK. The only way she could POSSIBLY be getting prosecuted and sentenced for this crime is that the people in authority don't understand popups, don't know how they work, and thus don't believe there's any possible way she *could* be innocent. "It was on her computer, therefore etc."

I seriously don't think you should be allowed to vote or make judgements or rulings on anything computer-related if you don't understand the technology.

[lariss.livejournal.com]

Surely there's an appeals process ... maybe the ACLU will step in?
Poor lady.. losing her baby from the stress, no doubt.
How's THAT for endangering a minor?

[patoadam]

I have contributed to her legal defense fund.

I have certainly had the experience of seeing unwanted sex-related sites pop up on my screen.

The dubious but arguable rationale for a computer-illiterate jury is that if they knew anything about computers, they would be ineligible on the grounds that they already knew something about the case. But I see no reason why expert testimony was not permitted.

[skemono.livejournal.com]

Expert testimony was permitted. The "expert" testimony for the prosecution looked at the browser history and found that the computer had visited porn sites at the time she was on the computer.

To which I say, "duh." But with more swearing.

[patoadam]

Yes, some expert testimony was permitted, but "the... jury was not allowed to hear most testimony of defense technology experts".

[patoadam]

Thanks for the additional information.

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

That is so totally wrong. My daughter (who is 10 and thinks anything to do with sex is gross) had a lot of trouble with pr0nny popups on her previous computer. I think my husband fixed that by installing a ton of stuff like AdAware and Spybot. You mean this woman was CONVICTED simply on the prosecutor's word??

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Maybe the prosecutors would do better to arrest Bill Gates.

No?

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

I forwarded this to my best friend. Yeah, the lifelong P.D. who's client popped her. She had colorful words all right. Some were for the prosecutor, but most of them were for the competence of the lady's defense counsel.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

See this account of the matter (http://www.alternet.org/story/46925/); the source of that story is a well-known blogger, who has written more about it, here (http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/julie_amero/index.html). There is an Amero defense fund, here (http://julieamer.blogspot.com/2007/02/contribute-to-julie.html). Personally, I think it would have taken extraordinary defense counsel to get Amero off--judge, prosecutor, and police had all gone off the deep end, and perhaps were covering for the extra-ordinarily irresponsible school officials as well.

[aota.livejournal.com]

So they blame the teacher. Not like those brats couldn't have gotten the computer to do that themselves. I think there was a reason those kids were sitting there giggling.

denial of responsibility

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

When I think about internet spam, it makes me wonder how long Britain had to put up with highwaymen before they thought to organize scotland yard and cook up an organized countermeasure.

The software industry doesn't seem to think of spam as anything more than a marketing opportunity, to sell us more self-defense measures. And as long as the copyfight is eating everyone's brain, there's little attention left over for addressing the real resource waster.

Until that happens, we're going to see the little guy get scapegoated.

Re: denial of responsibility

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

With all due respect, it's a harder problem than I suspect that you appreciate.

I work for Microsoft, doing applied research in their anti-spam group. I think I can guarantee you that if MS had a foolproof way of blocking all spam (while blocking no good mail) it would provide it. Same goes with most other email providers: the more spam that they have to deal with, the more resources are required, and the less satisfied their customers are.

There are basically two different ways that you can try to deal with spam: as a technical problem (figure out which email is spam and block it before the user sees it) and as a social problem (i.e., go after violators of the CAN-SPAM act or similar legislation).

Lots of people--including MS--are working on each of these approaches. Perhaps not in as coordinated a way as possible, but in fact there are a lot of entities--individual people, corporations, and governments--that are putting a lot of time and resources into solving these problems. Spamming (and phishing) is a major industry for the spammers, and there are some pretty smart people behind the spam that you get.

The technical approach is difficult for a few reasons:
* "spam" is not well-defined. Lots of email is pretty clearly spam, but it wouldn't get sent if at least some people didn't read it and get influenced by it. There's also an awful lot of "graymail", sent by bulk emailers, for which the population is divided (in some cases 50% think it's spam and 50% don't).
* Much, if not most, of spam these days gets sent by bots, which are compromised computers that do various things (including sending spam) by remote control. This means that most of the machines that are sending spam are doing so without their owner's knowledge. There are easily millions of such compromised machines all over the world.
* Filtering spam based on its characteristics has always been an arms race: anti-spam software learns to block spam with certain characteristics, so the spammers change the characteristics. Some types of spam emails are very expensive for computers to process, but are trivial for human beings to read (e.g. image-based spam).

The social/legal approach is difficult for three reasons:
* the identity of the spammer is often hard to trace (in part because of the use of botnets)
* jurisdiction problems (most of the worst spammers are located in countries from which extradition is at least problematic).
* the aforementioned bulk mailers don't want anti-spam laws that are too restrictive, any more than telemarketers were happy about the Do Not Call List law being passed.

(Side note: spam is not necessarily the direct cause of the problem here; there are a few different ways that pop-ups can start showing up, and virus-laden spam is just one of the delivery mechanisms. We're working on ways of trying to address the others as well.)

Re: technical/social fixes

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty informative rundown, and i appreciate it. My understanding is that when e-mail began, there was no real need to establish secure connections, since the user base was so small. So now establishing ones identity online is not part of the infrastructure.

I hear that there are people working with mail systems that have more secure routing methods (it's not so insanely easy to forge a mail header) but their systems have to be reverse-compatible with the older method. Since there's no big advantage yet, there's not as much pressure to upgrade.

It seems like much of the problem with this story, and with the spam/popup/malware issue, has to do with control not being equal to ownership. I paid for this machine, but I only get to control the machine somewhat.

I wish there was a way to have a secure online identity without also inviting a host of other, more controversial measures thrown in, like DRM and trusted computing. But bits that make money are always going to want to flood out bits that simply convey a human emotion. (like the ratio of junk mail to handwritten letters, I guess.)

When you copped to working for microsoft, I had to resist the urge to open up with all my other frustrations about the way computers are misused... and then I remembered my mom, who worked at the phone company and got no end of grief for it.

I'm sure if one single company ran the internet, it would treat spam as an expansive waste of resources and deal with it... but since it's a commons that's being degraded, some interests are more important than others.

Re: technical/social fixes

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. Probably not the place for it, but what the hell. :)

There are also people that are working on technical fixes of the sort that you describe (SenderID, e.g.) but the biggest problem with those is getting people to use them.

Control vs. ownership: not really sure what you're getting at there. You have as much control over the machine as you want, really. Operating system software is incredibly complex, though, and it's very easy for security holes to arise.

Secure online identities don't require DRM, trusted computing, etc; if anything it's the other way around. (Check out http://www.identityblog.com .) Personally I hope that the whole DRM thing implodes soon, as seems increasingly likely.

I'm actually very glad that the Internet is _not_ owned by a single company or organization.


ObReferenceToTheOriginalTopic: I should have said this before, but I agree with the general sentiment: this teacher, for whatever reason, is being punished for something that, it seems clear, is seriously not her fault. I can only hope that she wins on appeal, because this is a serious miscarriage of justice that she was even _charged_, much less convicted.

Bah!

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

MS has, over the years, built this network of enormously insecure computers, and, because it doesn't cost MS enough money, doesn't do anything about it. MS could sandbox VBX's, distribute IE/OE with tougher security settings, distribute security updates to all Windows computers, regardless of license status. MS could also get behind a free, cross-platform digital signature and mail encryption standards. MS Office could forbid the distribution of applications as documents (a single question to which one usually answers yes is not security.) But all these things cut into profits, and MS wouldn't own them. MS could also support outlawing spam.

If MS had put 1/10th the effort into basic security precautions that they've put into DRM, spam and botnets would be minor issues, not the huge global problem they've become.

Re: Bah!

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Look, I'm not a MS apologist. I don't believe that MS has done everything right, or that it is necessarily doing everything it could be, and in some cases I actively disagree with some of its policies. But I do think you're overstating the case, and in some cases what you're saying is actually inaccurate and/or misleading.

* What do you mean by saying that MS "doesn't do anything about it"?
* IE is in fact now distributed with tougher security settings as of version 7.
* "Distribute security updates to all Windows computers, regardless of license": in what sense is it MS's responsibility to fix software that someone hasn't bought from them? Should car thieves be able to get warranty service? (I agree that some of their licensing agreements are overly restrictive. But that's a different matter.)
* "free, cross-platform digital signature": do you consider either SenderID or CardSpace to be relevant here?
* What does mail encryption have to do with any of this?
* MS has been involved in legal battles against spammers; check the news. As for outlawing it, there's already CAN-SPAM, but (as I said already) that only works in the absence of jurisdictional issues.

If you want to discuss this further, please email me at the address on my LJ userinfo page. I don't mind discussing it in a public forum, but Tom's LJ is not the place for it.

Re: Bah!

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

That response slipped out when I was trying very hard to distract myself from difficulties in other work; I really wish I hadn't written it. That said, I do stand by it; I'll write a short response here and perhaps follow up with an e-mail.

- IE 7 wouldn't even exist without competition from Firefox.

- It would cost MS little to provide security patches to all users of MS software and would enormously reduce the huge problem of malware.

- Reliable e-mail authentication and encryption would vastly reduce the scope and efficacy of e-mail scams, malware, and so on; if unauthenticated mail showed up with a great big "forged sender address" overlay it probably would not be much of a problem at all. It's not like such a system would be hard to implement; an international public key infrastructure could be built with a tiny investment. But such systems will only see wide adoption by non-commercial users if free and widely advertised; this is an area where MS could lead, but does not choose to.

There's a pattern here, and the pattern is that MS simply does not care about the public good; management only acts when revenue is involved. In no other industry would conduct so destructive be tolerated.

[chaosdancer.livejournal.com]

Is there anyone we can contact, write to or otherwise do if we don't have money to spare right now? (I start my new job Monday and will contribute when I can, but right now it's not possible.) I was thinking about writing to the school board but am not sure that would be the best way to handle it.

[topaz7.livejournal.com]

And who is in charge of the school's anti-spyware, firewall, stuff? What happened to them?

For fuck sake. This is bullshit. What kind of jury.. OMG. 40 years in prison. They'll just give her a suspended sentence, won't they? *prays*

I've never gambled in my life, online or in RL, and I got the endless popups for Golden Palace Casino once. Somebody lock me up before I read spam again!

[crwilley.livejournal.com]

Even if she gets a suspended sentence, she'd still be listed as a sex offender, which means never teaching again.

One reason I've never been a big fan of sex offender registries is that they lump the predatory pedophile in with the college guys who got drunk and groped someone's boobs at a party. No taking of circumstances into account.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Circumstance? Circumstance? What are you, a commie? We all know that Boobs Are Teh Bad and Groins Are Evil and Sex In Any Context Is An Abomination Before The Invisible Sky Cop.

[/major snark]

I've always hated the sex offender registry anyway. If the offender has paid his or her debt to society, that should be it. If you think there's gonna be a problem anyway, then [a] DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT rather than let him or her out and [b] your rehab program needs work.

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

> on registry
Amen on that. I would rather be able to look up past breaking & entering cases and see if those past criminals are living near me. But, when the system has said you paid your debt to society, that should be it.

the technology

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

I do miss having a power off button on the cable modem that can be reached easily. My current modem only has disconnect by power off by unplugging the power cord.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Tom, would you consider linking these articles in your top-level post; people are asking what to do and I have no time to answer them.

http://www.alternet.org/story/46925/
http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/julie_amero/index.html
http://julieamer.blogspot.com/2007/02/contribute-to-julie.html

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Done.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[andamaroo.livejournal.com]

I think if we're going to have "death qualified" juries for death penalty cases (which I think is wrong), we should probably have "techy savvy" juries for computer related crimes.

Tech Savvy judges would be nice too.

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

Ye gods the stupidity never ends.

A jury made up of people who run networks and do desktop support would laugh this case out of court.

Speaking as a network admin who has both helped fire people for looking at porn at work and kept people from being fired by showing that the files on a given system could have been placed there by any number of people this is just ... just ... sorry, I don't have the gift to put it into words.

Unfortunately any time you say "porn" and "children" in the same sentence people get really sensitive. Not without good reason in some cases, but it causes overreactions.

I've cleaned up a machine for a friend after her (now-ex) husband was tossed in jail for child molestation. The police looked at everything but left his garbage behind on the computer when they gave it back to her. Yeah, that's all she needs is for her daughter (the victim) to find some of that crap later on. This guy is going to get out of jail in a couple of years (he's been quite the angel behind bars) and this lady is going to be on the same registry as he is. FFS what's wrong with this picture?

[connor-campbell.livejournal.com]

Tom,
I hope you don't mind, but i am going to copy and paste this to my livejournal as well. being a teacher assistant and heavy computer user myself, i want to get word out of this and make a stink about it myself. i don't want to see my career go up in smoke before i even have my bachelor's finished! i agree - i, too, have words for this, but being an example for middle school students myself, i will restrain myself from saying them...


(besides, it might get me the death penalty if i did...)

[nightmarewriter.livejournal.com]

I've been looking into schooling in this country lately, starting with this man's work:

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

He taught for 30 years and quit after finding out that our schools aren't there to teach, but to make a compliant comsumer class... I purchased a trio of books from him - "The Underground History of American Education", "A Different Kind of Teacher", and "Dumbing Us Down". Best $50 I ever spent. I'm going to homeschool my grandchildren, that's fordarnsure.

Another case that's just as messed up, look up Sydney McGee, and how she got in trouble last October... for having an APPROVED field trip for her ART class to an ART museum, in which a parent type inadvertantly saw a nude sculpture, and so they fired her...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/education/30teacher.html?ei=5090&en=72efd1846b3947bd&ex=1317268800

But at least we CAN homeschool in this country, unlike in Germany, where we got our system of schools from (as per Gatto)... Check out this story of a girl who fell behind in school so her parents homeschooled her (illegal there), she was taken from home by armed police and put in a mental institution for "School Phobia".

http://www.netzwerk-bildungsfreiheit.de/html/pe_erlangen_en.html

/sigh

[min0taur.livejournal.com]

Various parties in the case seem to need a massive "educational experience," specifically regarding the sophistication and aggressive intrusiveness of modern malware. I'm only sandbox-level computer-aware (compared to some of my friends, anyway), but even I see a perfect formula for injustice here: Combine rampant computer ignorance in the workplace with lapsed anti-malware protection, a vulnerable always-on Internet connection, multiple bad-guy bots that are out cruising the Net looking for that very situation, throw in a bunch of children (some of whom may have surreptitiously found some of the sleazo sites when the big people weren't looking), then garnish thickly with traditional American sexual hysteria/paranoia, underbake in an historical milieu of eroded reason, and a scenario much like this one becomes well-nigh inevitable.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that pretty much covers it, along with two other aspects: the only thing you have to do to get onto many adult sites is to lie about your age; and Google is one of the biggest potential smut distributors out there -- all you have to do is turn SafeSearch off.