"Internet porn pop-ups cost this teacher her job and her freedom"

[FourScore]

"A teacher faces up to 40 years in jail for exposing her pupils to online pornography, amid an outcry from computer experts that she is the innocent victim of malicious software.

In a case that has become a cause célãbre in the online world, where millions of rogue websites appear unsolicited on computer screens every day, Julie Amero is gathering a network of supporters who claim that she has been wrongly convicted over an incident she says has destroyed her life.

Amero, a supply teacher in the small Connecticut town of Windham, was convicted last month for exposing her class of 12-year-olds to graphic sexual images on the classroom computer. She contends the images were inadvertently thrust onto the screen by malicious software that she was powerless to stop. “I’m scared,” said Amero, 40. “I’m just beside myself over something I didn’t do...”

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article1464355.ece

[barb162]

1. this is a travesty.

If she never did anything like that before purposely, she should be exonerated.

[htuttle]

2. Criminally charging the teacher is incomprehensible to me

If anyone should be held culpable in a case like this, it should be the school's IT department. Even then, it shouldn't be criminal culpability -- just evaluated as 'somewhat incompetent'.

[Dr.Phool]

5. If anybody needs to be held culpable, it's the prosecutor.

For even filing charges in this case to begin with. The exculpable evidence is there. He, and the judge refuse to see it.

They should both be fired.

[Syncronaut Seven]

3. IP Logs will tell.

Someone surfed a site, could have been a student.

I once had a fast food reciept save my ass. Employer tried to set me up one day before announcing significant downsizing.(~20%)

Bastard didn't want to risk paying on unemployment.

[LoZoccolo]

4. How did the fast food reciept help you? n/t

[Syncronaut Seven]

6. Someone set me up. I ate lunch at my desk but maybe a half dozen

times a year. Liked to keep up on the workload.

On one of those rare occasions I stepped away, someone surfed a porn site on my PC. Uh-huh.....

An hour back from lunch and our IT guy, personnel and the owner called me in to a conference, read termination.

Confronted, I demanded to see the IP log. IT guy smiled, I had after all, built my own office PC with scraps. No shit. Owner nearly stroked when I pulled out a Taco Bell receipt. Two minutes and nearly 4 miles apart.

I was laid off the next day with about 35 others.

Bastard.

[DaveJ]

7. 'Bastard' is right...

If you could entertain my personal curiosity, was this a publicly owned corporation? I believe that in most cases such Nazi management styles are typical of these organizations.

[Syncronaut Seven]

8. Private

But there was definitely an ethics problem.

Insistence on delivering a product that functioned was probably what really got me in to trouble. To me it felt like fraud, I just didn't understand American business ethics.

You live, you learn.

[LoZoccolo]

11. Dang. I should save like every scrap of paper with a date on it.

It would at least be an interesting project.

[Cha]

12. I knew that was the reason "the receipt"

saved you! So you got unemployment but he wanted to FIRE YOUR ASS!

[Porcupine]

9. What exactly do "IT logs" log?

Doesn't the server in this kind of situation record addresses only? Why would this help her? I thought the whole point of malware was that it made the infected computer access sites other than those requested by the user.

Why would this not be obvious?

[w4rma]

10. IP address (and port) accessed. Time accessed. (nt)