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The news coverage of this has been 100% one-sided. I need a whole lot more information than what has been published to date to make a decision, but I suspect that Amaro is most guilty of hiring an incompetent lawyer.
The school should've been compliant with [url=http://libraries.idaho.gov/forlibs-e-rate-cipa-compliance]CIPA[/url], and the lack of compliance should be the cornerstone of the defense - that a reasonable person would've had exactly the same problems, and those problems stemmed from an incompetent Tech Director/principal/superintendent. And even in the best circumstances, it's hard to manage reasonable filtering.
Thus according to that jury, "not having the sense to turn off a computer" is a multi-count felony punishable by 40 years in prison.
Was the jury actually allowed to figure out the sentencing? When I was on a jury we weren't allowed to know what sentence a guilty verdict would bring because it might prejudice our decision (as well it should).
I don't have much sympathy for a person who admittedly doesn't know much about computers, asking for computer access on a system that she doesn't know zip about, apparently to alleviate her own boredom (as there didn't seem to be any instructional mission involved), in a room full of seventh graders. That was just dumb, on her part. Anybody old enough to have seen Disney's Fantasia ought to know better, fer chrissake. And then, to panic, and run out of the room to find someone who could manage her computer issues, seems behavior that compounded her original error. I'm just glad there wasn't a trash can fire on her watch. Sheesh. The juror quoted nailed her responsibility toward protecting those kids in a nutshell. When she left the room, she was doing nothing more than covering her own tail.
Whether she deserves 40 years for goofing off, being stupid, and panicking is another matter. But she's hardly blameless, and the jury saw that. Kudos to the jury.
paulsc must think she was playing full-screen porn videos.
All of the jpg's that we looked at in the internet cache folders were of the 5, 6 and 15 kB size, very small images indeed. Normally, when a person goes to a pornographic website they are interested in the larger pictures of greater resolution and those jpgs would be at least 35 kB and larger. We found no evidence of where this kind of surfing was exercised on October 19, 2004.
The kids were at least 10 feet away from the computer if they were in the front row. How well can you see a 15kb thumbnail from 10 feet away?
Basically, calling this "exposure to porn" -- even without calling it "criminal exposure to porn" -- is ludicrous and sparks of hysterical overreaction. The responsibility of the school IT staff is completely ignored: they were violating federal law. THEY are the ones trying to cover their asses.
Every computer security expert who has looked at this case has come to the same conclusion. In the insular courtroom, however, the jury was not permitted to hear the full defense (her attorney may have committed a grave error we can only hope the appeals court will see).
I rarely think this much less of someone after a meta-anything post, paulsc, but I think much less of you now.
I couldn't care less what did or didn't show up on the computer, and neither, apparently, did the jury. As the jury clearly saw, the computer issues are completely irrelevant to the case.
Why did she leave the classroom? Was she justified, for any reason, in leaving 7th graders unsupervised, to their own devices? Is a person so enfeebled by the presence of technology as to be unable to push an on/off switch or pull a plug on a mis-behaving electrically powered device a proper person to entrust with the safety of 7th grade children? I think that was the thrust of the jury's decision.
The computer issues raised by the defense are all secondary and tertiary to those issues, and hardly worth considering, by comparison, although they are tortured foundation of the linked article, and in fairness, do form part of the charges at trial. Given the things she could have been charged with (although IANAL, had I been a parent, I might have pushed for 30+ counts of child endangerment) I'm surprised at your failure to comprehend such basics stilicho, and in light of your post above, I think less of you.
"When you get back the kids are clustered around the computer, checking out hairstyle websites. But one is actually a link to porn sites, and it loads a Trojan onto the unprotected computer.
Suddenly, pop-ups start appearing — X-rated popups.
From the linked article.
And stilicho, the kids weren't 10 feet away from the computer.
You think that teachers of 7th graders should never leave the classroom? No going to the bathroom? Nothing? Wow. Harsh.
I can totally see someone with limited computer experience being afraid to turn off the computer when they've been told not to. I imagine anybody who has had a teeny bit of computer on-time has been told that they shouldn't just use the on/off button to turn off the computer, and she was specifically told not to turn it off. She might have thought it would damage the computer if she did.
My husband and I were just talking yesterday about some of the silly stuff we did, and things we didn't understand when we first got our computer, a million years ago. It was funny... we would save files, then think they were lost, because we didn't know how to navigate the directories. This isn't funny... This is sad. I'm amazed that anyone would feel that she should be severely (/understatement) punished for being naive about how computers work. Or going to the bathroom.
"You start to panic. You're not supposed to shut the machine and you don't realize you can just shut the monitor. You try to block the screen, but — like normal seventh graders — the kids are curious and pushy.
You run to the teacher's lounge for help. Finally you get some and the crisis ends. But the kids have seen the porn. They tell their parents. The parents tell the school. "
Again, from the linked article.
She didn't go to the bathroom, taz. She got someone to start a computer, without, apparently, any instructional plan or purpose. Once she did that, she somehow apparently lost control of the classroom, and couldn't simply tell the kids to go back to their seats, and turn the monitor out of their sight. At some point after she no longer had control of the classroom as a teacher, the kids crowded around the oomputer, and clicked a link that started a pop-up series that threw up a bunch of porn. Then, she panicked, and left the classroom. While she was gone, the kids saw enough porn to tell their parents about it, later. Apparently, they registered something from the experience.
If what she was seeing was alarming enough to her to cause her to seek help, didn't she have a first responsibility to see to the safety of the kids? Doesn't the safety of kids outweigh the safety of a computer in even the most basic of Luddite minds?
By going to look for help instead of pulling the plug on the machine, she probably did herself no favours, but in the middle of a panicky moment, I don't know if I'd do the most sensible thing either.
But this should never have gone to trial, let alone conviction. I hope there's going to be an appeal.
Holy effing wow, is that the weirdest acase and punishment I've ever heard of.
I can understand that she didn't want to turn off the computer, after they told her not to (probably sothat she wouldn't have to login again) and I know that even ctrl-alt-delete can't beat the porn-popups at times (at least it couldn't on an NT machine where it happened to me once). In hindsight she should have shut the screen off - but this would still be showing "Lots of porn files in the computers memory" so with that jury and judge she'd probably still get *gasp* 40 YEARS. Holy crap.
In Sweden you get six years for murder. (12 is life, you get out in half if you play nice).
having said that, in 2007 OMFGPORN America, you don't leave a classroom of children alone in a room with a PC that, for whatever reason, is showing porn images (small, OK). you turn that PC off first.
I doubt that they'd have fired her for turning the PC off. not to mention the jail sentence.
and look at the bright side, by now the lady does know everything about adware and Windows
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