

Accused of letting impressionable students see pornographic pictures as she browsed the web in her classroom, former Connecticut school teacher Julie Amero dodged felony charges last Friday by agreeing to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge and surrendering her state teaching credentials, according to the Hartford Courant.

But if a soon-to-be released forensic report (.pdf) about her hard drive is accurate, Amero's guilty plea is hardly justice – since the school computer had adware, the anti-virus software on the computer had been discontinued, and the technical testimony at her trial was amateurish and flawed.

Amero, a substitute teacher in Norwich, Connecticut, was arrested after students in her class reported that they'd seen pornographic images on her computer screen on Oct. 19, 2004. Amero said the computer wouldn't stop sending pop-ups and that she didn't know what to do with the computer.

In January 2007, she was convicted of four felony pornography charges and faced up to 40 years in prison.

Computer security experts, including Alex Eckelberry of Sunbelt Software, read about the case and immediately suspected Amero was the victim of rogue software and an overzealous prosecutor. He and a crack team of computer forensic experts examined the hard drive for the defense on a pro-bono basis.

Based on their March 2007 report, the judge in the case set aside the conviction in June 2007 — essentially granting Amero a new trial and raising hopes the prosecution would drop the case.

Threat Level received an advance copy of the report, which hasn't been publicly released.

Among its findings:

The school's IT manager told the jury that the anti-virus software had been updated with new virus definitions in early October, just days before the incident. But according to the system’s antivirus update log, signatures were last updated on Aug. 31, 2004 . Those signatures were from June 30, 2004, which was the last update Computer Associates ever made for that product.

The computer had no anti-spyware or firewall software. It also lacked any pop-up blocking technology.

On Oct. 12, 2004, an adware program, newdotnet, was installed onto the system, likely at the same time someone installed a 'free' Halloween screen saver. The IT manager told the jury he didn't know if adware or spyware was on the computer, and the police's forensic investigator falsely told them that there was no evidence of uncontrollable pop-ups. In fact, the forensic report found pages that reloaded more than 20 times in a second.

The jury was told that one adult web page had a red link on it, indicating that Amero had clicked on it. In fact, the computer she was using turned visited links a green color and the HTML on the web page specified that link be red for every visitor.

Prosecutors argued that Amero should have shut off the computer and by not doing so, endangered her charges at the Kelly Middle School.

Eckelberry, who led the tech team on Amero's behalf, said in a blog post that Amero wasn't in condition to endure another trial.

Amero pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge and has to pay $100 fine.

Photo: Tanya Ryno

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