Connecticut teacher porn case

rsynnott

I'm not sure if people have already heard about this; there's a good summary here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/14/julie_amero_case/

Basically, a substitute teacher was convicted of showing her students porn. The classroom had an ancient Windows 98 computer whose firewall, antivirus, and spyware software had all expired. Now, Windows 98 was insecure. Really insecure. Inherently insecure. Really.

It was the prosecutor's contention that the teacher in question typed in the urls of various porn sites. On the computer in front of the children. Obviously, if this were true, it would be horrendous. But what basis does the prosecution have for this accusation? Well, the porn sites were listed in a registry key called "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\TypedURLs". It says TypedURLs, so it must mean typed urls, right? Well, no, not really; many pieces of Adware and Spyware add site urls (typically pornographic urls) to this key. (Here's one: http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2004-042715-3545-99&tabid=2) The computer was spyware-ridden, and hopelessly insecure. So is it really the obvious conclusion that the teacher visited the sites deliberately, in public, rather than that they were popups created by spyware?

This leads, then, to my questions. The 'expert' witness for the prosecution was a police detective. He was clearly incompetent, in that he used the 'TypedURLs' as evidence that sites had been deliberately visited, and used results from a piece of forensic software as evidence that they'd been visited despite the manufacturer saying that the software couldn't tell you how something had come to be on a computer, only that it was there. He also made some extremely dubious statements about being able to tell that the sites were not shown as popups because he read the source code.

Now, if I had been charged with, say, poisoning, I would hope that expert witnesses for the prosecution would be qualified in their field, with the respect of their peers, articles in peer reviewed journals and so forth. I would NOT expect the expert witness to be a police detective who'd taken a night course in homoeopathy. Am I being hopelessly naive here, I wonder? If not, then shouldn't computer forensics cases be held to the same standard?

Is an 'expert witness' in any way liable if they are clearly incompetent in their field, I wonder?

It also raises the question of whether cases revolving around computer forensics or computers in general (or other complex systems which the layperson cannot be expected to grasp quickly) should be put in front of normal judges and juries. Misunderstandings seem inevitable (and indeed if you look at the history of internet copyright cases, say, you will see bizarrely randomised results; the judges don't seem to grasp what is going on).

Right now, it looks as if someone who couldn't afford sufficient defence could be unjustly charged with all sorts of things, if 'expert witnesses' are allowed continue claiming that utter nonsense is fact.

DublinWriter

rsynnott wrote:

Right now, it looks as if someone who couldn't afford sufficient defence could be unjustly charged with all sorts of things, if 'expert witnesses' are allowed continue claiming that utter nonsense is fact.

The whole thing is a sham.

What compounds it though was the teacher was too busy surfing the internet herself at the time to supervise the kids, plus the lousy school IT infrastructure which allowed the pop-ups to happen in the first place.

padser

To be honest, and I know this sounds callice, but I have no sympthy for her even, even though this looks clearly wrong.

The damage done to those children through the sub standard teaching and neglect from her is a far more serious issue then most of them seeing a little porn, that many will have seen before anyway, and the ones that havnt probably wouldnt understand.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

padser wrote:

To be honest, and I know this sounds callice, but I have no sympthy for her even, even though this looks clearly wrong.

The damage done to those children through the sub standard teaching and neglect from her is a far more serious issue then most of them seeing a little porn, that many will have seen before anyway, and the ones that havnt probably wouldnt understand.

Yes, I'm sure the poor little darlings will be seeing therapists for the rest of their lives.
(Mind you, the are American...)