The Ashimmy Blog

Julie Amero, Connecticut school teachers conviction thrown out!

I was happy to read tonight that the guilty conviction against Julie Amero, the Connecticut school teacher originally found guilty of several counts of "risk of injury to a minor" was set aside by the judge today and a new trial ordered.  This is not official word that she is out of the woods on this, but the fact that the district attorney did not oppose the motion is a good indication that they have no plans to retry this case.

For those who don't remember Julie was a substitute teacher who was in a classroom with a computer that had some sort of malware that was causing porno pop ups to keep popping up.  When the students told their parents they complained and she was arrested.  It turned out the schools anti-spyware program was expired and they did a terrible job of security. If anyone the IT administrator should have been on charges. 

Anyway, good to see justice prevail in this case!

Congress wants to put an end to NSA wiretaps without warrants

Was just reading an article be Preston Gralla over on ComputerWorld about a bill passed by the House and sent over to the Senate that would require the administration and NSA to abide by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as "the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance may be conducted for gathering foreign intelligence information."  This would mean that they would need to get a warrant prior to or within a time limit of electronic surveillance taking place.  I think this sends a clear signal that this type of due process breach should not be tolerated.  It should also help the the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) suit against AT&T for cooperating with the NSA in this.  I feel kind of bad for AT&T though. They were in a no win situation. If they refused the NSA request, court order or not, god knows what could have rained down on them. In any event, the bill still has to pass the Senate, but I think it will.

Taken in conjunction with the thriller novel story about how the current Attorney General and White House Chief of Staff went to visit the then AG in intensive care at the hospital to have him sign the order to continue these unwarranted wiretaps, leads me to question just what the heck is going on here. It would make great drama and reading, if it weren't so chillingly true.

A travesty of justice- it could happen to you

How many of us serve as the unpaid tech support specialist for our friends and family.  Since I first got into computers 25 or 30 years ago I have probably helped diagnose and fix hundreds of computers for people who are technically challenged.  Often times I am amazed at how much crap can be loaded on these computers inadvertently.  So now it looks like we are sending people to jail over not being able to keep the spyware off of their computers.  Well, if those computers are in school anyway.  Brian Krebs of The Washington Post in his Security Fix column blows the whistle on one of the worst cases of prosecutorial neglect and miscarriages of justice that I have ever seen.  I actually first read about this story in ComputerWorld a while back, but didn't realize the full extent of it.

To make it short, a 40 year old substitute teacher was convicted and faces up to 10 years in prison for endangering students by having porn shown on a computer screen in school. Whether or not you believe that this is a crime worthy of prison time is another story.  The facts are that this computer was riddled and infested with the kind of sypware we have all probably seen before.  It just does not let you shut down the browser, constantly spawning new windows with such sundry things as penis enlargers, hair loss, anti-aging and of course porn and I would imagine gambling content.  She ran out to the teacher lounge for help and no one would bother.  Then the kids went home, told their parents and she was fired and subsequently arrested and then convicted!  She now faces jail time. 

Oh did I mention the computer this was happening on was a Windows 98 machine, running IE 5.0, no firewall (the schools license expired), no AV (again the schools license expired) and no anti-spyware or pop up blockers.  If anyone should be going to jail here it should be the school administrators for letting this sad sack of sh*^ in the classroom.  This computer should have been thrown out or not allowed to connect to the internet.

Bottom line is that someone with half a brain has to step in here and put an end to this charade.  Also, a great lesson that though we tend to think of our security roles as mundane, we are the first line of defense in stopping this kind of BS from happening to those who work with us and those who ask us to help with their computers.