Pr0n of a different kind
I’m taking advantage of this space for today to make sure that you all read and learn about Julie Amero. I emailed a few of you last night but wanted to also post about this as well because it truly left me speechless last night when I read this post by Karoli. For those of you who don’t know, Julie Amero is the seventh grade substitute teacher in Connecticut who is facing 40 years in prison after pornographic popup ads came up on her computer screen during a class in 2004.
Forty years. It takes about one second to Google this story. Please take a few minutes to read about what is happening to this woman. It makes my blood boil. I want to help her. Here is what I’m going to do. If you donate money to her defense fund (go here), even if it’s only $1.00 leave me a comment and I will put your name into a drawing for a gift certificate for $25.00 to Scout’s Swag. You can also get your name put in by posting about it on your blog. If you do both, I’ll put your name in twice. Just leave me a comment/pingback and let me know. I will keep comments open for 48 hours. You have until Thursday, February 22nd at 8:00am MST to do this.
We all know the power of the internet. We can make a difference in this woman’s life. Steve Bass also talks about the power of e-mail. The State’s Attorney responsible for supervision of David Smith, the prosecutor in the Amero case, is Michael L. Regan. You might want to write him and strongly urge he help Smith file a motion to vacate the conviction. An e-mail to the Chief State’s Attorneys of Connecticut Kevin T. Kane and Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell can’t hurt, either. (There are more e-mail links on the Julie Amero site.)
Please spread the word. Do something.
Owch. Honestly. Why is she getting forty years when rapists and murderers walk?
Thanks for the heads up. I live in Connecticut, therefore I am a constituent! also, I know a teacher in MO who was trying to get to the White House site a few years back…Back then, whitehouse.com was a porn site! For her it is just an embarrassingly funny story.
Reading that story just made me ill. How the hell can they even pretend to call that justice? I donated - not much, but at least something. I don’t need to be in a drawing, just glad to be able to help a little. Thank you for bringing it up, because I hadn’t seen a thing about it.
40 years! The fact that she was convicted at all with the evidence is insane. A friend of minie caught a student trying to access porn sites on his classroom computer. The kid was trying to get my friend in trouble as he was earning poor grade. It’s all just crazy.
e-mails sent and $$ donated!
Oh, for the love of Pete. Don’t these people have bigger fish to fry? Fish who have actually done something wrong?
This once again demonstrateds that “Common Sense” is the ultimate oxymoron.
I’ve made a small donation and made mention as well as linked to you in my blog. Grrrrr.
Money sent. “Tough on crime” should not mean ignorant of the facts.
This is rediculous. I have e-mailed the governor about this.
Pop up porn? Yup, that has happened to me.
Requests for help posted.
I hope she gets justice.
I donated and I’m blogging too. The injustice is insane and the ramifications of what this could mean for technology in schools is massive. In addition, an innocent woman is being forced to take the fall…just ridiculous.
I made a donation. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
This is an absolute outrage. I’ve seen lighter prison times for murdereds and rapistss. I donated.
I donated….and I wrote emails to the people that can stop this. I can’t believe this happened to her! The whole porn loop happened to me on an old computer too. It’ not easy to get rid of!
Small donation sent. It just makes me sick about what is considered justice. I think everyone at some point had issues with the porn pop-ups. Probably even the people who convicted her.
Small donation sent.
I hate that the people who are in charge are also ones who think that the Internet is a “series of tubes.” That’s a big part of the reason things like this happen.
That’s unbelievable - I’m posting about it on my blog. It’s just insane - thanks for posting about it, I may not have come across it otherwise.
Blogged too, FWIW.
It’s just awesome that you’re doing this! My comments close at 2PM today and I’m expecting to make a donation of about $50 or so in addition to the $20 that I sent already.
I really hope the DA will realize what he has done with this case and reverse his choice to prosecute her at all.
Don’t drop my name into the drawing — keep more spaces for commenters and readers to have a chance at it. Thanks to you and all of your readers for moving this farther into the limelight.
That is just horrifying. I contributed a bit of money and blogged about it. Horrifying. Thank you for doing this, Scout.
I can believe that will all the murders, rapists, pedifiles, etc that they can’t find someone to prosecute that deserves it, no they have to go after a teacher because of porn popup boxes. I’m still pissed off and I’ve experienced what poor Julie experienced with the popup boxes….you close 1 and 5 take its place. I was able to make a small donation and I posted about it on my blog. Hopefully I can spread the word to my readers and we can show Julie the power of the internet and the kindness of knitters.
[…] You all are awesome! Since I posted on Sunday, there are just over 50 comments and trackbacks to the post, and Scoutj has opened up the opportunity for anyone who donates to the Julie Amero Defense Fund to be entered into a drawing for a $25.00 gift certificate to Scout’s Swag. She’s leaving comments open until 2/22 at 8:00am. If you’re a knitter or like to crochet, you should head on over and check it out — there are some really nice variegated yarns made with luscious fibers (Merino is one of my favorites). […]
I donated…my fifth grade teacher spent most of the year on the computer buying flight tickets instead of teaching us, and even recruited us to help. This case is kafkaesque, in a very literal sense of the word.
I did a blog entry about this. Thanks for bringing it to my and everyone else’s attention
Scout,
I donated and just posted a blog entry. I hope this helps. This is insanity.
I CAN NOT believe this is happening! For 8 years I worked in a computer room in a Pre-k through 8 school and know full well that firewalls/adware/malware and most importantly popup ads programs fail on a daily basis. This has NOTHING to do with the dedication of the teachers or their supreme attempts at keeping children safe from this filth! They are most definitely prosecuting the wrong person for this, and the sad reality is that they know they would have too much on their hands if they tried to bring the large corporations that supply the “safety nets” for these computer rooms to trial! This truly is a HUGE miscarriage of justice and makes my blood boil as it could happen to any of us! I will most definately put a post up as soon as possible bringing attention to this poor woman’s plight. Thank you for bringing it to everyone’s attention Scout.
I donated. Totally insane - and not even checking the computer for malware?! ARGH.
i blogged about it and i posted on my site.
thanks for the info on this.
I gave! Thanks for pointing this out! Had not heard about it!
I posted and thought I did a trackback…anyway, I donated ;o)
Hadn’t heard about this. Will most definitely be posting about it. Thanks for the info!
And people say the internet won’t bring about anything good…or that blogs are worthless. HA. Web 2.0 has only scratched the surface if things are being changed and people are getting educated with the click of a button.
Thanks for writing about this.
I’ve donated. The whole thing is beyond belief. Even Anthony is railing. I’ll post about it and spread the word tomorrow. Yikes
This sucks! I’ll go make a donation.
This sucks! I can not believe she’s been convicted. I will definitely go make a donation.
Good heavens . . . these are the times when I’m ashamed of my justice system . . . I went and made a donation! And am putting a note on my blog tonight, too….
I have been following this story for the past few weeks and as a former high school teacher am even more irate, knowing how crazy a classroom works; spam ware blocks the sites you want the students to see and allows in the crud. Thanks for taking this up! Done donated….
Thank you for using your website to make the internet work FOR that poor woman - such a good idea.
I just gave a web-linked lecture on the internet yesterday, and feel so lucky it wasn’t me and so donated a bit.
Blood boiling with the rest of ya’ll.
I’m so speachless over this matter.
Crazy!
I was in earlier. Thanks for joining the effort to help Ms. Amero.
Grant Robertson at The Download Squad wrote,
Now it’s your turn. Take 5 minutes out of your day and do what you can to keep Julie Amero from serving jail-time for falling victim to malware! Think for one minute about the last time you answered a ridiculously simple computer question for a computer-noob relative, and of how a concept so simple for you was so mind boggling for them. Your five minutes meant a lot, didn’t it? In this case, that same five minutes could save Julie Amero from jail.
Connecticut Board of Pardon and Parole
(203) 805-6605
Chairman Gregory Everett
Rowland Government Center
55 West Main Street, Suite 520
Waterbury, Connecticut 06702
You can email Chairman Gregory Everett at greg.everett@po.state.ct.us
I just donated. This is absolutely crazy and I can’t believe resources have been used to prosecute this lady. I’d never heard of it before, but
now I’m just plain mad. Grrrr.
Sad sad state our justice system is in.Murderers and rapists walk free and teachers face 40 years in prison.I donated and emailed everyone I knew.This has to be stopped!Thanks for passing on the info.
I can’t believe that none of the jury members had ever had those pop-ups happen to them - when they know full well that they didn’t type in the URL… I’ve sure had it happen to me!
I donated - hope it helps!
I live in CT and am familiar with the case. There are a couple issues here to be addressed. Let’s make believe that Julie didn’t access the website which started the pop ups. It’s fair to say that children left alone with computers can get into sites they shouldn’t be accessing.
The real issue here is why she would sit at a computer popping up porn fully aware that students were able to see the images and do nothing about it. She didn’t pull the plug. She didn’t throw something over the screen. She didn’t pile books in front to block the view. She didn’t run next door and grab another teacher. Nope, Julie sat in the classroom for several hours with porn popping up on the computer in view of students.
Who was protecting the children that day? If it had been your child sitting in the room would you dismiss this as something that’s not a big deal?
It’s easy to take Julie’s side because we’ve all been in situations where pop ups start and you have to unplug the computer to make them stop. However, I did not sit there for hours and let them pop up with my children in view of the computer. I was an adult and handled the situation. Should Julie not be held to the same level of common sense?
Diane - I don’t want this to turn into a ‘thing’ (and this is not a personal attack, just an observation) but I’d like to point out that the teacher - the full-time employed teacher of the school - started up the computer for Julie and told her to not shut it off under any circumstances - as per the IT department who had let the firewall software lapse.
You are right, no one was protecting the children that day - because the school’s IT department wasn’t doing its job and the computer she was using was running Windows ‘98 which has not had an update put out by Microsoft in several years. Perhaps Julie has some responsibility - but she is not alone in this. She is the person who is being held up as the scapegoat of all of the people involved who let the security of the network slide. She is the one facing the possibility of 40 YEARS in jail for a mistake that was made by several people.
I’d also like to point out that I have a 17 year old daughter and I’d like to think I would be objective about a situation such as this and hear both sides of the story before screaming for someone to be responsible. 100% of the children in this world are not the lovely little angels we all wish they were - and they are very tech savvy. Odds are, If a 12 year old wanted to get around a firewall to see some pr0n, they’d be able to do it in half the time of one of us.
Hey Scout, I came here from Mel at Cabezalana. I just donated at Julie’s site. So much has been said that I agree with, about unreasonable persecution, etc. I also agree with Diane that Julie could’ve tossed something over the monitor. However! I have been a substitute teacher (I didn’t last long!) in a middle school. I like this age group, but they are not any kind of angels. There are always a few in each class that visibly try to push buttons to see how far they can go. I have no doubt that one of these kids COULD have purposefully started the porn thing on this computer. Or that one of the other kids could have inadvertantly done so. And even though Julie could’ve “done” something, it is completely within the realm of possibility that she was so stressed trying to stay on top of the classroom of kids that it was just the one more thing that she couldn’t attend to. So, in the end I think Julie deserved some consequence, but on the order of a comment in her record, having to attend an IT class, 2 hours of community service, something like that, NOT a trial and certainly NOT jail time! So I emailed the links you included and asked them to vacate her conviction. I’ll post later and link to you. THANKS!!!!
I hadn’t heard about this at all. It seems just awful. Its posted to my website.
I left a donation and a note with links on my blog.
As for Diane’s comment, I’m sure there was something she could have done to stop the cascade of pop-ups or at least to stop the children from seeing it. But 40 years for not pulling the plug on the computer? There’s something to be said for proportionality, and when no one else is being held accountable, then I’d say that justice in not being served for the children, either.
Posted and donated. Thank you for letting me know. Why didn’t the school district have pop-up blockers?
I blogged about Julie. This seems to me to be a terrible injustice. Thanks for passing the word along.
I got the word from Mel (Cabezalana) and have donated. Paranoia about porn fed this injustice. No matter what filters a computer has, popups will occur, especially if the system is fairly old. I can’t imagine a teacher can do all the precautions in a classroom full of kids.
Added to blog too.
Hey friend, BoingBoing has another post on Julie Amero here, calling for people to email various authorities.
It’s a repeat of Steve Bass’s post, here
You can get the addresses from Julie Amero’s blog:
http://julieamer.blogspot.com/
I’m with you on this.
I too saw something about this on the news, its pure madness. I have donated and put something up on my site, hope it helps
http://knitsane.blogspot.com/
I donated and posted about it on my blog.
I was made aware of Julie’s persecution through another blog. I have made a donation to her defense fund. Her persecution is unfathomable, everyone has been the unwitting victim of these pop up ads and other forms of spyware that infect our computers without our knowlege. Regardless of the security controls that we install, we can’t avoid it - I know this for a fact since I work in the network security field. This is pure madness and government run wild. I don’t have a blog, but I plan to send the information out to everyone I can contact. While I don’t believe in censorship, these site do not exactly represent Freedom of Speech when they appear on our computers uninvited and unwanted. It would be nice to see the prosecutors put as much effort going after the owners of these sites vs the unwitting victims of their spam.
WTF!?!
*bangs head on desk*
Seriously - the injustice! I donated and posted on my site.
I’m shaking a little. Rage? Frustration? What if it had been me?
I had 5 infected computers move into my classroom the year I took over the Middle School Yearbook when I taught on the Big Island of Hawai’i. If the first hadn’t started acting up AFTER SCHOOL when I was shutting it down for the day…
I’ve posted/linked to you on my site.
I’ll be doing more in the morning.
I donated! I heard about this a while ago, but didn’t know about the defense fund - glad there’s a way I can help!
[…] Now I try to keep to my knitting (as it were) however, Scout posted today about the horrible miscarriage of justice that is being perpetrated in Norwich, CT. and frankly, I’m pissed. Apparently, instead of prosecuting the real criminals who write the garbage that we all must deal with and try to keep off of our computer, the [in]justice system has decided that they will go after those of us who do not keep our spyware software up to date. […]