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Filed under: News

Conn. Profs urge deeper investigation in porn-pop-up case


We've been watching the case of "porn pop-up teacher" Julie Amero with stunned amazement. Officials from the lowest to highest levels of Connecticut government have managed to choreograph the perfect comedy of errors, leaving Mrs. Amero's career in shambles and her dignity dangling by a thread in the public square.

A group of twenty-eight computer science professors from eight Connecticut Universities have stepped in on Mrs. Amero's behalf, taking out an ad in the Hartford Courant to air "An Open Letter to Chief State's Attorney Kevin T. Kane."

The professors ask State's Attorney Kane to heed a suggestion from Mark Rasch, former chief of the U.S. Department of Justice cyber-crime unit, who says an independent investigator be brought in to look at the case.

Amero is due to be sentenced on March 28th, 2007.

See Also:
Malware victim faces jailtime; Write Connecticut's Governor
Porn pop-up teacher gets new attorney, PC World outs juror
Julie Amero sentencing postponed, Norwich "expert" speaks

Filed under: News

Julie Amero sentencing postponed, Norwich "expert" speaks

Julie Amero, the substitute school teacher convicted of being an internet n00b in a classroom with a severely outdated and unmaintained computer has had a brief, non-permanent reprieve from her sentencing on four felony counts. The hearing to decide her fate, which could see her spending up to 40 years in prison, was postponed until March 29th. The Norwich-Bulletin does its typically biased job of updating events in the case, and reminds us, "forensic investigation of the computer used that day revealed she was actively surfing the sites nearly the entire school day."

According to reports however, the Norwich Police's only "computer expert" Mark Lounsbury has little if any IT training, and relied primarily on his free "certification" on the ComputerCop Pro software, and the reports which it generates. The big issue: ComputerCop Pro is incapable of determining whether the URLs opened by Internet Explorer 5 were the result of human action, or of programmatic control through spyware or malware. Nevertheless, Amero was convicted on the back of testimony offered by Lounsbury.

Lounsbury has himself admitted to criminal activity in the past. In 2001 Detective Lounsbury admitted to drinking alcohol while driving a minor child in a police vehicle while involved in an underage drinking sting operation. He was never charged, and as far as searchable records show, the investigation essentially died a quiet death, leaving Detective Lousbury in his position as the chief investigator of computer crimes involving children for the Norwich Police Department.

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