Teacher gets fired for using Windows

[Void Main]

Use Windows and this could happen to you. You almost expect incidents like this when using Windows.

[Calum]

i know it's probably just her stupidity rather than any actual guilt, and i do think jail time is extreme, but "they knew the risks" as somebody once said. i'd say the same thing if people were getting salmonella and bse from meat and eggs etc.

[Void Main]

After 4 felony counts and sentenced to prison a group of security people are trying to get her out of this mess:
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11440

I would be suing both the school and Bill Gates if I were her.

[Calum]

that's great news! i like it when the actual truth can be found out in the end! nice work, those security dudes. windows 98, eh? maybe the school can't afford to "up"grade to the more secure windows 2000, xp or vista. surely windows 98 is now so obsolete that it bears as little similarity to a modern windows system as it would to a modern linux setup. In fact, why don't schools who are running windows 98 switch their machines to ubuntu or fedora? this way the students can learn on a current OS which has a future, the scool can lose a lot of licencing headaches and also be assured that security messups like this one won't happen again (i can GUARANTEE you this would not have happened on a fedora machine, not if i was working in the computing dept anyway, and i am hardly MR Knowledgeable about computer security).

If they don't see the logic in that then they deserve to get sued for everything the education department's worth over this mess.

[Void Main]

But you don't understand. This could have happened on *any* version of Windows. This sort of thing just doesn't happen on Linux system or even Macs as far as that goes. Windows (any version) is the only platform that this accidental click & install spyware/crapware software gets installed and takes over your machine.

[Calum]

that still doesn't affect the fact that the school could fix their issue by replacing windows instead of pouring money into the ever widening disparate windows version gulf that they are apparently avoiding by continuing to use older software.

Haven't they heard that apt-get is free?

[Void Main]

You confused me when you said "upgrade" to Windows 2000, XP or Vista since I don't consider that to be an upgrade. Certainly the school is more at fault than the teacher. It's a shame really.

[worker201]

Of course with all these pro-Windows and anti-Windows accusations flying around, one might not even notice that it is possible that the teacher is guilty of being a porn-freak. Sounds like her lawyer is maybe a little bit smarter than anyone gives him credit for.

[Void Main]

Actually if the lawyer was worth his salt she wouldn't be in prison right now. I really don't believe she is guilty of the crime she has been convicted of and even if she was it doesn't sound like anyone involved is competent enough to actually prove it. I think it's a case where nobody involved (lawyer, judge, jury) has enough technical knowlege of the subject to actually be able to render a fair verdict.

[Calum]

yes, it's quite trendy these days for people to say "oh well, s/he might be guilty, so obviously they should be in jail".

Void main reminds us of the quite quaint concept that people should not be being punished for something they have not been *proven* to be guilty of. Call me old fashioned, but i also agree with that thinking.

by the way:

"up"grade to the more secure windows 2000, xp or vista.

that phrase was completely sarcastic by the way. it would be a pointless exercise to try to compare the "security" of these systems without third party software. In my opinion, the only way one windows version can be described as more secure than another version, is in terms of their *potential* for being *made* secure.

[Void Main]

Here is a really good in-depth 7 page Register article covering many aspects of the case:
http://www.theregister.com/2007/02/14/julie_amero_case/

It troubles me that the world is becoming so brainwashed that they want to shift blame to one single person. A scape goat.

Others have suggested that Amero's crime was not deliberately going to porn sites, but simply failing to prevent the pop-ups from being seen by the students. Indeed, this may have been the government's theory as well, or an alternate theory that the government came up with after the defense tried to show the existence of pop-ups and spyware. The prosecutor told the jury that Amero was guilty of exposing the children to pornography because she "should have thrown a sweater over the monitor" as a means of protecting the students. The angora defense? This despite the fact that as at least one student testified, the substitute teacher "physically reached up and pushed his face away from her computer".

Indeed, it is possible that the statute permits conviction for merely "permitting" a child to be placed in a situation that might impair their morals. So did the jury convict her for merely pushing the kids away and not yanking the extension cord? It is impossible to say. We all know that Microsoft Windows almost yells at you if you try to turn of your computer this way (well, at least when you reboot) – and that this kind of hard reboot can not only lose important data but can potentially damage the spinning hard drive.

If she can be convicted of a felony and do many years of hard time for child endangerment just because she failed to think fast enough to turn the computer off when a piece of spyware that may have been already on her machine started popping up porn images then I have serious issues. Not because I don't think our children shouldn't be protected because I really think they should. What I have a problem with is who is being blamed for this.

I have had problems for a long time with schools even having direct connections to the internet. K-12 schools should have completely private WAN network connections and no direct connections to the Internet. Just having those connections should get the school itself a child endangerment conviction if you ask me. After all the Internet *is* made of of 92% porn and we all no that no matter how hard you try to filter things out there are people out there who can get around the filters on both ends of the line (kids are smarter than teachers when it comes to computers).

I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. If you are going to have a 12 year old insecure operating system hooked up to a bucket of porn in the classroom you are the one who should be in prison, not this poor teacher. At least use an operating system that isn't so susceptible to this garbage, and keep it updated, and make at least an attempt to apply security. Where are the government agencies who are setting standards for the public schools as far computer/network security? How can this crap even happen? Even if this teacher tried to surf porn on purpose from a school computer she should not have been allowed to. If she can there is a failure in the system and the school should hold more liability than the teacher in my opinion. You want to "protect our children" then fix your freaking system!!

[Calum]

it's very rare i see any porn adverts or popups at all ever, and even then they appear as popped under tabs (due to the helpful options in firefox et al).

Voidmain i have to agree with your thinking on this issue 100%. That law is what's wrong, not the behaviour of the teacher. I can think that there would be some reasons for schools having internet access, but it could be restricted to just one lab and the odd computer in a teacher's classroom i think.

At our high school, well this was before the web, but definitely not before the internet, but we had a fairly large internal network with many computers attached, but it was not connected to any outside line. well, the head of computing had a machine with a modem, but content from outside never found its way onto the network and vice versa. My education has not been impaired by this, and in fact i think i learned a great deal about how to use computers without getting a shot of the internet until college.

in fact come to think of it the only computers at college that could access the internet were the library ones, the ones in the labs were standalone machines i think.