A disturbing case of exposing minors to pornography is drawing to a close in the US. Julie Amero, a substitute teacher from Windham, Connecticut, was convicted of four counts of impairing the morals of a minor and faces a maximum of 40 years in jail. The disturbing part is not the pornography, it's the way the computer forensics has been presented on both sides. Amero was using someone else's PC since she had neither her own machine nor a login on a shared machine. The porn was from pop-up ads after either she or one of her students typed in a URL that turned out to be a front for an adult site. And she acted immediately by pulling students away from the monitor.
The State's case seems to revolve around whether or not Amero typed in the URLs in question. Despite the forensic detective's assertions to the contrary, there is no way of telling which URLs have been typed in at the keyboard of a browser and which have been launched by pop-ups, not without some kind of keystroke logger installed. In fact, if URLs such as http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com turn up, there's a very strong likelihood that they were NOT typed in by a person but launched by a script or included in a Web page's source.
Hopefully, nothing like the Amero case could happen here.
Paul Furber, senior writer, ITWEb
But the defence was asleep at the wheel too. The PCs were running Windows 98 and IE 5, had visited plenty of sites that were known havens for spyware, and the machines themselves were riddled with spyware and popupware because, well, that's what happens to Windows when you browse the Internet, especially Windows 98 and IE 5. None of this information was presented in her defence.
Amero's explanation sounds reasonable: she and the students were looking for hairstyle information and went to http://www.hair-styles.org and http://www.new-hair-styles.com. Neither are hairstyle portals but rather fronts for Russian and Ukranian porn and Viagra sites. The sites launched porn pop-ups that couldn't be closed down so she tried to pull the kids away from the computer.
The Trojan Defence, namely "a trojan planted the child porn on my machine", doesn't apply in this case. Instead, it just seems that Connecticut officials are rapidly heading for trouble if Amero's case is not readdressed - and fast. Oh, and she's four months pregnant, too.
In SA, the Information Security Group is working hard on a standard for presenting computer forensic evidence before the courts. Hopefully, nothing like the Amero case could happen here.
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