The Julie Amero situation

["Alex Eckelberry" <AlexE () sunbelt-software com>]

(Feel free to forward to others as applicable). 

Many of you have been following the plight of Julie Amero, the happless
substitute teacher in Norwich, CT who is facing up to 40 years in prison
for having porn popups on a classroom computer.  According to the
defense's forensic expert, the popups were spawned by a javascript bomb
on her machine.   (If you want to catch up on this story, Brian Krebs
wrote a good overview, and you can also read my editorial. Links
http://tinyurl.com/2kbmxp and http://tinyurl.com/3au7cz and
http://tinyurl.com/3bo2kk.)  

We actually have an image of the drive here at our offices and are
performing our own forensic analysis of it.  The results will be
available to interested parties in the next few days. 

Sentencing is on March 2nd, and a number of concerned industry folks are
lobbying on her behalf. (A lot of work is also going in to getting her
good pro bono representation for the appeals process. But the appeals
process can be an iffy one itself.)

We have been very active on this case, talking to the defense, the
prosecution, the expert forensic witness and Julie herself.  To us, it's
clear this is a grave miscarriage of justice.  Due to some legal
technicalities, quite a bit of exonerating evidence (such as the fact
that the machine was loaded with spyware) was not allowed as testimony
in the trial.  There was also false testimony in the trial (such as the
statement that "Julie had to have navigated to these sites").  The
police used inadequate software for their analysis (ComputerCops
Professional) and seem to continue to stick by their story that Julie
navigated to these sites, despite all the physical evidence pointing to
the fact that these were popups.

The machine in question was an old Win 98SE machine running IE 5, with
no antispwyare protection, an old antivirus program (Cheyenne), an
expired content filter, no desktop firewall, no popup blocking and
(according to the forensic expert), no or few patches installed. It was
a disaster waiting to happen. 

We've also found a number of disturbing issues in the case which point
to a typical "small town" witchunt.  A lot of this I'd rather not speak
of publicly, but there's quite a few troubling allegations that I've
heard. 

Some industry people are considering taking out a full page
advertisement in the local paper, asking for the prosecution and the
judge to consider all the facts in the case, including the new
information that has come out post-trial.   The letter will be written
in such a fashion that would allow a wide range of signatories to the
document.

If you are interested in possibly signing the letter, please contact me
off-list.  Also, I will see about setting up a temporary mailing list
for this case for those who want to take an active part in the case.
Any help is appreciated. 

And if anyone is going to RSA, I hope to see you there.

Thanks,


Alex Eckelberry
------------------------------------
Alex Eckelberry
President
Sunbelt Software
101 N. Garden Avenue
Clearwater, FL 33755
e: alex () sunbelt-software com
MSN: alexeck () hotmail com
p: 727.562.0101 x220
f: 727.562.5199
w: www.sunbeltsoftware.com
b: www.sunbeltblog.com
------------------------------------ 

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