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Experts rebuke Amero ruling
The president of a Florida computer protection software company, skeptical of the conviction of a Norwich substitute teacher in a computer porn case, says computer experts are joining to aid in her defense.
Alex Eckelberry, owner of Sunbelt Software, said he and a "forensic team of A-list players across the country" are performing a forensic technical review of the computer hard drive used in the January conviction of Julie Amero.
Eckelberry, who is among many to lambaste the conviction, said he is still analyzing evidence, but remains skeptical of the prosecution. He declined to mention names of other people involved.
"In this case, what we see is a preponderance of evidence showing pop-ups were occurring," he said.
Convicted on four counts of risk of injury to a minor, Amero faces the possibility of up to 40 years in jail when she is sentenced March 29 in Norwich Superior Court.
She is soliciting funds for her appeal on a blog site and her defense attorney had the sentencing postponed while other attorneys join the case.
Recently, a group of Connecticut professors signed their names to an advertisement asking State's Attorney Kevin Kane to perform an independent investigation. Kane declined comment on the matter.
Two University of Connecticut computer professors, whose names appear in the ad, said they read about Amero and think it's plausible she inadvertently accessed pornography, though they have not examined evidence in the case.
"I think the whole thing was blown out of proportion," said UConn computer professor Dong-Guk Shin. "Whether it was inadvertent or intentional, I think one of the bigger issues is the penalty going to fit the crime? Was there intent to harm a child? Was it criminal or carelessness? I'd like to give her the benefit of the doubt."
Thomas Peters, a professor of computer science and engineering at UConn, said, "There's a lot of plausibility that this could have happened inadvertently. I don't question the judicial process. I think it doesn't seem there was a complete investigation in the case."
He said it only seems reasonable to do a full forensic investigation.
"It may exonerate her or it may convict her," Peterson said.
Both men said they became aware of the case through e-mails circulated at the school.
Norwich police Det. Mark Lounsbury, who performed the investigation in the case, presented evidence pornographic sites were accessed continuously for nearly two hours on the morning of Oct. 19, 2004. Ten male students admitted seeing images of nude men and women.
Lounsbury, who has come under fire by columnists and bloggers, stands by the evidence.
"What we're talking about is Web pages, clearly distinguishable between unwanted ads," Lounsbury said. "Clearly pages were accessed."
Lounsbury said he has no doubt adware was downloaded on the computer as certain sites were accessed, but he said people are drawing conclusions without the evidence at hand.
"I've seen a lot of talk, with nothing to substantiate that," Lounsbury said. "This isn't a guessing game. If you're going to blame a particular piece of software for doing something, you should be able to find that software."
Some people blame a lack of filtering protection on the school computers.
Robert Hartz, information services director for the Norwich School system, testified the content filtering, or firewall, remained in place, but had not been updated correctly during the previous months because the license had not been activated. The filtering system didn't regularly add newly discovered pornographic sites to its restricted Web sites database on the school's 2,000 computers.
"If the school had adequate protection, this would never had happened, certainly not to the degree that it did," Eckelberry contended. "The jury's out whether it would have blocked all these things, but this would have made a significant difference. The machine was basically unprotected."
Hartz contends, however, Norwich's filtering software failed to stop school computer users from accessing inappropriate Web sites just six times since 1998.
Under rules of the Federal Communication Commission's Children's Internet Protection Act, schools receiving federal funds must have an Internet safety program which includes measures "to filter Internet access" to obscene material.
Amero, despite having been reprimanded in the past for computer use at the school, claimed to be computer illiterate and hesitant to shut off the machine.
"It's blindly clear to me a half-day seminar of computer security and we would not be having this problem," Eckelberry said.
Reach Greg Smith at 425-4219 or gasmith@norwichbulletin.com
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