Unfathomable Injustice 1

Julie Amero is a substitute teacher who was arrested for the crime of being present in a classroom equipped with an adware-infected computer that displayed porn pop-up ads. She faces 40 years in prison sentence, and will be sentenced on Friday.

Julie Amero, the Connecticut teacher, found guilty exposing children to pornography after popups appeared on her school computer, will face sentencing this Friday, May 18th. Amero, who says that malware on the infected PC was responsible for the popups, could face up to 40 years in jail. Even if she receives no jail time, Amero will be labeled as a sex offender and unable to teach, and be stuck with tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
This case gained a lot of publicity earlier in the year, but as the prosecution has delayed sentencing three times, the story has fallen off the radar. The Amero case could have a chilling effect on efforts to get computer into classrooms if teachers are afraid of losing their careers (or freedom) over an infected PC.

On March 6, 2007, a $2,400 advertisement appeared in the Hartford Courant signed by 28 computer science professors who said that they think that Amero could not have controlled the pornographic pop-ups.