Sex, Lies, and Computing

I once saw a T-shirt with the following mantra written on it: “Never underestimate stupid people in large numbers.” It’s a valid concept, especially since our laws are based around the idea that the viewpoints of the majority can be turned into legislation. Politicians need the support of the masses to ensure that they’ll be elected for the next term.

Another thing that we should never underestimate is the power of a corrupt cop who can take the stand in a courtroom to offer testimony that will affect someone’s life.

Detective Mark Lounsbury, who once admitted to drinking beer while driving on duty,* offered testimony against a substitute teacher, Julie Amero, who was found guilty of “risking injury to a child” because the computer that she used at school ended up with several pornographic pop-ups on it. It was later discovered that the computer in question had been infected with spyware and adware before the substitute teacher even touched it. It was also discovered that the district’s antivirus software was out-of-date and their firewall license had expired.

Julian Sanchez from Ars Technica reports:

Amero’s bizarre trip through the legal system began in a Norwich middle-school English classroom on an October morning in 2004. According to Amero’s account, she was just browsing the web and waiting for the day to begin—searching for nothing more salacious than sites about hairstyles. What she got, as her seventh-grade students were quick to notice, was a Kama Sutra’s worth of pornographic images and pop-ups, which the hapless sub says she had no idea how to halt.

Having been warned (she would later say) against shutting off the machine, and a bit fuzzy on the distinction between turning off the monitor and powering down the computer, Amero hurried to the teacher’s lounge for help. Instead of a copy of The Internet for Dummies, Amero was handed an indictment on charges of endangering the morals of a minor.

Prosecutors—and the testimony of officer Mark Lounsbury, who examined the school computer—convinced a jury that Amero had been surfing porn sites, recklessly exposing kids to a lesson in lewdness.

That didn’t sound right to Alex Eckelberry, head of a Florida-based computer security firm, who wrote about the case on his blog. Eckelberry hadn't intended to become involved further, but from there, he told Ars, “it just snowballed.” A friend put him in touch with a forensic witness who’d testified on Amero’s behalf—and eventually passed along a copy of the hard drive image. Discussing the case with friends Alex Shipp and Robin Stuart at the annual RSA security conference, he found others were equally intrigued and appalled. Before long, he’d put together a forensic team. For the first time today, Eckelberry has made their findings available to the general public on his Web site.

They discovered that—contrary to the testimony of the school’s IT manager—the computer’s antivirus software had been months out of date and the school’s content filter subscription had long ago lapsed. In fact, a piece of spyware called newdotnet had been installed on the Windows 98 machine a week before Amero had showed up to fill in, bundled with a Halloween-themed screen saver.

The investigators also found that Lounsbury—whose testimony revealed a penchant for dropping computer buzzwords in weirdly inapposite places—had misled jurors on several points. He suggested at one point that only sites a user had directly visited—as opposed to those reached via redirects—would leave a trace in the computer’s temporary Internet folder. He similarly suggested that links to another site would turn red only if the user had actively clicked on them—which is not only false in general, but doubly so on the machine in question, which had been set to register “visited” links in green.

Moreover, one of the red “links” the jury had been shown was, in fact, text set to display in red on the page in question. Lounsbury also testified that there was no evidence the system had been subjected to “uncontrollable pop-ups,” but Ecekelberry’s team found plenty.

With evidence of errors mounting, Amero’s conviction was eventually overturned and a new trial planned. But in deference to her declining health—since the conviction Amero had been treated for stress and heart problems—prosecutors, professing their confidence in her guilt even at the end, decided to drop the charges in exchange for a fine and a plea.

While I’m not sure if Lounsbury had been drinking before taking the stand, the fact remains that a cop gave bogus testimony while on the stand (that’s usually called perjury, if I’m not mistaken). What is also frightening is this piece of information that was e-mailed to PC World’s Steve Bass, reportedly by one of the jurors who defended the conviction:

If a 40[-]year[-]old school teacher does not have the sense to turn off or is not smart enough to figure it out, would you or any other person wanting [sic] her teaching your child or grandchild?

Yes, the juror’s view was that she was guilty of “risking injury to a child” because she wasn’t tech-savvy enough to turn off the computer. Now, the argument could be made that a reasonably intelligent person should be able to power-down a PC or Mac, but Amero was not on trial for computer illiteracy; she was on trial for risking injury to a child. Yet the jurors saw fit to find her guilty of something else.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. Never underestimate Connecticut jurors, cops, or school IT managers.

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*The story from WTNH is no longer on their site, but the following information is available on several Websites dated February 2007:

A Norwich police detective has admitted to drinking beer while driving a minor around the city on a sting targeting alcohol sales to underage drinkers.

That’s according to a report in today’s Day of New London newspaper.

Detective Mark Lounsbury, who drove the police van used in the undercover sting operation on November 30th made the admission last week to Deputy Chief Warren Mocek, the newspaper reported.

Mocek is overseeing an investigation into a misconduct complaint against Lounsbury and Lieutenant James Daigle.

A 20-year-old woman claims Daigle photographed her topless while she was working for the department in the same sting operation.

References

Bass, Steve. “Juror Speaks: Teacher in Porn Case.” PC World. 15 Feb. 2007.

Cheng, Jacqui. “Teacher Faces Jail Time for Porn Pop-Ups.” Ars Technica. 14 Feb. 2007.

Sanchez, Julian. “Teacher in Porn Popup Case Dodges Jail but Loses Creds.” Ars Technica. 24 Nov. 2008.

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