Scott Fain is currently, and was at the time of the incident, the principal of Kelly Middle School.

The first four pages of Mr. Fain’s testimony was background information - who he was, how long he had been there, why the regular teacher wasn’t in the room that day. At the bottom of page four was when his testimony about the incident began.

In the morning of October 20, 2004, he received an email from Mr. Napp, that room’s regular teacher. He then proceeded to go to the classroom where Mr. Napp then went through Internet Explorer’s history from the previous day. Let’s look at some of the testimony:

Q: What type of information was being pulled up by Mr. Napp on his computer?
A: Well, the alarming parts were, could be classified as pornography, multiple pictures of naked men and women that were obviously alarming.

Q: I’m going to delve in a little bit more. Some of the pornography was it explicit pornography, explicit meaning naked people on a school computer?
A: Yes. It appeared to be of a sexual nature, yes.

Q: Engaging in sexual acts, some of them?
A: Some were, some were simply nude poses.

Commentary:
It appears that the prosecutor simplified the definition of pornography a lot. A picture of naked people is explicit pornography? Better hide those pictures of your kids sitting in the tub folks, I wouldn’t want you charged with possessing child porn.

Mr. Fain then testified about talking with Ms. Amero, and how she told him that there were students who had been using that computer, and how there were popups throughout the day.

On cross examination, Mr. Fain was asked about his relationship with Ms. Amero. Part of his answer was that he had previously spoken to her “about being more active monitoring and working around the class as opposed to sitting”.

Commentary:
I have almost never had a sub that actively monitored the class and helped with work. Let’s face it, subs get paid very little, don’t need to be very educated in the specific subject they’re covering, and are only covering a class for a very short period of time, often only a day or two. I think the only time I’ve had a sub pay attention is when there has been a quiz or test that the class was taking.

On redirect, Mr. Fain testified that others told him what Ms. Amero had shared with them, about some kids using the teacher computer without permission, after he had already seen the computer.

Commentary:
So let’s see what we’ve learned so far. There was a substitute teacher that had been told to not use the computer as much…but subs generally do something other than read, at least the subs I’ve had.
We learned that there were pornographic popups.
We learned that all the students in that room were under 16 years of age.
Basically, all we learned were very basic facts about the background of the case, nothing all that interesting.

What will the next witness tell us? Stay tuned and find out.
Transcript

I think it would help if I started the series out with a little background information.

Julie Amero was a substitue teacher in Norwich, CT for a few years. On October 19, 2004, she was covering a class at Kelly Middle School while the teacher was taking a training course. Barely knowing anything about computers, she asked the teacher (who was in the room before class to make sure she had the lesson plans, etc.) if she could use the computer to check her AOL email. He said yes, and then left the room to go to his training course. She then left the room with the computer turned on (and logged on, because as a substitute teacher, did not have an account to log on herself), and went to the bathroom before class started.

She came back from the bathroom to find two male students using the computer and giggling. This was a teacher computer, and they were not allowed to use it. She informed them of this, and one student sat down at his desk, and the other student left the room, since it wasn’t his homeroom.

Later that day, while she was using the computer as the kids were working, she became victim to a barage of porn-related popups. Try as she might, everytime she tried to close one of them, more would open. After running for help, and being told that “popups are normal, it’s nothing to be concerned about”, she went back to the room, and tried to prevent the kids from seeing the material on the screen. At the end of the day, Amero told the principal of the incident, and was assured that she didn’t do anything wrong.

At least, until the police showed up. Amero was charged with 10 violations of CT General Statute 53-21(a)(1). This section reads (item 1 in bold):

Sec. 53-21. Injury or risk of injury to, or impairing morals of, children. Sale of children. (a) Any person who (1) wilfully or unlawfully causes or permits any child under the age of sixteen years to be placed in such a situation that the life or limb of such child is endangered, the health of such child is likely to be injured or the morals of such child are likely to be impaired, or does any act likely to impair the health or morals of any such child, or (2) has contact with the intimate parts, as defined in section 53a-65, of a child under the age of sixteen years or subjects a child under sixteen years of age to contact with the intimate parts of such person, in a sexual and indecent manner likely to impair the health or morals of such child, or (3) permanently transfers the legal or physical custody of a child under the age of sixteen years to another person for money or other valuable consideration or acquires or receives the legal or physical custody of a child under the age of sixteen years from another person upon payment of money or other valuable consideration to such other person or a third person, except in connection with an adoption proceeding that complies with the provisions of chapter 803, shall be guilty of a class C felony for a violation of subdivision (1) or (3) of this subsection and a class B felony for a violation of subdivision (2) of this subsection.

(b) The act of a parent or agent leaving an infant thirty days or younger with a designated employee pursuant to section 17a-58 shall not constitute a violation of this section.

A year and a half later, the State’s Attorney handling her case has dropped six of the charges, and they go to trial on the remaining four. Key players in the case include the judge, jury, and prosecutor, all of whom are tech illiterate for the most part; a computer “expert” detective, who laters gets published on a website saying he’s not an expert, and never claimed to be; and a actual copmuter forensics expert, who never gets the chance to testify in full to the best of his ability because of a mistake in court room procedure.

Transcript Part 1

For the second time this week, I have just finished reading the transcript of the Julie Amero case. For the second time this week, I am sitting at my desk, wondering why this case was prosecuted. And for the second time this week, I was questioning myself on if I still might want to go to law school or do computer forensic work, when a majority of society - and indeed the Connecticut criminal justice system, the system I would most likely be working with/for - is still technologically illiterate.

For the next week or so, I will be going through the transcript witness by witness and issue by issue, and posting what I think about it. Don’t worry, I’ll be attaching the appropriate part of the transcript to the entry so that you can download it yourself and read it if you wish.

Sentencing for her case was originally scheduled for March 2. Luckily, that date was then postponed until today. But it has been postponed again, this time until the end of April. That gives the State another month to see the errors they made in this case, and to motion the court to set aside the verdict, and dismiss the charges, which carry a total of 40 years imprisonment (10 years per charge).

Picture this: your car has a few dings in it, a few small scratches here and there, and there’s a small dent that nobody can really see. But everything on the inside of the car works, and all the important parts (like the engine) still work like they did the day you bought the car. Do you buy a new car or not?

Most people wouldn’t buy a new car if their old one has a few cosmetic damages, but is running fine, and nobody would judge them negativly about it.

Now picture this: you’ve found somebody that you enjoy spending time with. They make you laugh with the smallest joke and make you feel better when you are sad. When you are with them, or even just talking on the phone with them, time seems to stand still, and you don’t want to say goodbye. But there is something cosmetically wrong. They have a limp, wear glasses, have a weight problem. Do you dump them, even though they are “beautiful and wonderful on the inside”?

Unfortunatly, most people would, not because they don’t like the physical person, but because they are afraid of what their friends will say, if not to them, then behind their back.

Over the past 10 years or so, society as a whole has shifted focus on what matters most from how a thing works, acts, thinks, etc. (the inside), to how it looks (the outside). A lot of people will tell others to “not judge a book by its cover”, but how many of those same people will then judge something by how it looks?

I think that stereotyping has complicated this issue as well. Not all African-Americans like fried chicken. Not all Irish are drunks. Not all blondes are stupid. The list goes on and on.

What can be done to stop this? For one, the media needs to stop putting so much attention on celebrities. Maybe then people would stop wanting to look like them.

I want to hear your comments. What can we do as a nation to end stereotyping and people judging others by, and basing their decisions on, how they look?

In a blink, the wisdom of the crowd became the fury of the crowd. In the last few days, contributors to Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, have turned against one of their own who was found to have created an elaborate false identity.

LINK

As a student, we all hear that we shouldn’t use Wikipedia as a source. Most of the time, the professor’s argument is that due to its nature, anyone can edit it, and you don’t know what the person’s background in the material is.

Well, this news just adds more weight for the professors, as one of the administrators has just announced his real name, and his real backgound. He is not a professor of religion whose specialty is canon law, as he once led everyone to believe. Instead, he is a 24 year old college drop out.

People have gone through his edits and found places where he was basically cashing in on his fake credentials to bolster his arguments,” said Michael Snow, a Wikipedia administrator who is also the founder of The Wikipedia Signpost, the community newspaper for which he is covering the story. “Those will get looked at again.”

This is what professors are talking about when they say they don’t want to see WikiPedia cited. What if one of the articles a student used had misinformation that was left because of a user’s false credentials? The student gets marked down, and it might make him not use Wikipedia next time, which drives down their traffic. They might tell their friends not to use it as well, which would drive down traffic even more.

I’ll admit it, I use WikiPedia when doing papers. But when I do, I go there to get ideas on other resources to use, resources that the professor will accept. And in the odd chance that I do cite WikiPedia, it’ll be for something that I’ve already cited at least one other, a more legitimate, source for.

Just felt like showing visitors and reader alike what my stats look like at the end of the month. So here’s a screenshot:

For this being a site that doesn’t belong to any niche, I think those stats are pretty good. Never did I think there would be 166 visitors to my small site, whose purpose is…undefined, really. Hopefully the stats will only go up from here.

This was going to be a post on something else, but that can wait since this post is going to be more interesting.

I logged into the wordpress admin panel, and saw a link that caught my eye. Eventually I made my way to ProBlogger, where he compiled a list of 34 reasons someone might unsubscribe from an RSS feed. Some of the items on that list got me thinking.

• Too many posts (the post levels are too overwhelming) - 37
• Infrequent Posting (or the blog is effectively dead) - 29
• Irrelevant Content - 13

Now, for my site, I don’t know where the line between too many posts and too few posts would be. This is a personal blog, and so I write about things that happen to me and other things that interest me. It would be entirely possible for me to go a week without posting something solely because there was nothing going on that week and nothing in the news that I want to comment on.

How would someone be able to define irrelevant content for here? Again, its a personal site, and as such, almost anything I post is relevent. The fact that there is no central theme also makes it hard to define irrelevent content for here. If I had decided to write on a central theme, then yes, irrelevent content could be determined. But I decided that a central theme would be bad, because while I write about school on here, this blog gives me a chance to write on whatever I want to, and not what I’m told to write about.