Why can’t I update more regularly than I have been? I’m not that busy that I can’t write a post a day, but it seems that I just don’t get around to it. Sentencing is on Thursday (unless it’s postponed again), and I want to get this series done before then. All that means is that I have to do three or four posts a day, nothing big.
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Mr. Hartz was, and currently still is, the Information Services manager for the Norwich school district in October 2004. Prior to being employed by Norwich, he worked for mainframe manufacturers in the 1960’s - 1970’s, and did consulting work after that. He was responsible for almost everything tech; the servers, the workstations, and everything else needed to make sure the network ran.

On the 20th of October, he was asked to take a look at a computer that was suspected of being used to access inappropriate websites the previous day. The first thing he did when he logged onto the machine was record its IP address. Every computer on a network has a specific IP address that identifies that computer; even your computer has an IP address right now, because the internet itself is one large network. After that, he took a look at the cookies, which he says didn’t tell him anything. After that, Mr. Hartz looked at the temporary internet files that were stored on the computer.

He testified that the first thing he had seen that was visited that day was AOL.com; this makes sense since Ms. Amero used the computer to check her email. Mr. Hartz also said that there was a file for Orbitz.com; this could be from an advertisement, or she could have visited the site. He then testified that he saw sites that had been visited around 9:30 that caused him to believe that the computer had been used to view sites that were inappropriate for school.

After talking about the files on the computer, Mr. Hartz talked about the network firewall, and the entries that were in the firewall from that day that concerned the computer in Mr. Napp’s classroom. The firewall log corroborated what was on the classroom computer (how could it not? It would have to be taken off of school property for that to happen).

After talking about the computer and the firewall, testimony turned to filtering software. What we learned here is that the filtering software had not been updating correctly, and then new sites that should have been blocked were not. Mr. Hartz testified that all of the workstations had anti-virus software on them. The direct questioning ended with this:

Q: Okay. And as a person involved in the computer field, do you know of viruses that would allow a computer to be infected and to cause those computers to access random websites against the user’s wishes?
A: I haven’t seen anything like that, nor have I heard of anything like that.

Now, I know I’m only 21, haven’t been around computers as long as this guy, and haven’t graduated college yet, and haven’t even spent two years playing with viruses yet, but I have heard of, and have seen, infections that cause (not so) random websites show up. Granted, this is almost two and a half years later, but it is certainly possible that the same viruses existed back then that do now. The basic rule that I always think of is if a virus writer wants a computer to do something, he’ll figure out a way to get it done. And getting a computer to go to a website isn’t all that hard compared to some other things.

On cross, Mr. Hartz was asked to define adware, spyware, and viruses. His answers were right on the money, as I’d expect them to be. He testified that nothing was installed on the computer recently to the date in question and that spyware and adware do not generate pornography (comment: they don’t generate anything per se, but display anything that they are programmed to, which can include pornography). He then testified that the name of a website does not always have any relevance to what kind of content is on the site, and that one can click on an innocent looking ad, but be taken to a porn site.

Transcript