Protecting minors, or something

[lederhosen]

Via pharyngula: Connecticut schoolteacher Julie Amero has been convicted on four counts of 'impairing the morals of a child' after a classroom computer got locked in a porn pop-up loop.

On a projected image of the list of Web sites visited while Amero was working, Lounsbury pointed out several highlighted links. "You have to physically click on it to get to those sites," Smith said. "I think the evidence is overwhelming that she did intend to access those Web sites."

I am fascinated by the claim that the only way a classroom computer with lapsed virus-protection could have visited a porn site is by physically clicking on that link. (And also by the implication that the only person in a seventh-grade classroom who could possibly have done any such clicking is the teacher...)

More technical comments here and here. (Note that Amero - a substitute teacher - had been logged in by a regular teacher who told her not to turn the machine off, which may be why she didn't pull the plug ASAP.)

And via ambitious_wench, an old USA Today report (several years old, but the same flavour of idiocy) on a fifteen-year-old girl who posted nude photographs of herself on the net and was charged with 'sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography'. Now while I am very much against all three of those things, I fail to see how arresting a minor and giving her a life-long record as a sex-offender for crimes committed against herself would seem like a useful thing to do.

Comments

[bitterlight.livejournal.com]

How can you be accused of a crime against yourself? That doesn't make sense. That's like prosecuting somebody for committing suicide (obviously you could only prosecute them if they failed, but I don't think that's done either).

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

These days it's usually handled as a mental-health issue, but until fairly recently many parts of the world did treat attempted suicide as a crime. (The original version of 'Bedazzled' joked that "in less enlightened times, they'd have hanged you for it", but I don't think it's been a capital offence for quite a while. More detail at http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040326.html.

(Not that I think this makes any sense, mind you.)

[culfinriel.livejournal.com]

We're prudes and we have to assert our moral authority. And nudity is sex, as opposed to nudity. Also, there's no such thing as healthy sexuality. In the meantime, it's ok to see gross, horrifying violence and desensitize our children to that.

[harliquinn.livejournal.com]

There was a lengthy article, ... somewhere ... stating the various ways those links could show up in her History and yet have never been directly accessed (i.e. URL typed into the browser and hit "send"). This particular web genius detailed the various nefarious ways pop-ups can appear in your browsers history despite the fact that you didn't "surf there". The idiocy with which they prosecuted this woman rivels the current ignorance surrounding the Moononite escapade.

And I find it odd that of all the paper reports I saw none mentioned she was a substitute teacher. Oh, and the school that this happened in? It rests mere miles from my mother's home. ... and people wonder why I don't particularly want to be a teacher now...

[deor.livejournal.com]

On the teacher and librarian listservs it's been widely noted that she was a substitute, that she'd been told not to turn the machine off, that she tried to block the screen from the students' views with her body, and that she herself was the one who told the principal what had happened.

This is a TOTAL travesty of justice.