Posted on 12/14/2008 10:05:30 PM PST by neverdem
Unreal.
What a nightmare this teacher went through. The DA who brought charges needs to be remved from office....
She should not have taken the deal. She should have gone in with a tape recorder, her lawyer, and an expert witness. She should have not only refuted the “crime” but accused the persecutors (not a typo) or neglegence, suborning perjury, and malicious prosecution. When they, huffed, puffed and threw her in jail, that tape should have then been given to the media by a defense lawyer with fortitude. The Prosecutors would have been destroyed.
Most everyone knows that schools, both the lower and college level do not invest in Virus software. Why, I don’t know. When my husband was in college; we would never allow him to use a disc that came from school on our personal computer.
Her mistake was “letting” the malware generate, um, non-diverse popups: otherwise, she could have just called it a lesson in tolerance and gotten Teacher of the Year for her trouble.
edu’s are a soft target. Only slightly ahead of law enforcement and politicians. And all three are way behind the criminals in knowledge of the internet and technology.
I pointed that their "WWW.WILDWOMEN-ENT.COM" domain name could be perilously similar to one leading to something quite unsavory. When I asked my young (female) assistant to "put the Wild Women's website up on the screen, she mistakenly left off the "-ENT" part of their domain name.
The next thing I knew, the screen was flooded with popup windows full of nude photos (and worse) -- and they were popping up faster than my panicked assistant could close them!
When she screamed and broke down in tears, I yanked the power cord out of the projector -- until I could get the proper website up on her monitor.
Needless to say, my point about judicious choice of domain name was made -- too well! BUT, if that had happened in public school, both my assistant and I could have been in big trouble!
FWIW, I do not recommend repeating the experiment; I just checked, and the first thing that happened (before I immediately killed the browser window) was that an applet began to load. I have no desire to know what would have happened (or appeared) if I had allowed that website to finish loading... :-(
No, her mistake was walking into the doors of a school building as a teacher/substitute teacher. I know from personal experience, they will destroy you and your life and your career if they want/need to. Teachers are the bottom rung of the ladder—after principals, parents, even the students. A student can make an accusation against a teacher, it will be believed as truth, the teacher will be put on administrative leave while the district conducts a career-damaging ‘investigation’ all before even hearing your side of the story. Regardless, the student’s story is taken as truth, and any corroborating or contradictory evidence you may present to support your side is considered desperate lying to cover up your guilt. They build a case behind your back, using taxpayer dollars to pay for expensive attorneys, all to support the student’s lie, and your career is over.
Let me tell you, I know. It happened to me. I’m still not over it. It haunts me every day—and what this student accused me of was not in any way sexual. But they tried to take me down anyway. I fought them through legal avenues, and ended up being offered another contract, which I turned down. But, at least I didn’t have to say I’d been non-renewed. Not that I ever want to set foot inside a public school again!
Don’t teach...you are replaceable. They don’t care about you—none of them—the district, the parents or the kids. Eventually one of them will get you. And yes, I’m bitter. I spent four years of my life getting an education degree and ten years teaching and stupid lying kid stole it all away from me. Don’t teach. That’ll be your first mistake.
Having worked in higher education for a number of years, I can tell you for a fact that the college I worked at most certainly kept up-to-date antivirus software, and we never had a virus problem on school-owned machines.
What schools can’t control is what students do to their own machines - and on those, yes, I saw malware.
As someone who works in the forensic community, I’ve followed this story for a long time and have read about it in great detail. The incompetence and arrogance were stunning, and the case was a travesty.
MM
Sorry, just had a different experience.
No worries.
So, uh, could I get arrested for handing out copies of The Origin of Species to sixteen year olds or is "morals" limited to sex-related acts?
This is a disturbing law. Too vague. Open to abuse.
The computer in question was running Windows 98 and MS IE 5. Not Windows 98SE, the original Windows 98 - already a year out of mainline Microsoft support at that time.
For all intents and purposes that PC was placed in her classroom with a pre-installed rootkit.
...Rational, reasoned inquiry, or debate has been squashed out of the rule of law and the scientific method by partisan and/or individual expediency. I’ll hold my type, don’t want to get terminated from FR again, but y’all can figure out the expletives deleted!!!
Sounds like Norwich PD’s “computer expert” knows less than tens of millions of ordinary business PC users. I most certainly would have avoided the kinds of bone-headed mistakes made by this “expert” and I’m no geek at all.
Is there no honor left in our judicial system?
God help us all :-(
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