Julie Amero sentencing postponed, Norwich "expert" speaks
Julie Amero, the substitute school teacher convicted of being an internet n00b in a classroom with a severely outdated and unmaintained computer has had a brief, non-permanent reprieve from her sentencing on four felony counts. The hearing to decide her fate, which could see her spending up to 40 years in prison, was postponed until March 29th. The Norwich-Bulletin does its typically biased job of updating events in the case, and reminds us, "forensic investigation of the computer used that day revealed she was actively surfing the sites nearly the entire school day." According to reports however, the Norwich Police's only "computer expert" Mark Lounsbury has little if any IT training, and relied primarily on his free "certification" on the ComputerCop Pro software, and the reports which it generates. The big issue: ComputerCop Pro is incapable of determining whether the URLs opened by Internet Explorer 5 were the result of human action, or of programmatic control through spyware or malware. Nevertheless, Amero was convicted on the back of testimony offered by Lounsbury.
Lounsbury has himself admitted to criminal activity in the past. In 2001 Detective Lounsbury admitted to drinking alcohol while driving a minor child in a police vehicle while involved in an underage drinking sting operation. He was never charged, and as far as searchable records show, the investigation essentially died a quiet death, leaving Detective Lousbury in his position as the chief investigator of computer crimes involving children for the Norwich Police Department.
Lounsbury has contacted PC World and stated that he has evidence he is unable to share with media until the sentancing phase of Amero's trial is complete. "I can provide you w/ the source code showing all the .htm and javascripting for each web page, images from those pages, date/time of creation, MD5 hashes, etc." Unfortunately, to hear a computer "expert" refer to ".htm" files as source code doesn't instill a great amount of confidence in his assessment. It's difficult for anyone with solid understanding of computers to see how MD5 hashes, used mostly to ensure a file remains unchanged from one sample to the next, could possibly have any bearing on Amero's guilt or innocence. It's likely that Lounsbury has a giant ball of nothing in his pocket, aside from some useless reports he feels must say something incriminating among all that gibberish he doesn't fully comprehend.
Lounsbury says he will share the "evidence" with PC World upon the completion of Amero's sentencing, "I'm thinking the world doesn't want to hear the truth. IGNORANCE IS BLISS. The lies are exciting, bringing up STRONG emotions. OMG, that poor person, victimized by the Evil Government and its minions."
OMG, ROFL. Touché Detective Lousbury.
See Also:
Porn pop-up teacher gets new attorney, PC World outs juror
Malware victim faces jailtime; Write Connecticut's Governor
