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How spyware nearly sent a teacher to prison (computerworld.co.nz)
15 points by makimaki on Dec 9, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments



A possible alternate title would be: "How the DA office's culture of malicious prosecution and willful ignorance almost cost a woman her life".

Where are the real prosecutions here? Why is the dishonest IT witness not being charged? Why are the prosecutors allowed to fervently harass people who are clearly innocent?


DA's may have incentives to not drop cases. Take the case of Paulette Cooper, where the Church of Scientology was later found (in Operation Snow White) to have done things like falsified evidence, etc. against people.

Despite this, the DA didn't back down.


This is such a crappy link covering the details of this case. Here's better information: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081124-teacher-in-por...

To summarize: She was a substitute teacher. She lost her teaching credentials instead of 40 years in prison. It was a windows 98 computer. She didn't have the sense to turn off the monitor, she tried to fight the battle of endless spyware pop ups. The "expert" they had to explain the computers knew nothing.


"She lost her teaching credentials instead of 40 years in prison."

It stuns me that 40 years was even a possibility. And it makes me wonder: have there been cases like this that we've never heard of, with similar vengeful prosecutors and similar ignorant, bewildered, defendants, who now cry themselves to sleep every night over what happened to their life?

I wouldn't doubt it.


And yet the bastards in the prosecutor's office still ruined her life.

This isn't justice. This isn't even a miscarriage of justice. This is holding justice down, raping her, giving her two black eyes and a bloody nose, and then saying in court that the bitch was asking for it.


She should sue Microsoft for negligence and the school for using misconfigured computers and not educating her properly.


I'm tempted to read the court transcripts. Did her lawyer not hire an expert to explain computers to the jury?




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