If these were my peers' I'd be screwed.

People who are not technosavy should NOT be involved in judging or selected to be in a jury in a trial that involves technology. I say this because the innocent get hurt by the lack of knowledge from the people who are sitting in judgment. There’s was this substitute teacher who was on a computer in a classroom when a bunch of pornographic pop ups kept coming up. She would close one window and other two would appear. This woman was found guilty of “exposing children to porn”, because the Judge was unable to understand the evidence that proved that she didn’t do it. The judge disallowed the introduction of evidence because it “confused her” (actually I’m not sure the reason, but I do know it was wrong to do so). So because of this (and maybe a bad lawyer) she was found guilty.

What happened after was that the story got out onto the Internet and before you know it, everyone in the tech community heard about this situation and was just shaking their heads. We Geeks know wrong when we hear it. It was on Digg, It was on a Twit and Diggnation podcasts as well as many other tech news sites. The Geek culture was not impressed; so unimpressed that many of the top computer security experts have volunteered their services to assist her, even though she has already been found guilty. She also has a new lawyer.

This woman was supposed to be sentenced a month ago, but the geek backlash has been so huge that the sentence date has been pushed back to the March 29^th and there has been a hint that the DA might be easing up on his shameful attacks. My theory is that the IT people at the DA’s office read this and asked this guy “ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS”. There also appears to be some back peddling going on with the judge as well. Oh and apparently the DA’s office, the school district and the police department has suddenly become extremely quiet about the whole situation.

Despite all the evidence about how the anti virus and anti malware software was out of date on this computer and the evidence pointing to malware as the cause, and that the police didn’t even look for malware., there are people who still want to have his woman sentenced. I don’t know who these people are but I’m reasonably confident that all the appliances in their homes are blinking 12:00. Heck, they might be the parents of the kids in the Jesus camp DVD. I’m sure that these people also watch a lot of Fox News.

The more I think of it, the more I’m reminded of the trial in the Idiocrary movie. Just a room full of stupid people with power. Well guess what Mr. Judge and Mr. DA. The Internet spotlight is on you now so and we are not going to let you send this woman up the river because were watching you stupid people.

My 2 Bytes.