Man Fired When Laptop Malware Downloaded Porn 635
Geoffrey.landis writes "The Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents fired worker Michael Fiola and initiated procedures to prosecute him for child pornography when they determined that internet temporary files on his laptop computer contained child porn. According to Fiola, 'My boss called me into his office at 9 a.m. The director of the Department of Industrial Accidents, my immediate supervisor, and the personnel director were there. They handed me a letter and said, "You are being fired for a violation of the computer usage policy. You have pornography on your computer. You're fired. Clean out your desk. Let's go."' Fiola said, 'They wouldn't talk to me. They said, "We've been advised by our attorney not to talk to you."' However, prosecutors dropped the case when a state investigation of his computer determined there was insufficient evidence to prove he had downloaded the files. Computer forensic analyst Tami Loehrs, who spent a month dissecting the computer for the defense, explained in a 30-page report that the laptop was running corrupted virus-protection software, and Fiola was hit by spammers and crackers bombarding its memory with images of incest and pre-teen porn not visible to the naked eye. The virus protection and software update functions on the laptop had been disabled, and apparently the laptop was 'crippled' by malware. According to Loehrs, 'When they gave him this laptop, it had belonged to another user, and they changed the user name for him, but forgot to change the SMS user name, so SMS was trying to connect to a user that no longer existed ... It was set up to do all of its security updates via the server, and none of that was happening because he was out in the field.' A malware script on the machine surfed foreign sites at a rate of up to 40 per minute whenever the machine was within range of a wireless site."
What is the real truth here? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and by the way, the real Truth is here. (check my name)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Legal "slam dunk"? (Score:5, Insightful)
For company/government controlled computers people should not forget that network/computer administrators can quite readily take over users computers and use them for what ever nefarious activities they want to and then blame the poor end user. In this case the administrator really and I mean really fucked up, I mean they found the child porn but missed the viruses et al, what, does the admin get such of kick looking for porn on there users computers that they forget to fulfil the security functions that they are actually paid for.
While the end user is certainly in the clear, the admin is in real trouble as now somehow they have to prove their innocence as the actual administrator of the infected (by whom ?) computer. Also the admin should be subject to criminal negligence charges as they bore false witness against the user as the admin should have detected the viruses et al prior to bearing witness against the end user, so some really serious stuff and the end user and their lawyer can really go to town on them.
So the real question for the future is, is it the end user's computer or the system administrator's computer, who has the greater control and hence who has the greater ownership? Running a far more secure OS like Linux will certainly do more to protect computer administrator's from future prosecutions, something to really think about.
Re:Legal "slam dunk"? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about actually following the money trail? Are the malware authors and people putting those images up really doing such stuff for free? Someone must be paying for those ads, the creation of child porn sites etc.
There are more serious crimes than possession of some image file, especially an image file that is likely to be downloaded by malware.
Lastly, Linux isn't going to help. The real problem is mass hysteria - lots of people suddenly turning their brains off when they hear a trigger phrase. Sure child porn is bad, but if you really want to fix it, follow the money to the bitter end. Not go around starting stupid witch hunts. The way they do things, I figure it's just a tool for cynical manipulation of a mindless populace.
Re:Legal "slam dunk"? (Score:5, Insightful)
When something bad happens, and you fire somebody you are, by the strictest interpretation of the words, "doing something about it." It might not be anything effective, but if you don't know what is effective, then "doing something" sounds a lot better than "doing nothing."
Out of all the ineffective ways of of "doing something", firing somebody is the most attractive, because it localizes the blame in a person who is, or at least in short order will be, outside the organization. It is the solution that shifts the most blame. Since the person is outside the organization, he can't defend himself.
Unless he lawyers up.
Re:Legal "slam dunk"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux would have helped, instead of having a sophisticated network system where you need a valid login/pass to get access to the updates for your computer system... all the updates needed come from trusted repositories, no password or login needed, oh and, if the end user isn't given permission to install software, instead of having a dumb script on the system that logs in to a server, there can be a central server that runs a script that logs in as the admin user on each system to force updates, without having to create a new login/pass every time a new user grabs a linux laptop.
linux doesn't fix the dancing pigs problem, but by being a inherently secure platform, remote administration isn't a joke feature thrown in as a 'buzz' word to movie more copies and try to avoid loosing important corporate customers to more secure products.
Linux would have solved All the problems this company ran into. As a matter of fact, i've run across compromised windows systems where even after a format with a DOD level file system erase were automatically reinfected by malware that had corrupted the bios of the motherboard. the only thing that worked, was switching those machines to linux, and reflashing the bios (because it kept having problems with stability until the bios was reflashed)
and if you think, well security software must have caught up by now, the sad truth is that about 3% of malware and rootkits released in 2006 are Actually protected against by security suites. the problem is, the way windows lets any administrator process to re write almost any file instantly, and any file with a reboot.
once the software infects, disinfecting a system is very hard, doing a complete wipe, and flash of all programmable chips (optical drive, the main bios, there are even viruses that can infect the memory of a HDD's internal controller, which isn't normally accessible to the end user) a lot of people just throw computers away when the malware comes back, after a format.
windows really really pisses me off more and more everyday because of how the way windows was designed, despite decades of end user knowledge in developing secure UNIX systems for college campuses, all because windows was completely managed by greedy, profiteers who didn't care a whit about how things were designed as long as they were number one, and had no serious competitors.
oh and hey, even if the guy was running linux, and it wasn't auto updating, since it was a desktop and not a server, it probably wouldn't have run any of the popular programs hackers who target linux target.
Maybe he deleted it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it was not visible to the naked eye because he deleted it. I don't know, but I can easily see a situation where some script kiddie creates a bot which trolls chatrooms and which sends random users child porn and then sends the feds after them.
It probably would not take a lot of time to write such a bot, or to trick the typical horny middle aged male to accept a picture of what they think is an adult woman, only to find out later it's child porn. But whats he supposed to do? his computer has been infected.
So now he has to reformat his entire computer. I can see this being the new WinNuke.
Re:What is the real truth here? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What is the real truth here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a good reason to either demand a clean install when being issued a machine (and check it yourself anyway) or (if dealing with clueless types) wipe it, hand it back, and play the luser:
"Uhh, I can't log on..."
Not everybody is a slashdotter (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not everybody is a slashdotter (Score:5, Insightful)
Not having a skill you might happen (I assume) to have shouldn't be cause for derision or ridicule. As for the "nerve", you've obviously never had a job at a company of any significant size. And we'll leave it at that.
Re:Not everybody is a slashdotter (Score:5, Insightful)
You've got to admit the OP has a point though.
The guy in TFA got sacked for using Windows.
You Evangelists always say it's so easy to use, but if Windows is so easy, how come this guy needs L337 skills just to avoid being labelled a child pornographer and losing his job?
Next time anyone says "No one ever got sacked for buying Microsoft", I'm pointing to this guy.
Re:Not everybody is a slashdotter (Score:4, Insightful)
Nor did they appear to factor all that in - the litigation costs.
It sounds even more negligent given they passed that guy a non "clean" laptop in the first place.
Anyway, often the problem is the downtime it takes to reimage the machine - esp if it's an old laptop and nobody has an "up to date" and pristine image.
AFAIK normally nobody cares.
Except in this case. I guess someone cared enough to start a witch hunt and this poor chap got the brunt of it.
Someone screams "child porn" and suddenly it's like a mass shark frenzy with blood in the water.
Re:What is the real truth here? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to think that as a sysadmin, I have the duty to protect both the company and the users under my watch. I was not harming the company by giving this guy an out(especially since he had just got a big promotion and an expensive move to corporate HQ).
Do you think I did wrong in not reporting the guy? (It was obviously deliberate browsing, but no kiddie stuffs)
Its called "the greater good" (Score:5, Insightful)
By bringing it to his attention
1) You save the company a competent employee
2) Discourage him from doing it again
3) You demonstrate your personal loyalty to an up and coming executive.
The question you have to answer, is did the employees actions harm the company
in a non-trivial manner? I assume the answer is no. There are many things users
do that waste time, most of which are trivial and do not actively cost the company money.
If the cost of stopping these trivial things exceeds the benefits then you tolerate it and move on.
I would be more concerned about the use of a "firewall/lan bypass device" than the content itself.
Re:Its called "the greater good" (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone wanted to get him fired. (Score:4, Interesting)
Look, we are here on slashdot discussing this as if we don't have the technical skill to use CP as a weapon to get people fired. It's really simple write a bot, and then upload your enemy list in encrypted form to that bot server in whatever location and have that bot send a bunch of child porn to all the people you dislike.
9 times out of 10, most men will accept any photograph of what they think is a hot chick, not knowing what it is before they open it, it could be child porn, it could be a virus, they don't know. The problem is once the child porn is on their computer then they get reported and their computer gets checked for child porn.
They then undelete everything and find that one photo was on the computer for a split second.
This alone is enough to get a person fired. Personally, in my opinion, unless a person has LOTS of child porn, I don't think it's right to report them over one image found somewhere on their drive.
If we go by those standards then only the most paranoid of internet users will be able to avoid being infected with child porn. The situation is messed up but I wont label pedophile so easily.
In my opinion you did the right thing. It's becoming way too easy to label someone a pedophile, at this point any hacker can get just about all of their enemies labeled a pedophile by simply hacking into their enemies computers, uploading the child porn, storing it in some secret hidden directory they can't see, and then alerting the proper authorities.
It's fucked up, but just like there were people writing viruses which would destroy computers, there will be people who spend all their time trying to destroy peoples lives using child porn as a weapon to get people mislabeled into a pedophile.
If all it takes to get labeled a pedophile is to be caught with child porn on your computer, how hard will it be to make you look like a pedophile?
You probably wont have to look for child porn or search for it or anything, I doubt the authorities check search records in these cases to see if the person was searching for child porn, they probably just see the pictures on the computer and scream pedophile.
Re:What is the real truth here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Julie Amero ? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Julie Amero ? (Score:5, Informative)
The forensic report is linked to on this page [csoonline.com] and is scathing about the IT staff.
They did the handover and didn't even notice that the antivirus wasn't working and that their SMS update system wasn't working.
It should be policy to handover computers with clean image and with updates.
Re:What is the real truth here? (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if she ever noticed that 'the internet' preferred brunettes?
Re:What is the real truth here? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What is the real truth here? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What is the real truth here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is the real truth here? (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing that will make a real difference for you is to find your natural peer group. Until then, like the AC said: ask for lessons in humility.
The Truth (TM) (Score:5, Interesting)
The truth is that this can happen. The truth is that so many corporate desktop and laptop systems are p0wn3d by th3m that it isn't even funny.
The truth is that event logging on these networks and systems are insufficiently detailed as to demonstrate conclusively which actually happened. Any logging that does take place on a system probably can't show you wether the user was responsible, or if an automated program pretending to be the user was responsible. Any corporation that gives a users a typical Windows system and then holds that user responsible when something untoward happens on that system ought to be opening themselves up to a lawsuit.
The truth is that even the the lawyers who advised not to talk about the reasons for dismissal don't recognize this. They prohibit discussion of the details regarding the dismissal of the employee for reasons entirely unrelated to the issue of being entirely unable to conclusively substantiate any accusations which would be made. (It's standard dismissal policy at all of the Fortune 500 to not give any reason). In general, employees, managers, lawyers and judges are completely unprepared to assess the details which would expose the fact that nobody can actually prove that this unfortunate person was probably the victim of some botmaster's prank. People should be surprised that this doesn't happen more often.
That said, there are things one can look at to determine what was *likely* to have happened on that box, and one can assess to some degree what things were relatively more likely than others. If the box was running malware, though, the most likely outcome is that one cannot demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the user was guilty. However, one can, in some cases, demonstrate innocence, by showing, for example, that a given download occurred when the user was away from the keyboard.
It's important to note that the converse is not true. The malware can easily mimic user behavior by performing user style tasks only when the user is logged in. Malware may, for example, have incentive to operate only when a real user is logged in, because certain operations in certain environments are unlikely to succeed if the user is not logged in (being stopped, and identified as likely malware behavior by a 3rd party heuristic detection system, for example.) Malware often does change its behavior based on instructions from the outside, based on the day or the time, based on all sorts of things, and may not behave the same in an isolated test lab as it does "in the wild" so it can be difficult or impossible to demonstrate the full capability of a given strain, even if you have a copy of it.
Re:What is the real truth here? (Score:5, Informative)
"He'd have 40 Web sites hitting his computer in a minute -- who's the IT guy who looked at this and said, "Wow, this guy is pretty active on the Internet?'" Loehrs said. "It's physically impossible!"
Loehrs found a script file that was set to go out and run its own searches on foreign Web sites, she said. "And once you get into some of these foreign sites, you'll get all kinds of stuff you don't want to see.
"Actually, the child pornography was just a very small portion of it. The majority was just bizarre porn. He was being hit with everything," she added.
Certainly sounds fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Certainly sounds fair... (Score:4, Informative)
Government employees in Massachusetts, the state that is so corrupt and dysfunctional it gives government all over the rest of the U.S. a black eye.
Seriously. I just escaped (to D.C., which, despite its warts is a million times better) from three years of living in that hellhole. I don't think I encountered a single effective or competently run state agency the whole time.
I expect the employee who would have been responsible for wiping this laptop is probably a relative of some high official, and probably doesn't know how to do anything except reinstall Windows from a factory CD.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Certainly sounds fair... (Score:5, Funny)
Anytime. It was so satisfying, I'd leave again if I weren't already gone. Maybe I'll fly up there just to leave again.
Re:Certainly sounds fair... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Certainly sounds fair... (Score:5, Informative)
He will, however, be suing them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Lawyer: This, boys and girls, is why . . . (Score:4, Informative)
This, in a nutshell, is why lawyer's represent guilty scum.
Sometimes, it turns out, they are neither . . .
Personally, I'm skeptical about the idea of malware that secretly downloads and hides kiddie porn--why would the malware developer do that? I really can't fault the emploeyr for not considering such an idea and investigating it.
The defense attorney, though, is to advocate for his client, even if the client claims seem far-fetched.
hawk, esq.
Why? lots of reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
* to provide a plausible alibi for any of his perverted friends
* to drive up the cost of prosecuting this type of crime so prosecutors will have less money to prosecute his brother-in-law who runs an organized crime family
* kicks/jollies/juvenile reasons
* someone paid him to do it
* Why ask why
* He wanted his work to get on CowboyNealBoard, er, I mean Slashdot
Re:Why? lots of reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
It happens with malware spreading sites, why not illegal porn?
If the malware can run a distributed dynamic dns based site, it will achieve a highly distributed network that would be hard to shut down easily.
Re:Lawyer: This, boys and girls, is why . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
What that bit of malware probably did was go around to a bunch of sites that the author gets fees from and makes it look like someone is browsing them.
Get a botnet of 1,000 computers going and it looks like hacker X convinced 1,000 people to view the site over and over.
Re:Lawyer: This, boys and girls, is why . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lawyer: This, boys and girls, is why . . . (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lawyer: This, boys and girls, is why . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lawyer: This, boys and girls, is why . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I've actually seen this sort of thing a couple times... not for kiddie porn luckily. Just movies (hollywood) and warez back before p2p.
As you can imagine finding servers to host and distribute this sort of stuff can be difficult. So why not compromise some random persons laptop, setup an ftp server, irc, dynamic dns, and whatever else... and then use it as a free and 'anonymous' remote host and storage.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least that this could be in use for kiddie porn distribution.
I really can't fault the emploeyr for not considering such an idea and investigating it.
When dealing with any case of child abuse including kiddie porn, one should ALWAYS be extremely cautious. Because whether he is innocent or not, people will never look at him the same way again.
..why Megan's law and "zero tolerance" is tyranny. (Score:5, Insightful)
zero tolerance laws produce an extreme disincentive to properly and discretely investigate such things before slinging around an accusation which will ruin somebody's life.
"Megan's law"s punish people after the official debt to society has been paid. If you are so sure pedophilia is an incurable, life-long disease, than imprison them for life or develop a house arrest program, but you can't simply toss these sex offenders out, put a big neon "child molester" sign over their head, and pretend they have the same rights, or are not in danger of vigilantism.
Re:..why Megan's law and "zero tolerance" is tyran (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:..why Megan's law and "zero tolerance" is tyran (Score:5, Insightful)
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Frankly, zero-tolerance doesn't seem like what the Founders had in mind, nor does torturing people you don't like for the rest of their natural (and now probably shortened) lives. Granted, I suppose this depends upon your interpretation of "cruel and unusual", but if this can be applied to sex offenders it can be applied to any group of people if you can manage to vilify them sufficiently.
Re:..why Megan's law and "zero tolerance" is tyran (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:..why Megan's law and "zero tolerance" is tyran (Score:5, Insightful)
Note his daughter was 11. He saw him on the sex offender list and thought "kiddy fucker" immediately, not "rape" or "mild sexual harassment" (which can get you there too, with a little work).
Re:Lawyer: This, boys and girls, is why . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is true, though, the real question then becomes how they didn't notice the virus on the machine when reconfiguring things (poorly) for the new user. At that point, if the defense argument is accurate, the malware should have still been able to display this stuff, and you'd think the IT guys would have noticed...
Re:Lawyer: This, boys and girls, is why . . . (Score:5, Informative)
There is more than one kind of malware.
One kind sends Phishing Spam / Viagra spam / etc.
Another performs DDoS attacks.
A third acts as a distributed FTP/Fileshare server so that the guilty have a place to hide & share their wares and not have a single point of being shut down by the authorities. Whether this be lists of CC numbers or kiddie porn is immaterial.
-nB
Re:Lawyer: This, boys and girls, is why . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lawyer: This, boys and girls, is why . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Why would it matter whether you believe someone might have a motive? I don't understand why people might commit all sorts of crimes, because I'd never do that. But some people commit those crimes anyway. Lots of people have motives to frame others for crimes.
In any case, on to methods. I have a demo on my web site of how to do "preloading" in javascript. Is javascript enabled in your browser? If so, my demo shows how I can create a web page that quietly downloads images from arbitrary URLs, without showing them to you. This may be used to load those images into your browser's cache. It has valid uses, such as to speed up subsequent downloading of other pages from my site which use those images. But I can just as easily fill your browser's cache with porn. Unless you know how to scan your browser's cache (or have the sense to purge it frequently), you'll never know what I've done to you. My code (actually my web server) also tells me your IP address, which I can use to send the authorities in to examine your browser's cache.
I'd be willing to testify in court how easy this is. And give the court a copy of my code (though they could easily download it from my web site
And yes, I usually do browse with scripting disabled. This was typed into a Firefox 3.0 window, which has the NoScripts extension installed. My demo code won't work against me.
Most organisations wouldn't (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Certainly sounds fair... (Score:5, Informative)
There is no excuse for giving someone a used laptop or workstation that hasn't been cleaned. We don't concern ourselves much with our workstations since they never leave our network, but any laptops get a thorough cleansing before being re-issued to someone else.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Certainly sounds fair... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Certainly sounds fair... (Score:5, Funny)
yet another (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:yet another (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yet another (Score:4, Interesting)
You rely on child exploitation laws which are already in place perhaps? If a child is harmed there are plenty of laws in the way to make sure there is a measure of justice.
This pretty much equates to outlawing the symptoms of a problem such as the tremors of an alcoholic in need of smooth refreshing goodness.
In that context the video is simply evidence against the person who actually harmed a child. That sounds like appropriate punishment to me.
I don't think that will happen though and I actually agree with the current law, at some point I think certain kinds of content serve no use to society, such as malware and kiddie porn but I can understand that information should always be legal. I think in this context we could argue that it is not information and is simply objectionable content.
When something is no good for anyone I think it's safe to say that it should be illegal. If someone comes along that can prove it does some good then the issue needs to be readdressed and evaluated for legitimacy.
Re:yet another (Score:5, Insightful)
I once heard that described as "trying to cure diarrhea by tinkering with the plumbing in your house."
When something is no good for anyone I think it's safe to say that it should be illegal. If someone comes along that can prove it does some good then the issue needs to be readdressed and evaluated for legitimacy.
That, ultimately, isn't the issue. The problem here is that the mere accusation of child pornography is punitive to such a degree that, even if you're not ultimately convicted, you'll suffer severe consequences. That's not what the Founders had in mind for our legal system (as corrupted as their vision has become.) Somebody who gets nailed for drug possession or dealing (which, given how much the government spends to stop it must be a crime worse than murder) doesn't go through what a person merely accused of possessing child pornography does. It's one thing to punish those who break the law, those who hurt other people
Better to let a guilty man go free than imprison an innocent one. There are those who disagree with that, who believe that a few thousand wrongly imprisoned souls are a small price to pay "for the children" but they're wrong. If child pornography is truly as big a problem as everyone says (I'm not saying that it isn't, I just haven't looked up any numbers on it) then give law enforcement the funds they need to go after the real criminals, the ones who exploit the innocent is such a horrible way. To do otherwise is no justice at all.
Re:yet another (Score:4, Interesting)
Wouldn't remember it was cnet if it wasn't so much out of their usual scope. However, I think the author had a very valid point. And if someone knows how to get this article I'd highly appreciate it - couldn't find it in recent years...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:yet another (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:yet another (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yet another (Score:5, Insightful)
You told it: it doesn't make sense to make information illegal to posess. I thought that to be self-evident in "the land of the free".
Re:yet another (Score:5, Insightful)
"Officer, I'd like to make an anonymous tip. So-and-so Smith is carrying marijuana in a plastic baggie taped to the inside of his bumper, license plate 555-555. He parks at workplace. I overheard him talking about selling it."
Bam. Reasonable cause, possession, and intent to distribute despite the fact that Mr. Smith has led a blameless life. Because of someone's grudge and quick work with masking tape, he's now a felon.
Possession crimes are super-easy to prove in court and are therefore a favorite of prosecutors.
"Here's a photo of the illicit material in his possession. What do you think, jury? If he had the material in his possession, he's guilty of the crime."
Of course there are absolutely no corrupt officials or police officers who would ever plant such evidence. If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.
Bonus: Captcha == "Bunkmate" which is what this guy narrowly avoided being plowed by.
This Is What Lawyers Are For... (Score:3, Informative)
Alas (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alas (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm honestly curious to know; how could they have possibly investigated this more?
Re:Alas (Score:4, Interesting)
A poorer man would've been convicted (Score:5, Insightful)
If he hadn't had the resources to hire his own expert, he would be in prison and branded a sex offender for life, all because his boss didn't practice safe hex.
Tough lesson learned... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Of course that is probably a better circumstance under which to be looking for a new job than the one he's in now...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The majority of computer users are unaware... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Tough lesson learned... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dayam. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that Linux (or OSX, or any of 'em for that matter) are 100% crack-proof, but putting one's career at the mercy of common malware and the only safety net is a sharp eye at the IT department?
OTOH, I suspect this guy (if he plays his cards right and has a sharp lawyer on retainer) may never have to work another day in his life.
The real crime here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The real crime here... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Telling quote from TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds too familiar. What's really fucked up is that his former employers "stand by their decision", namely to fire the guy. The bare minimum would be a public excuse, an offer to let him work there again, and probably a hefty compensation if he refused. But that's not likely to happen since by definition, the government knows best.
"We stand by our decision" (Score:5, Insightful)
"We stand by our decision," she said.
The worst part is that the assholes at DIA responsible for the horrible "roll-out" of a replacement laptop, and the PHB's responsible for firing him w/o doing proper research into the issue will not be punished in any way. THEIR lives won't be ruined. Even if he wins a lawsuit. It'll be money from the DIA, but no real punishment to the people involved.
Somebody find all their names and contact info (I'm too lazy) and post it. Let's send the info to Russia with requests for Viagra and child porn.
Seriously though, The Office is funny on TV, but tragic in real life. These people should be arrested for harassment and criminal negligence at the least.
What kind of laws can we enforce (and/or pass) to truly punish the individuals responsible for shit like this? Lawsuit money from the organization isn't even close to justice.
Been there to an extent (Score:5, Interesting)
I was even fooled by it once. I found pr0n bookmarks under a cute girl's login and I was thinking "Daaamn this girl is a freaky.." for a few seconds until I realized what it was. I could easily see how people would jump the gun and over react when they find actual material on a computer and not just bookmarks however they should at least ASK the person if they're guilty and send it for investigation first.
Whats interesting in this story is.... (Score:5, Interesting)
However, another article (can't find the link, sorry) was interviewing one of the detectives involved with the case. What he said was something along the lines of "there was a LOT of porn on the computer. 99% of it was just gross stuff, not illegal. But we did find a few pics of young girls.". Which makes me wonder --- how, exactly, do they define child porn?
Are they just arresting people because pictures look young?
It just seems odd that all of a sudden there is all this kiddie porn out on the publicly available internet and it does not draw attention. I would presume, with Tor, Freenet, etc all of that activity would be driven underground (ie: encrypted). Is there really "spam" and popup based kiddie porn still going on in the WWW?
I ask because I have...err...my friend has not seen it since the early early days of the internet. Back then, you truly could stumble across it accidentally. It hasn't been that way for a long long time though, in my experience.
Re:Whats interesting in this story is.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whats interesting in this story is.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, with child porn one could make a reasonable guess -- there is no confusing an image of a 6-year-old as possibly 18. But for "incest images", the only "portrayal" could be from a text label (in the image, or the filename), or some blatanly obvious visual hints in the photos, which would have been *deliberately* placed to convey the idea that the image portrays incest. There is no way to deduce from an image of two naked people, without knowing their identities as well, that they are engaging in incest.
Saying they the images portray incest based on the labels is no more justified than saying that they portray space aliens, or members of the White House staff, or Osama bin Ladin in disguise.
And are images depicting (or just claiming to depict) incest a crime?
I saw the movie (Score:5, Insightful)
the ultimate untraceable weapon (Score:5, Interesting)
usually a witch hunt to fire high paid worker (Score:5, Interesting)
Their team also loves to hand us data that their forensic person has pulled from Windows without giving us access to the original drive. When questioned on how he obtained the data it was clear that their certified forensic expert didn't make a locked copy of the drive but logged in and poked around. The certification their contractor has is from IACIS http://www.cops.org/certifications [cops.org]
None of them so far has gone to a judge AFAIK but I know my PHB has testified for an arbitrator and the arbitrator ruled there was insufficient evidence for a dismissal.
Back to Salem? (Score:4, Insightful)
So these regular folks would notice that somebody (often a lonely old woman) acted a bit oddly. Instead of using a bit of imagination and charity to understand why, they leaped to the conclusion that she was consorting with the Devil. Just as some Native American tribes got their fun from torturing prisoners to death - life was DULL in those days - torturing and killing a witch just made their year. (Another possible parallel is that those who informed on "witches" often did a deal with the state whereby they split the victim's - often considerable - possessions between them).
Nowadays it's not quite respectable to torture people or burn them alive (unless they're foreign Bad People). But these here pedophiles... we should string 'em all up.
There seems to be a type of mentality that doesn't even want to understand how nasty pictures can wind up on someone's laptop, without the owner's knowledge or consent. It's just a great chance to get someone down and kick him, kick him, kick him...
The man was EXONERATED (Score:4, Insightful)
The point here is that an innocent man has been through hell because IT screwed up and didn't set up SMS correctly so his computer had numerous security holes. The summary doesn't convey this, of course, resulting in the stupid (and, actually, offensive) comments from those who assume that he was guilty based on the summary. Folks, this is a real story about a real person, not something from xkcd. You should not be so quick to judge, especially when you didn't RTFA.
The guy might be rotting the the slammer somewhere if it weren't for his wife who rounded up the competent resources to find out what really happened.
I am infuriated because of the occasional poor summary posting that Slashdot seems to be proud of. If I see another story about an air-powered car again, I am going to puke and stop reading.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I submitted to the Firehose at 6PM! on the 18th (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That's a nice HUGE FREAKIN' BLOCK OF TEXT (Score:5, Interesting)