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Blow the Whistle, Lose Your Job?
ccnull writes "You're a systems admin. On a routine PC repair, you discover a trove of child porn on an employee's PC. You call the cops. The employee pleads guilty and goes to jail. Then what do you do? You get fired. InformationWeek has an interesting expose on whistleblowers who lost their jobs, they say, because they publicly embarassed the company. The company has another version of the story. No matter what the reality is, at the center of this is a good question: If you discover illegal goodies on a machine, what should you do about it?"
why not let them embarass the company.. or just cover it up..
MABASPLOOM!
If you're heading out into the cube farm to fix an end user's desktop, you ought to ignore everything that's not part of the problem.
Now, if the hard drive was literally full, and the reason is that there's gigabytes of kiddie porn and no room for a temp file, then you'd be justified mentioning something. I'd probably say something like "You should delete the Candyman directory, it's taking up too much room. Is it okay if I go ahead and delete that for you?"
Unless your organization has an acceptable use policy for the computers, and unless the employees are aware that personal files on their computers are going to be audited/double-clicked on by bored techies, and unless your job description specifically states that you are to monitor for unacceptable use, then you have no business snooping around. In my experience, 1/3 of the people never install stuff without approval, 1/3 of them install RealPlayer even if you tell them not to, and the other 1/3 install RealPlayer and everything else they can click on without even realizing it because they are clueless but thankfully the tech support guys are there to clean up the mess afterwards.
Look, employees have to sit in front of these screens eight hours a day. Is it really anyone's business WHAT or HOW they decide to use their computers, so long as they are getting the job done?
And what next, after you tell on the guy with kiddie porn? Bob has too many MP3s, Larry didn't wash his hands after using the bathroom, and Alice took an extra ten minutes on her lunch break. Nobody wants to work with a person like that. Just do your job, ignore the kiddie porn, and get on with your life. I would hate to be the director of IT, and have some techie ruin my week by coming up to me and telling me that some employee has kiddie porn on his computer. This was not a problem until some n00b techie started looking at stuff he shouldn't have and had to go blabbing his big mouth about it.
Firing might seem harsh, but if someone with access to all the data in the company can't exhibit some discretion, I think it's justifiable.
Of course, kiddie porn is sooo highly illegal in this country (rules of entrapment don't apply, etc.) that the firee probably can make a strong case that the only reason he was fired is because he alerted manegement to an endemic problem within the organization. That wouldn't get him his job back, but it would be a nice payback to get the U.S. Marshalls in their seizing hard drives and restoring from tape to look for any other kiddie porn on the company LAN.
Mr. Townsend, is that you?
Oops, that was research, right?
You're assuming that the children were hurt, which may or may not be true.
I'd rather assume that, and be wrong; then to assume that children are not hurt, and be wrong.
I'm certain the children would prefer I feel that way too.
It is more than 'simply' "children might be hurt" (of course it isn't "might", but rather it is "children are being hurt"). Lives are at stake. Do you think that 9/11 was a fluke and that the terrorists (who happen to be your neighbors, thanks to our far too lax immigration policies) aren't biding their time for another round? If so, I hope you're right, but I really doubt that you are. And I'd rather not take chances with my families' lives, or our childrens' safety.
self-rightous cunt
De Oppresso Liber
I'm taking the company's side. :) The quotes from the Plaintiffs made them sound a lot like the kind of people who would accuse their boss of anything if the boss did anything but lick the employee's assholes. Stuff like "We werent' trained by the company to deal with finding child pornography". How the fuck is the company supposed to train them? Further, how are they supposed to train them without getting in trouble themselves?
I'll bet they were problem employees who didn't exactly handle themselves with maturity throughout this particular ordeal and were terminated WITH CAUSE. I've seen their like before. Fuck 'em all. Darwin in the work force should weed out these people.
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