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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?"
But child porn... I'd tell for sure. Fire me if you will...
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
... I simply report them anonymously.
That way, the perpetrator gets punished, I am left out of the deliberations, and everyone's happy.
Just email the URL or IP address to the proper authorities (your boss, the police, etc.) from one of your anonymous email accounts and you're all set (use a proxy too).
For each child in a single picture, how many more are hurt by it propagating along the internet and encouraging more abuse?
I think that there should be a law to protect whistleblowers, and perhaps some form of federal insurance that the can draw from in the event that they are retaliated against.
Whistleblowing, wether it is calling the cops on pedophiles in the workplace, or terrorists in your apartment building, is a critical tool of law enforcement. Sadly, too many privacy nuts would rather shelter pedos for the sake of being able to post anonymous crap on message boards...
I've already noted several posts here that say words to the effect of "report it to the boss" and "its not your problem to call the law".
Unfortunately, that is not always such a simple decision.
In some states, and I'm sure many more will follow, it is the law that, should you find evidence of child abuse or child porn, YOU are guilty of a crime if YOU do not report it immediately to authorities.
You may be an agent of the company, but you are also subject to the laws of the state you are working in.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I work government network security for a living. Part of the ethics instilled in us (along with federal regulations governing the position) is the broad understanding that we are here to protect the security of the network. We are not the porn police or any other type of legal official.
We are legally bound NOT TO report anything even if discovered on a routine call, not our job. We are not legally authorized to invade your privacy. That is why they have policy with warrants. It is also a position I stand behind and advidly enforce on my more moral or do gooder juniors. Your users should trust you to do your job and FIX the computer / issue, not narc them out. Your job is NOT to enforce your morality or ideas of what the law is upon them.
If you want to be a narc join a legal body and put your computer skills to use helping them. If just want to narc on your coworker because they don't fit in your ideas of morality, I have no sympathy for you or anybody like you. Losing your job should be the least of your worries, you should be hung from a tree.
Everybody breaks the law including you. Do you really want to live in a society where the guy behind you on the freeway calls the police on you for doing 57 in a 55.
Mind your own business and do you job unless your job is to bust folk.
De Oppresso Liber
Are we becoming good little nazis who spy on each other and use punishment and revenge as the first resort?
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
OK, change the situation. Say you're in the office, and an unstable co-worker who happens to be in favor with the next level of management takes exception to some action of yours and proceeds to beat the living shit out of you with a baseball bat.
Do you "Work within the system" and let management discipline him, or call the cops and have his ass thrown in jail?
If you say "call the cops" How is it different if you're not the victim?
If you don't, when did you lose your self-preservation instinct, and did it hurt?
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Also it encorages those pervs inbetween who are potentially abusers themselves. Since they can get the porn, and since others find it desirable to share, then what is depicted must not be so bad.
So why not look at little suzy? It's just looking
Why not touch little suzy, it's not serious...and my net friends told me they would too...
Does that make things clearer for you?
I completely understand what you are saying about the "proper channels".
I worked at particularly large American semiconductor manufacturer for many years.
They have their own fire response team.
If there's a fire on the site, screw the city fire department -- you're supposed to call security.
The company says that the city fire department is unfamiliar with the chemicals and equipment that they're liable to encounter. On the other hand, they have been chastised by the city police department and fire department on more than one occassion because they unnecessarily risked human safety by trying to handle their problems themselves, allowing them to spiraled out of control.
In the end, the company was frequently unable to handle these situations.
Now, here is why I'm very, very skeptical of your suggestion...
Corporations are legal entities in the eyes of the law, sure, but they have no morals. They didn't "grow up"... they are chartered by suits, snapping into life in one afternoon. Unlike real people, their first and only priority in life is financial.
I don't know you. Our parents didn't know each other. I grew up and live in Texas and I have no idea where you live. Still, I'll bet that you and I would probably agree on the "right thing to do" in 99% of the moral delimmas that we encounter, even though everything in the equation is subjective.
That's amazing to me, but it's a testiment to how societies function to keep order.
And how about corporations? Who "raised" them and what are their motives?
The real purpose of a company's "proper channels" is to mitigate their legal liabilities, that's all.
Go find a corporate lawyer and ask. They'll set you straight on this.
An employee discovering illegal porn on a computer or illegal anything is in a tough position: report it to you employer and the problem will magically go away or report it to the proper authorities and get fired because you violated some legal agreement you signed with them (under duress) the year before.
Employees caught in this situation are not fools; they're just unfortunate bastards.
--Richard
Well without seeing exactly what pictures these techs saw, one can't say for sure, but I think 99% of 'kiddie porn' accusations are nonsense. They don't involve, say, someone kidnapping 5 year olds and photographing their rape and torture. Now, if this professor was actually doing that, then I'd have no problem throwing the switch on him. But something tells me that's exceedingly unlikely.
Usually what's involved is someone that didn't produce the pictures, has no way to know their provenence and in no way contributed to their making, and the pictures in question are perhaps shots of 16 year old girls on nude beaches and the like. 16 years is the age of consent in a lot of countries you know. In the US it was formerly 12, in fact if memory serves 11 in one state. And there's no way to tell what age a model was in most cases anyway - is that a 16 year old, or an 18? Without knowing the provenence of the pictures and having records to prove the ages of those involved, it's simple conjecture, hiding behind outrage to avoid proving anything.
Frankly, in the absence of evidence of some real wrongdoing (kidnapping, torture, whatnot) I'm extremely skeptical of the notion of simply possessing digital image files being a crime. I'm extremely skeptical, also, of a tech that would make a stink because he saw some naughty pictures on a professors machine. Like I said, without having been there and knowing all the details, I'll have to withold judgement, but it sure sounds to me like a couple of people that have proven themselves untrustworthy by their actions, caused a basically innocent man a hell of a lot of trouble, and deserve a lot worse than they're getting.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Just do your job, ignore the kiddie porn, and get on with your life.
Ignore the kiddie porn? Ignore clear evidence of a felony?
What if you recognized one of the children in the photos? What if you (accidentally or otherwise) ran across a photograph of your neighbor's child, your niece or nephew, your son or daughter, being sexually abused? Would you just ignore it and get on with your life? If not, why would it make any difference if the children in the photographs are strangers?
Ok, maybe you don't think child pornography should be a crime. What if you ran across photographs that provided evidence of bank robberies? Murder? Rape?
!!!NUKE ALL ARABS GO AMERICA!!!
Oh, I see. You're an idiot.
Ok, fair enough. If the kids in the kiddie porn were his own kids, or there was some other evidence that he had taken the pictures himself (they were taken in his house, for instance), then I would agree that one should get the police involved immediately. But if he just downloaded some stuff off the net, I think the correct response is just tell him to delete it from the office computer and do his jerking off at home!
Really, do we have to make a federal case out of everything?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
No HR is NOT the proper channel, a FELONY was commited, the only proper channel is the police. Why is that so hard for people to understand. If a murder occours in the lobby do you call HR? No, you call the police. HR is for minor squables or at the most sexual harasment claims, not for serious felonies.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Contraband MP3s/movies are one thing - child pornography is something completely different.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
What if it is the boss's computer?
Go to HR. Talk to them about what you found. Give them a heads up and that you may have to involve law enforcement, but want to give the company time to put together a coordinated response.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I think the correct response is just tell him to delete it from the office computer and do his jerking off at home!
Except then he continues to be a consumer of child pornography, thus he continues to pay for it, and someone else (an even bigger sicko) continues to get paid to exploit children in disgusting ways.
my pet machine