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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?"
Alter the evidence to look like the porn was found on your boss's computer
...so you can horde all of the contraband you discover on workstations and servers. :)
you are a whistle tester.
four-oh-four
But child porn... I'd tell for sure. Fire me if you will...
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
When you're at work you're acting as an agent of your employer. You should always go through your proper chain of command until the situation is resolved. The last step in the chain being law enforcement.
... 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).
See No Evil, Listen No Evil, Say No Evil, and keep the job.
Actually, the companies who fire whistle blowers really do have something to hide, which also shows that they are untrustworthy with their business pratices.
Please direct all bug reports to
I know I would be very displeased if I found one of our system administrators playing "computer god" with our proprietary information. If he can't be trusted to keep the privacy of a coworker, then who's to say that he can keep the privacy of the company's trade secrets? He would be outta here in no time.
--sdem
An officer of a company is a representative of that company. While people are personally accountable for their actions on a criminal level, their actions are nonetheless that of the company, as well.
Remember, a "company" doesn't exist. It's just an idea held by a group of people. Think of these people as your friends, because even if you don't like them, they are. They help provide for your welfare.
Would you report your best friend's smoking weed? Would you report your father for voeyerism?
Report this matter to your boss, and document (in writing) that you did so. Having effectively wiped your hands of the matter, enjoy your job.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
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'm not quite sure about this one. The story submitter says that these people were fired because they gave the company a bad light, but this wouldn't even be about the company, since they were being outsourced. It was a computer of a professor at New York Law School, not a computer of someone at Collegis.
[insert witty comment here]
The pervert doesn't know you'll both get fired for reporting it.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
According to the employer's response, that's exactlty what happened in this case.
What happened after that, and why, is less clear.The problem with the other option - covering it up - could be that some children would continue to be abused.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
Couldn't you just blow the whistle to the police anonymously a few weeks later? As long as you don't tell anyone else about it and leave a long time delay no one will realise that it was you (hopefully).
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
ok to comment on that seriously, I'm not saying its right but perhaps it has to do with the loss of trust after someone has snitch on his/her own people, kinda like when somebody betrays their leader and joins the other side in a war or they're a double agent -- these people are never fully trusted again no matter what.
for the person that gets fired for whistle blowing, if they can prove with hard evidence that thats why they got fired they should be able to use the anti dicrimination act (or the equivalent in your country)..... and embarass the company again.
Personally, if I found something as severe as child porn I'd definitly report him to the police. If I lose my job then I sue.
There should be a law againist punishing whisle blowers.
Bugs are just features that have been fixed.
When you're at work you're acting as an agent of your employer. You should always go through your proper chain of command until the situation is resolved. The last step in the chain being law enforcement.
The corporate chain of command doesn't apply to criminal activity, only to company policy. If you witness criminal activity then it is your responsibility as a citizen to report it. We can get into discussions about how bad the crime needs to be, but if it's a crime and you feel like it should be reported then why go to the boss first?
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
It wasn't until AUGUST that these two employees actually went and talked to anyone directly:
In any case, and complain if you like, but this is much more serious than having, say, some MP3s or something (which very arguably could be legal), since those aren't originating from the abuse of someone who will most likely become scarred for life.
[insert witty comment here]
Don't jump to conclusions. Take a look at the other article in which Collegis responds with:
"Employment of the technicians ended due to issues completely unrelated to this isolated incident, which will become clear as the case progresses through the legal system. Claims made by the plaintiffs cannot be taken at face value and should not be trumpeted as fact via media when they are based solely on unsubstantiated allegations."
Yes, it sounds like they're covering their collective asses, but can't they cover their asses AND be telling the truth? We're so cynical now a-days that we always want to focus on the most negative aspects of things.
There is no spoon...
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Advise him to erase it, or at least encrypt it and transfer it to his home computer.
So, are you unaware that his downloading said porn in the first place is financially and morally supporting the sites he got it from, whom in turn finance people who sexually molest their children?
Or are you simply condoning child abuse?
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.
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.
A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five.
Or maybe it's not that funny.
I would say escalate it to your boss then, allow them to take care of the issue appropriately. What a bummer to get fired over somebody's obsession with kiddy PRON.
I was severely reprimanded on two different subjects- one was over our complete and total lack of fire supression equipment in our server room. The building-wide system's alarm in the room didn't even work- and you couldn't hear the others outside because of the air handler. Extremely dangerous on so many counts. How did I get in trouble? Fire Marshall pointed at the server room and said "What's in there?" while I was headed that way. "Server room." "I want to go in there." "Okay."(what was I supposed to say? "Sorry, don't have the key to the door I was walking towards", even if I felt like lying?) That got me screamed at real fast, because the fire marshall hit the ceiling when he saw a complete and utter lack of fire supression. No sprinklers(water, gas, fog/foam, whatever. Nothing there. Why? Landlord had ripped out the half-dead system.) Nothing ever came of the FM's threats- I'm sure the landlord paid him off.
Second case was some hand-me-down backup software from our "main" office. It was, of course, licensed to specific Solaris system IDs, belonging to systems we couldn't have, for whatever reason. They wanted me to change the system IDs- defeating the whole licensing system(ie, against the license terms.) I refused, on two grounds- violated the licensing terms, and it was probably not possible/could damage the system's hardware, according to the stuff I had read on the sun manager's list.
Why couldn't they simply call up and ask to have the keys re-issued for new systems, which was 100%, completely allowed for in the terms of the license? They were $20,000+ in the hole with the vendor, the only company who could reissue the license keys.
Please help metamoderate.
Just ask Enron, Worldcom, the FBI, all branches of the military, and many others. They all agree that if you relay a problem to your superiors, the matter will be handled in a timely, ethical matter.
I understand not wanting IT guys to become the copyright police, but serious felonies are different. If you see a man rape a coworker in the janitor's closet, shouldn't you call the cops? The law may not require you to speak up, but morality does.
So the question is, where does child porn fall on the spectrum ranging from jaywalking to serial killing? I think child porn -- given that the market for new images directly leads to the exploitation of helpless kids -- is pretty far on the serious end of the scale. We're not talking about a bootlegged copy of "Matrix Reloaded" here.
As to those calling for whistleblower protection, such laws exists for many federal and state issues. Learn more here.
From what I can tell, a bunch of posters seem to believe that the "chain of command" and other coprorate culturisms should have trumped the basic humanity demonstrated by the plaintiffs in the case here. Maybe the law school would have covered up the professor's wrongdoing or incompetently allowed him to destroy the evidence before the police arrived. The whistleblowers prevented that and set an example.
Unlike other "think of the children" laws, those banning child porn really do protect actual kids from real abuse.
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
The Boss will either just fire the employee or call the cops herself. Regardless, you should call the cops too, especially in the case of child porn which is quite serious.
Ideally you should alert the boss first to prepare for the embarassment and have the spokesman prepare statements before the employee is carried away. Tell her, I intend to notify the cops, she wont be able to stop you then. If she tries to stop you, and you tell the cops, and get fired, youd have a lot against the boss too.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I used to work on repairing printing machinery and one place I went to was publishing a child porn mag called 'Young and Free'. The machinery was repaired without comment and as I drove away I phoned the police on the cellphone.
Each of the guys working there got a prison sentence, and I hope they had a tough time.
Peter Jones
Ex AGFA engineer
Although I would have to admit that going above the boss' head is a dumb move in this particular case, quite honestly if you know the company is doing something wrong - for instance if this guy didn't get fired for the child porn on his computer, or if the company as a whole is doing something illegal, like laundering money - if you don't blow the whistle, you are an accomplice under the law.
I seem to recall that people have been protected for reporting corporate crime before, and as such the company in question here may be in trouble for firing their sysadmin.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I believe the SC Legislature recently passed a law that requires an IT person to turn in another who may have Child Pornography on their computer. Not doing so would be illegal. For the company to fire the person afterwards would then open the company up to litigation. Basically, I'm between a rock and a rock! Time for a Career Change??
The truth is usually just an excuse for lack of imagination.
Very obviously, the first thing you should do is read the company security policy and find out whether your find conflicts with it. If it does, shut up or give an anonymous hint to the police.
I've written a security policy for a company. Data privacy and data security do sometimes conflict, and if the company doesn't have that problem sorted out in a written document, urge it to do so.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Notice the funny moderation?
It's not the porn that's bad. It's what you do with it!
. . . something like that is found and the first thing the person with the porn knows about it is an anonymous note asking how much they are willing to pay *not* to be turned in?
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
You're the sysadmin, why not just delete it? After all, the employee can't complain about it without divulging the fact that he had illegal pictures on his computer.
Like eagles on pogo-sticks! -- Glottis
What should you do about it? What until the owner shows up for it, then beat the shit out of him.
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
Only an idiot would post without first reading the article and discovering that they did report the incident to their supervisors.
Dinivin
My suggestion is go to the company Human Resources and/or in-house legal and let them deal with it. Be sure to document that you have done so.
For a situation as politically charged as this, the whistle blowers should go straight to their own attorney for advice. Hate to say it, but many companies place their reputations above the law. Some managers may have the internal clout to make your life miserable for even raising the issue internally.
Some /. posters have made the point that firearms are defensive weapons, and that the more innocent people with firearms, the harder it is for bad people to use firearms for bad purposes. I would make the same argument about lawyers
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
You should call the police. Tells the boss that you're going to call the police, don't let him (or her) talk you out of it. In the long run you might lose your job, but you'll know that you did the right thing. You very easily end up thinking about whether or not you did the right thing or knowing that the person who commited the crime didn't get the appropriate punishment.
A clean conscience is more important than the best paying job in the world.
Looks like the proper chain of command to me. Also, looks to me like Collegis is trying to make an example out of the whistle-blowers so clients will not be afraid to continue dealing with them out of fear that they will be ratted out if something objectionable, or illegal, is found.
Some people have this attitude towards porn, but usually, it's because they haven't seen the right kind yet.
Just wait until you get married and you're down to one night every week. You'll go hunt down some dvds you and the wife can 'enjoy together'. Believe it or not, the right kind of porn makes women very excited.
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
Except the constitution, which says people have a right to face their accusers.
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).
Um, no. Most proxies keep logs. Many even pass in the HTTP headers what client they're proxying for. Oh, and Hotmail, Yahoo, etc all put your client's IP in the headers of any email you send. Worst case, it would take anyone with half a clue and subpoena(sp?) power about a day to find out where the email really came from, if that.
Please help metamoderate.
Whats wrong with normal porn ? Ethically - no one is getting hurt.
:)
Helps relieve sexual frustration. Its good!
(Note: I am not talking about child porn here - thats inhuman)
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
NOT
FOR
CHILD
PORNOGRAPHY
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
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
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
Only an idiot would get all high and mighty, and call the police right away. He deserved to be fired.
Tell your boss and let the company deal with it. Don't embarrass yourself and your employer all in one go. Sheesh, this is worthy of a front page story?
"Hey, I saw my boss whack Chuck in the basement, I should go make an appointment with the VP so that we can resolve this internally!"
What a fucking coward you are! And who modded this moron up? "Wahh, I don't want to get involved. I'm a spineless craven without the ability to think for myself. I must go to my boss so he can tell me what to think and say!"
It's doormats like you that have made the world what it is today. Maybe if people stood up for what was right, rather than roll over for anything that might cause them any discomfort, there'd be less crime. But what can be expected from someone who just wants to download MP3s and watch porn all day?
Mod me down and I shall become more trollish than you can possibly imagine!
"I'm quitting church, I spend way too much time in the bathroom with a copy of Hustler to be bothered by Jesus every sunday."
When Jesus is relegated to Sundays only; it doesn't take too much to reach the conclusion you've just stated.
Everybody knows that as soon as you place yourself at the scene of a crime, you become a suspect. My friends and I learned this when we called the police after seeing some kids set fire to a pallet of cardboard boxes behind a Wal-Mart. Guess who got grilled the hardest? Yup.
You see something wrong? I'll tell you what you do. Walk away. It's either that, or get yourself involved and substantially raise the chances that something negative will happen to you.
In this case, the chain of command is trumped by the law. The police is the first line in the chain of command because a crime was commited. Any idiot who is advocating the chain of command in this case is advocating a coverup. Alot of time, corporations use the chain of command as a technique to cover the asses of the people higher up. If an employee sees a crime or fraud, call the cops or FBI. If more people did that in Enron and Worldcom, it would have saved alot of people their pension money. The chain of command is not law. The law enacted by legislature and congress is the law and is supreme to any coverup mechanisms that corporations are advocating.
the article says:
"For two hours, Perry tried to fix it, uninstalling and reinstalling antivirus software, but the system continued to malfunction. The next day, Perry gave the PC to Gross to back up, fearing it might crash and lose valuable data."
Any technician that "fix things" repeatedly installing and uninstalling the same software doesn't deserve the job... but that's my opinion...
And to report the problem to police is wrong, there is an hierarchy in the company, if they thought that the company wasn't acting accordingly to the case, the should anonymously fill a complain with authorities...
If the company policy is that PCs are not for personal use and may not contain illegally-copied materials, I'm gonna tell them to clean up their act. If I find it a second time, you're goddam sure as hell I'm going to report it. Same with giant MP3 collections, P2P clients...none of it is appropriate in a work environment. You remind them they're violating policy, and if they keep it up, you let the appropriate folks know the facts. Seriously, what planet are you on?
I see this all the time with users- they think that because they USE the PC, it is THEIR PC, and they have the right to do whatever the hell they want to with it...
Please help metamoderate.
The idea of going to the boss first is a good idea. This is the same thing with any other event that may require the involvement of law enforcement (not including emergency services). You do this, get in touch with HR, PR, etc. so that when you go to law enforcement, the company has a coordinated response. This limits the damage to the company when the story gets out.
Creating a record of your interactions is helpful because if they fire you depending on the state, you may be able to sue, or at least complain to HR regarding your treatment. Being able to document your interactions is helpful.
Next you give your company the opertunity to go to law enforcement. Ask your boss how long he or she needs for this process. Again document, etc. and them if necessary (and only after good-faith avenues are exhausted) do you go to law enforcement. I would give warning to the management at this point that if they do not deal with the legal implications, that all your interactions on the matter will be handed over to law enfocement too for your protection (so they don't accuse you as an accomplice).
At this point they have trouble firing until after the police are involved, but if they push back too far, then that might become part of the investigation.
My own opinion is that you should look out for the interest of the company as well as trying to see that justice is done. Of course if they refuse to take up the oppertunity, then you probably don't want to work for them. And when your story appears in the news, maybe they will think twice next time....
Act in good faith and the rest will work out...
Then again, there are illegal things (like mp3's) and illegal things (like child porn) and they are not created equal.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
It's not just an accusation, it's a pointer to hard evidence. Why does it matter who found the evidence?
So lets see, you find a coworker murdered in a storage closet. You go inform your manager at Waste Management, Inc. He pounces for the phone, and tells you to proceed to your next task, which happens to be on another floor. Oddly enough, the police didn't come by to question you about the body. You still let the company deal with it???
I find it incredible that anyone could think that its an employee's duty to withhold information on felony activity occuring at a workplace. Or perhaps you think one needs to be sympathetic to a company's concerns while child molestation is being committed? Its people like you that let clowns from Enron swindle investors.
And yes, its obviously the employee's duty to inform their manager first. Which is what they did. How likely is it that two employees previously with good work records BOTH lose their jobs because they simultaneously are performing substandard work?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
The next day, Perry gave the PC to Gross to back up, fearing it might crash and lose valuable data.
In the process, according to the suit, Gross opened a folder titled "my music," within which was another folder, named "nime," then another, "nime2." It was here, Gross said in an interview, that he encountered the illicit content. "I didn't have to click on any files when I went into the folder," says Gross. "There were thumbnail images, so I was pretty much instantly exposed to that."
If Gross hadn't opened those folders, he wouldn't have come across the offensive images in the first place. But Perry and Gross say it wasn't unusual for them to check the content of folders when troubleshooting; a large file, for example, can be an indication that a virus is at work.
I don't buy this. Are they claiming that standard procedure for these folks, when looking for a virus, is not to boot with a known-good disk and run an up-to-date virus scanner, but rather to go through folders looking for large files which might "be an indication that a virus is at work"? If so, that's pretty crappy. Well, I have this huge file called PAGEFILE.SYS on my C:\ drive, I guess I have a virus (it's Windows' swap file, for those who use other OSes), right? Sigh.
I also don't buy the "they were looking in the folder for files to backup" argument, either. That's not the way you do it. You use Windows backup, or a 3rd party utility, or a disk-imaging program (like Ghost for windows or DiskCopy for Mac) or you drag everything to a server for later restoration, or you use an external firewire/USB drive. You don't poke around for files and copy them one by one. Apart from being horribly inefficient, that would also kill the client's directory structure. For example, within my documents folders, I have subfolders for different classes, and for things like correspondance, and receipts, and the like. If some tech support company had to back up my stuff, and had copied the files one by one, instead of copying the entire tree, I'd be real pissed off.
So I don't think that they quite came across the porn in the line of duty. I think they were looking around without any good reason. (Not that this makes child porn any less wrong, but it does cloud the issue of discovery and reporting)
There is, of course, the other issue, which is that by default, newer versions of Windows use thumbnail view, which is unfortunate. If the prof had been using regular list view, and the techs had double-clicked the files, they wouldn't stand a chance of defending themselves. This raises the issue of just what exactly is "invading someone's privacy"? Even filenames can say a lot about someone. For example, if you see someone's desktop, and they have a bunch of files named "naked_teens_1.jpg" through "naked_teens_50.jpg", what are you going to think about them? What if the files were named "12_year_old_naked.jpg"? Does that change things? Suppose you wrote an editorial to your newspaper about how much you though Al Qaeda sucked. You named this file "al_qaeda_letter.txt". You take your PC in for service, and some tech sees it, and decides to report you to the FBI. (Not too far-fetched in this day and age). Are filenames public or private information? Sure, you can't prevent people from seeing filenames, but do they have the right to act upon them? (This applies to other issues, like when the RIAA found files with the name "usher" and "mp3" and assumed they were songs when they actually were some prof's lectures.)
I work in tech support, and I find myself in lots of situations when I have access to users PCs. The general guideline where I work is to see as little as possible. For example, If I'm working on a PC, I try to stay at the root level as much as possible. When we need to backup a PC, we drag the entire directory tree to a USB drive (if its PC) or a FireWire drive (if it's a Mac), or a server if nei
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Right. The accuser will be the police, who find all the kiddie porn on his computer.
The accuser is the person who is charging you.... or giving evidence in court against you.
If a tech guy, justified or not, should discover that sort of sh%t, he should alert management, and give them a chance to handle the case and do damage control as they see fit..
If managenment doesn't feel it needs to do anything, or the action doesn't match your moral standards, you don't wanna work there anyway - so go ahead and blow the whistle - anonymously or not.
Working for M$ is selling your soul?! No, working for an employer that doesn't report child porn in order to protect marketing interests is selling your soul!
Ha ha ha... I love having a sense of humor. Too bad "A Proud American" doesn't know what it's like.
The proper action for them to take would have been to simply delete the offending material, thereby eliminating the potential liability to the company and would avoid tarnishing the company's public image.
And leave a felon and a pedophile on the streets? There are enough already. By reporting the professor to their supervisor, they gave the company a chance to do the right thing and report this criminal behavior to the police, which would have kept the company's public image clean.
Also note the timing of the employees being put on probation:
Still, on June 20, the same day the police executed a search warrant on Samuels' office computer, Perry was put on probation for tardiness, excessive phone usage, having visitors at her office cubicle, and dressing provocatively, the suit says. On July 16, Gross was hit with his own probation letter for tardiness, failure to respond to a help-desk call, and lack of knowledge about a Norton application used by PC administrators.
That sound suspicious to me, especially considering they had good performance reviews.
Corporate assets must be protected
At what cost? What if that cost is the obstruction of justice? The employees claim they were told "the police detectives didn't have enough information." In that case, I think the employees were justified in going to the police to make sure they had ALL the information. Their supervisors obviously weren't.
And y'know, just once I'd like to see a CEO as motivated by morality as profit.
So now you can lose you're job for reporting people with child pornography, but get a freaking medal for reporting people with mp3's of the work of musicians that get caught with child pornography?
I've always found it boring, cheezy, and fairly degrading toward women.
Yeah you're more for the child porn, eh?
Interesting that you give your take on porn: Apparently you go hunning just to sit back and go "boring!", "cheezy!", etc.
Sexuality, and the desire for the female body, is genetically coded into most males. That is a simple REALITY. Either you're a eunich, or a total bullshitter (people who spout your sort of bullshit are usually the ones sodomizing the young kids at boyscouts). Men who have girlfriends, wives, or harems still enjoy the occasional bit of pornography. As far as the PATHETIC "degrading toward women" attempt at Bleeding Heartism, realize that they're capitalists taking advantage of an asset. Calling it degrading is akin to feeling sorry that poor actors are being paid millions to read a couple of lines and feign tears.
From a point of view of avoiding personal hassle to oneself, it might be best to pretend one has seen nothing, in situations where that is plausible.
I really don't see how it is possible for an employee to get out of the situation of being sacked for one reason, if the company says the reason is another -- since the employee cannot prove why they are really being sacked.
I hope the employees win multi-million dollar judgements against their foremer employer.
And I hope the former employers also gets charged felonies for being accomplices in covering up a child porn crime.
I reported rampant software piracy to our CEO and board member and got fired within hours. This happened in January. Now I sense that I'm blacklisted.
Well, after reading a lot of the comments here, I notice that people are blasting these techs because they "snooped" around in the PC.
Now, one thing that I think is being overlooked.. is the fact that when you go to My Documents / My Pictures.. by DEFAULT, it displays thumbnail images of pictures, in WinME or XP.
Given that from what I read of the article, it's not like the techs were digging through folders to find stuff, I think it's pretty likely that the guy had the pics in one of those folders.
I know that often when I've had to shift files over a network to preserve them, I'll glance inside the folder after the transfer just to make sure I got everything.
-- Karma is for people who think they matter.
Since you handle is "proud American," I assume you're in the US. Things are rapidly changing here, but at the moment before the cops can act there either needs to be facts in plain sight (e.g., the kiddie porn is available through a website) or they'll need to get a search warrant. To get a search warrant they'll need to have some credible reason to believe that a crime has been committed - and anonymous complaints rarely cut it.
Furthermore, an anonymous complaint makes the job of the investigator much harder. The first defense of someone caught with real kiddie porn is that they were framed. Obviously whoever made the anonymous report framed them! This may be bullshit, but the detective has to disprove it and it's a lot harder to do when the person reporting it is anonymous.
(Before somebody asks, I'm contrasting real kiddie porn with, oh, the stuff Traci Lords made when she was using fradulent IDs to prove she was over 18. In that case the first defense is that the viewer had no clue the model was 17 instead of 18 or 19.)
So while you might think you're doing something useful, you really just wasting everyone's time. They can't even track the number of anonymous reports since there's no way to ensure that a dozen anonymous reports aren't all from a single person.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Totally agree.
I mean lets think of the reason Collegis could have fired them for:
How about Total incompetency that resulted in heavy losses for their company while the entire industry is going through an economic slup -
forcing the company to let them go.
- This totally flies in the face of their previous year reviews. Not knowing how to run a particular Norton program requires the company to train the employee - not fire him/her. And yes, they were FIRED and not let go ! If there were other employees who were as competent as these two, it begs the question as to why they were kept back.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
You work for the company. You should at least consider the company's interests. Having the cops investigate could expose the company to considerable costs if the cops have to shut down the network or look around for other illegal files, which they may well have cause to, since all they (and you) really know is illegal material is stored on a company computer - which for all you know was put there by some disgruntled employee or admin at the office.
The right thing to do is report it to your manager. Presumably they will bring it to the attention of the authorities, and if they don't, well THEN you consider going to the cops yourself.
Why is whistleblowing so sanctified when it's on the part of the little guy ? Would we automatically want companies notifying the cops if a drug test showed we had (say) coke in our system ? Should we expect our neighbours to call the RIAA if they have evidence that you're sharing files illegally ?
Why shouldn't a computer support person have similar protection under the law, especially in this day and age, where so much of the porn is in digital form?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
The posession of child pornography is a felony. This isn't about some guy doing something against company policy.... whether the company thinks it's OK or not is irrelevant.... it's NOT ok.
And technically, if you have knowledge of a felony and don't report it, YOU have committed a crime, as well.
Secondly, if you are sitting in front of my computer, yes, it's my business what you do with it. You can make arguments about the quality of a work environment, sure... but ultimately, NO, you DONT have a right to do whatever you want with a computer that is not yours.
Furthermore, as someone in charge of the company's computing resource, you absolutely DO have the right to snoop around, especially when company policy dictates that computers are not for personal use and all data on all computers belong to the company.
As for people installing things you tell them not to... tighten up your controls and *prevent* them from installing it.
While I would agree that the person was in the right calling the cops, but it opens up a can of worms as far as trust between IT professionals and companies that they contract to.
People generaly want to protect their privacy, even in cases where a person who did what I'd consider to be the honest, moral, and legal thing, businesses don't tend to hire people who phone the cops on clients, right or wrong. Business if full of shady dealings, even how profit margin businesses like resturants and their dealings with local health inspectors.
This is sad but true.
What comes to mind, typical non-discolsure agreements prohibit you from discussing what you see in the workplace. Sadly, violating that even in this case tends to get you fired.
Personaly I feel there should indeed be a law protecting wistle blowers, but until then, do it ANONYMOUSLY.... like in this case, burn the CD of the offending material, and send to the FBI, or better yet, setup a simple script to e-mail the images on a time delay.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
The problem with the other option - covering it up - could be that some children would continue to be abused.
How does having JPEGs on a computer equate to child abuse? I'm sure many of us have seen the pictures of the death camps with corpses stacked like cordwood, but that doesn't mean we go out and exterminate Jews. A couple of decades ago, there was a problem with so-called "snuff flicks" which showed the actual torture and murder of people (usually young women). I can't imagine anything worse than that, but people weren't put in jail for viewing those tapes.
This is like the laws against drug use. They really don't do anything except give warm fuzzies to the people who stand up and beat their breasts to show their concern. I don't use or advocate drug use or viewing child porn, but I don't want my tax dollars wasted on the pursuit and incarceration of perpetrators of victimless crimes.
If you discover illegal goodies on a machine, what should you do about it?
The policy at my employer is for us to tell our boss who then tells the VP HR.
In every case I know of the employee was fired and in one case where child porn was found the employee was arrested on the spot.
The right call at most companies is to punt the situation to HR and let them deal with it.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Just out of curiosity, how many children do you think were protected from abuse by imprisoning the professor?
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
It is explicitly illegal (since the home secretary Michael Howard) to draw images that look like child porn.
Maybe the next mod to come along will do some reading before performing a knee-jerk moderation.
Which is why they left us with an interesting rule of law, 'innocent until proven guilty' - you may have heard of it?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
They reported it to their supervisor. Then the company has the ability to handle it how they like.
I don't see why anyone should get in trouble for reporting an illegal activity going on at work to their supervisor. I could understand if the employees directly went to the police or media and not giving the company the ability to handle it.
Maybe I've had the experience of working at better companies. A coworker and I had the wonderful experience of walking into work late one night and all the lights were off and one of the employees was sitting at a computer... well you get the idea. I reported it to my boss and the employee was fired the next day. Their were logs that verified what was going on. Some things just aren't appropriate at work.
As a system administrator, I always make sure that their is a message drawn up by the legal department that we may discover things in the normal duties of our job. I have never poked around people's stuff. But I have had to go into people's home directories to fix things for them (my general policy is I don't touch your home directory unless you ask me to). However, I do go through system logs occasionally. If something turns up in system logs that shouldn't be there, I will report it to my boss.
One company I worked for had a policy that we were to ignore any porn found. That was fine with me, it's their decision. This was done after management decided to crack down on it, and it was found that the largest downloaders of porn were some of the vice presidents. After those results, the policy was quickly put in place.
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
JUST DELETE IT, no notice, no complaints, no information. I've been a systems admin for 10 years in one form or another and I've NEVER had backlash from deleting inappropriate content, but then I've never reported anyone either...
Let the user complain someone removed their MP3's or pr0n. Just let them compain...*signed* BoFH
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
this isn't just pr0n, but child porn. big difference. let's say you found emails, etc., that the guy was running a drug ring, selling crank to kids down at the local school yard. or that he was funneling money to al qaida or something. where do yo draw the line. maybe i'm biased. i have two children and i teach seventh grade (12-13 yr olds). child porn is a pernicious offense and offenders should be pubished. you think he jsut say, gee thanks, i won't do that any more. look at the research on child molestors. they are habitual. they cannot be "cured". actually true of most sex offenders. but towards children especially.
i'm not talking about some 17 year old tittie, or some 18 year old drerssed in a school uni. hell, if i'd found the stuff on his computer, i'd probably just take the guy out back and beat him fucking senseless.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I wouldn't put this to the "nazi" test. First off, it is our duty as humans to keep predators away from those that cannot defend themselves. In this case, kids. I can't say whether looking at child pornography causes one to molest, but common sense would say it wouldn't deter it.
I agree the guy needs help. But, if you think the shrink can make it all better (all the time), then you need a little more reality. For child pornography or murder, the coppers were the right path.
I am sure the court will give him a fair shake and you can rest easier knowing this. Look at old Pete... who knows if his story was real. And, if this turns out like you want, perhaps the professor could move to your neighborhood and babysit your kids (when you do have kids). Any problems? Call a shrink, they work magic.
I save proof of the offending material, along with the IPs from which it was obtained, etc., such that I could prove it in court. At that point, I go to the CEO and demand weekly "protection" payments to commence immediately in the amount of US$2,000.00 (what a good deal), adjusted semi-annually for inflation and/or any arbitrary amount selected by me, whichever is greater.
KIDDING ASIDE I would actually handle this situation legally and ethically: Save the proof I talked about a moment ago for my own protection, but not to bring down the company. Then, I go to the most in-charge people in the company and talk to them about the problem. Let them call the police, fire the guy, or do whatever they think is right. I save proof of these meetings (like, audio tape of talking to the big shots about it). If they fire me for bringing up the subject with them, or try to silence the issue without busting the asshole who is doing it, I then deem the company unethical and call the police, the media, and every customer this company has and tell everyone about it, getting the company busted big time for not only having tons of child porn on their boxes but also for trying to shut me up and discredit me. It'll be on O'Reilly faster than shit going through a tin horn.
Oh yeah... And either way, I'd get the biggest, baddest gangsters in town to kick the ass of whoever is looking at that material. It's immoral and unethical because it wastes bandwidth that should be used for transferring FreeBSD ISOs around instead. Want porn? Buy a magazine, asshole.
Then why do straight porn movies have such ugly men in them? Straight couples tell me they're enough to put the bloke off while watching, let alone the sheila.
this is so true. there is nothing wrong with porn. hell, when wife and i can dump the kids with auntie or grandma for the night, we get a hotel, and will usually rent a movie. but there is huge difference between adults and kids. damn shame some /.'ers can't see the diff. "privacy" doesn't mean i get to do anything if i don't get caught.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
should creat err umm a backup copy in case the professor ever 'loses' his, and then you can always let him know you are 'covering his back' for him. I hear tenured professors make a lot more than PC tech-support folks :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
And exactly who is the victim of him having the child porn?
Keep in mind, the porn would have been produced and existed whether he possessed it or not.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I'm a guy, so I find romance novels boring, cheezy, and fairly degrading toward men. ;-)
The proper action for them to take would have been to simply delete the offending material,
That's destruction of evidence, you're not allowed to be a party to that as an Officer of the Court (caps not accidental). Destroying the evidence does not undo the crime. And if you know your client is lying or has destroyed evidence, you MUST inform the court. You cannot stand by if a fraud is perpetrated upon the court.
This guy's termination is actionable, he needs to find a good lawyer, not a Democratic Party crook seeking to justify Bill Clinton's criminality. He can get big bucks from this, and should.
Ok, their employers helped in the investigation. They commended the employees for reporting the crime. The employees were fired for supposedly unrelated reasons. As much as I'd like to trust InformationWeek, they only got one side of the story.
If the employees were fired for blowing the whistle, then I would agree that they should win the lawsuit. But it could also be that the employees became so distracted with the situation that they were no longer productive. Like it has been said before, we're going to ahve to leave this up to the courts to hear both sides - we only got one.
Though, I'm sure everyone would agree that Collegis Inc wasn't trying to cover up any crimes.
the article says: "For two hours, Perry tried to fix it, uninstalling and reinstalling antivirus software, but the system continued to malfunction. The next day, Perry gave the PC to Gross to back up, fearing it might crash and lose valuable data."
Any technician that "fix things" repeatedly installing and uninstalling the same software doesn't deserve the job... but that's my opinion...
We can't really judge the competence of the IT guys from how the news article describes their actions. Even if this is InfoWeek, you still can't assume that the reporter is technically competent enough to accurately sum up the actions described to him by the people he interviewed in this case. Reporters misquote and describe poorly all the time (I've been quoted in a newspaper 3 or 4 times and I think once were my words accurately transcribed).
And to report the problem to police is wrong, there is an hierarchy in the company, if they thought that the company wasn't acting accordingly to the case, the should anonymously fill a complain with authorities...
I keep seeing people saying "These people should have gone through the proper channels." This argument doesn't fly on two counts:
1) They did in fact go to their supervisor first. Their supervisor took it up the chain and police action resulted. Once police action resulted, it became a criminal matter and anyone with actual knowledge of the crime is perfectly entitled to take what they know to the police.
2) There are two hierarchies at work here, not just one, and they operate in parallel, not serially. One is your office's corporate hierarchy, which deals with matters relating to the operation of the business. The other is the legal hierarchy, which deals with matters relating to the legality of various actions. In this case, both came into play -- but the corporate hierarchy can't trump the legal one, or preempt it.
If you want another reason why it's not only justified but required to go to the law or otherwise make sure law enforcement is informed of a felony in progress in the workplace: Your office policies are a matter of contract law between you and your employer, and contracts are not allowed to force one party to commit a crime, or become an accessory to a crime. So if a crime is being committed in the workplace, you are required to report it to the legal authorities (or see that it's reported) if you know about it, and you may be required to report it to your boss.
None of the above should be taken as saying the company wasn't in the right in firing them, but the workers are justified and required to go to the law with what they knew, even if they knew it as a result of violating corporate policy (in which case the company is justified in firing them for said violations). The company doesn't get veto rights of any kind over the reporting of a crime in the workplace.
To make an analogy, if you broke into an employee's office to play a prank, and found a rape in progress, would you call the cops, or would you call your boss (assuming your boss isn't the rapist)? At that point it ceases to matter why you were there, for purposes of who to report the crime to, but it may matter in that you might lose your job over it (which is, really, as it should be).
-- Old Man Kensey
Child porn usually least to child molestration. Don't believe me look up the stats yourself.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
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?
". . . that's why we have courts -- to allow both sides to present their positions . . ."
Pardon me while I die laughing. As is obvious to anyone following the lack of connection between Just results and our "Justice" system, why we have courts is to legitimate the behavior of the rich and powerful and promote their interests. If you're poorer than your opponent, you're wasting your time even showing up -- assuming you can even afford to appear.
The mere fact that you may end up fired for doing the RIGHT thing shouldn't sway your decision one way or the other. You do what's right, and if no one else likes it, it's not on your head. I can't imagine a company getting any better publicity over firing someone who DID do the right thing and making it look like they cover up all kinds of other crap. Always do what you think is right I guess. Don't worry about anything else.
You're nothing; like me.
You're a janitor and you find a bag of crack in a desk where you work. Or theirs a meth lab in the apartment building you manage.
Its illegal. It's that simple. These problems are not as simple as someone stealing office supplies. These are real life situations where someone could get hurt.
If that's not enough, then how about the bandwidth used by this person, or the storage used to hold them. Their both property of the collage, and the collage could have been held responsible for the photographs.
I deleted my sig years ago.
I know a few people who work for a computer store that upgrade and fix peoples computers.
I have been told stories about people having full kiddy porn themes on their windows machines, or gigabits of kiddy porn fully available and in view of the people working on the systems.
Their company policy is if any child porn is found on the machine, to hand over all information about the person and the machine to the police, and they take care of the rest.
I deleted my sig years ago.
So if you see a coworking downloading The Matrix Reloaded, you'd immediately call 911?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I read both articles. The whiny tone of Collegis' response cannot be missed. They acknowledge that they refused to talk about the case, then attack the newspaper for running the story without trying to tell both sides of it? Ridiculous. If the media worked this way, anytime some sleezebag wanted to keep a story out of the news, all they have to do is refuse to talk?
Well, it _was_ running Windows. Sometimes that kind of crap actually fixes things with Windows. Why? Often it's incredibly hard to say why, but unfortunately it's pretty much a black box. Diagnosing problems with a black box is pretty damn difficult.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Worst case, it would take anyone with half a clue and subpoena(sp?) power about a day to find out where the email really came from, if that.
... don't send it from either your work or home PC. Go to a busy internet cafe or public library and send it from a public terminal (making sure that nobody is looking over your shoulder).
Easy
I have often wondered how many Hotmail or Yahoo accounts are created and used just once to send an anonymous e-mail.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
If that's the kind of society you want to live in, why don't you move to... um... er... America!
Yeah, right.
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
In this case, kids. I can't say whether looking at child pornography causes one to molest, but common sense would say it wouldn't deter it.
To what extent is being put in to the position of being photographed in sexually explicit positions not molestation? The point is that some child is abused in this process and that downloading *and storing* this material is contributing to this abuse. If someone can *make money* by *sexually abusing childen* then that person needs to be put in prison for a long long time, IMO. If someone contributes to that trade, then that person needs some sort of criminal punishment, though maybe not to the same degree.
Now, whether digital representations should fall into the same category is a whole different question, and I have a different answer because I am afraid of how that could be a slippery slope with regard to censorship.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
A special someone? Boy, I bet that gets the chicks.
They didn't keep her on because she did something vaguely assoicated with the right thing.. They kept her on because firing her would make it harder to keep the mess covered up. She did not have a very encouraging estimate of the half-life of your average whistle-blower.
The US Government has (or, at least, had) very elaborate procedures in place to protect whistle-blowers from retalation. I don't know if those are still in place, but that's really the only way that an employee can be sure that blowing the whistle won't result in a blown job.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I would think no one coherent enough to write the above comment is brain damaged enough believe it. It must be flaimebait.
The poster is not only suggesting that the company machines are nobody's business but the users', he is also suggesting that when you see a crime you should not report it!
This is the kind of person that sees nothing no matter what. The short name for such a person is coward.
I've got an uncle in fucking IT who was busted pulling kiddie stuff off Usenet at work. Since it was only maybe a half-dozen illegal pictures, and he's such an "upstanding" "Christian" (read: virulently conservative Catholic asshole), he got off with probation and getting shitcanned. If it weren't for the fact that his wife and kids would suffer, I would have liked to see him locked up. Fucker.
Anyway, telling the boss is a courtesy, but telling the Law is a responsibility. I'm not gonna be party to the crime by helping to cover it up.
hang brain.
I'm sure not a lawyer, so you shouldn't take any of this as professional legal advice.
You *do* realize that there is a difference between child molesters and producers of child porn?
And that a 17 year old in a video "intended to incite lust" falls under US child porn laws?
I tend to think that a lot of laws designed to mold people into embracing certain moral values are fairly broken. I'm not sure that legalizing prostitution is a good idea...but I'm quite sure that making it illegal on moral grounds is a bad idea. The same goes for child porn. Show actual damage to society, folks...not just touchy-feely "well, that doesn't seem *right*" claims.
May we never see th
Thank you for avoiding yet another knee-jerk response.
May we never see th
what if ...
I take pictures of myself when I'm 13 doing all sorts of sex acts.
I'm now 21.
1. Am I allowed to even keep the pictures I took of myself?
2. Can I sell copies of them?
3. What if I was making out with my twin. Could we have each other arrested for having a copy?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
society has decided that somone under 16 can't consent therefore they can't "have no objection".
Adult : "Can I tattoo your face?"
Child : "Sure, go right ahead"
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
This is an interesting employee rights "wrongful discharge" issue. Unfortunately, unlike in the EU, private sector jobs that are neither contractual or unionized are subject to the employment-at-will doctrine, meaning that such jobs are not protected by government. Just as employees are free to quit their jobs, employers are free to terminate employees without notice. There are three generally accepted exclusions to the EAW doctrine though: violation of public policy, implied contract, and implied covenant. Firing employees for refusing to commit a crime, reporting criminal activity to the authorities, or for disclosing illegal, unethical, or unsafe practices (whistle-blowing) is considered a violation of public policy and is actionable. The employee though has to show that the employer's sole grounds for the termination was retaliation; otherwise, Collegis can fire the two. Depending on the work records of the two employees, the case could go either way. I'm not sure their argument that finding the porn constituted sexual harassment has any merits. It would depend on the specific wording of the NY statute. In my jurisdiction, it wouldn't fly. If the employees allowed the porn to pass though without informing the management, then the employees would put themselves in a bad situation legally if the porn was ever discovered in the future and it was shown that the company via the IT workers knew or had reason to know that there was child porn on the system.
Hey!! Many child abusers are teachers, priest, politicians and business people. I don't really hear about many cases where someone have a real "evil"-intent like selling crack to kids or do Al Qaida bussiness on the side, in fact I don't even think Al Quaida is very tolerant when i comes to child abuse. I'm sorry to hear that a modern teacher is this catagorical. It's in public interest show child porn surfer to a psycologist/psyciatrist instead of to the police and the press. Child molesters are quite a different subject, violent people are those who are habitual. A child porn surfing joe might be a regular guy like you and me who might be in a 'difficult' phase of his life.
Then again, many people have the tendency to go a little bit out of their way to preserve what they think is right and I don't blame you for beeing concerned for your kids. Then again, child porn surfers might be people too. Use your brain.
There are too many crooks, bozos, and psychos in corporate management and in the "chain of command". Those incompetent fools look after their own and they will manufacture ways to get rid of the whistleblower.
The employees did the right thing by going to the cops.
I think you'd follow whatever company policy is in place first and foremost. Let them deal with it. Some companies still do what is right and involve law enforcement, some don't. After you've tried it the company's way and you're clear of their policies you can do whatever you want as a "concerned citizen" there's usually someone out there who could use the information you have to offer, even if its anonymous
So you agree that it's alright for folk to look at underage pornography?
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
I've never had a company treat me well enough to make it worth my while to protect a pedo.
Yet while I didn't work IT, the IT folk apparently were treated well enough, because while they told me who and roughly what they found, they never spoke up. And I never had hard evidence for me to make such a strong claim.
So the lesson is, pay your IT people well, because odds are you have a pedo in your ranks, and I guarantee they prefer using the T-1 to their home dial-up.
The article mentioned in passing that the firing might have also been retalitory for a previous law suit one of the employees filed against their company. There was also a bit in there about the employee being cited for being combative.
Filtering out all of the bias there and here, I'm more inclined to believe the company had legitimate reasons to put one or both of these folks on probation and to dismiss them, but I don't have all of the facts either, so I wouldn't draw any conclusions.
You should go to HR first. Plain and simple. However, I also realize that this is a very complex situation and at some point you have to trust things.
1: By going to HR you are opening the crime scene up to possible contamination if the word gets back to the employee. But
2: If the employer does not know what is happening this makes things *very uncomfortable* for them. In general, you do not want to compound the crime my bringing the media down on your employer without giving them fair warning....
So, the problem is hard. I still say talk to HR unless you have compelling reason not to. Tell them you have to go to the police and suggest that they start coordinating the PR response.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I understand fully what these two people are going through, I too was fired for, what I believed to be, the right thing to do.
This issue takes place about 10 or 11 years ago, I worked for a hardware manufacturer, back in the early days of the internet. The company had wanted to put up a tech support BBS, I had experience with this, so they asked me to do it, but limited me to the software used, which was crap. Well, to cut it short, it was up for several months until it crashed and we lost user data.
I posted a small note from the Admin asking users to reenter their data and apologized for the inconvenience, which I believed to be the professional and right thing to do. A trade rag caught wind of it, and posted a little blurb about it. The company was a tape backup company and the article was felt by the company to have given them a black eye.
I was removed from the BBS project, put on probabtion, and then investigated, my desk rummaged through, my workstation examined, etc. Finding nothing, I was later interviewed for one thing or another by managers, then fired on trumped up and false charges of inappropriate behavior, tardiness (I was never late a day I worked there and up to that point had never taken a sick or personal day). I was hauled down to HR, shown a huge stack of pink slips (all without my signature or a note that I'd read them), and fired that day. Up until then my reviews had been perfect, my attendance at work had been reported as perfect, my knowledge level for the job was impecable, my skill was exemplary.
I spoke with a lawyer who told me at that time, there was nothing I could do, the company can produce all the evidence they wanted to prove their case, including providing dated and signed material which can be backdated, and I had nothing, no witnesses and no documentation to prove my case, I was advised to drop it and move on, so I did.
Personally, I believe what happened to these two people, I know from experience what companies will do in cases like this, and I know it's going to be a hard road ahead for them.
Try looking up snuff films. I think you'll find that they don't exist; nobody has ever seen one.
Don't get me wrong, child porn is an abomination, but as with everything, some common sense must be used in dealing with the supposed perps.
Yes, I read the acticle. And just because rifling through all the data is easy to do, and might yield useful information, is not a reason to do it. Take a plumber who is rifling through your personal receipts. He wants to see how the person who worked on the toilet before him tried to fix it. Is this useful information? Yes. Does it justify going through personal documents? No.
And just because a company can look at all your personal stuff on a company computer, doesn't mean that they should. I work many hours a day--I'm at work practically all my free time. To ask me to have no personal information on any work computers is basically asking me not to have a personal life. But this is too much to ask.
Other people have dealt within this discussion the justification of actually looking digging deep into his personal folders. Rather than reiterating their points, you can consult them yourselves.
My favorite part of the article:
But as criminally disturbing and emotional as this issue may be, the pending litigation has nothing to do with the professor. Employment of the technicians ended due to issues completely unrelated to this isolated incident, which will become clear as the case progresses through the legal system. Claims made by the plaintiffs cannot be taken at face value and should not be trumpeted as fact via media when they are based solely on unsubstantiated allegations.
Translation: Yeah, we fired them for that, but we didn't think they'd sue us. We'll just say we have evidence that will appear in court. We'll pull a tardy report from a few months ago, bam, permission to fire them. Never mind that the guy they told on was a golf buddy of mine and asked me to get rid of them as revenge.
Do corps do this kind of thing? You'd better believe it. I used to work for a utility as the network admin. They would come to me and ask for me to find "evidence" for them to fire someone. Usually all that took was a weblog or a copy of an email of them doing something against company policy. I hated doing it, but it would have been my job if I said no. The reason they tell you you are fired is never the real reason.
I am a network admin. when I find porno on someone's machine what I do about really depends on whether you are a dick or not.
As far as child porn goes I can see how the company would fire the admin who called the cops. The company is just pissed the admin didn't go through them first... so he was maken an example of.
The standard Windows file manager in recent Windows versions will show you little icons for files indicating what type they are, but you can also set it to show thumbnails of pictures, or big icons, or other kinds of views. And you can customize the view on a per-directory basis, so you can look at your source code directories as a list of filenames, and your My Pictures directory as thumbnails.
So this wasn't someone who'd right-click-saved thumbnails of pictures and not the full-sized pictures, this was the Windows file browser showing thumbnails of whatever-sized pictures had been saved.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
There's an old Chinese saying:
"Ne Em Say, Gnoi Say." (You Die or I die.)
Which would you choose?.
We're talking about a criminal act here. If you choose to handle it this way on your own, and it comes out that you were covering for this sicko, you're an accessory to the crime. A conviction for Kiddie porn possession and an entry in the cop's Pedophile database isn't going to do your career any good. This guy had better be a damned good friend of yours if you're willing to risk this much for him.
The company's article says that there are other things going on, which they can't talk about because there's a lawsuit pending. If that's not true, and they're really doing it because they're embarassed about it being reported to the police, then they should presumably have also fired the supervisor who reported it. Sounds like there are multiple sets of ugliness and stupidity going on here...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
cd /../CHILDPORNGUYs.porn.trove.directory
ls -al >> ../adminsdirectory/CHILDPORNGUYlog.txt
chown root:root *.* >> ../adminsdirectory/CHILDPORNGUY.txt
chmod 000 *.* ../adminsdirectory/CHILDPORNGUYlog.txt
chattr +i *.* ../adminsdirectory/CHILDPORNGUYlog.txt
When CHILDPORNGUY bitches about not being able to get to his files, tell him to take it up with his boss.
Now you have a log of your actions, and a log of the files in question. You are protected, and so is your company.
Of course, I have no idea what to do if the files are on an NT server.
Dawn of the Dead
http://whistleblowerlaws.com/protection.htm
It is against federal law to fire an employee if that employee called out the company, or an employee of the company for illegal activities.
If he wanted to go through it, he could take his employeer to work for this.
Its not what it is, its something else.
If you're being blacklisted then you might as well phone the BSA anonymously and report your company. A little bit of revenge that they cannot prove was done by you is ok if you're already in shit street.
When contracted to the Ontario Ministry of Health for Y2K upgrading (replacing about 5000 machines), a routine backup of one of the managers of Institutional Health branch showed some rather large non-routine files being copied.
He'd put his collection of bestiality porn, and other stuff that may have been worse by the titles (I didn't have the stomach to browse it all) in a subdirectory nested deep inside his working files.
After reporting my find, not one thing was done or said to this guy as far as I know. And he still kept getting his fat government paycheck to surf doggie porn.
Maybe one of the raises I got in that time period was intended to keep my mouth shut. I quit shortly afterwards so I don't know.
I'm not seeing many post to indicate that anyone read the second article. It presents quite a different picture, one that I'm inclined to believe. From the second link mentioned in the story:
The two plaintiffs [suwain_2 note: the two fired IT guys] were commended by both Collegis and the law school in their handling of the situation.
Employment of the technicians ended due to issues completely unrelated to this isolated incident....
Of course they wouldn't come out and admit to firing them for making the company (college, actually; everyone keeps saying company) look bad, but I'm inclined to believe them that the firing (or whatever it was) was completely unrelated to this.
It's kinda like a police officer who shows up late to work every day, and rarely does anything but 'guard' Dunkin Donuts. One day, he catches one of the FBI's Most Wanted. The next day, however, he's fired for always being late to work and rarely even doing his job. Interesting timing, but it's not necessarily correct to claim that he was fired for making the city look bad by catching the criminal in *their* city and not a neighboring one.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
No, but if i see him downloading or watching child porn, I'm likely to call the cops. It's a matter of degree, nothing is black and white, and you have to exercise a bit of judgement.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
As some of the wiser people have pointed out here, this can backfire on you badly if you talk directly to the cops without informing your boss. It's a shit situation but child pornography is inhuman (it happened to a member of my family) and the people who perpetrate this deserve to get punished.
However the wish to see justice done shouldn't overcome your need to stay employed, or at least to have a good source of money. You need to eat.
My boss regularly browses porn at 6AM in the morning and I don't do anything about it as long as it's not child porn. I do however make private backups of the logs in case I ever get fired so that I can get some nice financial rewards on being fired and can cover my butt in ensuing legal action.
ok, let's consider two scenarios:
1) i'm a wage slave. every week i need my paycheck to maintain my lifestyle and pay my debts. in this case, my employer controls my way of life. i must do everything i can do to maintain/advance my relationship with my employer.
2) i'm an employee. i live well below my means and save the surplus. if i lose my job, i can go months if not years without replacing it. i do everything i can to maintain/advance my financial integrity. bonus points for personal integrity, too.
Now, let's suppose my employer is brewing anthrax spores in the break room. What do I do?
#1, keep very quiet and make your boss think you're a true believer, too.
#2, remember those bonus points for personal integrity and call Inspector Friendly of the FBI.
Lots of people distort the relationship with employers because they have wrong ideas about employment. Your paycheck isn't a trust-fund disbursement (sorry Bertie Wooster), and it isn't an allowance from your dad, and it isn't a welfare check. It's an artifact of your relationship with your employer and your productivity on his behalf.
The One Thing I most regret in my twenty years of bumming code is the time I worked for a bunch of Nazis. (7/9ths of the company's name was Rapist. I kid you not.) Had I had more personal integrity I would have left them much earlier.
Universities have Human Resource departments with power over tenured professors?
A few years ago I found out that a manager was viewing and copying pornographic pictures to his hard drive. He actually asked me whether files were "really" deleted when he deletes them from Windows explorer. Little did he know that all his web surfing was logged anyway, so it really didn't matter what he did on his local drive, we still had evidence of his habit.
I was actually concerned at the time that his habit was actually impacting on the business, as at the time we had only a single dial in line, and his web surfing was slowing down email and other company communications.
I cut off his access to the web, and when he asked for reinstatement I refused. This pissed him off a bit, but he could hardly take it higher without me revealing to higher management *why* had taken the action.
In the case of Child Porn I think that it should be taken up with senior management first. Senior management will probably then fire their ass and report it to the police themselves. This way they get to look morally rightous, and get good PR.
If you tell the Police without first telling management you havn't given management the opportunity to deal with the internal issues. If management attempt to cover it up and continue employment of the offender then perhaps you have justification to go to the Police directly.
Just my opnion...
Collecting photographs of kids (naked or clothed) != child molestor.
I realize this difference is hard to remember when you have been brainwashed by the bible thumping, name calling, press peddlers - but it is, nonetheless, a critically important distinction. Quite a lot of material that is now illegal in this country can be bought on the street in many others - and could here, as well, before Meese and Reagan began their campaign of puritanism. Thanks to those wonderful 80's, The Oscar-nominated Pretty Baby couldn't even be made (in the US) today; you could now be arrested for having copies of Penthouse you bought in the 70's and 80's... just a couple more shining examples of modern life in the "Land of the Free."
hell, if i'd found the stuff on his computer, i'd probably just take the guy out back and beat him fucking senseless.
Et Tu, Quoque?
Hrm. I'd rather look at ass and legs. The real kicker for me though is if the woman has some sort of odd colored hair.. blue, pink, purple, green, etc. Especially if the drapes match the carpet. Girls that look like they stepped out of anime. I guess at least that's a healthier fantasy than being into children. ;)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
If you've stumbled across evidence of substantial and systematic bilking, theft, fraud, etc. in a corporate database on an utterly massive scale... remember, fish rots from the head down. Going up your chain of command is what you have to do, but do expect severe and immediate retaliation.
Just them knowing that you know what they've been up to, by your routine data QA, is enough to cause sudden complaints about your "behaviour." Remember, it takes two to tango, but only one to squirm . Their complaints are evidence that they're starting to squirm. You need a plan now.
When the going gets tough, the tough take notes . Keep copies of things. You you are going to need a well-planned and pre-established "exit strategy", because you will be punished for doing the right thing.
While "Retaliation for Opposition to An Unlawful Practice" is illegal, it will take you 3-5 years to prosecute your retaliation case, while also giving testimony in the civil and criminal cases the FBI or Serious Fraud Office is going to be bringing against them. You are going to need one heck of a safety net.
So your order of business is:
- Detect Evidence
- Discuss with Spouse, Family, Religious Leaders
- Document Evidence
- Find out whose the best lawyer in the
State, if not the Land for handling your case
- Copy Evidence,place under lock and key
- Find another job, sell excess assets, cash in annuities
- Report Evidence up Chain of Command
- Enjoy Watching them Squirm!
- Resign at the worst possible time for them
- Provide Your Evidence to The Authorities
- Going to the Press is a last resort
You have to discuss this with your spouse and grown children as soon as you even have suspicions, so that you can plan your exit strategy together. They have to understand that you all might be a lot happier in the Peace Corps or setting up wireless networks in Africa, or living on a high-school teachers' salary or grad student stipend. If you belong to a church, mosque or synagogue, discuss it with your pastor, priest, imam, rabbi-- because, God help you, you will need serious moral support when the poo hits the ventillation system.When you must report criminal wrongdoing expect to get canned--for "other reasons" of course. You will be surprised at how lame a case they'll be willing to make for those "other reasons." So will the judge.
Child pornography is criminal wrongdoing. Bilking legitimate shareholders of millions of dollars a month is criminal wrongdoing. A utility defrauding half a nation to the point that its factories are closing, its schools are cold and dark, and its hospitals have to turn away sick children is criminal wrongdoing.
... with the idea that they will be the ones reporting it (if you're the IT person they'll most likely ask for your assistance.) You let them know the seriousness of the crime, and make it clear that they must act. If they don't, then you take matters into your own hands, but one of the best reasons for going to your employer first is that the chancers are good that they already have an attorney or two on retainer. Besides which, the company, and the policies are under their control, not yours.
On the other hand, if you are the employer then you make certain you protect yourself in advance by having clearly-written lawyer-vetted policies in place for everything from fair company resource use (including the company network) to employee conduct, and procedures for filing a grievance if another employee is messing up. If there's a comprehensive, well-written policy then there's no question, the employee would know how to handle any situation.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
So you agree that it's alright for folk to look at underage pornography
Is it alright to hire a hooker? Is it alright to smoke pot? Is it alright to copy a CD for a friend? Is it alright to go 60 in a 55?
You tell me.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I wouldn't do a damn thing. I don't know how old the models are, I don't know if they were edited on photo shop, I don't know if it's really midget porn. Saying anything would seem to make me open to a lot more liability.
Especially, what if I think I find something, is it my right or job to dig into it and explore further? I'm pretty sure it isn't and would leave me vulnerable there.
If I don't know for sure, since I didn't dig into it, then what if I reported suspicious, but ultimately, non-illegal materials to a manager or police to check into further? If there wasn't a policy in place saying that is my job, then I've just exposed a coworker to harrassment and ridicule, costing them their job, marriage?, etc. Then I get sued by my coworker and lose my job by getting my company sued also.
Basically, that's a pretty messed up situation and I'd hope if I was in that position there would be some solid policies in place so that my ass was covered. I think it is a good thing this article came out to point out the catch-22 HelpDesk operators might be in, and start discussions of how to avoid it.
I'd definitely want policies in place saying what I was allowed to access in ordinary duties, HelpDesk duties and I'd want employees signing a form that they knew what kind of access to files was allowed to the Help Desk.
Then of course I'd want solid guidelines for what happens should I find something.
Come on- if some asshole told me that reading /. was workrelated, i'd pity that ignorant fool motherfucker and call 'BULLSHIT, BEEEATCH!
and you know that if that person worked for me, i'd fire his/her punk bitch ass.
Contact HR, tell the situation. No matter what management has to say, they have to listen.
Call in a forensics company to take a snapshot image of the suspect computer, (~$AUS200-300 hr) this can be done after hours when the offending child porn artist is blissfully unaware of the actions.
Most forensics experts are ex-police/ investigators with an understanding how to handle these situations. And if the matter has to be delt with in a court of law, the evidence taken will be admissiable because the way they acquire the images in the first place.
If the company wants to fire you over being a whistleblower, sue their ass.
Yes, I work closely with these types of investigators. They deal with aquiring harddisk images from child porn, homicide to industrial espionage.
I think the mistake was reporting to the supervisor. Child porn is a grave crave crime, and it should have been reported to the police directly, not the supervisor or anyone else for that matter. The cops would have maintained the confidentality of the reporter.
grisha.org
So if you see a coworking downloading The Matrix Reloaded, you'd immediately call 911?
Errr... No. I'd rather tell them not to waste their time since the screener version on the net is pretty lame, and to wait for the DVD screener to slip it's way onto the net. Oh.. I mean downloading copyrighted workes are bad, MmmKay?
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
"Well I guess we know why the world is the way it is. Over a billion people on the planet, all walking away. If doing the right thing was easy then the world wouldn't be in the shape it's in presently. Well as the saying goes "Evil prospers when good men do nothing."
Well obviously you should help if someone is getting beaten up or mugged or stabbed or having a heart attack, etc. But let someone else fight the victimless crimes.
A little bit of revenge that they cannot prove was done by you is ok if you're already in shit street.
Yes but like a lot of slashdot posters in this article who have been saying of the wrongdoings (was if you theolien who said about your boss downloading porn at 6am or someoen else - bah its 3am here) there is a nice permenant record with your name on it. and lets face it it can be traced back to you - most people use the same online handle for usenet , email accounts, and slashdot some of which will have your real name on.
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
you delete the goodies and say nothing because the world is run by mean little cowards.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Look up the age of consent in most countries. In most states in the US, it's either 17 or 18[AR used to be 16, but I think it was changed in the early 90's or so]. In most Western countries [Britain, Europe, ect.], it's 16, still. In some countries, it's much younger. Hell, I was 11, when I got laid by a 34-yr-old woman, and I never complained about it ;-)
I'm a regular Slashdot poster, but what I'm going to say is extremely personal, hence the anonymous post. This is a short rant about the nature of child abuse. It may be graphic, so read on at your discretion.
My father physically and sexually abused me, and took movies of me as well; this happened 30 years ago, but for all I know they may be floating around the net right now. My mother suspected the abuse, but did nothing to prevent it and only stepped in to stop it when he threatened to kill me. I don't have a relationship with either of my parents now.
I know and can admit that I'm a very screwed up person. I have seen psychiatrists and therapists throughout my life to deal with the very real emotional scars left by this abuse (and all replies stating something to the effect of "get over it" or "stop being so self-involved" will be summarily ignored). I have attempted suicide once. I have met many people who similarly suffered due to child abuse. My best friend is an abuse survivor, who thus far has received no therapy for her trauma.
Unlike most of the other screwed-up people out there, I am taking the personal responsibility to try to solve my problems. I don't have a problem with saying that it is my parents' fault for the state I'm in, but that it is *my* responsibility to get out of that state. Personal responsibility is not in vogue right now, but I hope that changes.
Here are some thoughts about abuse, pornography, and trauma.
1. Viewing sexually explicit images of children indicates a treatable disorder or sickness. Sending someone to prison for possession of child pornography is only slightly more helpful than killing that same person. Samuels (from the article) will go to prison, where he will most likely find no resources to help him with his problem, to help him understand himself why he found those images exciting, and how that kind of thinking is damaging to himself and others. He will leave prison only older but no wiser, and just as likely to desire sexual images of children again. But, probably, a great deal more careful about it.
2. For nearly all child sex offenders, the issue is totally about control. Not sex, but control. It is about the control of a defenseless individual, and the offender gets sexually excited primarily due to the control, perhaps secondarily due to the child (or not at all). This offender is not that different from someone who beats, controls, or otherwise abuses a spouse for sex (but the trauma is naturally much worse on the child than a spouse).
3. The laws in the US dealing with child abuse are abominable and out-dated. I'll stop right there with my opinion, and you can check out "Just Before Dawn" by Jan Hindman. It systematically and scientifically investigates the nature of abuse and does away with many of the myths surrounding causes of abuse, types of abuse, and resultant trauma, and points out the problems and gaping holes in our legal system and victim support system that do little to help the victim, the child.
4. I like porn, probably like many of you. While I am beginning to form what most of you would call "normal" relationships, I have relationships also with several strippers and hookers. I know something about sex workers that many of you don't, or at least aren't thinking about while you're getting off: the overwhelming majority of all porn stars, hookers, and strippers were molested as children. There was a study done several years back (sorry I don't have a reference for it) that reported that out of a few hundred porn stars surveyed, 98% of them reported being sexually abused as a child. I haven't known hundreds, but all the hookers and strippers I have really talked with have told me of their child abuse, most little or no prodding.
It's funny when you hear Greg Giraldo on "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn" make a joke about how American society is obsessed with pushing the limits, "how we want to set a land speed record in a car, see how many hot dogs you can eat in
So, if our P2P file sharing networks get shut down, kiddie pr0n won't be leached for free as much, kiddie pr0n syndicates will get more money, they will abuse more children, and the RIAA will be directly responsible for all of the young girls and boys lives ruined through that industry.
And to think.... most of us thought Microsoft got dirty money for selling information in sleazy ways.
P.s. this post was not a joke.... well blaming the RIAA for child pr0n was, but the rest was serious.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
I worked at an electronics store and a customer returned a computer for a refund, I checked it out after it was returned and they had templates in there to generate fake proof of insurance certificates for cars. I notified the store loss prevention. They agreed that the person was using the computer for illegal purposes but decided not to contact the police for fear that the customer would sue them for "invasion of privacy". What a bunch of crap. Then a year or so later, I was working on a computer that belonged to a state supreme court judge and it had some pornograpy on it including under-aged porn. We decided not to do anything about it because we figured he might be using it for a court case. My general rule on working on people's home computers is that they all have porn. Just do a search for *.jpg and sort by size. I've never been disappointed when searching.
I hope all the IT people here are having fun talking about how they'd stand up to the big bosses and be really brave and fight against the evil felon.
To me, the right thing to do is have a little talk with Mr. employee about the right and wrong things to have stored on a company computer. Tell him that's not a healthy hobby to begin with, if you like, and tell him in no uncertain terms that if he keeps doing stuff like that on company time you'll have to report him... TO THE COMPANY.
Oh, and all you people who are equating this to homicide, get off your high horse. This is just data, after all. Undesireable data, granted, but data. Saying the guy with the picture of a kid on his computer is supporting child abusers is the same line of thinking as the "Buying an SUV supports terrorists" argument.
The definate right place to report this is HR. All you found was a collection of ones and zeros, not a dead body.
you are not an accessory after the fact, nor are you liable in ANY event for the simple non-reporting of crime, unless you are under a legal duty to report the same. You are however, liable, should you take ACTIVE steps to conceal that a crime was comitted. It is the active concealing of the crime that makes you liable, and failing to report is not an active event, it is a passive omission. See 18 USCA sec 4 (the annotations), US v Warters 885 F2d 1266 (Tex C.A.5 1989) and US v. Cabrales 118 S.Ct. 1772, 1776 (1998) for the principle that to be an accessory you need to take an active step.
I fail to see how viewing a picture I obtained for free is harmful to anyone. I didn't PAY anyone to get it, did I? I do think it's repulsive, but it's not destructive, and I think there are MUCH better things we can persecute, like littering and bad traffic etiquette.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Looking and doing are VERY different. I know a lot of people who look at kiddie porn, but don't molest kids. I'd say they're pretty normal well-adjusted folks too. Human sexuality is VERY restricted in America and I think that the perverts are much BETTER OFF looking rather than doing. Please think about that before you draw a line betwen pictures on a computer and kids in therapy.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Wait for that person to leave there desk and leave a nice, polite, unsigned note saying:
"I know that you have child porn on your computer. You cannot hide it. If I ever EVER find it again YOU SICK FUCK, your ass will be in jail and Bubba will use you as his child porn bitch."
Something tells me that would go a long way in solving the problem... At work at least.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Removing the material from this person's hard drive would not be criminal. It would be the right thing to do because kiddie porn is immoral!
I used to work at a small daily newspaper and I remember this horrible case where a little 3 year old girl was kidnapped, raped, tortured and then killed. They caught the guy after a lengthy investigation. When he committed the murder, he had been out of prison for less than a month. Sex criminals get worse in prison, not better. Prisons aren't making kiddie porn go away, are they?
As far as the example of finding kiddie porn on somebody's computer, a sincere face-to-face with the person who collected it, telling them honestly that their desires that they're feeding are not healthy, causing them personal embarassment by looking them in the eye and saying that you know what they are doing, telling them that they're facing ruin, and telling them that innocent kids are being exploited against their will would be very powerful.
I don't depend on 'authorities' to make this world a better place. The way this world gets better is if people take direct action when they see somebody else fucking up like that -- even if it is giving the guy a black eye, like others suggested.
Authorities are only a representative of society, but each individual is also a representative of society. Society makes the real rules when it comes to morality, right and wrong, not politicians.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
...And, in fact, we have a new case about once a week, once every 2 if it's slow.
Here's what we do:
We find $STUDENT to have images,movies,mp3s whatever on the server (P-90 running Novell 4, 9 GB HD- ancient as heck, but, being SCSI, works okay)
We then:
Lock their account (once or twice, we just gave 'read-only' permission- those were funny, we'd get a call saying '$STUDENT' can't save to their folder-says something about permissions? then we explain that $STUDENT did something they shouldn't have, and have been locked out. have them go see asst. principle for more info)
go talk to principle/assitant principle about it
for the 'Net, we have a Proxy server running. 'nuff said. logs it for IP and MAC addresses. we get calls from district office (where they have the time to sit and watch traffic go by) and walk in behind the kids some times. tap them on the shoulder, and drag them upstairs.
we do scan for large files (on our network, that means 500k or more, as each student *should* (should because Mac files don't show up as correct file size on Novell, long story) only have about 5-10 MB of stuff. we don't delete, we just lock down and report. we don't do anything until building administration decides what to do about student.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Disgusting. I'd like to see them (the outsourcing co.) back out of this. 2 people involved in a huge smear on the company for busting a child pornography trafficker? Riiiiiiight. They both just HAPPENED to fuck up this close to something this major. Whatever. I happen to think that EVERYONE fucks up on the job, but normally it isn't a big deal. I believe 100% that the company fired them over the smearing, but used legitimate complaints as the reason for dismissal.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
This actually happened to me (at a State School for the Deaf) I busted a kiddie porn pre-vert six-0clock new - the whole bit... Six weeks later, I was history. Never have regreted it really. It felt REALLY good to catch the freak. Didn't hurt that I immediately started making better money either.
while i totally agree, and in fact am sometimes scared to death that some student who wants to "get back" because they failed or whatever, and says "he touched me...", or just says "he asked me...". there are alot of factors. like how much? hope fully there is some IP logging tocheckwhere it came from. how bout if there is some on work comp, AND at home. usually, the cops will investigate and be able to determine if this is a set up or the real deal.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
- "I'm just viewing it, I didn't take the pictures!"
- "I got it for free, so no one's making money off me!"
- "It's not hurting anyone to just look at them!"
Viewing the pictures, for profit for not, creates demand. All those fuckers need is demand. Many of them don't do it for money; a lot do it because they're honestly obsessed with naked kids, so saying you're not paying for it is not really an argument. You're one more person that's sharing that dick's experience and one more person egging him on.The same goes for pictures "morphed" into something bad, but in a different way. This is not a sign of the morality police, but a way of preventing any kind of brain-food for perverts to get their fix. It's entirely questionable as to if this actually helps at all (some will have their addiction starve off and die, others will go looking harder) but it does have a logical purpose other than enforcing morality.
The part I can't get over is I'm having to justify legal restrictions on naked children on Slashdot. Has our urge for free speech really gone this far? My God...
Here is a quote from the article:
On Sunday, June 2, Perry began to assess problems on the PC used by Samuels, who thought his system might be infected with a virus. For two hours, Perry tried to fix it, uninstalling and reinstalling antivirus software, but the system continued to malfunction. The next day, Perry gave the PC to Gross to back up, fearing it might crash and lose valuable data.
She spent 2 hours installing and uninstalling and reinstalling anti-virus software? I mean, c'mon here people. I might expect my dad to do something like that if he thought he had a virus. But my dad is not a computer tech. She is supposed to know what the hell she is doing. And then she gives the machine to someone else who decided to look for "large" files?
But Perry and Gross say it wasn't unusual for them to check the content of folders when troubleshooting; a large file, for example, can be an indication that a virus is at work.
WTF? Yeah, that's right. My virus scan program didn't find anything. So, my next step? Go looking for "large" files.
What happened here was that these two idiots managed to get by at their jobs without knowing jack shit, until this case came up. Then, when they had to give an accounting of the steps they were taking to resolve the problem and how they found the illegal material, their ignorance was exposed to management. So, management found reasons to let them go.
I will give them props for having the balls to report what they found, that is commendable. But based on the troubleshooting as reported, I wouldn't let them anywhere near a computer I had to support.
WWJD?
JWRTFM!
So that makes your boobs argument totally irrelivent! HUH!
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
No matter what. No matter what. You did the right thing. I have two children - Casey who is 4 and Gavin who is 3. If you discover such, report it!! Don't worry about what "may come" from it. I worked with an enterprise corp. (http://www.corning.com), so I know the pressure. I worked CIS MSE. A similar situation did arise and it was taken care of. Don't worry, the children come first. This is in my eyes and the eyes of the world!!
Andy Rockwell HTTPeasy.com PHPAudit.com
...if they really care about their public face. Like my employer has adopted the Whistleblower provisions listed in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
Yes but like a lot of slashdot posters in this article who have been saying of the wrongdoings (was if you theolien who said about your boss downloading porn at 6am or someoen else - bah its 3am here) there is a nice permenant record with your name on it. and lets face it it can be traced back to you - most people use the same online handle for usenet , email accounts, and slashdot some of which will have your real name on.
Not to mention that revenge isn't a good excuse to throw morals out the window. I don't know how you feel personally, but while I would love to avenge myself of my former employer, turning to the BSA is still wrong and I won't do it.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Look at the research yourself, it seems the recidivism rate for sexual offenders and children predators varies between 10% and 40%. The rate is not 100% as you make it seem to imply. You may think 10% or 40% is too much to bear, or that the research is flawed because many sexual offenses go undetected, I won't argue with you there and that's not what I'm arguing -- I'm just trying to distinguish what is fact and what is opinion. You *said* that "the research" backed up your claim and that's simply not the case.
The first article is a study, which analyzed the combined results of 61 previous studies on this topic.n _98_frame.htm
http://home.wanadoo.nl/ipce/library_two/han/hanso
The second article is a review of the literature on this subject./ grubin_96.htm
http://home.tiscali.nl/~ti137156/helping/articles
The same goes for pictures "morphed" into something bad, but in a different way. This is not a sign of the morality police, but a way of preventing any kind of brain-food for perverts to get their fix. It's entirely questionable as to if this actually helps at all (some will have their addiction starve off and die, others will go looking harder) but it does have a logical purpose other than enforcing morality.
That's plain bullshit. Child porn laws were passed to prevent the sexual exploitation of children. 'Morphing', as you call it, creates fictitious porn in which no children were harmed in any way whatsoever.
Personally, I don't understand the mind that finds such things titillating. But I can clearly reason that fictitious porn harms no child, and therefore has no business being prosecuted under child porn laws - since no children were involved in the making of it.
So you might find it sick and twisted and perverted. That's nice, but no justification for a law when no harm is done. Fact is, I find religion sick, twisted and perverted in *any* form, but I don't go around demanding that laws be passed to prosecute the practitioners. So long as the religious perverts don't go about harming anyone, they can indulge in whatever sordid activities that they want, no matter how disturbing I find personally find them.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Nowadays I can't access my email without getting a half-dozen porn-o-grams a day, complete with pictures and with subject lines like "Traci wants to suck YOUR hard cock!!!"
No doubt this in and of itself is reason enough to fire me under some of these company policies....
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Looking at this case, first some facts:
(1) There is very little, if any, freely available hard child porn available today on the Internet -- there are lots of photos of twenty-somethings in school uniforms and some sneaked naturist or sports field photos of children. These are distasteful, but scarcely evidence of extensive child molestation.
(2) There are child porn sites hosted out of Eastern Europe, but I'll bet anyone in the U.S. who signed up for one of these would quickly find themselves visited by the police.
(3) There are pedophile rings that abuse their own children and distribute records of the abuse to each other (presumably using encrypted e-mail). Occasionally, one of these rings gets cracked. I am sure many others go undetected.
(4) It is unclear which category the child porn in this case falls into.
Snooping to see if a computer contains something incriminating to its owner is a gross invasion of privacy. If it happens to show up criminal behaviour, this does not justify the act.
I do not believe these system administrators came upon the child porn accidentally but, for the sake of argument, let's assume they did. If there is evidence of involvement in a pedophile ring, I think the police must be involved immediately since clear and present danger to others is involved. In other cases, I would normally follow company regulations. In unclear cases, I would give him the benefit of the doubt.
Fellow /.ers, if we cannot examine such issues with in a clear, unbaised fashion, what hope has our society as aa whole?
Ok, so you didn't read what I said so I'll knock it down a level, mmk?
Fictional porn feeds the minds of people that can't get the real thing. This will lead to one of two things: they will be happy with the fake stuff or they will go get the real thing.
Getting the real thing is bad and what is illegal. If we get the sickos off the addiction all together then we can hope to fight it. If they can still get their fix then it will still happen.
Really, dude, think of the children.
As an aside, I really have no idea why you brought religion into this. This is social science, man. Twisted pervs chasing naked children and how we can stop it. Nothing more than that. The idea is to get anything that could ever fuel that mindset away from them and then hope it dies of starvation.
Has anyone considered the chain of custody of the "criminals" hard drive?
Most people in any place I've ever worked leave thier computer on all day long. They never lock the desktop and so anyone can get access to thier computer when they aren't there.
Now imagine a disgruntled employee or student getting access to that computer.
It's not hard to setup a newsreader to an Altopia account and have it download a chunk of alt.illegal.child-porn. You could set this up with a copy of X-news and delete the program without a trace once you were done. We are after all talking about a company owned computer. The control the user has over this machine is not as great as the control he has over his machine at home.
What if he/she pissed off one of the techs? Whatif the tech does a cut-n-paste to //lawprof/c$?
How would we ever know?
I've read the article and yes I know he plead guilty and went to jail. But what happens if you go straight to the cops and the guy (or gal) is arrested immediately?
It won't matter at all if the person is later found innocent. That person will forever have a blotch on his reputation. In some states, like Michigan, being found "not guilty" doesn't get your named removed from some "sex offender" lists.
When I come across a computer that has a hard drive that is full to capacity, I don't go snooping for the reason immediately. There's no reason to go looking around in folders for "viruses" when a good AV program is available.
I usually inform the user that they have to move or delete some stuff off the drive before I can fix it. Now after the user has told me that they have moved everything off the drive and I'm still seeing a full disk, I'm going to go looking for a cause. In this case DiskPieis your pal.I do this because I know that some of that stuff is going to be personal stuff. Finding nude photo's of the CEO's wife on USENET is one thing. Finding them on his hard drive is uncomfortable. I also work with users who have files that contain sensitive information about clients. I don't want to see that either.
Last but not least, I'm not a cop. I don't play one on TV. And I don't get paid to investigate peoples criminal behavior. If they blatantly hold up proof in front of me that they are doing something wrong, then they've made a problem for me and I will act accordingly. But I do not consider it my place to hunt through someone's hard drive looking for pron.I don't have Pete Townsends' attorneys.
Serving hot dogs down at the youth club & babysitting does not a child psychologist or paediatrician make.
It could be something as innocuous as sneaking the potential victim a piece of candy and asking the child not to tell Mom or Dad, she said, to "see if the child is amenable to manipulation."
The abuser-in-waiting will start to spend more time with the child, and exhibit more outward -- and inappropriate -- signs of affection, such as giving back rubs or acting too playful.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Part #1 does anyone know of really good site blocking, proxy tools to keep this stuff out? If someone was to get something on a machine, how would I find it [temp files, caches, etc]. Are there any prgrams that can search for the stuff?
Part #2 how would you get rid of "it" and by "it" I mean generally any illegal files, mp3, porn, programs, grocery lists, etc. For reasons everyone else mentioned, I'd prefer not to know someone had "kiddie porn" I just want to know if they've got dirty pics and delete the lot of them automatically, If they don't like it, tell the boss. Yeah, right. p. I suppose the best way is to use LTSP or Knoppix, then you don't have to worry about PCs. You can then require files to be in approperiate places and restrict the heck out of everything else! Do away with private folders all together. If everyone can see everyone's stuff, then there's not alot of room to go wrong. Maybe lock=down could be a really good Linux selling point?
Coming late to this discussion, but...
I'm in the midst of studying for my GSEC recert exam, and there's a section that addresses this pretty directly.
The recommendation is that you need to have a written policy on what to do in this case. And it needs to be signed by your boss and your boss's boss. You should have already decided beforehand in what cases the cops should be called.
Also, it points out that you can't even make a copy of child porn files you find on someone's computer, without violating the law yourself.
You don't go straight to the police. You tell the boss and its his job to tell the police (or you tell him you will).
This guy will have been sacked for telling the cops straight away without giving the company a chance to do some damage limitation.
One aspect that rarely seems to be covered is that of being falsely accused of possessing illicit materials such as child pornography or bomb making instructions or whatever your "cause-du-jour".
Sysadmins and techies are in an excellent position to plant pornography to "discover" during routine maintenance etc. If I as a sysadmin had some child pornography stored away for use in ruining a hated employee if I so chose (in an encrypted container file for example so it wouldn't come back and bite me), I could easily plant it in the employee's documents folder to be "found", by me or anyone else I anonymously tip off.
Now the employee who has just had these images found in his documents folder is in serious trouble. He or she will not only be liable under the law for possession of it, but worse still, their reputation will be forever ruined by even the accusation of having it, even if it is later thrown out of court.
Then, if it gets to court, the evidence will be, as previously posted, blown up to poster size and paraded in front of the jury, who will of course only see that the employee was obviously a sick individual to have these images, regardless of the fact they might have been planted. (Would YOU believe an employee who told you it was planted after it was discovered?)
I won't even cover the issue of juries, lawyers, judges etc not being "affected" by viewing these pictures. (Who censors the censors??)
What would YOU do if you were so accused?
Visceral Psyche Films
If you discover illegal goodies on a machine, what should you do about it?
I would explain the owner of that machine the risks associated with having such files on his/her machine and give him some suggestions about reducing that risk, like storing the "goodies" on external drive and/or using encryption.
If his activities may negatively affect the company, I would suggest that he/she ceases them.
P.S. It's nobody's business what a person stored on his HDD/CDs. I don't think there is a need to check every CD thrown in the trash and every computer sent into service centre. The fact that it is accessible doesn't mean it's a right thing to check it. Do you look for porn magazines/videos when you visit your friend at his/her home to report them to his/her spouse? That would be a good first step to witch trials...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
a) in attempt to pull kiddie porn from say kazaa someone put BO or Netbus out there as 3jailbaiters.jpg.exe or something and this user was dumb enough to get it somehow. i do realize kazaa has built in features to stop this, and i dont know for sure it was kazaa, but this is just an example. virus checker then shows the file name that is found as a virus and the location to it. The techie see's the awful name and opens up the folder....
b) when moving or copying large amounts of files on windows it shows file names. Techie keeps flipping an eyeball back to check on it and notices a lot of kiddieporn named files...
I personaly dont care about the context of how he found the pictures. He did the right thing.
If you are willing to sacrifice childeren for your privacy then you are partaking in child abuse as well.
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
I would simply talk to the person that had porn on their computer, delete their porn and tell them to go see a shrink. Sheesh, do people really think that bosses and police are the solution to the problem of kiddie porn?
And that would do no good at all and the sick pervert would go on raping children. Good for you! (BTW: I'm assuming we're talking about actual pictures of adults engaging in sex acts with children, what normal people call child rape.)
Child porn is used by pedophiles. These are people who are repeat offenders and who are almost never "cured" by psychotherapy. In most cases the only thing that stops a pedophile is prison. So while you may be squeamish (as well you should be) about calling the cops based on a file found on someone's computer, I can assure you that if you had any idea at all about the extent of psychological devestation these sick fucks wreak on children, the thought of not calling the police would literally make you want to puke.
If you think for one moment that someone who is not a pedophile would seek out pictures of children having sex, then you're just not using your head. Seriously, what do you think your reaction to seeing such vile material would be? Your friends? Your family? You need to realize that we're talking here about materials to which normal people have universal reactions of shock and disgust. Yes, I realize that's a broad statement, but it's pretty well ingrained into human nature that coercing young children for sexual gratification is wrong--imagine that!
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.
Dude, thank you! Seriously, it's glad to see someone else who doesn't think you should check your moral compass at the door when you get to work.
I'll tell you how they'd "limit the damage". They'd eliminate the evidence, then start recording "deficiencies in your job performance".
Hit him first. Hit him hard. When the dust clears, and the rightness of your actions is a matter of legal record, you'll be much safer.
That's not to say that you're not still fscked. Nobody wants to ever get into that situation, but once you're in it, pick your best chance for surviving it.
I bet to differ:m
http://whistleblowerlaws.com/statutes.ht
You cannot fire someone for refusing to help you do something illegal.
Sir, excuse me, i have found child porn on your computer! It must have been caused by some virus, because we all know you are not a weirdo. Do you want me to delete the virus and the porn or will we first report it to the police? I have allready taken measures at the firewall so it won't happen again! I think i will be promoted.
So if we remove the 'fake stuff' the only thing left they can do is go for 'the real thing'. That's how I feel. I don't get what the allure to naked children is either, but child rape and molestation has been around a lot longer than child porn, and I think that in societies where there aren't laws that prevent the sharing and posession of such pictures there is a lot less exploitation of children.
I feel the same way about illegal substances. Nobody would get shot over drugs if you could go get them at the liquor store. The prohibition forces the culture to become make-or-break violent.
Also, you fail to address that at least some of the child porn out there is completely consentual and non-coerced. I remember when I was nine a female friend and I took 'child porn' polaroids of each other because it was fun and not-allowed. Is that sick or immoral? I don't think so, just a little weird.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I thought this was kiddie porn.
I'd think boobs would be (oddly enough) a turn-off.
"Really, dude, think of the children."
BS BS BS BS!
Fake child porn harms no one.
You can't criminalize what goes on in a person's head. As long as it stays in one's head it harms noone.
You're the sicko to think you can create laws that make people's thoughts illegal.
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
I'll bet they were problem employees who didn't exactly handle themselves with maturity throughout this particular ordeal and were terminated WITH CAUSE.
If you read the article, you'd see that they were infact model employee's until JUST AFTER they reported what they found.
Your reasoning is flawed. You're saying that by catering to people with a mental illness and feeding that illness that you can limit that illness? To put it another way, you can put a fire out by throwing more wood on it? No.
This is not like drugs. Next?
Some child porn consentual? You're grasping for straws. That's like saying that if I was seven and saw another seven-year-old naked and played "doctor" or whatever that I was a child porn maniac or something. That's entirely incorrect because the two people are the same age which completely makes it not what is illegal. If those kids them take photos, that's not illegal. If they then distribute these photos that's illegal because someone older than them can get a hold of it and then we're back at my first post.
Which point are you arguing? People thoughts or people's art?
Art is an expression of thought, not the thought itself. I'm not talking about limiting the thought, I'm talking about defending the laws that are already in place that say the expression of that thought is illegal.
The point to making illustrations of child porn illegal is that it limits the imagination of the person with the illness. Hopefully that gives the person with the illness, and without the will to do it themselves, cause for seeking help in dismissing it. If we allow illustrations of it then we're basically saying, to an extent, "hey, this is all right after all, just don't actually do it, ok?" That doesn't work. They feed, and feed, and feed and then eventually you have a little league coach or someone that lands in jail for groping some 10-year-old.
Stop it early, stop it completely, and then it can't start.
I don't expect porn addicts to understand. I also don't expect people blinded by free speech advocacy to understand. Just because you want to do something does not mean you should be able to do something. With all freedoms come limits designed to protect fellow man. This one is designed to make any and all forms of expression of even an interest in abusing a child illegal. That's a good thing.
If you can't see that by now then you need help.
> Watching somebody else buggering little boys may well embolden
> (or at least excite) some idiot enough to plan and execute
> something for themselves.
Prove your assertion. Personally, I agree with the Canadian judge who struck down a particular law forbidding the personal possession (not distribution) of child pornography--the argument that convinced him was that viewing child pornography could be a sexual "release valve" for pedophiles the same way regular pornography is a release vavle for normal heterosexual males.
Be rational--what do people do when they view porn? They masturbate, orgasm, and then their sex drive temporarily wanes. I'd imagine it's exactly the same with pedophiles. From a rational standpoint, the mere posession of child pornography by a pedophile might actually help control his urges and keep them in the realm of fantasy.
Think about it.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
If you read the article, you'd see that they were infact model employee's until JUST AFTER they reported what they found.
I read the article, and the article said that the employees said they were model employees unti ljust after they reported what they found. In my experience, and it is many, when employees pop off about how perfect employees they are and how hard they work, they're full of shit. Never once have I worked with someone, or had someone work for me, who said they were the best employee and didn't actually turn out to be lazy little fucks who were better at shooting their mouths off than actually working. The article gave me a STRONG impression that these two are just like all the other "perfect" employees. They're full of shit, trying to look good in the press.
In Soviet America, Pravda reads you.
Like what I said? You might like my music
That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
... honestly, that's just funny.
You know, I think that it's amazing the lengths that some minds will go to "fight the belief systems" in the world just to express some form of independence, but that's just
Ok, fine, you're going "against the machine" or whatever and making some point here. Fine. Have you even questioned why you want to stretch things so far that you liken pictures of naked seven-year-olds to religion? I mean, to any normal person making that association is beyond absurd and into the comical realm of being raped by aliens, so to actually have the defunct mind needed to get to that level you really have to have something against religion.
I think rather than trying to steer towards that area of conversation you just need to stop and think for yourself about the world, man. I mean it, that was one huge leap in logic over molten cesspools of reason and association and through the brick wall of sanity. That had to hurt, man. Pick yourself up and look around and see what was driving you to do that kamikaze stunt rather than participate in this discussion. You need some massive introspection, there.
I wouldn't go to the BSA, but my situation is not the same. But you're right about using handles online etc. The thought occurred to me while writing that post that maybe I should just shut up.
I don't know if there are any good answers to situations like this. The best would probably be just to accept it and make do with what you have. Trying to bust your former boss' arse can be very difficult and can rebound on you badly. But covering yourself in case you do get hauled to court is not a bad idea.
Apparently you lack the ability to wrap your tiny little brain around the argument I was making.
Fact: fictitious child porn harms no one. No children were used in the making of it. Prosecuting people for indulgence in fiction is prosecuting thought crimes.
Fact: some people, myself included, think that religion is inherently sick, the workings of a deluded mind. Whether you happen to subscribe to this belief is entirely irrelevant.
Fact: so long as these perversions - child porn or religion - are limited to 'thought crimes' no one gets harmed. It's only when they're forced into reality - the actual molestation of real children, the forced conversion or repression of non-believers through legislation - that they become harmful.
Is that easy enough for you to follow? Can you make the connection between point A and point B?
Thought crimes, no matter how distasteful I find them, are not *actual crimes*. Prosecuting them is just plain evil, a perversion of the legislative system to enforce a moral belief that has no bearing on reality. Trying to make others think like you do, or believe like you do, says far more about your character than it ever will about the people you're trying to punish.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Fictional porn feeds the minds of people that can't get the real thing. This will lead to one of two things: they will be happy with the fake stuff or they will go get the real thing.
Bullshit. Prove it. Provide cites to scientific studies published in accredited, peer-reviewed journals that support your statement.
No substantive link has ever been established between pornography and any form of sexual violence. Fact is, sexually violent people are violent whether or not they have access to porn. That's a truism; rape, child or not, has been with us throughout human history, and long before the invention of pornography.
There has been no rise in sexual violence since the advent of porn. There is no link between the two. None. This is the party line of right-wing freaks who use arguments like these to force their narrow moralistic views on everyone else.
If we get the sickos off the addiction all together then we can hope to fight it.
The evidence to date suggests that the tendency towards sexual violence is actually biological in nature. The only successful treatment for such behavior is through drugs. Without drugs, the recidivism rate *even with extensive, ongoing therapy* is greater than 90%. This is no better than the rate *without therapy*.
Do you understand? Therapy does nothing precisely because this problem is biologically based - only drugs work. This is not an 'addiction', it's a basic brain malfunction that can only be treated - so far - by altering how the brain works on a chemical level.
Access to pornography is entirely irrelevant. Either you're a sicko or you aren't, and if you are your only hope lies in drug treatment. If you rape children, *you're defective*. If you don't rape children, no amount of pornography is going to alter your brain in some strange way to make you defective.
Really, dude, think of the children.
The argument of assholes. "Think of the chiiilllldren!" Christ, folks like you are a dime a dozen these days.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I'm sorry, but I don't think I'll ever be convinced that merely looking at something is bad, immoral, or wrong. It might be an indication of a disorder, but more often than not it's just another thing for dirty old men to jerk off to, and I don't have a problem with that.
I think our efforts are much better put to rearing a society that minimizes the demand for such material, and I don't think criminalizing possesion is a means to do that. Maybe we should tighten the laws up on people who actually commit sex crimes, even if it doesn't deter them it is to our advantage to not allow them to re-enter society.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I thought about trying to explain the problems with your derailed logic and then I realized it would be all for naught since your mind is quite enveloped in it's fantasy land.
Go on, stay there and be paranoid and leave the nice sane people alone.
[sigh]
I would expect you would have at least seen the last statement as humor, but you're all riled up and spewing canned arguments so I suppose you missed that. And other things as well, it seems.
Not worth my time.
The folks thinking that child porn is so unexceptable to everyone tried to do what they thought was right by telling their superiors. What they did not realize is that at this university(and many others) the child porn is more exceptable than snooping. Next time inform the police annonymously and maybe this professor would not be the only one at the school that was found out. Anyone who even remotely tries to justify this filth needs to be watched.
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
the employees said they were model employees unti ljust after they reported what they found.
Its been a few days since i read the article, but i thought they had performace evaluations to back up thier statements. At least, thats the impression i was left with.
Its been a few days since i read the article, but i thought they had performace evaluations to back up thier statements. At least, thats the impression i was left with.
It's been a few days for me as well, but that was definitely not the impression I was left with. However, considering what their words seem to indicate about what kind of workers they are (regardless of whatever proof they have, in my opinion), and the fact that they snooped on a customer, I have to side with the employer on this one.
Like what I said? You might like my music