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Microsoft Fires Mac Fan For Blog Photo
christor writes "Microsoft has fired a full-time temp employee after it discovered that the employee posted in his blog a photo and story concerning Microsoft's purchase of what looks to be around 18 G5s.
Check out the blog entry, Even Microsoft wants G5s, and the one that follows it. Microsoft fired the blogger, despite an offer to take the posting down. Note that this is not a free speech issue, even though the blog was hosted on a non-company server, because Microsoft is not, yet, the government. But it does present several other interesting issues, including that of the trade-off between the bad publicity that comes from the firing and whatever bad results follow when employees feel free to post such things."
I'm pretty sure that if I posted confidential information about my company, they would fire me too. All I have to say to this person is, duh.
I don't think there is that much OS discrimination within the company, with the exception that each developer needs to have a windows machine for obvious reasons. I think MS fired him because he was blatently trying to embarrass the company.
MS is making a big push towards platform independent applications via managed code. I heard from one employee that the vast majority of products will need to be re-written for the
For as valid as your point is, its kinda of unrelated to the topic of a company terminating an employee for iReason. The posting is suggesting that the employee was fired for.... what? Saying Microsoft was buying Macs? I don't think so. I would imagine it had more to do with taking images from the Redmond campus (unapproved images from his digital camera), off campus and making them available online. There are many business campus' that have very specific rules (that you agree to as part of employment) about what can and can't happen on campus. Understanding the images were captured in a loading dock, but they could have been pictures of code (screen captures or documents) or other MS IP. Since the guy was a temp, he prolly wasn't afforded a detailed explanation, just a seizure of non-personal items an personal escort the edge of the property.
Well, considering that they DO develop mac software (Office, IE), I don't think it's really a mystery why they wanted the boxes.
I don't think there is that much OS discrimination within the company, with the exception that each developer needs to have a windows machine for obvious reasons. I think MS fired him because he was blatently trying to embarrass the company.
This is not really the issue (or it's very unlikely that it's the case).
There are probably two factors that played a role. First, while the particular picture is not a big deal, maintaining a policy of not sending out pictures *is* a big deal. If people get in the habit of snapping pictures, sooner or later, important data will leak. Where I work, you just can't have cameras, and just can't take pictures. It's not unusual. Most companies won't just let you walk in and start taking pictures wherever you want. I've known people over the course of my life that *have* been involved in corporate espionage, and a small camera is a seriously useful tool for someone who can't afford to be standing in front of something for a couple of minutes scribbling things down on a clipboard. It's not an unreasonable policy demand at all, though I think it should probably be made more clear to temps. I applaud the guy for not flying off the handle over this.
Second of all, this information *could* be damaging. It's a pretty safe bet that Microsoft conducts competitive research (though the building name tends to make me think that this is not the case). If competitors know what Microsoft is examining, it could put them on guard as to what Microsoft is trying to use from them. Furthermore, it lets them arm the lawyers, so that the moment Microsoft steps near infringing on a patent or whatnot, they can smack them. In this particular case, there's not a lot of suspicious information, but if, say, Microsoft was picking up a handful of iPods, something that doesn't generally have a direct business application (and it seems unlikely that the guy here would stop at snapping a picture with a caption of "Even Microsoft Wants iPods"), things might be a bit worse. Even if it's not competitive research, the contents of a company's loading docks can be quite valuable information. If Boeing has crates and crates marked "titanium sheets" sitting around, you can damn well bet that other airplane-producing defense contractors will be very interested. If Sony's Aibo division has a bunch of bales of fake fur on their loading docks, competitors have a good guess as to where the product is going, and time to produce marketing campaigns and make deals appropriately.
So...I have to say that I can see how frusterating it is for the temp guy, but it's not as if Microsoft Security is firing him for liking Macs and working at Microsoft. Hell, of the people I know that have worked at Microsoft, two of them really like Linux, and one kept a Tux doll in his cubicle. MS doesn't really care about something like that -- they care about potential leaks, or precedent being set that could lead to future leaks.
May we never see th
I'll back you up on that statement. I was supporting Microsoft products (Windows 2000 Professional. Then NT Server, Services for Unix, Services for Macintosh, and Proxy 2.0.) through an outsourcer and had plenty of contact and meetings with regular employees as well as temps (a- accounts). There are several employees that are fans of other OSes. Heck, I personally had a big 20th Anniversary Macintosh poster in my cubicle. Microsoft understands diversity and embraces it in the company.
On the other hand, if you come to work taking pictures of internal affairs and publish them on the web with blatant intentions of making your employer look bad, how the fuck do you expect them to react!?!
-Lucas
Come on, the camera as security issue is bogus. What are you gonna do, stop everyone with a cell phone because you can now snap 1.2 megapixel pictures with some models and send them in real time?
Yes. It wasn't long ago that there was an article on Slashdot about how some big Japanese company with a research wing was banning the use of camera cell phones.
Even companies that allow people to carry them may have policies against use of the camera on company grounds. This is difficult to enforce, yes...but as it happened, if someone posted pictures to a weblog and an exec got ahold of them, they'd know that they were taking pictures.
No, it wasn't even a question of security, because the first question they asked him is if it (the page in question) was hosted on a Microsoft-owned server (wtf - they couldn't even do a traceroute? oops, forgot - this is Microsoft, not the most tech-savvy company out there by a long shot).
This is unreasonable on your part. Microsoft is not limited to paying for machines in the MICROSOFT.NET and MICROSOFT.COM domains. A number of companies use cohosting/colocation services. Microsoft, if working on a project, especially with outsiders, could easily be using a system not in their regular domain. Sure, it probably wasn't going to be true, but it likely provides the company with legal ammunition (there may be a policy against non-work-related personal use of Microsoft-owned systems), and they then have witnessed claims from him.
If it had been, they would have sacked him for misuse of company property. Since they couldn't they went to their fall-back position, which is that it was a breech of security to let the general public know where the building was located - never mind that the location is already public knowledge - city hall has it, the public utilities have it, the phone company has a detailed layout of the whole site, delivery companies have it, former employees have it (unless they're being mind-wiped on termination), yada yada yada. It's not a secret, so their excuse was typical microsoft bullshit.
They almost certainly aren't trying to prevent people from knowing the "location of the building". You didn't read my post -- I was arguing that they were worried about precedent-setting and possibly the contents of the loading dock itself.
As far as preventing leaks, this is a company with a history of leaking like a sieve halloween is here - we want more halloween documents, just like their products.
Ridiculous. Microsoft took reasonable precautions -- this is legally significant if a leaking employee gets isolated and a trade secret case can be made -- to keep those memos secret. They were probably not sent to outside addresses, etc. There is no way a company the size of MS can stop internal memos from leaking completely, and leaks in the past *certainly* do not mean that the company should throw up their hands and give up on plugging current leaks.
May we never see th
Let's look at this from an ethics standpoint. If the guy had posted a picture of himself dressed as Mary Poppins frolicking in his yard, then it's not an issue for his work. If he published pictures of his personally owned Windows PC blue-screening and bitched about it in his blog, that's not cause for Microsoft to take action against him, either.
It's when you cross that line between home and work that it gets ugly. The guy took digital photos of his employer's non-public building areas while there as an employee. He identified himself as a Microsoft employee, in what department he worked, and in what building. He used poor judgement and he knows it. Microsoft didn't commit some horrible atrocity against the Mac community by firing the guy. They did not quelch his free speech rights. They fired some loose cannon who was wandering around the campus taking digital photos and posting them on his own web page. The whole story is just sensationalistic: Microsoft Fires Mac Fan For Blog Photo. It had nothing to do with his being a "Mac Fan." What's next?
Come on folks.
Criminal trespass is the unlawful access by a person to anothers' property. Your example (McDonalds) is not only lame - it's not true. I can walk into a McDonalds (not that I would - I've been boycotting them since they started making pizzas) with a group of friends, order a meal, and start snapping pictures of our little party.
If they were to even try to physically confiscate the camera, I would be well within my rights to call the police and sue for assault. So, where was the trespass? Hell, I can even take pictures of what is plainly in view and they can't say anything, as long as I'm there as a customer.
They would have to have the "no cameras" ban posted prominently AS YOU ENTER THE STORE. Anything else just won't cut it in court. For example, you see the "No dogs allowed" sign (which I fortunately am allowed to ignore - lucky me, life isn't a total suck :-) AT THE DOOR, not at the back of the building.
This is the same rationale that the MPAA wanted to ban text messaging because people were texting each other during the movie to say "the hulk sux".
They're going to have to get used to the idea that, in a wired world, what goes on in public is available for public consumption and recording for posterity.
It's the same as using your phone while in WalMart to call your buddy at CostCo to find out which of the two has the better price this week. Not only not illegal, but attempting to stop you would be a federal crime, as it is interference with a lawful telecommunication.
Remember, just because most people don't know their rights doesn't mean that those rights cease to exist for everyone.
So what? It's not a bank, a nuclear research facility, the changing rooms of Moulin Rouge; it's an office building.
Was he hired to take digital photos of company property? It's not his office building. It's theirs. If they don't want photos of it floating around the net, that's their call.
Think about the questions that go through the minds of the security people: Today it was the loading dock but what will it be tomorrow? The new X-Box, our development lab? Photos of company-proprietary memos? Why is the guy wandering around the campus taking pictures with a digital camera?
You also don't seem to understand how industrial espionage works. They might be just Macs to you. Someone else might have other information that they are able to put together with that in order to ascertain something that Microsoft wishes to keep secret.
And in all the places I've worked, no one has ever cared what snaps anyone took or what they did with them.
Where have you worked? JC Penney and Walmart? Most engineering firms are very guarded and don't want pictures of their facilities distributed over the Internet.