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Alabama IT Whistleblower Fired For Spyware
chalker writes "Vernon Blake, an IT sysadmin for the Alabama Department Of Transportation, wanted to get evidence that his boss spent the majority of his time playing solitaire on his computer. Since emails to higher up supervisors were ignored, he installed Win-Spy, which grabbed screenshots several times per day over a period of 7 months. 70% of the resulting screenshots showed an active game of solitaire, and another 20% showed his boss checking the stock market. When he reported this to superiors, he was fired, even though he had 21 years of service in the position. His boss got a reprimand to 'stop playing games'. He is appealing his termination in court since he claims it was part of his job description to 'confirm and document' computer misuse for ALDOT. His complete story is here."
Employers spy on employees, not the other way around!
this guy got shafted. Canned for doing your job?
Should we ask what the other 10% consisted of?
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Firing him was an appropirate response. He abused the power he needed to do his job, and could no longer be trusted with it.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Am I the only one who HATED solitare?
Past tense of course, I no longer use the dreaded windoze... you know, D O Z E.
Yes, I am cool.
delete solitary from his boss's computer?
They couldn't fix my brakes, so they made my horn louder.
For spending 70% of his time worrying about what his boss was doing. Give me break! We've all worked with people like this before- they're sooo worried about what everone else is doing. These are the same people who used to remind the teacher about the homework assignment.
I'm not saying its right to spend all day playing solitare, but it sounds like this weasel went to extremes to "tell on" someone.
[FromTheMorning]
I heard you cannot even record phone conversations, EVEN if you feel that the other person has ulterior motivation to call you!
They have computers in Alabama? When did this happen?
Was the bosses machine his primary source of doing work? If you're the boss you're in meetings all day and out telling people what to do, not sitting in your office typing away. Also, I've left a game of freecell going during a 2 hour meeting before or during lunch. That doesn't mean I'm derilict in my duties.
Please. This guy installed Spyware on his bosses computer, and his wife's. for seven months, probably looking for porn surfing but all he got was solitaire.
This guy was just an asshole, the kind of person who thinks because he's a sys-admin who has admin access on the computers that he ought to be the computer morality person as well. Or in this case, the productivity nazi.
The supervisor in this story has gotten good reports, maybe playing solitaire is the way he 'thinks'. Who knows?
The person who setup these screen grabs (seven months of them) deserved exactly what he got.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
From the site. Hehe.
Surprising thing was none of the screenshots were of solitaire crashing
Granted, most people here hate boss-types, but its only fair to ask for the boss's side of the story. For example: perhaps his job consists of minimal computer usage. When I was in college, part of my financial aid package involved doing work for the school - I got put to work answering phones and calling alumns to shake them up for money. I had a computer, and there was a solitaire game or something similar on it all the time - it was mindless enough I could do it while talking to somebody, and it kept me sane between calls. The boss could be in a similar situation if he spends most of his time on the phone or otherwise _talking_ to employees. He just wouldn't be constantly playing the game. Most people here equate working with time spent active on the computer doesn't mean that it always is.
I'm not saying this is the case, but its worth considering that the boss could have a radically different story, and the article did present a very one sided view.
Do not make your boss look bad and expect to retain your job.
1 wrong resulted in two wrongs. Unfortunately the lesser wrong was fired.
2 wrongs made a CLE (Career Limiting Event)
He wasn't abusing his power. He was doing exactly what he was paid to do: stop computer misuse. His boss was misusing the computer. The only reason he got fired is because he did this to his boss, rather than to some underling.
Grrrr....
1) Be respectful of the privacy of others 2) Think before you type
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I wonder how the guy was caught. Oh, and there's a picture of a spy in the lower right hand corner.
It's called office politics. If you don't like the game, become self employeed. And ya...people suck ass. YOu just gotta learn to live wit it.
Oh ya, I hope that lazy-ass sysadmin get's his job pulled from underneath him!
Life is not for the lazy.
Just gathering from what they've done, both the boss and the employee should be fired. Just firing the boss would open the door to people spying on one another all the time, but just firing the employee, well, there's your standard business-type hypocrisy.
... for using Windows. Bet if he was using Linux and playing games (games on Linux are better anyway) he would have been fine. I'm pretty sure the only reason why I haven't been fired yet is because I use Linux. ctrl+tab moves me to my other desktop, which conviently is running vi with the latest version of our app, and I am sure that I have no spyware installed.
Arthur - If you're reading this -- just kidding! Otherwise, I am completely serious.
bash: rtfm: command not found
Not-so-mean-BOFH vs. PHB. Let's get ready to rumble!!!
I read that as:
And I thought AC deserved a medal.This kind of makes me wonder if he would have still been fired if he used software that was more for "remote administration". Something like PCAnywhere, where you can see the remote desktop over the network if you needed to manually install a patch at night on a user's computer from your own desk.
Even then, doesn't this guy's company have some sort of disclaimer for their network in which using it provides consent to monitoring? If so, the boss can't say he wasn't warned.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
If you ask me, the more interesting question is: To what extent should an employer have a right to decide what their employees do on company time.
Should it matter if you're spending half your time playing Solitare if you still manage to do the job you're supposed to do?
This boss's managers don't seem to want to get rid of him. One conclusion you could draw from that is that perhaps the boss actually is getting what he's supposed to be doing done. (Maybe most of his work isn't even done on the computer?)
In that case, who cares if he's playing solitare? Perhaps he's thinking things through and making decisions while doing it?
Personally, I've got a job where nobody tells me what to do with my time, as long as I get the job done.
And that's the way it should be, if you ask me.
By my definition, a job is performing a task for money.
This guy deserves a Darwin Award for removing himself from the workplace.
Your post makes no sense at all.
This guy was doing exactly what he was hired to do. If he'd found a lowbie employee playing games, he'd have been given a pat on the back for his work.
His only "misdimeaner" was finding his boss guilty of this waste of tax dollars, instead of a minor minion. Bosses never think that rules apply to them.
...where money has always been and will always be more important than justice.
This guy pisses me off. After reading the article I can see he tried to get boss in trouble because he pissed him off. He claims that he could effectivly "supervise" his 6 subordinatesl well if he was with the company for so long how did he manage so far. And another thing, I'm sure his job discription doesn't include investigator. Even if you a Sys Admi you cant install software for your needs.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
That would be the best course of action, because then the lazy bastard would have to ask somebody to put Solitaire back on the computer. Or he would go and download his own little games and fuck up Windows with spyware.
I thought spyware generally meant a completely unrelated thing, software like Gator that spies on the user that installed it, and gives the information to the company that makes it. As opposed to software that allows one person to spy on another person.
He should have known better than to get the son of the CEO fired.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
is to the office staff what leaning on one's shovel is to the DOT road crews. It is a privilege of the senior employees. Yes, you could be fired for not working all day. Obviously, it is not going to happen to this supervisor any time soon. The fact is that this guy is not good guy whistle blower. He is just an idiot with an unproductive boss.
Installing unauthorized software on a state government computer WILL get you fired. Raise the bar, and install spyware on a state government computer and you could be facing criminal charges. It does not matter that the software install was for alleged "white hat" purposes.
Have you Meta Moderated t
In all seriousness, by the time it got to this point, wouldn't have been easier, less time-consuming, and all-around saner to just go and get another job? After 21 years in IT, this guy should know how that world works.
Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
Different work places have different work ethics. I work for a certain big company in SiValley, and I run a stock company on the side. Since the market closes by 1pm PT, I have at least 5 more hours of work aside from just monitoring the market every morning.
I think that in California this work type of work ethic is enjoyed where as in New York any deviation from work would be reprimanded. Similar to the dress codes as well.
-------
artlu.net
yuo = nuts
Seems the company had a policy of spying on its employees with a key-logger. Unfortunatelly the cocmpany didn't keep these key-logs securely and someone stole them and extracted credit card info from people who made online purchases.
This kind of spyware is dangerous regardless of who is using it.
Just the good ol' boys,
Never meanin' no harm,
Beats all you've ever saw, been in trouble with the law since the day they was born.
Straight'nin' the curve,
Flat'nin' the hills.
Someday the moutain might get 'em, but the law never will.
Makin' their way,
The only way they know how,
That's just a little bit more than the law will allow.
Just good ol' boys,
Wouldn't change if they could,
Fightin' the system like a true modern day Robin Hood.
If this was private enterprise damn tootn he should have been slammed. However this is state and tax dollars this is a concern...we should know where and how are dollars are spent...or we should not use tax dollars to support this system.
OVER TAXING.
If you haven't figured it out yet, IT and the people in it are just a resource to be used and abused. If you're not connected up in the food chain then tread carefully. Just a worker bee here.
I had this same sort of problem at work. But instead of trying to prove that the employee was spending innordinate amounts of time playing solitare we would just go in and change all the windows shortcuts to point random places. My favorite was to have it open mspaint with a screenshot of a new game of solitaire.
He has a toolbarcounter on his whine page
This should be fun to watch...
Counter Hits Summary
Total Months Counter Hits / 12200
Average Number Of Counter Hits Per Day / 394
Oh, and I imagine this will look different in a few hours as well
Top 5 Browsers by Visits
(Browsers / Visits)
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x / 6498
FireFox / 1447
Unknown / 922
Safari / 598
Netscape 7 / 437
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
It's not like I voted for CowboyNeal!
Might I remind you this is Alabama. Our typical computer system intra public includes a state of the art pentium 2 processor, with 24 to 32 megabytes of Ram. YIKES !!!. Osi Osi Noche
Osi Osi Osi Osi Osi
Yep. If'n the ole boy lived in Miss'ippi the boss'd be playing solitaire with real cards. (Actually, if it were our DOT, the boss would be propped up in the yellow crew-cab pickup truck reading Hustler).
>Sweet home Alabama
I prefer this version.
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
How does one detect Win-Spy? Just in case.. erm... just wondering... uh... hypothetically speaking, if someone has installed WinSpy on my^H^H a computer, how would one detect it?
Yeah, never underestimate the buddy system in management.
During bad times I took a soul killing job at a charity. Like many charities, this one was run to keep buddies employed. I was doing the number two position in our branch office, moving our inefficient paper around. Number one sat in her glass-walled office and read romance novels all day, being a buddy of the big chief at head office.
Desperate for brain stimulation, I figured out how we could exchange our photocopier lease for a computer system lease (our charter did not allow us to own equipment), and how to set it all up to handle our paperwork. I figured a month to install, another to make absolutely sure it worked perfectly, and then they could fire me as redundant. Excellent efficiency. Wrote it up and delivered to my manager. Got turned down. I bugged for why. It was eventually admitted that it would also eliminate the number two at head office, who was of course another buddy of the big chief.
But I got out soon enough. There was an inspection coming up and I was informed I'd have to be demoted because romance-reader needed to cover up that I'd been doing all the work; branches weren't supposed to have a number two.
You might think of that next time you're phoned to donate clothing to be resold by a charity. Give it directly to the poor instead and write a cheque to a real cause.
Maybe this guy should have spent time WORKING instead of wanting to get his boss fired.
*sigh*
Lock down the computer. Remove admin rights and give him only stuff he justifiably needs to do.
Block access to certain websites.
If the boss raises these restrictions up, talk to him about how that would be conflicting with official policies. Ask for confirmation in an email if he still objects and want things changed.
If you work in government these are all things that set the trail for accountablitity and responsiblity (and yes that scares the crap out of people).
Spying in the workplace, unless its 100% cleared from above, is immoral.
Could I, as a janitor, put cameras in the woman's washroom because I wanted to prove that too much time was being spent there?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
...but the screen capture utility didn't capture that for some reason.
I worked in a government office for a few years, and it's quite conceiveable that you could fire up an app (Solitaire in this case), then walk away to a meeting for hours-on-end (taxpayer waste, if I ever saw any).
I wonder if there isn't a whole lot more to the story that we're not getting. Any boss (or sysadmin, for that matter) worth their salt will admit to office "downtime" occasionally. I keep a browser window open all day long, usually with slashdot loaded, but that doesn't mean that's what fills my day.
His "webpage" (with it's own domain name, no less) is written in an MS dialect of HTML. That in itself isn't so bad, and I wouldn't have noticed. Except when I pull my scroll bar on a webpage with plain text and my system _LAGS_, I check the source. Good god what does he have there. If you clean it (17.5KB) up, the text is 3.5 times smaller (5KB!). He does IT? He should know this.
Anyone who lives in Alabama ought to be writting a letter to their state representatives asking what is up there. Reports that someone is missusing their computer shouldn't have been ignored in the first place. The state of Alabama needs to completely change that department. Start with replacing the cabinet person responsible for transportation. (I'm guessing this is a cabinet level position, but I don't know how that state government works)
Then do a massive layoff, since most of the upper management obviously needs to go.
We can argue the ethics of what this guy did, but I'm having problems finding anyone ethical in this story. Not the supervistor who ignored the report (if it wasn't ignored either the behavior would have stopped, or the boss would have been fired before this guy finished 6 months of screen grabbing). Not the boss playing solitare instead of the job he should do. Even if he can do his job in 1 hour a week, it is unethical to not find other work that needs to be done for the other 49. This guy is perhaps most ethical, as a admin his job is to watch the state's computers. (but perhaps because I don't know that state) This isn't a private machine he was spying on.
If the supervisors were doing their job, this would have never got this far, because they would have repramanded the boss right away. Then either the boss would have changed so nothing would need to be done, or he wouldn't and they would know to fire him. Most people I know have done something stupid like this at work (including a number of you reading this at work), but when it becomes a problem the boss is supposed to notice and tell you to change before it becomes time to fire you.
...they should have a Darwin Awards for getting fired instead of diving. Installing spyware on a coworker's comp, for legitimate reasons or no, strikes me as a bloody stupid thing to do. "Oh, hey, this guy is playing games with his time instead of working. Please ignore the fact that I compromised security to get the evidence."
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
I can see both sides, but you have to remember, most companies can fire you for any reason or no reason, so this would just set yourself up for being distrustful, regardless of your 'white hat' sales pitch.
...on the other hand, that was his job...ok, then he should have gotten permission up front for his task, that should have covered it.
if it were me, I'd look at something like bitch-slap, you know, the old bluescreen inducing network app? from the screenies it looks like it may work on that old system. just randomly crash the computer, but be sure to cover your tracks, that would be enough to keep me entertained. you can only worry about what the next guy is getting away with for so long, plus, it's only a job.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Anyone know of a nifty piece of software I could use to see what other people are doing on their machine in real time? Something a-la VNC in read-only?
I would appreciate any ideas you guys have.
Nate
-- Nate
Sounds like the government is functioning perfectly!
Am I alone in wondering how it is that the comments seem overwhelmingly in favor of the government's actions and opposed to those of a sysadmin? Is you is or is you ain't my constituency? If this looney tunes boss was not getting his job done, and the official policy gave the sysadmin the duty to make record of abuse, then his actions were justified and right.
On another note, Alabama's government must be somewhat different than my state. Here, it is almost impossible to fire a government employee, no matter how blatant the offense(s).
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
The boss has certain tasks to accomplish as part of his job and he gets evaluated on them. If he can accomplish those tasks while spending most of his time playing Solitaire on his computer, then either the tasks are very light or he is very efficient when he isn't playing Solitaire.
If the tasks are very simple, it's not his fault: that sometimes happens in government--people get stranded in jobs where they don't have to do much yet they can't get fired.
Either way, evaluating the performance and effectiveness of his boss is not the systems manager's task. If the boss did something illegal on the computer, that might be the systems manager's business, but nothing beyond that.
What right does this person have to dictate what his boss should do? If he doesn't feel his boss is performing his job correctly, he should report it to the higher-ups, which he did. The higher-ups didn't care. This should have been a big fucking hint. Perhaps his boss can do his job and play Solitaire at the same time. Maybe that's why he ended up as Boss.
Here on Slashdot, many people post and read articles from work. This is claimed as "Okay," because we're getting our jobs done regardless, right? But when it comes to somebody in a position of power, suddenly playing a mindless cardgame is such a horrible violation that a sysadmin must "blow the whistle?" I call bullshit.
This idiot overstepped his boundaries. What makes it worse is that he was a government employee and demonstrated an intent to use his position as system administrator to spy on other government employees. This is completely unacceptable, and it was entirely appropriate to fire his dipshit ass.
A few thoughts:
I work at a engineering firm, and while quite a few people will work in CAD most of the day, many of the older engineers will not. If they're not in a meeting somewhere they'll mostly be marking up paper on their desk and passing it off to CAD people: their computer is really only there for email and to compose the occasional letter. If they've got solitare open on it it doesn't mean they're not working. Maybe they opened it during breakfast or lunch and havn't used the computer since. It happens...quite a bit.
Secondly, I also know the type previous posters have mentioned: those who are concerned more with what others are doing then themselves. The drawbacks to these types are at least twofold: Not only are they getting little work done themselves, they're also easily duped by someone who looks like they're doing work, but isn't...either do to deception or gross ineffciency. What's worst is when these people aren't part of your group so they really have no understanding of your actual output.
Thirdly, no one likes a snitch. If you were asked to do it by someone higher up that's one thing, but it's definately not something you want to perform unilateraly. If the bigwigs didn't care about it before, why the hell will they care about it now? Eventually you just have to accept the fact that people are complete wastes and let it be. Besides, that's what happy hour is for: bitching about useless coworkers
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
that link is right out of the story...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
He should sue the state into bankruptcy.
If this gets before a jury he has the case won. His lawyer just needs to show how he was "looking out for you, the taxpayers and his bosses those 'upper management types' didn't like it".
If his lawyer does his job properly, he'll never have to work again; unless he chooses to.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
" The article said the program took in to account idle times and took no screenshots during periods of inactivity."
True, but it also doesn't say *how often* the boss was using his computer. If he spent six hours at his computer every day that was 70% solitaire/20% stock checking, then it looks pretty bad. On the other hand, if every day he spent 7 minutes playing solitaire, 2 minutes checking his stocks, and 1 minute switching between the two, then it would be pretty trivial.
Alabama is an "at will" employment state. This means that an employee can be disciplined or terminated for any reason (or for no reason at all) as long as the termination does not violate federal or state laws. I do not know state law in Alabama, but he wasn't fired for being black and he wasn't fired for not sleeping with his boss, so I think he is screwed. Perhaps there is some whistleblower law floating around that will save him. Otherwise he should be getting his resume ready.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
SIMPLE?
He's trying to uninstall a game on a business-oriented operating system. That should be one command, tops.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
Don't think I could keep a straight face at this one though.
Look - the way the world works is this. There is the way things are supposed to run, and there is the way they actually run. We geeks do have a hard time with this concept, as to us, a spade is a spade.
Its like for example, I posted a comment about Google and search engines recently, which I posted intending it to be funny. The mods obviously agreed, and it's presently rated +5 Funny. HOWEVER, two guys still replied "correcting" my "claim" that searching Google for "search engine" took me to the home page. The fact is, whether my "claim" is accurate or not is irrelevant - it's funny to think that someone searched Google to find out what a "search engine" is and was taken back to the Google homepage and thinks Google is broken (get it??) What the joke is implying is that Google is so good, for many people it is the only way to search the web and has in fact become a verb - "Googling" for something rendering the "search engine" phrase obsolete.
In a similar fashion, if you are employed as a sysadmin and part of your job role is to "identify misuse of the net" or company hardware, this does not mean you have carte blanche to spy on the boss, (or worse, their superiors). If you want to lose your job, sure - go right ahead but people do not hire you to spy on them. You will very rarely see any of these "unwritten rules" formalised - it's just "the done thing", and the very fact the phrase "unwritten rule" exists should tell you something.
It's the geek syndrome - taking things literally. It's why we are traditionally so bad with the feminine mind set (I'm not being sexist here, men (typically gay men) can exhibit the feminine mind set too) until we understand the rules; and there are rules - for example if the average woman asks you "does her arse look big in this" she is most definitely NOT looking for an honest answer, she is looking for a compliment.
Learning to read between the lines is a useful skill. A wise person once said something along the lines of "often rather than what you do say, it's what you don't say that can be the difference between a sucessful career and an unsucessful one".
I agree, it sucks, however it's the way things are and the people who can adapt to this are sucessful.
The people he reported this too were probably doing excatly what he reported. Think about it: You are a manager - and are presnted with evidence that an employee has the power to track what you are doing... who do you fire?
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Oh nevermind.
In my experience, often management would rather look the other way when it comes to problems with computers and software issues. That way they can claim to not be at fault - how many shareholders understand the intricacies? My estimate is approximately zero, so it's pretty easy for hoodwinking to happen.
It's easier that way, and fuckups can always be blamed on "the goddam computer".
Am I right or am I bullshitting?
In the organization, we're all SOMEBODY's superior (unless you're an intern, then you're kinda screwed). This sets the precedent that most any employee that has a position of power has a right to slack off, and if anyone wants to interfere with the slacking, they're out panhandling the next day.
Personally, if the activities of a user isn't impacting the network or my application, I could really care less what they do when waiting for work to do. As a sysadmin, I do alot of waiting....on support calls from companies, waiting for user specs, waiting for users to frickin get of the system.....if I did not have Firefox open with something interesting to read, then I would go stir crazy. I usually don't stream anything during the day and when I do get sidetracked on the web, I start to think of things comeing up and start working on them. But have you ever had a day where you only had an hour or two left and you had to stay for support but in that hour or two you really did not have enough time to get anything started? That's the perfect time ot get caught up on industry websites and other items that may not pertain directly to your job, but are nice to know anyway because they MAY pertain to your job someday. Case in point, if you own a Mac and are an it person, you may browse Mac web sites for a a fe wminutes at work. That additional knowledge may pop up in a meeting...Hey so and so....didn't you say that Mac's do blah blah blah....
Solitare can work your brain. I think excess is one thing, but the occasional game is not going to do anything. If this guy just came to work and played solitare all day well then I could see that as excess. But if he cooled down from a meeting by firing off a few hands, then I doin't have an issue with that.
Gorkman
Being a do nothing boss and a civil servant to boot with nearly limitless power to terrorize the underlings at will and whim is pretty much how the world works. Get over it.
If you want to get your boss shitcanned then do a reasonably good job and plant porn on his/her machine.
The utility only captured input during periods of user activity. If there was none, the utility would remain inactive. So you posters saying "I leave Freecell open during meetings" are missing the point.
It also only captured during randomly set intervals at 30 minutes a minimum. Basically, it was set up so that it was a completely random sample that the sysadmin was unable to knowingly control in order to make the guy look bad.
Be honest.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
This raises a good point: how productive are we as an economic society? Do any of us put in anything close to 100% effort? I'd say our economy is operating at around 50% of its productive capacity due simply to labor laziness. Tons of workers only put in enough effort to keep their jobs (and others just enough to look good), but few put in their best work in every situation.
While most of us would find this guys actions appropriate, he obviously did not understand the attitude of the management he worked for, and THAT is what determines whether his actions were right or wrong, not what you or I or even he thought. When it became obvious that upper management didn't give a shit, his job as IT narc was done. At that point, his actions should have been regulated to gathering evidence for that day when things came crashing down (and they would have eventially) to cover his ass. If your bosses have expressed a distinct disinterest in how that posisition was managed, YOU are in the wrong for going any further, as much as it pains me to say it. At that point, you may be stepping on good ol' boy toes or some other crap, and while you have the right to do it, your an idiot for doing so.
It really surprises me that after 21 years of supposed service, this guy gets canned for the expose, which leads me to believe there is something(s) we're all not being told. 21 years and this guy still doesn't have a sensible grasp of the environment that would can him as sooner than praise him? 21 years and this guy is worth less than a solitair playing spider monkey? Normally that only happens when they're just dying for an excuse to get rid of you, normally after you've done something to piss them off.
Sorry, but thing aren't adding up here for the righteous IT guy here. I'm betting he screwed the pooch way before this incident.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
"Screenshots were automatically recorded at times randomly selected by the screen capture utility. The installer of said utility had no control over the randomly selected times...
Periods of computer inactivity on the part of the user de-activated the utility until such time that user input was detected. This feature prevented generation of redundant screenshots at night, weekends, holidays, days off, etc...
Also, A minimum time interval of approximately 30 minutes transpired between screenshots to prevent a large volume of redundant images. The purpose of the utility was to take a representative sample of computer activity. The pattern of computer usage on the part of the user ultimately governed the interval between screenshots. When no activity was detected, screenshots were halted."
Dude! cowboyneal better start working on getting in shape.. or... too bad.. he may miss the grand finale of Linux v/s MSFT by dying prematurely!
Fact is, we don't know what little contracts they signed. They may very well have agreed to be monitored, but as we all know, rules can override other rules, and it's likely the idea of an employee spying on his boss is one of them. Also, just because people agree to be monitored doesn't mean anybody can do the monitoring.
I live in Alabama, and I've heard a good bit more about this case than you probably have.
- This guy had complained to his superior's superiors. They apparently didn't care. So this guy's crusade basically ends right there. He did what he should have done, and when those higher ups don't care, you can get pissed all you want, but you don't take matters into your own hands.
- This guy seems to have a personal beef with his boss.
- Most people down here (including people that work in IT) think this guy is an assclown.
This man was doing this to his BOSS. You don't take policy into your own hands against your superiors and expect to keep your job, even for the government. And furthermore, his superior's job didn't involve much computer work. He was basically an admin type that mostly used his comp for email.
But it doesn't matter. This was his BOSS. You stay in official channels when dealing with any personel problem, and you ESPECIALLY do this when a superior is involved. It's lamentable that an Alabama state employee is wasting time on a computer, but that doesn't excuse the sysadmin's actions.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
He would be better off minding his own freaking business.
This happens all the time. Here in NY two college sysadmins (at SUNY Stony Brook?) caught a Provost(?) with Kiddie pr0n. They turned him in. He got put on leave they got fired. They appealed. Now they're super fired.
(What? I'm drunk and it is late.)
This
http://www.dot.state.al.us/Bureau/Right_of_Way/Con tacts/employeelist.htm
E J: www.dot.state.al.us/Bureau/Right_of_Way/Contacts/e mployeelist.htm
And in case it gets taken down, there's always the google cache:
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:qixovtHTWh
Now, obviously this guy had no idea the dept. would react this way, but it would have been smarter (in hindsight) had he done this:
1. Tell boss he needs to install software on his computer to monitor for harmful activity.
2. Install WinSpy
3. Report findings
If he had done the first item via email or some other documentable method, it would have qualified for permission to use the screen capture utility. (Well, the dept. would probably have still done what they did, but this would make it a breeze to defend in court)
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
Simple answer: arrange for the spyware to email the data to all of the computers in a couple of departments...and throw in a, "I have no idea how that happened...maybe he brought in a trojan from home".
Legal issue: he was terminated for cause and he is not a "whistleblower" - he set up the boss. He will lose.
~~~
His job, he says was to find computer misuse. The boss wasn't misusing the computer, he was possibly misusing his time. If he had been playing solitaire with a deck of cards, would that be misuse of his desk? Of the cards?
No, misuse of the computer, if you ask me, would involve installing spyware and trojans on other people's computer, looking at their files, flooding the network, running a porn site.
This sysadmin scares me, if he doesn't think you are doing your job properly, then even after he has told your boss about it he thinks he can install spyware on your computer and watch you. What other thing that bothers him would make him feel justified in doing crap like this?
I would fire him on the spot, possibly consider pressing charges. While employers do own their computers and thus you don't have as much privacy from your employer as you should have, this guy was not authorized by the employer, and what he did is possibly illegal.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
" ...the locals don't see why anyone would want to use one unless they were some kind of godless heathen communist."
Thanks heaps for perpetuating the myth that we're all inbred idiots in this state. And all becuase you apparently don't like the politics and faith of the people that live here.
Delta's ready when you are.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
OK, I'm from a state where we just had our third former governor indicted. Let me explain how this works. It sounds like the guy's boss was a fairly high-level employee, since the account used the term "bureau chief." Especially in Alabama, this probably means that there's some political patronage involved. It's quite likely that using a computer wasn't the most important part of the boss's job - making the appropriate campaign contributions would have been far more crucial to his survival. So it may have been just fine with the ALDOT administration that the Right-of-Way Bureau chief was a political hack that spent a good bit of time playing solitaire. Hey, he's at least showing up, as opposed to spending most of his working hours out on the golf course.
Some other posters were right on target - generally using spyware to make your boss look bad is a pretty risky proposition. But here there was another issue - the future election. An admin that gets embarrassing screenshots is very dangerous, because they could be useful to the governor's opponent and could generally embarrass the current administration. The ALDOT administration are most likely all political appointees. That means that if the current governor loses, they'll be out of jobs. (Heck, if the guy's spyware habit created a scandal, they could still be asked to step down.)
Did he? How do you know he did not take 2,000 screenshots and cull them? Always beware when an interested party hands you "random" samples. It would have been better if he tied the screenshots to time logs of applications. If his boss really played solitare all day, a log of applications would show it and the percentage time it was active. Even still, it would be difficult for him to prove as he could manipulate the logs manually.
What's called for is institutionalized watchdoging. There should have been someone who this man could have asked for help in doing his job. An IT person under another boss would be good. This institutional failure should as a basis for a transfer, not a firing.
I can imagine the state trying to slip out of the bind by saying that the boss was not abusing his computer or network time. It can always be argued that playing the boss was accomplishing his job description and what he did with his spare time was his business. Managerial positions can be that way.
A conscientious manager will roll up their sleeves and help get work done when they run out of planning, reports and all that boring crap. It helps to keep your feet on the ground.
A slob will sit around and turn into a moron. A slob that's drooling 90% of the time soon finds few topics for reports and might get axed. A dangerous slob is one that got themselves promoted to hide incompetence. They have a tendency to screw up and blame their underlings. I've had one of those and I think this one did too. Typically, those they leave in charge for an extended leave will say things like, "I did my job and his job with ease. My job usually takes all of my time. I wonder what the boss does all day."
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Tell that to the people whom pay their salary through taxes. If I'm to be spending my tax dollars at gunpoint...errr...I mean law, I don't want a fucking leech in the office not doing his job!!
Life is not for the lazy.
Testimony alleged that as a result of Blake downloading the software, a computer hacker at an unknown location in Australia breached the Alabama Department of Transportation's computer firewall in 2003.
also,
Blake also testified Monday that he installed the program on two other computers in the department, that of the state Right of Way Engineer Paul Bowlin, who heads the division, and Right of Way Secretary Jana Trafford Blake. Jana Blake is married to Vernon Blake.
So he spies on his wife, his boss, and HIS boss. It's also possible that his actions led to a breach in the firewall at the office as well (that's disputed and may not be the case). With those facts in play, that changes my view of events.
Do not openly make your boss look bad and expect to retain your job.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
According to another post here on /. WinSpy is smart about it - it only takes cap when someone is using the computer and stops taking pictures when there is no activity/screensaver/etc.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
My boss goes to the washroom at least once a day, and he's in there for at least a half-hour each time! Sure, he may be using the washroom, but I have a strange feeling that's he actually playing solitaire on his cell phone. As sys-admin for my company, it is my DUTY to put a camera in the toilet stall, so we can get to the root of this problem and unearth the facts. Of course, I'll do this before directly stating my concerns to the higher-ups -- and if they say that it's not worth delving into, I'll do it anyway! Call me access800, Virtual Vigilante/Super Sleuth! Thanks for the inspiration, Vernon Blake!
I mentioned this in my previous post, but I could not find any meaningful info on Win-Spy's homepage WRT activity.
According to this article, there was more to it than just the fact that he installed software on his boss's computer. It says the free version of the software was not approved to be installed on the department's computers. They're blaming a department firewall crash on the software as well. I don't know if any of this is true or just bullshit spin, but it does add another side to the story.
the other 10% consisted of him looking at pr0n
I did this to two of my former (RE: FORMER) bosses and each time, it was a little more complete recording of his activities. They were fired for being slack-asses and I was given a bonus for keeping the "mis-use" (or in other words, extreme non work usage of the computers) of the systems to a minimum.
Not only was I given a bonus, I am now the a lead for our MIS department in charge of corperate security. Under the current regulations, we watch the watchers, and get paid VERY well to do so. Trust is involved, and we have it. However, we are close with the CEO and CFO, so we "keep tabs" on them, but are under strict orders to keep it quiet - unless it is illegal, however we don't monitor their systems at all. They, after all, pay us and that's how they want it.
---nuff said.
Poor sys admin. The poor guy coudn't see the picture of what was happening. This is probably one of those companies that are used to launder money. Poeple are not supposed to work, the low people think their doing something, the higher people just throw it in the garbage. The IT guy should have known what kind of situation he was in when he called the big guns and they didn't care
He should have called the feds to investigate the company, but then again the CIA would have given them a call and told them to ignore everything.
It's the IT guys for not thinking this way that he got fired, and is probably on some kind of black list now.
IMO you should never secretly install spyware.
/.er could.
If he'd announced that he was going to install this spyware on every computer and then got fired,
I doubt anyone would have much sympathy for him.
It may not technically violate the fourth amendment, but it's certainly counter to the spirit of it.
Even non-secret surveillance should be done only with good reason.
I can't think of any reason that would justify this level of surveillance, but I wouldn't be surprised if some
-- less is better.
The worst part is that the guy's court case wasn't dismissed immediately--or perhaps even that he decided to try to bring it to court at all.
A company's employment policies are the business of no one but the company itself (including its owners and employees). Government has precisely ZERO place involving itself. If a company wants to fire you, that should be the end of it. It's their property, and they're the ones paying the bills and signing the paychecks; therefore, the decision properly rests solely with THEM--not the courts, not Congress, not any other government entity.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
For one thing, whistleblowers typically get the shaft after their deed. It goes with the territory - you blow the whistle, you lose your job. fact of life.
Installing spyware on ANYones computer is not ethical, I dont care what your intentions. You can get fired for this. Can your boss install spyware on your computer? If its work-related and you are informed, it maybe legal. Tough area to figure out.
What the heck was he doing trying to get shit on his boss? Not a good thing to do politically. Not a good career decision. If his supervisors lack of work was affecting his work, he might be able to go over the bosses head, but, again, not good in the long run.
The guy must have been frustrated to do this. If the job market was better, he could have moved out. But I'm sure he felt trapped and had to do something. Glad it wasnt me.
A couple weeks back, I was asked to research and draft some AUPs for a couple clients, one of which is a county government. In some of the sample AUPs that I've read, they've included the following things
* any communications on the network, whether it be business or personal, is classified as official business.
* there is no expectation of privacy while using a computer or network.
I believe that with these two statements in an AUP, the game of solitaire played on a Windows desktop can be constituted as being unproductive. I doubt any government would have a paid position to have someone play solitaire all day on their computer (anyone working in Nevada want to check for exceptions?). The monitoring would have been legal because it is the responsibility of the IT staff to see that the AUP is enforced.
After reading several of the comments, my response to taking action would be to keep going higher up in the system until you found someone that will talk with the supervisor in question about his computer activity and then present the evidence. At that point it can be determined if one party or both is acting in accordance to the AUP and the law.
I think one thing that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread, is that not only is this guy an employee, but also a taxpayer. It seems to me that while he held a position of trust, he also was in a position to stop a waste of tax money. His tax money, as well as the community as a whole. While his methods are questionable, the fact that the government didn't care about the boss's waste of time and money is horrible. Seems like paying someone to play solitaire is a BIG waste of money.
Perhaps someone can clarify where the line is drawn between a concerned citizen and a disinterested employee.
Someone had mentioned , "what if he see's his fellow employee's salary?"
Well, if this is a government position, isn't that info already public knowledge? As well as layoffs or any other such issues?
In a public office there really shouldn't be any secrets right?
I don't see anywhere on his site that he warned upper management of suspected abuse of computing resources prior to installing spyware. His letters to upper management contain bland statements of no real worth.
If you're trying to get your direct supervisor in trouble, you'd better make a specific case.
I think if he had made specific charges to upper management before installing the spyware he might have gotten what he wanted without getting fired.
The Alabama DOT is a shining example of tax dollars at work.
:)
Playing solitare is pretty bad, but I saw something when I was working for the government that made this guy look like employee of the month. Two federally employed civilians setting in a office, one playing solitare on PC, and the other waste of space was leaning backwards in his chair watching the other guy play with his legs kicked up on his desk. So damn lazy he couldn't play it himself.
Then a few years later I was teaching a class for the same organization that the dynamic duo worked for. During a smoke break between sessions we got into a discussion about how useless some federal workers were and I mentioned my story. One of the ladies in my class said "Oh my gawd! Is it !?@#?!?" lol. This guy's complete uselessness was legendary!!!
Workplace problems aren't handled by the IT department in any company I've heard of. They're always handled by the HR department. Nevermind that having a vigilante IT administrator deciding to investigate his boss for wasting time is not going to inspire any other managers to trust this guy, even if he had succeeded in his goal of getting the boss fired.
Many people in management are pet-rocks (two out of three are inbreed worthless). Around here we call'em View-Graph Engineers (Good Briefers) a/o Career Managers (Promotion Focused). I have also heard them call me and my colleagues worker-bees and pack-mules to important to getting the job done to be promoted into management. .... The (civilian worker-bees and pack-mules) make no decisions and can only seek permission, but those at cause of the failure point the finger at the group that many like to use as an excuse the poor and/or honest. Incompetent decisions that sometimes are made by unaccredited university degreed (diploma mill) managers, Bosses, and politicians are the typical today. ... don't cause bank/CU failures, business bankruptcies, criminal fraud and theft in business the majority of failures in our economy/business are due to piss poor performance by management and Bosses not the worker-bees and pack-mules employees. ... failures are due to failures in leadership and delusional denial by management. Credit Unions (CU), Global Crossings, World Com, Enron, ... failures, and Delta and other companies CEOs and staff steeling (lack of a better word) from worker-bees and pack-mules pension funds, reductions in pay, benefits, and health insurance to fund the CEOs' and staffs' ever increasing pay and benefits increases, and then put CEOs' and staffs' retirements in protected trust. .... ...), financial responsibility is a thing of the past, and social security is always secure, because the government can maintain benefits for the wealthy today, and increase the social security retirement age until the right number of US Citizens die and never collect any benefits (old folks don't have many dependents). US, EU, and UN Citizens are becoming the whores of the wealthy fucked now, beaten later, and screwed to death.
>
In the past (2003.07.19 2:29 and many other times) I have said management in the USA from CEO (Government, Business, Religion) to first-line pet rocks are failures/worthless/harmfull 66% of the time. Alabama/Ohio/NY, Enron/FBI/CIA, last/present/next group of politicians (I suspect) will be about 33% effective.
>
911 recommendations implimentation will mean nothing if management is not fixed and no one goes to jail for life, because there is an excuse for political or financial treason. I hope they fix management and get rid of the 66% pet-rocks, because they will kill US and destroy the nation slowly from within US like a cancer.
>
Management blames others (citizens/employees) for failures. We always find out later that the Government/Business/Religious militray/civilian worker-bees and pack-mules did all the right things, but management and pet-rock/office/plutocratic politics did all the wrong things
Failures in business and government projects are due to piss poor performance by management and Bosses not the worker-bees and pack-mules employees. Ecology, business, and tax laws, pension and health benefits,
2001/09/11 NSA, CIA, and FBI failures were not because of the field agents, workers, and soldiers. Two Shuttle disasters, Hubble Telescope, X-43A,
Politicians of the Capitalist Republic applaud CEOs' and staffs' performance in saving the economy by getting the worker-bees and pack-mules (US Citizens) to pay for the bad global economy. The President after 2001/09/11 called for all good US Citizens to spend our money and support the USA. The CEOs', staffs', and politicians (have a different agenda) are setting up more corporate and wealthy tax welfare programs for the oil and construction companies in Iraq and national parks, pharmaceutical companies in Africa,
US Citizens will pay in the future (our children, grandchildren,
>
OldHawk777, Yep, I know I have said it all before. I am originally from Alabama, I know the old-boys network. The IT professional is fucked and shit-out-of-luck. I know it is (and ha
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
If he thought somebody was running a web server or downloading pornography, or gambling online, that is one thing. But to take it upon himself to perform his own performance evaluation of his superior, was a bit bold and he was rightfully fired.
His focus should have been on the machines and the network, not carrying out retribution for a personal grudge.
AZspot
If you're going to blow the whistle on your boss, do it anonymously.
There is absolutely no expectation of privacy when using computer provided to you by your place of work. Anyone who seriously expects privacy might want to reconsider sending those e-mails about how much they hate their boss.
I have worked in an semi-administrative position in IT for quite some time and often see users get quite flustered by the information that we can gather on the users. I have even heard of instances where they have complained to their bosses only to be told that IT was well within their rights.
The simple fact is that this guys boss should not have been spending so much time with non-work related materials. I know that where I work now this would never fly but I suppose that is the difference between private industry and civil service.
But I do hope this guy gets off. There was no spying or spyware involved. He was performing his job which was monitoring company run resources and making sure that they were being used for work and not for pleasure. At one point we had and ISA server for the IT department that allowed us to avoid the proxy that blocked certain websites. Because of our boss's lack of productivity the server "broke" and never did get repaired.
In the world of IT the sysadmin truly has more control than just about anyone within a company or organization. I think sysadmins should do this more often because in the end the money wasted from lack of productivity is coming from someones pocket and I am sure they would love to know. In this case the man gets shafted because the money wasn't coming from the higher ups pockets but from the tax payers. Times like this I hate government.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Perdida's sister, I don't know why though.
Sure roads create commerce, and all that, but the department of Transportation in almost any state, is a bit slush fund, where favors are handed out, contracts rewarded for not working.
It is worse in some states than others... sometimes those funds get funneled other directions, and the roads fall apart, sometimes the roads actually get repaired. But in many states, it is hide the money, appoint a bid to a contributor, keep them employed moving orange cones around, cut deals, etc....
There is the chance that the screenshot software was only snappng during activity, and he was most active when playing solitaire. Were there time stamps, that showed the games going all day? The boss could have been using it as an office toy, while he shuffled "paper' and talked on the phone... not to create more bureaucracy.
But the IT guy? Sounds like it was part of his job description. I wonder what the news media will do with it? Probably nothing. Newspapers like roads too.
Firing this guy is a great moral evil.
In most jobs I've worked out, playing solitare during working hours is a firable offense.
This organization has an additude of conspiracy. The top brass should be at least fired, and probably arrested.
he got a raw deal? The deck was stacked against him?
Or maybe he should have just held his cards a little closer to his vest. Rimshot!
I find it interesting that no-one is talking about the sad state of the boss. If you're spending 70+% of your time playing solitaire, there's something really wrong with your life. I simply can't imagine that level of inertness, that level of boredom. I'm saddened. Genuinely saddened.
grib.
maybe
From those low quality pictures, it's either Mercatur or Perdida's sister. I'd go with Mercatur if she didn't look like a drug addict in that black and white shot. We require full frontal nudity in good lighting to judge. We demand it!! Perdida and Ceren are a step behind, with the wives in the gutter. And the Cowboy, we'll, he's just special.
Paranoia/obsession about the activities of a person 'above' you, is symtomatic of depression illness.
Left unchecked it can evolve to manic depression or bi-polar disorder.
Either way, it usually leads to loss of employment, and a life on the Red and Blue pills.
Was this guy paranoid?
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
how the hell do you spend 71% of your time playing solitaire and not get sick of it? I mean there are so many other things you can waste time on.
#!/
I guess he learned his lesson. Firing's too good for that uppity IT guy. They should hang him from the tallest tree as an example to other whistleblowers.
I like IT people. I think everyone should own an outsourced IT center or two.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Understand once and for all that employees have NO RIGHTS if you don't like your boss playing games and getting five times what you earn SHOT YOURSELF IN THE HEAD, all bosses are mediocre creatures and that why they are the bosses, that's the way it has been that is the way it will always be PERIOD.
Since the stock market screen shot on the sample page (the main page was /. ed) but the sample screen was for Crude oil prices - maybe that was related to his DOT job - and the *personal* stocks could be checked to see if those were in any way job realted as well.
The solitaire - errrr... maybe that was doing a statisical analysis of games of chance compared to the reliability of the stock market - yeah - that's it.
Maybe he thought his boss was screwing his wife?
This guy should have been fired. He blew the wistle on some guy being lazy and when he couldn't get anyone to acknowledge it, he installed invasive spyware on someones work computer. This douche doesn't have that authority. Is he the Lazy Police? No! He's a fucking admin.
What this shows his employer is that he's willing to completely violate someones privacy for his own gain (in this case, recognition of weeding out lazy shitheads) and that he can't be trusted (not even by his superiors!!).
This guy is a complete shithead.
Fuck that shit.
It's egotistical, but I'm more attractive than all of them. I know, I'm an AC, but I'm not trying to get modded down for this or have people think (know) that how attractive and how much of an asshole I am. But thems the facts, yo.
I could be a fucking model compared to those girls.
Who checks their email before evacuating because of a fire alarm??
Ironically, it appears that his biggest flaw was too much company loyalty. Normally company loyalty is a good thing, but being loyal to a company that has bad internal policies and practices isn't going to get you very far, as this story indicates.
Another possibility would have been to ask permission to install the spy software on company computers to facilitate documenting evidence of wasteful activity (this request being made entirely outside of and temporally distant from any discussion regarding his boss's activities so that a connection between the two would not be obvious). There is no reason why any computer on the network that the sysadmin is trying to prevent abuse on should be excluded from possible monitoring, but the exact policies that would be followed by the software and the adminstrator would need be laid out in writing to ensure accountability for how the software is used to the senior management, and to ensure to their satisfaction that it is not abused. Once permission had been obtained and after a few months, once the evidence is gathered, he could not have been justly fired for installing this "unauthorized software" after presenting the evidence to the higher ups, since he in fact would have HAD authorization to install exactly that software. If they chose to fire him anyways for that reason, it would be an open and shut wrongful dismissal case.
Of course, then we probably wouldn't be arguing about it on slashdot... and heaven knows what a crime that would be.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
All I know is that I paid less for gas before Bush went to Iraq to steal their oil...
What a tool of the liberals. We didn't get our oil from Iraq before the war and we don't now. You want to talk about injustice? Most of our imported oil comes from Colombia. Now there's a problem.
I bet the supervisors were too busy playing solitaire. No wonder they fired him when he became too nosy.
You know it makes sense, a little reminder from jointm1k.
Results are what matter. If someone can get their required work done with 10% of their time, no one should really care about the use of the other 90%. Sorry...gov't or not. That's what happens in companies who are concerned about the bottom line. You get your shit done, you have a job. You don't, you're fired. If higher ups thought he was getting work done, Solitaire is not an offense. If he's slacking, Solitaire becomes an offense. That simple. Dunno why there's 200+ posts debating this.
A more entertaining solution to the "whistleblower"'s problem would have been to replace his bosses version of Solitaire with one that looks identical, but only deals non-winnable hands.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
The IT depts. of public institutions are eroding from within.
My boss makes twice as much as me, yet he needs help using the insert key. God forbid he should try to make a new folder on the network.
There are times when I hate being right. Sorry dude!
Honestly, I totally support the use of spyware in these situations for gathering evidence. We use VNC to check up on people from time to time with it running stealth and will screenshot users activity.
...But they only authorise our doing this on users and not management, I wonder why now...
I know you're trying to be funny, but if you're going to post code, at least be correct about it:
i ?a nswer=1044841143&id=1043284376
http://faq.cprogramming.com/cgi-bin/smartfaq.cg
"Since emails to higher up supervisors were ignored"
:-))))
Couldn't he imagine that they were playing games most of the time, too? Or why should they ignore him?
...if someone had installed spyware on *my* machine to see what I was doing during the day, Slashdot would have been a recurring theme!
You must think in Russian.
The problem with most of these posts is that they are assuming that the "sys admin" has carte blanche to monitor any and all systems. This is obviously, and sensibly not so.
Authorised people = People who are *expressly* permitted to monitor those systems. (Probably conducted in a fashion similar to obtaining a search warrant.) Authorised people = only those that have appropriate *security clearance* in a government site. It is doubtful that a System Admin would be granted the same security clearance as a supervisor.
It boggles my mind that you people read these "disclaimers" as meaning "I accept that my computer activity will be monitored by any Joe-Blo" instead of what it really is "I accept that my computer activity will be monitored by my *employer* as my *employer* sees fit."
On a related note, why the hell was he spying on his wife and another employee as well? Sociopath? Drunk on power?
What's scary is that this poster really thinks his appeal to authority is impressive. Note how he puts "BOSS" in all capitals. Even God only gets an initial capital in everyday English. And have you ever noticed that people who suck up to authority like that somehow regard it as a brave and difficult thing. I've always found that strange!
Alas, I grew up in Alabama. In college, I referred to voting in state elections as "choosing the lesser crook." That's why I find it amusing that so many 'Yankee' liberals try to deny that ex-President Clinton is a crook. "Hey," I think to myself, "he's a Southern Democrat. Looting the public is why he went into politics." (That and those bimbo interns.)
Nor is Slick Willy alone. Think of 'Landside Lyndon' (LBJ), a nicknamed earned fixing elections. Think of the father of the sore loser of 2000, Gore Sr., better known as the "Senator from Occidental Petroleum." Or think of strutting little Governor George Wallace, whose corruption gave my dad (who knew him personally) fits.
Things have improved a bit,, but the South still has the best politicians money can buy. And when you have crooks in power, you have a government where a boss does almost no work but doesn't get fired.
Let's hope this gutsy whistleblower wins his appeal, and "Boss Solitaire" gets fired.
--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
He should have spent 70% of his time playing solitaire, and 20% of his time checking the stock market, and this would never have happened.
It's Alabama, for chrissakes. Be happy your boss can work a mouse.
That was the title on a t-shirt that we printed for a grad student who was working with me. It had a screen capture of a solitare game in progress with an MSN chat window minimized. This guy played solitare for 6-7 hours a day and even our professor would come in the lab and say to him that he would like to talk to him sometime when he is done with his solitare.
Now, this guy was one of the most brilliant computer scientist I have ever met. He was working on theoretical computer science and network theory. But he played a lot of solitare, and that did'nt get in his way of publishing 7 papers in the two years of his masters stay at my university. We were only hoping that he would stay back for a Ph.D.
The point of this post is that it's irrelevant how much solitare someome plays.
Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the human race.
Please post a link to your picture, supposedly hot chick.
"emails to higher up supervisors were ignored..."
I'm sure they didn't do it on purpose. They simply didn't see the new mail notifictaion icon in the system tray with that King of Clubs that had just come up in deck.
That is why corruption and abuses of power can continue because those below are being spoil sports if they talk about it.
Oh you spot tax payers money being wasted but stay in official channels at all cost, no matter that this means it will never get solved. That is the system and the system must be obeyed.
Fucking goverment drone.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Guess I will just show your post next time some windows fanboy complains about rm -Rf * being so complex.
And your right, I don;t know how to admin a windows network. But I do seem to remember that you can write your own windows install script and tell it not to install games. then again I just laughed at the person explaining how to do it and went back to my graphical linux installer and let him mess with cli on windows.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
He is a goverment employee meaning he is not allowed to use the computer for private use. So if he even had solitaire open for 1 minute in a year he would still be in the wrong. But that was not the case. He played solitaire so much it had become a running joke in the department even with cartoons. This is not like making a few personal calls in a month. This is moral busting abuse of goverment facilities.
A boss that does everything that is forbidden will have a bad effect on those below him. We need people like this admin to get goverment back on its feed.
This boss and the bosses that fired the sysadmin are the ones responsible for the fact that goverment needs ever more taxes to do less and less actuall work. I can't beleive anyone who is a taxpayer who is on the boss or his bosses side. THEY ARE WASTING YOUR TAXMONEY. Just because you are the boss does not give you the right to do nothing at work. Not when you work for the goverment. If he had been an ordinary clerk he would have been fired instantly and the sysadmin given a complimant on a job well done by stopping waste.
So very simple. At work, WORK. Anything else can get you fired. Especially if you are getting paid with my money. Anyone who thinks differently can pay my taxes.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That is SO BLOODY TYICAL FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYEES!
See, folks!? Thats what your tax money is used for. It's the same damn thing everywhere. Here in Denmark, the public sector is 30% less effective than the private sector (according to various studies), in sweden a report stated that the swedes could have the same public service for half the price, i don't think the US is much better in that regard.
State apparatus = resource waste. Learn it, and learn to vote correctly. Don't vote Democrat. Don't vote Republican.
Vote libertarian!
if you ever worked in a big place then you will know there are always a few people like this boss around that sap morale and are just a waste but that can't get be gotten rid off because they make sure to have the right friends and never actually so badly screw up that action must be taken.
But they are hurting morale nonetheless and this has a very real effect on performance. It is just that the uppers prefer to then get bigger budgets or blame it on underlings rather then fire middle management for incompetence. That sends a dangerous precedent. Start firing mid lvl managers and someone might get the idea to start firing incompetent upper management. Can't have that can we. Next we will be firing ministers for being a waste of space. Holding goverment accountable!!!!!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Coincidence?
:)Now his boss would have been able to solve the solitaires WHIL working! And multitask as a real Amiga-owner.
Right after reading this article I found this Free Cell Solver 2.8.7 on Freshmeat.
It's even available as a Win32-version.
Not on a goverment computer, you agree when you start using it that you may be monitored. So the whole privacy thing is straight out of the window
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
For some reason, I missed the bit about the private company vs. the gov't company. I hope you can forgive my responding on the wrong assumption.
I'd offer a correction but I'm not quite settled in my mind about what the right thing to do is. (In other words, you got through to me, but I still need some think time.)
Again, sorry about that. Bit fatigued today. Hope you get this before you respond to my previous post.
"Derp de derp."
That's alabama for you.
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
The tool he used to spy on his boss showed that 70% of the time he was using the computer was playing solitaire. So what? 0% of the shots showed him to be using the computer for work. All this tells me is his job doesn't require him to be using the computer.
The spy software shut itself off when the computer was in-active, so it's hard to gage from this data how much of the guys day at work was spent playing games. Maybe he used his computer for 15 minutes a day while drinking a cup of coffee everyday and played some games during that time. Maybe he goofed off all day. We don't know. It's impossible to tell from the data given.
I also have to question this guy's motives, did he really want to fix the problem or was it more personal. At no point did it seem like he confronted the supervisor about his "problem". Instead he immediately tried to leapfrog him and get him fired.
Assuming Vernon (the sysadmin) was actually doing his job, and not spending all of his time on this vendetta, I hope he wins the wrongful termination suit. Firing him over this seems to have been overkill. He should have been reprimanded and warned like they did with the game playing supervisor.
In business, market forces such as competition take care of the inefficient in a nice, Darwinian way.
Can you say "outsourcing"? I knew you could!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Okay, so the software was running for 7 months = 1200 work hours
414 images were captured = 207 hours (image every 30 minutes)
Time on computer = 17.25% of work hours
Time playing solitaire = 70% of time on computer = 12% of work hours
Taking into account that he may use this as a form of clearing the cobwebs from his head (I do) then this time (not much really) is actually productive.
All I can say is - damn right, fire the spy weasel!
Cheers,
Jason.
A manager has done his job properly should have little to do.
If he has hired good people and given them the right training, they should be able to handle the day to day business on their own. He is there to handle problems that are beyond the ability and experience of his subordinates.
Games cannot be "removed" on Windows since all you need is a solitaire.exe file from a floppy-disk and run it by yourself.
7 hours into august, Firefox is beating out IE for most hits, by about 1000 loads. Go /.
Actually, here in Ireland, you get fired as the boss, for visiting just one escort agency site, like the recent case of Mike Soden, CEO of Bank Of Ireland, several journalists making the link that his outsource of IT staff (pension and verious perks vanish) caused an attentive and vindictive staff..
The 'No Pr0n' rule having been brought in by.. Mike Soden himself..
More info:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/30/10858
http://www.lnreview.co.uk/media/journal/001909.
Is why you remove those games from windows.... And block all the game sites.... For those individuals who actually understand enough to copy the exe from their home PC, so be it. That percentage is small anyway. The SA had no right to screencap unless he was asked. The corporate world (which this gov office pretty closely compares to) doesn't allow any vigalantes. (NO jokes about dishonest CEO's please). It's not YOUR network, you just mind it for the owners.
Ever feel like you are driving the getaway car?
Why didn't they just remove the games when it first seemed like an issue... All my builds on Student stations HAVE THE DEFAULT GAMES REMOVED. Then if we have reports of individuals "wasting" time with some games in the office computers, I usually remove ALL the games in the office(s) affected at the end of the day... Next day, a few complaints, but games are gone...
Now, they can still download games (Not the public student systems) but then they are PROVING they want to waste time, and someone can take appropriate measure... Never had that, as usually just the fact that it disapears lets them know not to do it, so they surf instead. (another waste, but... )
As to how one should go about informing the higher ups about the bosses bad job is to write a letter on dead tree pulp (Forget email, most EPHB's don't read it unless it is a 3+jpg_female with little to no clothing...) After you document it in wrighting to the higher ups and get PERMISSION to spy on the person, then THAT is doing your job... To just decide to spy and then hand that data over is dirty politics and could (in this case did) backfire.
The KEY is to document what you are requesting on the dead tree pulp... See it has a funny way of being filed, and if you send it to 2/3 people in the chain asking for permission or "suggesting" the course of action that should be taken if they would like to approve it, etc.. Then more than one person knows, so if the next one up pitches it, and figures he'd screw you, you can say... "No, I also sent a copy to YOUR boss's boss, his secretary, and requested a copy filed in my employee record with human resources." Then you just hope one of them gives you the permission you need and your golden... but ATST, I've never had to spy on someone higher up... YET.
So, really he should of covered his ass better before he started down the spyware road...
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
On one hand, the boss was being abusively negligent. OK. Too bad, so sad, for the state. The problem with management clearly didn't stop with our card shark.
On the other hand, the employee engaged in conduct that, without authority from the owner of the computer, constitutes computer crime.
Whistleblower? Not! The employee had already reported the conduct. There was no retaliation at that time. Only after the employee engaged in conduct that was, well, freaky at best, was he fired.
The employee might have suggested that it would be possible to gather the information and get consent to act, without which his conduct was (i) criminal, but more important, (ii) highly unethical and not a little bit creepy.
Maybe they meant to mention this link to another product called Win-spy?
He spied on a superior - that's not his job. He complained, if that didn't help he should have lived with it or moved on.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Employee spies on YOU!
...are two totally different things. Policies are often in conflict with the law, and both are often updated or scrubbed. It's annoying to see so many people hide behind policy (and law also) when it's really about common sense...and how people should behave and treat one another in the real world. Sure...there will always be sad little people who spend more time worrying about what other folks are up to...and they will rationalize in whatever way possible...like decrying the tragic fate of "THE PEOPLE OF ALABAMA" (give me a friggin break)....they are also typically people who feel that they themselves are always 100% beyond reproach... ...but I suspect those people will be very lonely until they learn how to live on the playground.
I used to fear clowns...but I'm discovering that chimps are far, far, worse.
If a cop wants to search a house he must get a search warrant. The same applies here. Looking at personal information of an employee requires some kind of warrant by a superior. The sysadmin was abusing his privileges.. no matter what his motives.
...are the reason no-one gives a crap about "Sysadmin Appreciation Day".
the truth about what was going on between these two individuals. There is more than what we are seeing here, way more. No matter what the sysadmin was w r o n g!
We had an executive who consistently played Solitaire and Hearts, even when we tried to convince him that it didn't make him look too good in the eyes of his subordinates. He also HATED PC's and, most especially, spreadsheet programs (he was a pencil and paper kind of guy). Finally, IT went in and changed the shortcuts to his games so that they only opened his spreadsheet program. He sort of guessed that it was done on purpose, so he never made the phone call to "fix" his PC. The effort paid off...he went back to the crosswords in the newspaper, something that at least "looks" like real work!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Management has always been one of my rant-points, but there are many adequate recent significant examples ... "The 911 Report" provides the most recent list as proof. My comments express my concern with the current situation they are not flamebait.
.... I hope they fix management and get rid of the 66% pet-rocks, because they will kill US and destroy the nation slowly from within US like a cancer.'
..., but ask them for their comments/observation to these questions.
Should my extended comment be ignored as "verbal diarrhea", '911 recommendations implementation will mean nothing if management is not fixed and no one goes to jail for life, because there is an excuse for political, financial, religious treason, manslaughter, gross-negligence,
There is a preponderance (recent and historical) of evidence supporting the comment. Do we go into history like the Great Roman Empire, ignoring indolence, incompetence, corruption, malfeasance, and insanity (in our business, religious, government leaders) until the end? It will not be my end (I like most of the 66% will be passed away (dead), it will end for our descendents and posterity.
If you are in your '20s', don't prompt an answer from you parents or grand parents,
If you could pick your own work-team out of the people you work with,
how many of them would you want on your tem?
At work, how many employees are really needed to get the job done?
My experience over many years, jobs, places and faces the replies in the conversations have ranged from two to three in ten (never more). None of the folks that I talked with ever wanted "The Clock Puncher (and/or career manager)" or the "Problem Child (and/or pet-rock)" that made messes and was always needing training. Most said they can work with folks that have personality quirks/foibles. The totally delusional will identify themselves only or only other managers/bosses (never the pack-mules and worker-bees).
OldHawk777
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Installing spyware on your boss's computer is tantamount to secretly videotaping what goes on in his office.
This guy's assertion that his job included looking for computer abuse doesn't cut it. Did his job description specifically give him the right o use software to monitor the computer activities of any employee or manager? If not, he's toast.
(And, yes, employers do it all the time, but most make it agreement to that a condition of employment.)
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
So what have we learned here today...
Half the state employees are playing Solitaire or the stock market, and the other half are screwing around spying on their coworkers ?
Tax dollars at work
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
"In Soviet Russia, the spy employees *you*."
The diversity of opinions here goes to show how controversial the guy's actions were. Employers are naturally conservative, so if the guy's actions were this close to "the line," it's no wonder he got fired.
Right, it seems this link (an actual news story on the issue rather than just the one guy's point of view) has already been posted here more than once.
It stuns me that despite ~50 +5 replies, no one has bothered to point out that the program this guy installed HAD A BACKDOOR.
Yes, that's right people. That's why they're calling this spyware. Because it is.
Read this:
Bobby Mitchell, an employee contracted to DOT to do computer network support and computer programming, told the hearing officer that DOT's computer firewall crashed in January 2003 and had to be rebuilt.
Mitchell said he found WinSpy on Dobbs' computer when transferring material and programs in his computer to a new one and at that time saw that the program had an "imbedded address" that allowed someone outside the department to have access to DOT's computer system. The imbedded address was traced to Australia.
So, who still actually believes he should get his job back? He was so focused on proving his boss was in the wrong that he compromised the security of the network he was a sysadmin for.
Stuff.
it takes images every half hour and *not* when there is no user input recently going on.
The meeting excuse is invalid.
And to think that at MY work, the I.T. department just went and uninstalled the "games" package from all the Windows work computers... After all, you're there to do work.
No need for inethical behaviour, no need for random spying on your superiors, and you're following written company policy to boot. If the boss complains, point at the policy.
Solitaire that always helps you win. His boss becomes addicted and believes he has the greatest luck in the world only to be completely offset by a constant losing streak in the lottery.
He can't produce his winning streak on any other computer so he asks the admin to install special software to detect what is really happening.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Well, I work at a DOT that, let's just say is the next state over from Alabama. Here politics are more important than job performance. We call it the "good old boys system". Many of the IT managers are corrupt and/or incompetent.
Being a government agency it is usually rather hard to fire someone. It is impossible to get a bad manager fired because there other manager friends will cover their butts for them.
Of course it is easy to fire us peons, all they have to do is trump up some fake charge like having porn on our computer or some form of insubordination. Actually the computer usage policies are so strict that there are things that *everyone* is in violation of. So it is not that hard to find something.
They don't like to fire people to often though because it makes the managers looks bad, so what they usually do is run off their employees. They will pass out reprimands left and right for all kinds of bogus or stupid little things (like forgetting your daily status report or being late a few days). Using these they can also reduce your pay or otherwise demote you. Mixed in with all of this they will play "musical projects" and give you some project you don't know how to do. Are you a java programmer with 10 years experience? Well, your new project is in Visual Basic! Lets watch as you fail to meet your deadline and then it is reprimand time again! Oh, and you are not allowed to ask other coworkers for help as that would be "cheating". In the end it gets so bad they just quit to save their sanity.
So chances are this boss in the article was involved in a similar "good old boys system" and they just decided it would be easier to get rid of the peon causing trouble.
Your comment implies they know exactly what they're doing.
I've held a few peon IT positions, I've had different attitudes during them. My starting job, I was opinionated and high profile, and just got myself in a world of crap. I soon learned that the less you're heard from, the less unneeded attention comes your way. Now theres a danger that your job can get too cushy and you can goof off too much and get in trouble, but a steady application of self motivation can help you steer clear of trouble.
Instead of arguing about upper level decisions, "advise and persuade", and if ever a decision of yours proves it would have been better instead of the way management actually went, do not rub it in!. If a decision recommended by you is subsequently championed by someone else without acknowledgement of its origion, congratulate them on their creativity. I once walked in on my boss snoozing on his desk, I told him he should take it easier, he was wearing himself out. (Good boss tho, plus a new father so 3 am feedings were taking a toll.)
Its a wonderful thing, these periodic paychecks, and even better if you get to hack in an airconditioned environment to get them. Pragmatism goes a long way.
Someone needs to figure out that boss's email address (by removing the grey box), and write an HTML mail that uses an MSHTML exploit to make a SolitareCam for us slashdotters
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
Seems to me he was more of a control freak.
To me it seems that his boss was screwing his wife, and the poor sod just wanted revenge.
(But no, I don't support his actions. Being from a once totalitarian country where millions were jailed from anonymous reports, I don't have much sympathy to whistleblowers).
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
Let's face it this was not a security audit, this was a vendetta.
The sad and ironic thing is that the sysadmin got himself fired from a job where it's probably impossible to get fired for incompetence (civil service) by violating a privacy law. I've worked in the government, it's got a good chunk of lazy sacks of shit; I'm sure that his boss is one of them. Too bad, he'll be the one with a nice pension after thirty years service.
So, I noticed someone in the office was playing Solitaire -- and decided to have some fun.
Got something called "Wilson Windoware" (AFAIR). A macro language for Windows. Ran a macro on the computer that polled for SOL window every 10 or so seconds. When SOL was detected, injected window resize commands to it -- slowly at first, increasing in speed, and then a close message.
So, the person saw Solitaire launch, play normally for around 30 seconds, start to shrink, shrink and vanish. Good fun! I wanted to see what Helpdesk support (if any) was logged. None, whatsoever.
Still, good for a laugh.
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Since state transportation departments usually get a substantial amount of federal funding, his employer is indeed us, or at least those of us who live in the US.
And in the end, all you have is your integrity.
I have mine, and I was a consultant (which is saying something). Heheh. I never AFIAK told a client something they wanted to hear in order to get a job. I never failed to mention an existing or potential problem. I told them, "You can disagree with what I recommend, but you DO pay me for my knowledge, expertise, and experience."
Anything less than that is negligence, which may not be what you are suggesting, but pragmatism is akin to being practical. So is letting your boss get away with making bad decisions practical? What if that decision causes a few people to lose "these periodic paychecks"?
My boss is human. I argue with him every day. It's part of the job. They watch you so you don't make mistakes, and you watch then to do the same. As long as you act as a team, then things work well. As soon as people start worrying about looking good, then things get messy. I constantly argue with my boss about that point exactly. I tell him that I am interested in making the company run well from an IT standpoint, and that the company makes money to pay me. If everyone worries about looking good, then they make decisions that they think will be popular rather than decisions that are right for the business.
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
Public computers have no expectation of privacy -- the machine does not belong to you, it belongs to the public.
This guy is goofing off on the people of Alabama's dollar. The higher ups IGNORE this wrong doing, and indeed, seem to ENCOURAGE it.
Admittedly, conspiracy to waste public tax dollars seems kind of a frivolous charge, but it is still an abuse.
And covering yourself up like that is simply unacceptable.
give him something to do... like read a bunch of newsletters?
dobbsg@dot.state.al.us
<evil laugh>Muahahahaha!</evil laugh>
emerge -C package
Boom.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
Da Massah don't like it when you be uppity
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
Well, right -- that's part of why it's funny. :-)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
If this management guy's work was more paperwork than doing stuff on a computer, this pattern could be more of an indication that he took a quick round of Solitaire every now and then to take a short break. If he didn't, then the screenshots would have consequently shown screenshots 30 minutes apart, running Solitaire.
But as far as I could tell, the screenshots were often far apart in time, which means that he didn't use the computer much. Couple this with the fact that the program only took screenshots when there was activity, this management guy must have done a lot of stuff outside the computer.
So if you look at the screenshots without considering the time between each shot, it definitely looks suspicious. But if you look at the time and consider that maybe this guy's job didn't involve the computer at all, then the sysadmin who installed the spyware is suddenly in a bad light.
I'm not concluding with one thing or the other, though, since I don't have all the facts. That the manager misused the computer equipment for games seems clear, but I am not sure there is any proof that he didn't do any work.
Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but I couldn't find any comments on it.
Clever signature text goes here.
i would have made a program that scanned active processes all the time, and if it found anything relating to solatair, or any exe like that in the process list, it would kill it.
Therefore the game just 'would not work'.
He would have gone "damn , this solatair just crashes now'.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Government assholes are the lousiest performers everywhere!!!!
depends on what is in his job description, or the organizational policy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's an expression that became popular in the 80's down South. It refers to Delta Airlines and their ad campaign from the 70's "When you want to travel, Delta's ready when you are". It was basically a way to respond to the constant criticism of the South by implying "If you don't like it here, no one is forcing you to live here". There's a common perception of those critical of the saying that it's a defense of racism and Jim Crowe in the South. That's untrue, as it was a response mainly to the northerners moving down south in great numbers during the 80's (during the massive growth of southern cities that still continues) trying to change the culture of the South, ridiculing everything from our interest in sports (NASCAR and College Football in particular) to cuisine (mocking grits and sweet iced tea, for instance). Southerners basically got tired of the attempt to turn the South into a Wine and Cheese-eating copy of New England (don't ask me why, but that's where most of the migrants seemed to come from, rather than the west coast).
Ironically, the opposite now seems to be happening, with NASCAR, and southern cuisine and politics spreading to the rest of the nation. But the old accusations that southerners are nothing but ignorant inbreeding rednecks with no culture still gets our hackles up down here. So southerners basically said "If we suck so bad, why are YOU moving here?".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
no wonder we have to wait so long at the DMV to get a drivers license, 90% of the time their playing solitare
There is an extreme amount of sensitive information that he should NOT be exposed to simply to help fight laziness. Especially working for the government. The government is very picky about who they grant access to to see certain things, do you know how terrifying it must be to them that a sysadmin can install a program to take snapshots so easily? What if this guys boss was cleared for somewhat sensitive information that nobody else was supposed to see?
And lastly, people have been ridiculous here in saying that this guy couldn't expect any privacy because when logging on it says things can be recorded. This is true, but it does NOT give an employee the right to record them. That is meant for someone who can safely be exposed to sensitive information, not as signing away your rights for anybody who works there to spy on you.
An IT security emloyee should have a mandate to uninstall/monitor unsupported or pirated software from any PC under his responsibility. I don't know about ALDOT but in every company I worked for sol.exe is unsupported and removed on sight. Whether or not the PC is his boss' or not is beside the point. It is unfortunate that this would be considered spying. I'd call it auditing or meetering. More than one company has installed MS-SMS-2003 just for this purpose alone. The only question to be answered here is did the employee focus his "audit" on one person only? or is it part of a continuing audit of software use in the company. The later is NOT spying though the first one could be considered an invasion of privacy.
After reading the whole thread, I'm still not sure who is right or wrong in this case -- the whistle-blower or the 10 percent guy. But, as an independant software developer for several corporations/governments, I have a slight clue -- the managers should know what is going on, and be held responsible for their actions and decisions. Enron anyone?
Rules of Office Politics, Rule #24:
Do not, under any circumstances, attempt an attack on someone who spends 90% of his time goofing off. He is obviously better-connected at the company than you are.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Employers spy on employees, not the other way around!
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.