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."

Comments

That's 90%

[Platinum Dragon]

Should we ask what the other 10% consisted of?

Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

They have computers in Alabama? When did this happen?

Re:Wait

[babbage]

Oh they have plenty of computers in Alabama. The problem is that because most computers don't ship with TV cards hard-wired to watch football games, televangelists, and Fox News, the locals don't see why anyone would want to use one unless they were some kind of godless heathen communist.

As a godless heathen communist who studied computer science at a university in Alabama, this was just fine with me :-)

Solitaire

[jdc180]

Surprising thing was none of the screenshots were of solitaire crashing

Spyware.

[Daleks]

I wonder how the guy was caught. Oh, and there's a picture of a spy in the lower right hand corner.

Thats what the boss gets.......

[ErichTheWebGuy]

... 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.

Sounds like a case of

[JoeLinux]

Not-so-mean-BOFH vs. PHB. Let's get ready to rumble!!!

Had this same sort of problem

[FluffyWhiteBunny]

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.

90% of the time the screen was blue...

[noidentity]

...but the screen capture utility didn't capture that for some reason.

Re:Everyone knows

[Anonymous Coward]

What's this URL for?
http://www.dot.state.al.us/Bureau/Right_of_W ay/Con tacts/employeelist.htm

Oh look, I do believe it has George Dobb's phone number on it. :-) That's 334-242-6188

Slashdot away!

Suggested voicemail message: "We are watching you. Stop playing games on your computer and get back to work."

Re:couldn't he just....

[Anonymous Coward]

C:\> more test.c
#include <stdio.h>

void main( )
{
for( int x = 0; x < 1000; x++ ) {
print( "GET TO WORK, YOU LAZY FUCK!" );
}
getch();
}
C:\> bcc test.c sol.exe
Borland C Compiler v5
Compiling... DONE!
C:\> delete C:\Windows\System32\sol.exe
C:\> copy C:\sol.exe C:\Windows\System32

- Seth

Re:couldn't he just....

[l810c]

delete solitary from his boss's computer?

How about creating a custom solitaire that Loses Every Time. The boss would become frustrated. Seething in anger he would blurt it out at status meetings, thus outing himself.

Re:Everyone knows

[Abalamahalamatandra]

"If his boss was such a poor performer, his failures would have made themselves evident over time."

You've never worked in government, have you?

Re:couldn't he just....

[DAldredge]

And to think that I go moded to hell today because I said that Gnome was easier to configure than windows.

Re:Whistleblower?

[Elwood P Dowd]

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?

Huh. Iduno about that. I'd say that the amount of time I spend on /. while at work is completely inexcusable.