Perl's Chip Salzenberg Sued, Home Raided

Chip Salzenberg writes "In April of this year, Health Market Science of King of Prussia, PA, told police that they feared I was misappropriating trade secrets. That very afternoon, police raided my house with a search warrant to seize every computer in the house, paper files, CDs, and DVDs... even my wireless router and cable modem!" Chip was the pumpking for perl's 5.004 release. Keep reading for his description of his current legal troubles, and for a shortcut into what he says prompted his former company's actions, read his letter warning about abuse of open proxies.

Chip continues: "The key evidence in the search warrant was so ridiculous as to be surreal: CVS logs indicating that I downloaded more than I uploaded, and that I sometimes accessed the company network from home. Apparently, for company management, the police, and a judge, working at home through a gateway the company set up for that very purpose, and refraining from editing every source file for every code change, is a sign of nefarious behavior.

My behavior in accessing the company network was entirely within my job description and in no way involved misappropriation of anything. For the more than two years that I worked at HMS, I used ssh and CVS to access company files with my laptop both from work and home, with management knowledge and approval.

What would lead management to such a sudden action? Days beforehand, I had made an internal report of unethical and apparently illegal behavior by the company: Use of open proxies for web harvesting to avoid blockage by web site operators. HMS apparently decided that working with me to address their use of open proxies was not an option.

Health Market Science is a large corporation with, compared to me, effectively infinite resources. My legal bills have topped $40K already over just two months. If HMS succeeds in tarring me with their false accusations, what's to stop your employer or client from doing the same to you, should your relationship sour?

Friends have set up GeeksUnite.net, an informational web site and Legal Defense Fund. The site includes the search warrant, my letter about open proxy abuse, and court documents.

Please contribute to my Defense Fund to fight this attack on the normal and legal work practices of millions of tech workers. Every little bit counts! If every person who visits the site contributes only ten dollars, that will make a huge difference. Only through community effort can we protect ourselves."

Comments

Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

If his version of events is true, then wouldn't there exist whistleblower protection laws he can seek refuge under?

Lesson to be learned here

[Anonymous Coward]

Any time you're going to be challenging the mental giants that are in charge, ALWAYS have a lawyer in your pocket and all your ducks in a row. And offsite backups.
Seriously, what the hell did he expect - if they can use open proxies like this, that they would play nice with him?

The moral of this story

[Doktor Memory]

Retain, and have a very long chat with a very good lawyer before you threaten your bosses with police action.

Re:The moral of this story

[Anonymous Coward]

Retain, and have a very long chat with a very good lawyer before you threaten your bosses with police action.

Amen. I learned the hard way through several companies (some I started, some I helped turn around, and some I was wise to leave) that unless you're old money, your best option is to walk away. Notify the authorities anonymously and under extreme caution if you must, but make sure it's darn near impossible to pin it on you that you were the whistleblower, and even then, expect them to still come after you (who do you think the authorities work for, the people? LOL!). Old money and its network will blacklist you further than you'd ever imagine possible. Old money continues to keep making money by having idealistic middle class hard working entrepreneurs achieve great successes, only to discover old money eats first. After they are full, they may decide to leave you with some scraps.

The most important lesson I learned is that in any company, figure out quickly who is just like you (assuming you're a member of the unpriviledged middle class) and who's old money nobility. They're special people - the equivelent of "made men" - and middle class folks are not permitted to touch them. I learned at one company that even a psychotic, cocaine abusing, chair-sniffing and female harassing sexual predator, old money company owner who kept on blowing through family millions had more clout than a the technology manager who rebuilt the dying company product.

If you have to get into battle, get an old money law firm and get some old money patrons on your side. Let them protect you and understand you'll have to pay back the favor if you haven't already earned it. Just because the United States is technically a representative republic doesn't mean Machievelli's world doesn't rule here. I've had too many attorneys explain otherwise (if you've ever had a hearing moved to a different judge that your attorney used to clerk for, you know what I mean). As long as you understand that several thousand years of civilization has been about those in power making sure that the rest of us keep them in power and luxury, and you don't mess with that rule, you'll do fine.

Re:The company's website and contact info

[TwistedSpring]

I think a legion of slashdot readers blasting these contact details and sending trollish e-mails will only worsen this guy's situation: "Then he got his legion of goons to come to his defence, causing massive problems with our e-mail infrastructure and bringing our website to a crawl, before this had even got to court." That cannot be good.

I would advise any slashdot readers considering trolling this e-mail address to think carefully about the implications their messages might have on this guy, and refrain from contacting HMS unless they have something worthwhile and appropriate to contribute.

Missing Something!

[NickFortune]

Chip isn't a whistleblower. Whistleblowing involves running to external authorities with a story.

Chip complained internally. That's allowed. That's ethical. He was giving his employers a chance to sort out a problem. The open proxy scam might have been in contravention of company policy.

Unlikely with hindsight, I'll grant.

OK, I'm missing your point, I know. I don't even disagree with your advice. All I'm saying is let's watch the terminology. A lot of people will thing "Whistleblower, pah! He had it coming!" when nothing is further from the truth. He got into this mess because he gave his employers the benefit of the doubt.

Re:Missing Something!

[Anonymous Coward]

I *am* a lawyer......

Chip's mistake, from what I can tell, is not consulting with a lawyer before he did anything. The letter he wrote, while a great "f* you" letter to his employer, made a couple of mistakes that almost lawyer would've told him to leave out. Including the threat of legal action.

Once someone threatens you with even possible legal action, most companies go into offense mode. It's not really a choice they have, they have to protect themselves and what they see as their intellectual property. (I say it's not a choice because it's what their counsel tells them. They can also choose to ignore their counsel, but then few companies do that since it defeats the purpose of engaging such counsel in the first place, at least in their minds.)

I feel badly for this guy and will likely contribute to this fund. But I can't help but think there was a better way of handling this situation before it got down to an employee threatening their employer with legal action if they don't stop a behavior they, personally, find objectionable.

If you don't like something your company is doing, let them know you don't like it. If they say, "Tough sh*t," then you have two choices -- leave on your own, or stay and suck it up. Staying and making threats against your employer isn't likely to be tolerated by anyone, anywhere.

Sounds pretty clear to me

[suitepotato]

They got caught with their hand in the cookie jar and immediately attempted a smear campaign to draw attention away from themselves.

Further, on nothing more than the company's say-so, they got a search and seizure warrant from a judge who was obviously unfit for service by the very fact of his signing it. Actual investigation and evidence is required usually for this kind of thing and it seems to be a case of "he-said, got the warrant, screw what the other guy said" sort of thing. Having been the victim of this myself, I am not surprised. Saddened that it continues, but not surprised. People who love increasing the powers of the state for their political aims can just as quickly be the nail getting pounded down by that same state.

What is so shocking is that they think they will get away with it. All that are needed are logs from servers harvested by this scumbag outfit despite their attempts at a polite no through robots.txt, etc., and it will become a landslide against them with the first lawsuit for the intrusion.

If I had any money, I'd send some.

Re:I can't send money

[Zaak]

...they lead me to lean towards thinking he did nothing wrong. But I don't know. And I'm not dishing up my cash until I do.

The purpose of a legal defense is not to exonerate the guilty. It is to ensure a fair trial. Whether you believe he is guilty or innocent, or whether you don't know, makes no difference. He has the right to a fair trial. At present in the United States, that means having a lot of money to pay a competent lawyer.

TTFN

Re:Am I missing something?

[the_mad_poster]

You're not real clued in to how criminal investigations work, huh?

When the police find something "suspicious", you don't just say "oh, I have this perfectly plausible excuse which sounds highly improbable to technical incompetents like you" and walk away. Trust me, I know. I had to jump through some pretty ridiculous hoops with a detective once just to prove that it was not, in fact, uncommon for a brand-spanking new hard drive to appear "wiped".

The justice system is a misnomer. It's not a "justice" system, it's a "legal" system. Justice would imply that all parties are acting in an informed, responsible, and full-capacity manner, which is probably the sickest joke one could make about our incompetent, bungling court system.

Chip Salzenberg is fucked. You would be fucked if you tried to right off your little hidden system with that excuse, and you'd probably get charged for trying to interfere with the investigation and giving false information to the police if you used it.