Slashdot Mirror
AOL CTO Shown the Door
BrewerDude writes "Reuters is reporting that AOL Chief Technical Officer Maureen Govern has resigned from the company. Is this an appropriate penalty for releasing 20 million keyword search results, or is it too harsh, or not harsh enough? What do the slashdot readers think is the appropriate outcome of this fiasco?"
Is this an appropriate penalty for releasing 20 million keyword search results, or is it too harsh, or not harsh enough?
Well, it would certainly be nice to see companies (and governments) go back to a model where "the buck stops here" and take responsibility for their actions. I don't know who ultimate thought "I know what let's do" and release these records for public consumption without even "anonymizing" them, but the CTO is an appropriately responsible party I would guess.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
From the summary: Is this an appropriate penalty for releasing 20 million keyword search results, or is it too harsh, or not harsh enough? ...
Well, considering that others are shown to the door for working 20+ years, garnering good reviews, and creeping within a chip shot of expensive pension payoffs, it's probably reasonable to show this guy the door.
Probably the biggest crime, and one we'll never be in on, is how golden a parachute this guy jumped with.
So that those 20 million people can track him down and make his life miserable?
Resigning means he keeps his massive stock options and his overly generous retirement benefits and other such excess compensation. The average CTO only survives a maximum of 18 months anyways.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I couldn't agree more.
Let it fit the crime.
AOL should release - without names, of course - the text of all the searches executed by recent AOL CTOs.
NEVER being permitted to go online again!
Is this an appropriate penalty for releasing 20 million keyword search results, or is it too harsh, or not harsh enough? What do the slashdot readers think is the appropriate outcome of this fiasco?
The paradox is that the one who takes overall responsibility is axed, yet they have learned from the experience. They have also undoubtably done many things right, which their successor may goof on.
It's trading a devil you know for a devil you don't. Should have just docked her pay, made her stand in a corner of sommat.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
In an ideal universe, the last 90 days of Maureen Govern's search records would be published in a form suitable for addition to the database.
They fired the person who released the data and the supervisor, and the CTO was shown the door. I think the management structure was a bit too flat for me to not be suspicious. Was there people between the supervisor and the CTO who should've gotten the sack? Or was the CTO shoved onto her proverbial sword as public sacrifice to blow over the controversy? Or what are they really covering up? Inquiring minds want to know...
Being allowed to resign isn't good enough. He should have been fired. It's ridiculous that once you get high enough on the corporate ladder, you don't get canned like the rest of us would. Us peons screw up a little bit, we get fired. But if you're a big cheese, and screw up hugely, you are allowed to resign. Life's not fair I guess.
Maureen is a womans name and it does suck that others are fired for far less whilst CxO's usually receive golden handshakes for failure. I think Mrs Governs search history would be poetic justice if the breach was her fault, which is most unlikely.
After reading part one and part two of Something Awful's search logs his customers better want blood.
Off with her head!!!
I'm a happy pessimist. I expect and prepare for the worst, when it doesn't happen I am pleasantly surprised.
...we used on those Irish "scientist" Quacks, and then dump her body in an empty fish pond who's contents were sold to make the Biofuel needed to keep that not-quite-free-energy machine running. By contents I mean the water, since the Gold Fish were smart enough to say "So long and thanks for food flakes" and beam up weeks ago.
TFS = Her life... and wasn't this the question last week about Koreans?
Is this an appropriate penalty for releasing 20 million keyword search results, or is it too harsh, or not harsh enough?
I know they still have death by firing line in the United States, What about hanging, drawing and quartering though?
I fail to see how this could be the CTO's fault...
I am sure he is crying into his 7 figure golden parachute all the way down.
Where can we donate to a fund to help his suffering family???
Kidding aside, if you want the obscene Executive salaries, you have to accept that you get to be the sacrifical fall guy that is used to appease the shareholders.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
there will be no Mourning After she leaves.
What the CTO did is merely reveal that AOL was deliberately holding on to this privacy time-bomb and exposed it in a relatively minor way. The person who actually leaked the data should be praised as a whistleblower.
I want whomever APPROVED STORING the logs to be fired; and whomever adviced that hanging on to this kind of data is worth the potential risks should be locked up and sued.
AOL Chief Technical Officer Maureen Govern has resigned from the company. Is this an appropriate penalty for releasing 20 million keyword search results, or is it too harsh, or not harsh enough? What do the slashdot readers think is the appropriate outcome of this fiasco?
... or the CEO.
Assuming she honestly resigned, big kudos to her for taking the responsibility and the heat, and not passing the buck down to the people who need the paycheck. It's not often that a person in power will take the fall - most often, 100% of the blame gets placed on lower-level people who were just doing what they were told.
I'm sure she didn't make the decision or understand the ramifications - after all, she is a CTO. And hopefully there are some people at AOL who would have known that this was a bad idea. But in the end, it was up to her to prevent this from happening.
Why are so many posters referring to "Maureen Govern" as "he"?
AOL probably found her keyword searches for: "CTO", "fortune 500", "availability", "resume"...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
mandatory castration
During my first IT job, the CTO resigned when a server crashed and 2 weeks worth of orders and return information was lost. Tape backup procedures failed. Not sure if she was pushed out or if she voluntarily fell on her sword, but I felt then as I do now that it was the right thing to do. If you are the head of a department that fails to do their job in some egregious way, you should bear full responsibility and pay accordingly. Too many execs find ways to point blame below them. In my case, she could have easily fired the dweeb managing the backup tapes. He's the one who screwed up, right? Maybe he even lied about keeping up to date. This was 1995. Have I seen anything like it since? Nope.
Was it a new door or something? Why didn't she see it before? Was it even in her building? Why is this even news? I've seen a lot of doors in my time. In fact, I'm looking at one right now. Why don't I get a slashdot story, huh? What is this preference for the rich and famous? How does one even become rich and famous in the first place if so much depends upon the exposure given only to those already with status.... Why doesn't someone show *me* the door, dammit?! I'm a person too! I demand to be shown the door!
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Remember - business is a game. We invented this game. We can change it too.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Oh, wait.....
2356894 new job
2356894 new job soon
2356894 macdonalds
2356894 mcdonalds
2356894 mcjob
2356894 postal service
2356894 going postal
2356894 guns
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Whatever happen to, "I made a mistake." (be it though genuine blunder or an action percieved at the time as a good idea.)
It does happen, and crying and screaming for someone's head, makes me think some (not all), "doth protest too much."
Regards,
MBC1977,
(US Marine, College Student, and Good Guy!)
Regards,
MBC1977,
Forget moralizing the release of the keywords. From a business standpoint, this was terrible for AOL. They are trying to reinvent themselves as an internet service rather than internet access that, among other things, is responsible for your computer security. My memory, at least, is that recent AOL commercials have all stressed in particular that buying AOL helps protect you against "viruses". Then they release these search results, and eviscerate this new image they were building for themselves. Heads had to roll.
This is a perfect example of the current zeitgeist (is that the right word?) where the "something must be done!" public opinion is acknowledged and someone's head HAD to roll. Maureen was "it" this time. And we're all happy. No
In 6-12 months after everyone has forgotten about it, she'll get another CTO job at 100+ times the average wage earner in the U.S.
I'd love to hear who threw her to the wolves on this one because we all know it's very rare the person that did it actually hangs.
Note to self: Finish Web 2.0 business plan to pay myself 200+ times my exploited and willing American worker salary.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Welcome to slashdot. The South Korean version.
I think a better question is: Just how bad are things at AOL that their CTO must resign? BrewerDude is focusing too narrowly on the release of the keyword searches.
Was the release really a singular exception, or symptomatic of other problems - problems you probably wouldn't have a clue about unless you were an insider?
How did Ms. Govern's response demonstrate technical and/or managerial ineptness or incompetence on her part?
If you had to use AOL as your ISP, would you prefer Ms. Govern or her replacement to be in charge? What do you know that supports your conclusion? Is "anyone else but Ms. Govern" really a better choice?
What shortcoming in AOL's policies allowed this breach? If not their policies, shortcomings in AOL's implementation of their policies? Or their personnel?
AOL CIO OUT
LOL
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
"Is this an appropriate penalty for releasing 20 million keyword search results, or is it too harsh, or not harsh enough?"
Nothing deters slacking off on one's duties better than severe punishment.
She would probably rather be drawn and quartered than face 600,000 AOL users.
Come to think of it, I could see her changing her name.
Slashdot Mob: We have found a witch, might we burn her?
Bedemeer: How do you know she's a witch?
Slashdot Mob: Well she's dressed like one!
Govern: I'm not a witch! They dressed me up as one!
AOL Lawyers: Well, we did do the nose.
AOL Lawyers: And the hat.
AOL Lawyers: But she is a witch!
Slashdot Mob: Burn the witch!
/* somewhat functional - fix later */
1. howto spin big fuckup
2. creating plausible deniability
3. crow recipies
4. top cto jobs -aol
5. job keygen crack
6. alcoholics anonymous
7. depression hotline
8. psychiatrist
9. gun shop
10. funeral parlor
How many males do you guys know by the name of Maureen?
How do you know the two events are associated?
clancey
lol, anyone else starting to see a trend?
Lots of very personal information made public through simple lack of respect for customers.
Deleted
any one who uses aol should be shot in the 1st place.
but in all reality what happened was actually REALLY good. when Google didnt allow the gov to access its search records they had damn good reason and this action supports what google did to the fullest. this also leads us all to realize what NOT to do... 1 use AOL 2 use ISP search engin. 3 proxy or VPN if ur doing things u dont want traced back ASAP
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
Didn't take her long to screw up Big Time!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If the CTO did authorized the release, then she's certainly the right person to be released [sic].
If however, a subordinate few levels below her did it, then firing the CTO can't really be justified. I mean, you might as well fire the CEO if you can justify firing her in that case.
...releasing his home address so that viloated AOL users could send their AOL CD's to his house with a termination of service notice attached to it.
Here's harsh enough:
Have him defend himself, in a court of law, against 20 million plaintiffs.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Probably the only job open to her now is that of Official Keeper of the Glorious Counter-Counter-Revolutionary Bush. The Official Keeper's duties are to comb the breadcrumbs from Richard Stallman's beard each morning, and to bear it before him, resting it tenderly on a bed of cloth of velvet, at all official functions of the FSF. Unfortunately, a highly complicated dispute involving several professors at law, as to whether "breadcrumbs" refers only to home-made organic bread or also to the superheated patented supermarket dough known as "bread", is likely to mean that even this opportunity may not be available to her.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
She should have said that she was going to find out who released that and punish them by firing them. It seems to be a major trend for the last 5 years.
If I screwed up like that, I'd feel terrible. Resigning is pretty much the only appropriate response. Resigning means that you don't blame anyone else for your problems. Plus it gives you a break where you can go hiking in the wilderness and heal a bit. After that you can start over with a clean slate.
/kickban Maureen_Govern
/block !*Maureen_Govern*ATaolDOTcom
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
I don't see how anything harsher could be warranted. As far as I've understood, there is no expectation of privacy when doing a web search, and the release of the records has simply been a breach of AOL's privacy policy (versus an illegal act). The only way any of the searches could be traced back to the user was a direct result of the unprotected information the user knowingly sent over the internet. IF the CTO knew about the release of records beforehand and let it go forward, she should be canned, nothing more or less. If the CTO did not know about it, it is easy to argue that she allowed it to happen on her watch and could have stopped it through better policies, training, etc. In either case, resignation was probably her best option.
I suspect that, when the search results were leaked, Mr. CTO's was on that list too. I bet he found it hard to explain why he was spending several hours each day searching for "hot barnyard action".
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Even without the search results, given the level of AOL technology its appropriate and not harsh enough.
Thank goodness they'll be able to get some visionary technical specialis....
AOL's former CTO, will take over on an interim basis, according to the memo obtained by Reuters on Monday.
Oh, okay they are still screwed.
On a side note, I thought the search queries public release was a brilliant idea executed the absolute worst way imaginable. Collect the queries, not the origins. The Data is fascinating to study, and incredibly usefull, just ask google, sorry I mean just ask Google. Advertise the fact that the data is collected and agregated to "serve you better", but you have to make it public. Automated wikipedia style.
I think the sad truth is, it is our data collectively, and we'd like to know what the rest of the world is looking for everyonce in a while.
Privacy hording, tin foil hat wearers, I know this seems foriegn and scary. But the knife cuts both ways. Maybe you wouldn't be so afraid if you "knew it all too".
Just a thought
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
His losing this job still means that he will live comfortably in retirement -- far more comfortably than the millions of Americans who have never violated any ethical standard. When you reach that status of CEO, COO, CTO, president, or vice president, you have already acquired so much wealth that regardless of what happens to you, you will live well.
What concerns me is the 2 other people who were fired. They appear to be slaves whom the CTO ordered to release the private date of 10s of thousands of AOL customers.
If the slaves were only doing what the CTO told them to do, then the slaves should not be fired. The slaves should consider filing a wrongful-termination lawsuit.
235343 Top 10 Signs your job is in danger 2006-08-19
235343 What the press is saying about AOL Leak 2006-08-19
235343 What the press is saying about Maureen Govern 2006-08-19
235343 Finding a Job 2006-08-19
235343 Companies Seeking Crap CTOs 2006-08-19
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
They should be "blatant" and "laziness".
In the VERY first sentence of the summary, not even the article, it says:
"Reuters is reporting that AOL Chief Technical Officer Maureen Govern has resigned from the company."
Seems people can't even manage to get beyond the job title. Maureen isn't exactly an unknown woman's name.
Business processes are god. which makes a sort of sense when people leave.
Deleted
I know Mo from her days at Motorola, and let me say that she was one of the few great leaders at Motorola in the "dark ages" before the dot-com bust. It was a sad day for all when she left Motorola. She had a great knack for leadership and understood the technology.
I don't believe she was ultimately responsible for the fiasco at AOL, and if she should be reprimanded in such a way for it, so should the rest of the senior management there. All I can truly say is it's a good thing Mo is now out of the evil grasps of the devil known as AOL.
It's too late for apologies when trust has been betrayed
Now victims of your double life are naming names
--Steve Taylor
There can be no repirations. They should simply be shut down, and other companies should learn from their mistake and take better care of their data (and for heaven's sake STOP TRACKING SO DAMNED MUCH).
And that information wants to be free.
Hmmm, do you have a gmail address?
Deleted
The AOL release of search terms is (A) a boon to research on real-world searching habits, and (B) a wakeup call for those so stupid to think that anything they send over a PUBLIC network unencrypted is ever in any way private (which in this case it really wasn't either).
Were there privacy agreements in place with those who did the AOL searches? Not if you read the TOS carefully. We should all thank AOL for making it very publically clear that any searches may be later drug up under other conditions. Google promises never to release the search terms but still retains them and that means MANY different people within Google probably have access to that raw data, not to mention anyone at your ISP.
If anyone out there thinks this is bad, I encourage you to start your own search firm that clearly outlines you will never store search results and then get pummeled into gravel as companies that can try new search techniques using historical searches and data walk all over you with R&D. That's the whole tradeoff here that we all implicitly agree to by using these companies services, they are also getting our data. If you don't like it stop using the services but don't expect the companies to change something that is not very practical to change.
If you are worried about such companies having your data remember a few things:
1) You are one of hundreds of millions.
2) Your life is really not that interesting when looked at in great detail. This is true of anyone on Earth.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Reuters is reporting that AOL Chief Technical Officer Maureen Govern has resigned from the company. Is this an appropriate penalty for releasing 20 million keyword search results, or is it too harsh, or not harsh enough?
One executive fired? And they don't even have the balls to call it fired? (not that anyone ever does any more) Not enough by a damned site.
She'll have a new job inside of a week, and she probably got fifty million in parting gifts. Fire every person in the hierarchy that did it, after cancelling all their golden parachutes. Then put $100 million into efforts to reform corporate executive corruption and incompetence, and another $100 million into promoting serious privacy standards and legislation. Then maybe we can have an article asking whether it was enough.
When you have a total compensation package that is one thousand times that of the average engineer, and you are so incompetent that the people working for you either don't know enough about information science to grasp that this was a breach of privacy, or don't realize that it is important to your customers, merely getting fired is not even close. If she could screw up this monstrously, imagine what else she must have gotten wrong. It goes a long way to explain their stock price.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
So, five years and $10 million in legal fees after the fact everyone whose searches were released gets a coupon for 3 months of free AOL dial-up. Sounds like justice to me!
0 1 - just my two bits
So when does someone get fired for all the ultra-pushy salesman that put you through hell if you want to cancel?
Put away the love beads, hippie. You and others who believe that kind of nonsense need to get real.
If your Privacy rights were "inherent" as you say, the US would not have had to pass the National Privacy Act in 1988.
Whether or not this person was really responsible, we'll never know.
... here's one ... become a political lobbiest for privacy!
But what I can faithfully say is that she will have no problem finding a job as soon as she's ready to start working again. People in high-profile positions like CTO of a Fortune 500 company don't end up working at McDonald's the next day.
She will likely go to work for a competitor, start her own mega-huge consulting gig, end up in government, or
-David
It's trading a devil you know for a devil you don't.
According to Ars Technica, Govern had only been at AOL for not quite a year. She replaced John McKinley as CTO after he was promoted to AOL's Digital Services group. He'll act as interim CTO until they find someone new.
It's more likely that they just traded a devil they don't know for a devil they do.
You know I am right.
No, you're not.
No women in the workplace means nothing to look at for 8 hours/day!
I think it all depends on where this goes. There is a huge amount of data involved in this and quite a bit of it can change lives. Fortunately some pedophiles are going to be identified and handled appropriately. Some people will be thought of as terrorists (some may have it coming and some may be taken out of context).
However I think the ultimate outcome will be that some already stressed and depressed kids will one day look up their name on a search engine and find a whole page of private information about themselves. They will see their name right there attached to searches about small penises, or drugs, or masturbation, or abnormalities and will feel so embarrassed that they will serously think about killing themselves.
Lots of people are involved and the odds are that people will die as a result of this. I think that when this happens Maureen and CO are going to be in it a little deeper than just losing their jobs.
There's got to be a morning after...
Yeah, one day you're on top of the world, making theme songs for disaster movies and staring in the disaster that is AOL, then you get the boot. Here's hoping Ms. McGovern can get her music career back on track.
AOL should be lynched but other than that obvious fact ;)
I use a search proxy and of course Im not an AOL luser.
Took me 5 years to get my mom off of it too.
http://www.blackboxsearch.com/
They probably need all the help they can get.
I Would bet that the first Woman President will be known as the best president in a couple centuries.
Seriously folks
1 Not a member of the Good old boys club
2 will have something to prove
3 would have a more predictable emotional curve (God(s) help the countries that try something at the wrong moon phase [eg])
4 and besides when "dad" messes things up who cleans up???
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
because he's been handed a golden parachute of 2,000,000 AOL disks.
Table-ized A.I.
And no doubt she got a nice severance package for taking the fall. Here, have a few hundred thousand stock options and remember not to make a stink or the stock value may go down. [wink] That's how business really works. Negative responsibility is for the non-"chief" employees only.
Anyone else notice this person has almost the same name as the woman who sang the theme to Poseiden Adventure ("if we can hold out through the night..."). In fact, I looked it up and the song ends with a search reference ("we won't be searching anymore").
I'm surprised that got by their executive recruiters.
All he gets is a lousy nine digit severence package and a long line of headhunters at the other fortune 500 companies who want to give him a job. Sucks, don't it?
He was allowed to RESIGN. He probably keeps plenty of perks, too.
A regular joe, when committing a massive screwup, isn't allowed to resign, he's FIRED.
Or even when he HASN'T screwed up - he's performed well, gone above and beyond... but some execs screw up, profits don't meet expectations, the stock needs a bounce, so across the board "layoffs" are announced for a temporary boost to the stock price, and ordinary joe who has performed well is allowed to resign. Oh no, wait, he's not. He's FIRED.
This space available.
fuck aol
If I had mod points, I would mod your comment up!
I think we all know what MY regime would require!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Did AOL axe Govern because they are serious about earning trust? Or did they do this just to head off regulation?
Without further steps this is only symbolic.
Here's the real problem:
What, if anything, will AOL do about this?
- and how sad to see anyone get kicked out for this! Is it really a surprise to anyone on slashdot that search engines and ISP's hold this type of data? I mean, for one thing, how would you improve your engine without knowing the popular searches? How could you make a service such as Google Suggests? Ok, so they have the data, but they should not release it? Why the heck not? Isn't that what the net is all about? the sharing of information! If the data is anonymised, how can it possibly upset anyone? It's of great value to people wanting to build search engines (should there still be any around...) Available search data will lower the entry barriers to the field. It's so easy to scream for privacy protection these days, but wouldn't we all be better off saving the effort for where our privacy is really being threatened? It's not that we're lacking any candidates: Government agencies scanning our email and other online communication, fingerprint scans in the airports (even for people in transit), credit card records, phone tapping. So much information is available on us in government & private corporation systems and widely(!) accessible to people that may not exactly serve our best interests. Again, my feelings go to the ousted CTO. They cried wolf.
... I believe life without posibility of parole in SuperMax, confiscation of all assets, and selling her family into slavery would almost do it.
If the law doesn't pick this up and prosecute him, I will be sorely disappointed...he violated several privacy laws. And I think everyone and anyone who has had an AOL account of any kind should file suit (class action) for damages that could or have resulted from the release of their personal data. JMNSHO
--E--
He should have been fired
You know the CTO was a she, right ?
AOL should be shown the door.
Yes, it can be a scarlet AOL logo instead.
Actually in retrospect I think termination/resignation is too harsh. People who use AOL do so at their own peril. This has never changed. The AOL search data is important in that it shows us all just what sort of people average Americans are. Lest we believe in some hope that the average American is fundamentally bright and well-adjusted, we can always read the searchbox insights of the lives of such people as #711391 and #6396631.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Can anyone explain why the fuck slashdot, after FIVE FUCKING YEARS, can't get the concept of Next Page Of Comments right?
Whenever there is a comment with more than ~100 replies that takes up the entire first page, and you hit Next Page, it shows you the EXACT SAME FUCKING COMMENT AND REPLIES. Sometimes you have to go to page 2, then 3, then 4, before you actually see any new comments. Wtf.
This is while browsing at -1, Nested, Highest Scores First.
Typical enterprise making a sacrifice to try and improve their PR with customers, peers, etc.
Personally, I think AOL should fire everyone, help all the people that did the real work get real jobs with some meaning in their life and pay the board members back their original investment plus 20%.
The rest of the money should be used for a campaign where all the former AOL executives should go door to door across america, collect all the unwanted CD's and apologize to Americans for retarding the growth of the internet and for retarding its customers about how to really use a computer and the internet.
What if she's menopausal? Likely, considering she'd have to be over 35 to run & she'd probably be in her mid-50s to early 60s.
Some things are fairly obvious - take patterns like phone numbers and social security numbers and munge them, either to a single pattern like all-0s or at least to an anonymized pattern (e.g. renumber them starting with all-0s, so you can see if 000-00-0043 gets searched for multiple times.) Names and addresses are harder to recognize, and it's harder to decide the right thing to do with them.
If you're willing to give up patterns of use by individual users, you can improve the privacy by sorting all the queries in alphabetical order, so you don't know whether User #12345 searched for "assassinate" "bush" "castro" in one session or whether three different people wanted information on JFK, Shrubbery, and gay San Francisco. Not as much fun for the researchers, but it gives them something.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks