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Man Fired When Laptop Malware Downloaded Porn

Geoffrey.landis writes "The Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents fired worker Michael Fiola and initiated procedures to prosecute him for child pornography when they determined that internet temporary files on his laptop computer contained child porn. According to Fiola, 'My boss called me into his office at 9 a.m. The director of the Department of Industrial Accidents, my immediate supervisor, and the personnel director were there. They handed me a letter and said, "You are being fired for a violation of the computer usage policy. You have pornography on your computer. You're fired. Clean out your desk. Let's go."' Fiola said, 'They wouldn't talk to me. They said, "We've been advised by our attorney not to talk to you."' However, prosecutors dropped the case when a state investigation of his computer determined there was insufficient evidence to prove he had downloaded the files. Computer forensic analyst Tami Loehrs, who spent a month dissecting the computer for the defense, explained in a 30-page report that the laptop was running corrupted virus-protection software, and Fiola was hit by spammers and crackers bombarding its memory with images of incest and pre-teen porn not visible to the naked eye. The virus protection and software update functions on the laptop had been disabled, and apparently the laptop was 'crippled' by malware. According to Loehrs, 'When they gave him this laptop, it had belonged to another user, and they changed the user name for him, but forgot to change the SMS user name, so SMS was trying to connect to a user that no longer existed ... It was set up to do all of its security updates via the server, and none of that was happening because he was out in the field.' A malware script on the machine surfed foreign sites at a rate of up to 40 per minute whenever the machine was within range of a wireless site."

6 of 635 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Certainly sounds fair... by Kjella · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Good to know they researched heavily before firing him. +5, WTF? The company didn't research worth a shit. They handed it over to the prosecution as evidence, and the defense attorney did all the research. If it had been just a "firable but not illegal" offense they probably would have just ghosted it and bye-bye any defense. Not that you really have any defense against being framed out of a job in an at-will state.
    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  2. Re:Certainly sounds fair... by Raineer · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Good to know they researched heavily before firing him. +5, WTF? The company didn't research worth a shit. They handed it over to the prosecution as evidence, and the defense attorney did all the research. If it had been just a "firable but not illegal" offense they probably would have just ghosted it and bye-bye any defense. Not that you really have any defense against being framed out of a job in an at-will state. I see sarcasm is new to you :)
  3. Re:It was Windows, of course. by dedazo · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    You've tried this before, with the usual negative results.

    Certainly the AC was trolling, since nowhere in the article was Linux mentioned. But Windows can be perfectly secure if you want it to, which means that your tired claims and bizarre tie-ins with unrelated conspiracy theories are as usual no more than empty "advocacy" that helps no one and just serves to bury more of your accounts in the appropriate karma holes.

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  4. Re:Not everybody is a slashdotter by fm6 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Dude, whatever you do, don't go to work for IT. They already have too many assholes like you.

  5. Re:What is the real truth here? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I routinely exceed every skill my parents (or anyone) tries to teach me in a few months. I can deal with human transfer of knowledge really well, ask the right questions, infer most of it myself, bypass things I'm being told that I already figured out (i.e. complete the core point while you're talking), etc. Once my interest is in something I exhaust everyone I know who knows something about it, and then add my own research, and I'm better than the lot of them.

    My dad can code but he's not so good at it; he took an operating systems class and I had to explain how operating systems work to him... from knowledge I gleaned toying with the linux kernel on my own time and asking a ton of questions. He's not even any good with a computer.

  6. Re:What is the real truth here? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    That principle doesn't certainly apply. It only applies, in fact, if you subscribe to a certain ancient line of bullshit fed to an ignorant people to make them behave. Your God doesn't think anything at all about the great-grandparent poster's actions, because your God doesn't exist.

    I'm not the guy who wrote the post you were responding to. It's possible that he does believe in God. But it's significantly more likely than usual, since he's probably well educated and intelligent, that he doesn't.

    In order to convince people to behave morally, it's not sufficient to invoke a myth that many people don't believe in and take it as given that they should care what he thinks. Try reason instead.