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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."
Dear Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents,
As you can see, with your assistance, micro$oft has destroyed another family with their OS monopoly.
Did you ever study history and read about the complicit Germans who allowed the Nazis to murder millions of Jews or about the complicit southern citizens of the southern United States after the civil war that just stood by as the KKK murdered so many black citizens. This is YOU. You allowed your own employee to be tainted and tarnished by your accusal without even examining the evidence. Even though he was subsequently proven innocent, somehow beyond all audacity, you continue to "stand by your decision" as you were complicit in allowing flawed micro$oft software to paint an innocent man guilty.
As implicated by the forensic study, it was the responsibility of the IT department to "update" the micro$oft SMS server on the laptop so that the laptop would be get proper security updates.
But who is the real criminal here? The man now proven innocent? No. The irresponsible IT department? Maybe. The criminal extortion racket based in Redmond, WA who built an insecure OS that destroys families with its built in malware vulnerabilities? Yes, obviously.
This kind of problem where a computer is invaded by rogue malware is a window$ problem. This is exactly what happens when you use closed-source software that is designed by a criminal monopoly.
Had the IT department deployed secure Linux based laptops this would have never happened. This is exactly why I never allow micro$oft "crippleware" on any computer in my home or my personal system at work (I'm working on converting the rest). Congratulations,
Keep up the good work destroying families and lives just like the Nazis and the KKK.