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Sysadmin Steals Almost 20,000 Pieces of Computer Equipment
coondoggie writes "Now this is some serious computer theft. We're talking 19,709 pieces of stolen computer equipment from the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. The theft included everything from PCs and printer toner to hard drives, software and other office equipment amounting to over $120,000, according to court documents and published reports."
So my guess is a few big ticket items, and then lots and lots and LOTS of some small item.
What does this have to do with YRO? That is, unless he stole the suff over SSH...
In further news, a source inside the Pentagon reports that 17 pencils have been reported missing over the last three months. "These are critical communication devices, built to mil spec standards. They have the potential to inflict injury to an untrained operator. The Pentagon takes these communications security breaches quite seriously, and we will be looking for further funding to study this National Vulnerability."
... I believe you still have my err, uh, stapler.
wants to be free!
Seems pretty lenient considering this is a case of grand theft and potentially identity theft since there was information about contractors. It could also be construed, perhaps, as terrorism or treason considering the organization the equipment and data was stolen from.
Contrast this with penalties for copying music over the internet. Is "Enter Sandman" a more valuable national resource than naval research equipment and data in Washington?
The servers were refurbished and donated to a charity as their office servers and the surplus PC has been my desktop for over a year.
If you never ask, the answer will always be no. On the whole, people are nice, if only you are nice to them. Would you deny someone a piece of old equipment if they asked nicely? Then why should someone deny it to you?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I have a, eh, 'friend'....that used to work for M******** Aircraft many years ago in Long Beach. He had full area access due to his job, and that part was unusual, but it meant he could come and go as he pleased - his job also meant driving a van full of equipment on a regular basis.
His method was to first move equipment around inside the plant, waiting to see if anyone noticed. When the stuff went unnoticed for a period of time (say after an audit), he would load up and drive off base to his home, where the van would be unloaded.
This went on for years and he eventually changed jobs.
It was almost three years later that investigators came to his new home, hundreds of miles away. When they walked up to his door, they could see the open garage that was stuffed to the ceiling with everything from o'scopes to monitors to cameras...on and on and on.
In the end, the company got it all back (he kept and took very good care of everything), and only charged him with theft of one almost worthless item, since that was the only piece they felt like parting with long enough to prosecute. They later told him they were shocked to find him with so much stuff...they said their research told them it would take more than a dozen people to pilfer so much equipment.
They ought to leverage his natural skills and abilities by putting this guy in charge of the disposal and recycling of old stuff. If he was taking old equipment with pre-ROHS circuit boards, he probably saved them >$120k in fees.
I hope he wiped those hard drives of any critical information. I wonder if he was working with those guys from MI6 who sold the camera?
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Apparently he didn't get any of those $600 toilet seats or $900 hammers that we used to hear about the military procuring.
Life needs more saving throws.
on a related note, does anyone wanna buy a box of paperclips?
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
No one is saying that stuff walking away is a good thing, but 19+ thousand items at about $6.00 (est) average per item is typical office flow.
Listen, workers often bring things "into" work that are not counted, and some bring things back. I wouldn't even call it "quid pro quo," I'd call it humans working as humans do. We all do it, nothing bad mind you, I'll burn a DVD of stuff and bring it to work. I'll use my laptop because the company I may be working doesn't want to buy me one if I don't need it.
We are not machines, humans become "part" of the organizations to which they belong, and without malice "communal" supplies and things just get used.
Also, in a large technology environment, there is so much stuff that either gets tossed or walks. Think about keyboards, how many people order a cordless keyboard/mouse for their PCs? Well, what happens to the OEM keyboard/mouse? I'll tell you, it sits in a closet until it gets tossed or walks.
We setup a big data center a number of years back, we ordered 300 Dell servers, each and every damn one came with a keyboard and a mouse. We had a small mountain of brand-new mice and keyboards we didn't know what to do with. Dell would ship without them, and we couldn't get rid of them. So, we left them in a pile, and about 50% walked away.
Then there are hard disks, you upgrade a 100G hard disk to a 250G hard disk, 250g to 500g, what do you do with the old ones? They, too, sit in a closet. They have "book" value but no actual usable value. Computers, jeez, you can't get rid of them, but after 18 months they have "book" value but no practical resale value. It costs more in man-power to dispose of a 2 years old computer than it does to buy a new one. So it sits in a corner or a closet until someone asks "will that be missed?" and the response is "its just taking up space, I know nothing."
Your "human community" will use these things. The books will show a loss, but no real loss has occurred. Bonus! You get to deduct the loss, blame pilfering, and in the end stuff useless to organization stops taking up space and gets used, employees are better off, and there's room in the closets.
This is actually the best way. If they "gave" it to the employees, it would mean paperwork and taxes. This way, its just "lost" so sad. Everyone knows it, everyone does it, and this article is just a CYA piece.
"were talking 'military spec' pencils"
I know you're joking, but I was thinking something similar. Could it be ex-military spec junk hardware?. It could just be junk hardware that's getting thrown out (over a 10 year period), but is not officially signed off as allowed to be taken home as junk. From the paper trail it would look like the junk was still owned. Plus if people leave the organisation who allowed others to take some old junk home, then it would be hard to prove it was given away as rubbish. The paperwork would say it was still owned.
Considering how they are (only) now starting to take security a lot more seriously, I'm wondering if they are making an example of this person, who's basically got a house and/or garage full of junk?. Plus a system admin working for them, would probably get access to a lot of junk old hardware. It could just be old rubbish, but to paranoid non-technical types, who are looking for demons to fear everywhere, they would see it as wrong, rather than just seeing some engineer collecting a lot of interesting looking rubbish, before it hits the rubbish bins.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
I am sysadmin in a pharmaceutical company, and the Parent is correct.
We have 3 DELL 2600 servers with Dual CPU Xeon cpu, SCSI raid5, 4GB RAM ready to make their final trip to the dumpster.
We cannot use them anymore for plant systems because they are obsolete and out of support.
They are too big and noisy to use as test systems (as opposed to the 2U 2650s that we are going to keep just for that).
I would love to have even one of those machines in my basement, but it is not going to happen.
Corporate policy forbids employees from taking or even buying obsolete equipment.
In the beginning it was allowed, but someone once abused the system really badly, so now there has to be a documented paper trail for the destruction of all things going the the digital eternity.
We are going to try and give them away to a charity or school because it hurts to see those perfectly good machines except the disks) destroyed. But if we can't find anyone willing to take them, they will be destroyed. :(
If you end up in jail you're doing it wrong.
What you do is make LOTs of 120k loans even if you know they will never be repaid.
Then you get a big bonus etc for doing so well. The bonus could be 120K?
When stuff goes bad, you say "But everyone was doing it too". And everyone else nods their head in agreement.