Slashdot Mirror
How IT Pros Can Avoid Legal Trouble
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Peter S. Vogel reports on the kinds of inadvertent transgressions that could land IT pros into legal trouble without realizing it. From confidentiality and privacy negligence, to copyright and source code violations, IT staff are legally liable for a lot more than they might think — in some cases because the law will not stop at your employer, instead holding individual IT employees responsible for violations even if the individuals are just 'doing their job.' Worse, as the recent case against Terry Childs has shown, judges and juries are often not technically savvy enough to understand what IT pros do. 'That lack of understanding can lead them to conclude you're at fault or should have known better,' Vogel writes. 'After all, many people think anyone technical is a whiz kid or brainiac on any topic.'"
What legally questionable scenarios have cropped up at your job?
I'm liable for first posts.
He was a petulant child.
This narrative that this ruling could affect non-sociopaths is FUD.
It's such a gigantic PITA to track all of the licensing for everything that I weep for any small to medium sized shop that can't afford to have a dedicated person/dedicated people for it.
I'm a medical equipment technician at a California corrections facility. My boss routinely asks me to kill people in cold blood, and I've been doing it for a few years now... there's a lot of paperwork and everything, but I'm not entirely sure it's legal.
Does anyone else have experience with being ordered to kill somebody as part of their IT duties?
When someone at work has a blackberry, they are set up on the Blackberry enterprise server, which manages all their contacts and emails and calendar and such.
If they leave, or are terminated, we are told to send the kill command to their BES account. This will delete any emails off their phone AND their contact details. In some cases, a person will be let go - our IT staff will be let known first so their account can be disabled for security reasons. Then that recently laid off person has lost all of their contact details - including Mom and Dad and sweet Great Aunt Gertrude.
We haven't faced any legal suits yet - but it happened a couple times where people have gotten angry. As a precaution - we've started informing people that this happens - so anyone with a blackberry needs to back up their contacts constantly.
What legally questionable scenarios have cropped up at your job?
You have got to be shitting me. This isn't phishing, this needs a new term all its own.
'After all, many people think anyone technical is a whiz kid or brainiac on any topic.'
Obviously, they've never visited slashdot.
Here's one: I worked for one of the top national retail firms. Their POS systems were booted using PXE, and there was no firwalling between the stores and corporate HQ. In other words, the network topology was completely flat. Setup a PXE server at any store, distribution center, or headquarters, and you could respond to PXE requests sent by the POS systems. The store's location was coded into the DNS RR, and followed an easy to understand naming convention -- they also were powered down every evening. Which means, you had about a 10 minute window each day where if you disabled or DDoS'd the one PXE server on the network, you would be able to send a bootable image to every POS server in that timezone.
They fired me three days after reporting this flaw, calling me a security risk.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Worse, as the recent case against Terry Childs has shown, judges and juries are often not technically savvy enough to understand what IT pros do
As I recall, when the details finally came to light about what he did and how he went about it, the judge and jurry WERE technically savvy enough to understand what he did. It was all the people jumping to uninformed conclusions here on Slashdot that didn't understand.
I have no doubt there are plenty of cases where judges and juries fail to understand the facts at hand, but I don't think this was one of them.
I have often been either asked to use pirate copies of software (Borland Turbo C in the 1980s), or accept license agreements personally, where a corporate license would have been more fitting. Neither of these have occurred at my present place of employment, thankfully.
In other areas, I was once asked by a low-level manager at a client company of our contracting firm for my SSN for a "background check". I was told this person had a reputation of committing identity theft in the name of contractors, obtaining credit in their name, and threatening to insist they be removed from the assignment if they complained. I don't know if that was true, but did insist that any "background check" would be done by a recognized neutral party. I was requested removed from the assignment, and let go for lack of other work.
On the pirate software issue, I simply licensed my own copies, and took them with me when I left (well, wiped them off my work computer). Borland's license would let me use their compiler on any machine, even let someone else use it, one at a time.
The bottom line is that if your employer asks you to break the law, find another job... fast.
In Liberty, Rene
Umm no. I disagree entirely. Are we forgetting there was a network engineer on the jury? Seriously? This is exactly the sort of thing that SHOULD happen. A jury of his "peers!"
It was described to the engineer, and he was the de-facto explainer for the group, but seriously Childs was working for the gov't too long and had too many bad habits of "fiefdom" creation that are everywhere in city and state organizations. He created a world, then he took the keys away from everyone and didn't give it up. He's not the first, nor will he be the last, but the lesson here should be to all comers "hit by bus strategy... always." Otherwise, things that together could be suspect or could be best practice BECOME suspect without a backup and recovery plan.
And no, an encrypted that's tattoo'd to an admin's ass doesn't count. Especially if there's a likelyhood of a flame thrower being involved at some point.
Why is it a "concern" that judges and juries don't understand what IT pros do? Judges are supposed to understand the law. Period. Juries are supposed to be unbiased. Period. Is it a "concern" that judges and juries don't understand what police detectives do? Doctors? Hospital ethics boards? Accident reconstruction experts? Corporate officers? Accountants? Fund managers? Etc, etc. If the judge or jury needs to understand any of those things it is up to the parties in the case to educate them. There is nothing special about IT that makes it any more or less difficult to explain than anything else.
That network engineer, IIRC, said here something to the effect that he didn't think Childs had any criminal intent, and that he was doing what he thought was right for the city. The only reason for the conviction was that the letter of the law appeared to be against him.
This was a case where a fully informed jury should have acquitted, but unfortunately juries are not fully informed. A jury has the right, nay the responsibility, to judge the LAW as well as the FACTS.
Basically, put yourself in Childs' situation. You did what you thought was right. (Let's assume that's the case, since I believe that's what the juror said.) Wouldn't you hope that somebody would inject some common sense at some point rather than robotically reading the law?
That's why we have juries. But judges tell them all they can do is robotically read the law. It's awful.
http://fija.org/
Why?
Because I'm in IT security. My job is to analyze and dissect malware, not only to find out what it does but also how it does it, what attack vectors are used, what system flaws are exploited, what means of communication with a controlling server are used and, if possible, I should also try to cut those lines and render the malware useless, preferably create some kind of remedy or even protection against it. All this can usually only be done by taking a closer look at the software than is possible by simply watching it run. In other words, disassembly and protocol sniffing and decoding are two of the main parts of my work. Both already illegal in some countries.
Now, fortunately my country provides protection for this (albeit ... well, I have a law that I might pull out of my ass should I need it, but it's anything but a certain victory in case anyone ever goes to court for it). But in theory, any writer of malware could pull any IT security company to court and stand a pretty good chance to win. Though he'd first have to admit that it was him who created the malware.
In other words, as odd as it may be, I may violate that copyright because the one who could drag me to court for it certainly has no interest to come forwards and claim ownership of the code.
And now let's ponder for a moment what will change should ACTA become reality and copyright violations get shifted from civil to criminal code. Technically, the State Attorney would have to step forward and protect the copyright of the writers of malware without them asking for it (because the SA has to act even without prompting from the injured party) and prosecute those that analyze malware and design protection and remedies against it.
You see, you don't have to be the bad guy to think that ACTA is a really, really bad idea...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.