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Verizon Worker Arrested For Copying Customer's Nude Pictures
An anonymous reader writes "El Reg reports that two employees at a Verizon store in Florida are facing charges after making copies of a woman's naked pictures while helping her transfer data from an old phone to a new one. The two employees later offered to show the pictures to another customer, but the customer happened to be the woman's friend. The woman and her friend filed a police report. The police quickly got a warrant to search the store and found copies of the pictures on multiple devices there. One of the employees, Gregory Lampert, was arrested and charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor. The other employee, Joshua Stuart, is no longer in Florida, but will face charges if he comes back."
can you see me now?
Gently reply
This is stupid and pervy overall, but offering to show it to another CUSTOMER? Can't get much dumber than that.
Where they perchance prior Agents for Geek Squad?
Show us the pictures!
Unwittingly admitting your crime to the customer's friend and getting himself charged with two felonies - Priceless!
Unfortunately this has been going on since the early days of personal computers. Take your PC in for repair, and often times the 'techs' would scour your drive ( or floppies ) looking for 'cool stuff'. 'Cool stuff" could be anything from hoping they find porn and be fairly harmless ( since back then it wasn't as 'free' ) or in more current times, far more malicious and they may search for your bank records or something to blackmail you with later..
Lesson: Trust no one.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Pics or it didn't happen.
Seriously... the Internet has an ocean of nude pictures, and in far higher resolutions than any camera phone could hope to take. You can even get movies in full 1080p of women doing damned near anything and everything you can conceivably think of - be it sexual or not. Nearly any 14-year boy on the planet with Internet access know this!
In conclusion, we know that these two "techs" at the Verizon store aren't exactly carrying a surplus of clue here... ] ...so what does that say about Verizon's hiring standards for technically-minded people? Seriously?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Stories like this shows up all the time. If it's not nude pictures, then it's the product ID for antivirus or something else. The only thing you really can do about it is to avoid giving access to anybody.
Personally I had a computer which died and had to be fixed on warranty. I swapped the HD just in case and swapped back when it returned. The real problem is for people without the knowledge on how to do that, which would likely be the case for somebody paying for getting data transferred. Once in a while my family states they wouldn't know what to do if I couldn't fix stuff for them.
Another issue is why is there nude pictures on the phone in the first place? Stuff you bring around (like phone and camera) could get stolen, which is why you more or less should plan for how to minimize the damage if it's stolen before it's stolen. Also such stuff is often stolen from places where you didn't expect it to be stolen and hence becomes more careless.
Copying customer's pictures to his own device - Wrong on so many levels.
I have to disagree on the first part, as often times techs will bring their own hardware to a site and copy all the customers files of in preparation for a reload. "please save my pictures and music" ( or in a business, CAD files, or whatever ) as no one ever backs up...
A tech should use a company-owned device for that, not a personal device, and treat all backed-up data as confidential.
However, i dont look thru them, and they are deleted before i leave the site.
So you follow at least some good practices for confidentiality of customers' data. Customers should insist that this practice be written into the terms of service.
Keep accounting or tax records on your computer, or personal files with your information. Then ask some dweeb at a store to copy them over to your new computer???
I'm sorry, but what in the hell did you expect??
Well I actually expected them to copy the files over to the new computer and not make a copy of them. You know, behave professionally and all that.
My old roommate (who was very hot and used to dance at the strip clubs) took a bunch of nude pictures of herself with her Verizon blackberry. When her blackberry died she took out the card and sent the phone back for warranty replacement. When she got the replacement phone and put in the card she couldn't find any of her pictures or anything so she asked me for help.
Turned out she had kept the (completely useless) vodaphone simcard, and left the sdcard full of pictures in the phone. So now some lucky Verizon warehouse tech has an sdcard full of her nudes.
"I'm sorry, but what in the hell did you expect??"
That the "dweeb" at the phone store would (gasp!) behave professionally and not invade a customer's privacy?
Yes, I get this is not upstanding behavior. Is it a 'dealing in stolen property' felony? What the heck is an 'offenses against computer users' felony? Misdemeanor theft, yes. But 'handling lewd materials'? That's a crime? It feels like most of the laws are on the books just so the police can hit you with a zillion for anything then drop most of them to appear like the good guys.
It is a problem with the legal system. It is often difficult to convict based on the exact charge filed. So if they really want to get you convicted on something, they slap you with everything vaguely related and hope something sticks. Unfortunately, with all the millions of laws on the books, everybody is guilty of something. How many people can honestly say they have never went outside on Sunday without a hat on? So basically, anybody can be thrown in jail at any time.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Is there really an expectation of privacy?
Yes. Yes there is. Corporate policy and apparently at least Florida State Law says so.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Second, as Bruce Schneier argues in his latest book, Liers and Outliers, society functions on the assumption that most people are honest, and so we don't have to waste a lot of time on excessive sucurity. For example, if we extend the coffe shop example, if you don't always have you car in a secured garage with armed patrol, it is your fault if it gets stolen? I think so, based on the example.
These people got fired because they violated the assumption of trust that Verizon depends on to grow it's business. If I am worried that Vernon reps are primarily there to stea personal data, I will go elsewhere. The fact that the personal data is nude pics is a judgemental viewpoint that has more to do with the confort Jon's own body than the issue at hand.
Tomorrow I will see all these people in these large building just leaving thier cars in unprotected oparking lots, letting thier children run around without proper supervision, letting the public in with no security. I suppose if something happens it will be thier fault, not the malice of the perpetrators. I would hate to live in the world where one is afraid of everything.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
But he isn't acting as an individual, he's a representative of the company, he was paid during this time. This occurred at a company location, with company equipment. There must be protocols for proper use which were not followed so the employee most likely knew better. If the company made and distributed unauthorized copies of data from your phone and even showed other customers, would you be so lenient had this been your wife/girlfriend/daughter/sister/mother? What if it was tax information?
Let me guess "It's nothing we haven't seen before!"
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Not quite sure why you're modded at -1. This is all too true. A friend of my wife's was visiting not too long ago and showed me her camera - the same one she had three years ago when she last visited. Had a 4 GB SD card so it has a capacity of one zillion little jpegs. She's never off loaded them, never backed them up. They are pictures of kids, grandkids, family events.
She went home with a spare old 10 GB drive with her pics backed up. But some people.....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Funny thing nobody seems to mention. But the customer, the woman's (boy)friend must have taken up on the offer. Otherwise he couldn't have known it was her. Right?
Feigned outrage aside, if just about every man out there were in the same position they'd do the same (except showing the pics to customers), given the opportunity.
They most certainly would not. Just because you would do so, does not validate the behavior. You are using the typical defense of the unethical creep--deluding yourself into believing that creepy invasive behavior is normal.
Secondly, don't you think it might be a good idea to get rid of such photos before going in to get a new phone?
How do you know she didn't? Deleting pictures on a phone does very little. There are several completely freeware utilities that will recover those pictures with no problem. A Verizon in-store repairman would certainly know that.
Flash memory is even more of a problem than one would expect. Since manufacturers know that Flash memory is fallible, they take great care in making sure that the same memory space doesn't get used too many time (on average). Distributing the load on memory usage helps the failure rates stay low. In other words, a picture that you may have taken of yourself one year ago and also deleted that same day one year ago has a high chance of still being on your device to this day (without having been overwritten).
Now you could use sdcard/hardware/system-wide level encryption, but really, who wants to do that these days except for corporations? It makes your device painfully sluggish on reads/writes and it uses more battery. One other option would be to have a removable sdcard for your media files, but this is not a perfect solution either. I am no security expert, but I would only advise someone to take pictures of themselves naked with their phones only if it wasn't the end of the world for them to have those pictures potentially leak out. Perhaps, some Slashdoters can suggest some better solutions, or some good free apps for that specific problem. This is not a topic that I really know about.
For example at work I'm the Windows support lead, an upper level tech support guy basically. This means I have a domain administrator account, the root account on our UNIX systems, the admin account on our NetApp and so on. In other words: I have full access. There is no system in the building I can't get at everything on it.
This means they have to trust me, they have to trust that I won't go and rifle through shit I shouldn't. Even if you naively believe that people never do anything personal on work systems, there's still all kinds of work related stuff I need to leave alone.
And I do, I respect the need for privacy and understand that my access is not synonymous with permission.
People stopped buying McDonalds' coffee when they reduced the temperature because their coffee was shit, but nobody could tell when it was so hot it could cause third degree burns in seconds. They kept the coffee dangerously hot to mask its abysmal flavor. McDonalds was held liable because the temperature of their coffee caused an unreasonable and unexpected danger to customers. Spilling coffee in your lap should not require eight days in the hospital and two years of medical treatment.
The McDonalds spin machine is to blame for the public perception of this case's outcome; and indireclty, McDonalds probably caused a lot of frivolous lawsuits because of the popular impression that it's possible to get a court to award you millions in damages for inconsequential injuries, or ones that were not the result of anyone's negligence but your own.
Since the company offers to transfer private data, they are responsible for arranging that they do it properly. Ever heard a bank say "sorry, an employee stole your monry, not our fault"? No, the risk is foreseeable, so the company uses policies, procedures, and equipment which protect from these obvious risks. It appears that Verizon did not take appropriate measures. (One example is that they could have regularly reminded employees that such action could be a felony and that management WOULD call police if anyone was caught stealing customer data, along with methods to detect such actions, Including mystery shoppers watching for it.)
Feigned outrage aside, if just about every man out there were in the same position they'd do the same (except showing the pics to customers), given the opportunity.
Anyone who is so weak-willed and untrustworthy that they make copies of a customer's photos doesn't meet my definition of "man".
I get that, completely .... and you're right. But still, the whole argument that someone acting improperly on company time deserves punishment really only extends as far as reprimanding them, giving them a pay cut or demotion, or firing them.
The police shouldn't really differentiate when it comes to who (if anyone) someone was employed by at the time they did something unlawful. (The courts *might* do so when a case goes to trial -- but that's a different issue, and would typically only come into play if there was evidence the company encouraged the unlawful behavior in some way.)
As far as the level of criminal punishment these guys would/should get for this stunt? I'm of the opinion it's not extremely serious, actually. Stupid and immature? Sure... But on the scale of illegal activities, I think it really does rank among the minor issues. If these guys proceeded to leverage the photos to attempt to extort money from the woman, or started making money with a pay web site featuring "stolen cellphone nude pics" or something? Now THAT would take it to the next level. As it is, what we've got here is a woman who was really too careless or trusting with what she kept on her phone, handing it over to a couple guys who took advantage of the situation for kicks.
And the moral of the story is don't keep nude pics of yourself on your computer, and never, EVER send them to anyone else, because they WILL find their way onto the internet.
That the "dweeb" at the phone store would (gasp!) behave professionally and not invade a customer's privacy?
More professional pay might encourage more professional behavior.
But everything is about racing to the bottom and squeezing blood from turnips these days.
Utter bollocks. You don't get more professionalism by paying people more. Otherwise investment banking would have the highest standard of ethics out of any business.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it