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Cisco VP To Memo Leaker: Finding You Now 'My Hobby'
netbuzz writes "A Cisco vice president, who happens to have been a CIA operations officer in the 1980s, believes that the employee who recently leaked an internal company memo to a blogger committed corporate treason and violated a 'family' trust. In an email sent to Cisco employees, the executive invites the anonymous leaker to come clean, concedes that's unlikely, and adds, 'so I will now make (finding) you my hobby. Ask around (and) you will find out that I like to work on my hobbies.' That email got leaked and published as well. The tempest was sparked by a series of stories in Network World examining a host of bidding and contract questions involving the California higher education system."
This is why VPs are overpaid children
I can definitely think of some better hobbies..
The email is a dead giveaway that they dont have shit on the person who leaked it. If I were the person that leaked it, I would be rejoicing right now.
cool
I thought IronPort has a pre canned filter for "leaking memos". I could never fine tune that product though, apparently Cisco can't either.
If this guy had really been a good CIA ops officer, he would have said nothing until he knew who the leaker was.
I'd think his hobby would be more along the lines of "eating cake among other things."
What's the worst this asshat can legally do to him?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Cisco firing and downsizing whenever they see fit? how does that fit into your dumbass view of:
"committed corporate treason and violated a 'family' trust. "?
Also, look up treason.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Coming from a CIA-man, that's less of a promise, and more of a threat.
Quinn then underscored his point in a second less widely-distributed memo, in which he added, "I'm all out of gum." Roddy Piper did not immediately return our calls for comment.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I doubt Mike Quinn could find his own penis.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Cry in a press release about it. Not name names either, as with out absolute proof that would open him up to defamation.
Legally? Probably fire him. Probably pursue some civil action for breach of contract (I'm sure there's something in there for proprietary information).
Of course, I am not a lawyer, but I like to pretend I'm on on Slashdot.
+1 Disagree
Kind of creepy to hear of "ex" CIA officers in top Cisco positions... advertising this must do wonders for foreign (and domestic) sales...
And ah... continually beating wardrums about an issue which only *reminds* customers of cost issues with Cisco products and services is no winning proposition for Cisco either.
Film at 11.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I DID IT. I AM SPARTICUS!
Looks like you need to find a new hobby.
I remembered nothing about this leaked memo, but now that someone's all angry about it, I'm going to go find out as much as possible. Thanks Cisco VP for helping me find some entertainment!
"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."
The Repression of free speech by governments is one thing, and I agree with it.
Violation of Contract, or agreement is quite another, and has nothing to do with free speech. If I were to speak publicly about the internal workings of my company, I would fully expect to get canned, or be civilly fined for violating a trust. I would expect no protection for something like this.
Many people seem to have no understanding of the difference.
Jim
Someone that high can do a lot of things:
1: Ensure that the person can no longer work in the industry.
2: Press criminal charges for unauthorized use of computer equipment with a felony-hard amount of data "destroyed". That in itself will ensure the leaker will never work in any industry again other than truck driving, or tattoo artistry. Someone that high at Cisco can snap their fingers, and the local DA *will* get arrest warrants out. They will, or next election year, they won't have work. Judges tend to rubber stamp what the DA alleges (or also find themselves out of work), so most likely the guy will be convicted and handed a big sentence as an example.
3: Cisco can withhold support or authorization that the leaker works at subsequently. No OS updates, no patches, no authorization, no added upgrades, until that company fires the leaker.
There are a ton of strings that can be pulled. May not be legal, but it is like claiming right of way as a pedestrian when in front of an 18 wheeler.
...or did he send a very slightly differently punctuated/spaced email to every employee, just to see which version ended up leaked? I'm pretty sure that's what Bruce Schneier would do.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
Typical corporate jackass. Trying to throw around his (considerable) weight with veiled threats. Yeah, donut boy, I'm sure the memo leaker is just quivering in his boots right about now. If you were a Cisco employee what would you be thinking right about now? I know what I'd be thinking. I'd be thinking I'm not going to work for an idiot like that. Maybe donut boy still thinks he's in the CIA. Maybe he gets off on stupid little power trips. Maybe his wife treats him like shit and the only way he can get back is to take it out on the people he works with. Maybe he's just a fucking loser.
And perhaps some day companies will learn that. http://www.inquisitr.com/283632/cisco-firing-1300-employees-2-of-global-workforce/
Who heard that email in Cheetos crunching comic book guy voice?
both of which are generally seen as dangerous behavior by HR types, and policy manuals generally, like those in my outfit, add that such actions are subject to discipline up to and including termination.
make it your hobby, pinhead, to discover which dictionary definition of "termination" you are going to be facing.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Is that the same "family trust" that fires 10% of workers yearly?
If this is the "leaked memo": http://www.bradreese.com/blog/11-1-2012.htm
well...it says nothing of any substance, and it looks generic enough that it was sent to the entire internal sales team, so there are hundreds if not thousands of people that could have "leaked it". But surely a Cisco VP knows that you can't send something to thousands of people and not expect it to be leaked.
Certainly doesn't seem like it's enough to make a VP get all worked up about.
I don't see anything in the memo that Cisco couldn't have published on their home page.
I doubt he was that good at it. Probably he was a manager at the CIA which means he needs help to find his own ass. There are plenty of talented people in Government service but almost none of them ever make it to management.
Uh.. this guy's a VP. You know, the class of people for whom macho outbursts like this are encouraged.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
it was me.
Oh Lordey....I just looked at TFA and saw the pic of the VP. Countdown to his pic being this weeks most popular Meme in 3..2..1
The head of Huawei use to be in the PLA...
The head of pretty much every major Chinese company was either in the PLA, still in the PLA, or related to a general in the PLA.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Given that wacky incident where Cisco instigated the arrest (in Canada) of a former executive who had the temerity to testify against them in an antitrust case, I'd bet that they have some nontrivial pull, and certainly don't seem to be afraid of using it.
Kind of creepy to hear of "ex" CIA officers in top Cisco positions... advertising this must do wonders for foreign (and domestic) sales...
And ah... continually beating wardrums about an issue which only *reminds* customers of cost issues with Cisco products and services is no winning proposition for Cisco either.
Don't worry. It's only those chinamen at Huwei who have sinister links to clandestine entities. You can Pay More with Confidence(tm) with your friends at Cisco!
He's an ex-CIA guy, wow. So, he's really good at smuggling cocaine? And selling weapons to dictators?
Honestly, if I were ex-CIA, I'd try to be a little less hubristic about my ability to deal with former allies who are now being unfriendly... Have they ever had luck in that department?
yea.. kinda would make me leery of using cisco products.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
they both exposed wrong doing in their organisation.
Ok, here is my crappy attempt.
http://www.mememaker.net/meme/you-leak-i-plug/
we are ran by CIA operatives.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
When the torturers come home, feeling bigger than God after torturing Priests, Doctors and other authority figures, they may decide they are the correct people to run the place and put their other military or paramilitary skills to use to remove whoever they see as in their way. The French had that problem with people from their equivalent of the CIA that came back from Algeria and it culminated with an assassination attempt on the French President.
That is of course the extreme, but the "bigger than God" attitude can come through to a lesser extent to even those remote from extreme extralegal actions, which is why we get this idiot at Cisco pretending to be a gangster.
He would be very busy with his hobby.
Europe puts their sociopaths in hospitals. The USA puts them in boardrooms..
There is a war going on for your mind.
He isn't that good at it, he's just doing it as a hobby.
A short list of his hobbies are: Water-boarding, fingernail pulling, testicular electrical shock, sodium pentathol injections, sleep depravation,
Wouldn't it be more becoming of a Vice President to have a hobby of addressing ethical concerns of how their company handles bidding processes than obsessing over someone who blew a whistle?
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
I want to preface by saying that I absolutely agree that this is harassment and threatening behaviour.
However, I can say with certaintly that HR does not care one single bit. HR really couldn't care either way on most issues. They do their job. That job is to protect the company and its higher ups.
If a low level employee sent this, then yes, absolutely, they'd be terminated.
Now, when a low level employee brings these concerns to HR, they'll be informed that it is not in fact threatening, but rather a reminder of company policies regardling leaks and an assurance from the VP that he personally takes those policies very seriously. Then she'll offer some candy from the bowl on her desk and ask you if you've remembered to signup for this weekend's company picnic.
Joy! Beautiful spark of the gods!
A lot of people get out of the military and then get regular jobs. Kind of creepy to hear of "ex" soldiers in top corporate positions... (dramatic pause) The fact that the guy is an ex-CIA officer doesn't mean anything on its own.
I agree with you but it almost does not even matter.
Its what other people think that recommend solutions and write the checks who count...I only mentioned this because the same characterizations were lobbed during Huawei witchunts.
"A Cisco vice president, who happens to have been a CIA operations officer in the 1980s
And now try explaining to me again please: why should we trust cisco, but not huawei?
As Martin Castillo once said: You never get out of the Company.
It is easily done. I work at a fairly large company, and when hiring, we check names and personal info against a database. Part of that database is a list of those who have divulged secrets, left time bombs as "presents" if fired, attempted employee theft/hacking, or dug into info and tried to sell it.
If someone is on that list, they don't get hired, period.
To boot, same industry, we check NCIC arrest records. Not conviction (because people can buy their way out or have those sealed), but arrest records. If they have seen the inside of a police car with handcuffs on, they are not seeing anything but the door of most banks and larger businesses.
I am sorry, but this is a fact of life in the IT industry in companies past the SMB stage.
The threshold for arrest in the US is pretty low. A corporate officer presenting evidence to a DA, even if it is something written in eyeliner on a paper plate, will generate an arrest warrant (which is a career death sentence for any IT job past the level 1 tech support guy.) No DA will say they don't have a case because next election term, that DA will be replaced by one whom will open a file. Think the DA in Orlando would ignore a complaint from Disney? Not if they value their job.
If Apple can generate a police raid, Cisco can easily do the same on a leaker.
The Cisco guy doesn't even need to put the offender on the blacklist. All he has to do is get the DA to have the person hauled in for questioning as an official arrest. Just the NCIC entry is a guarantee of an employment-free life in anything more sophisticated than burger flipping.
They'd have an extremely hard time pressing felony(!) charges. This is a fat-fuck bureaucrat, management lardo with an ego problem, who happened to get pwned, hard! The CIA is full of these guys-- think DMV only the clerks are given Glocks with silencers, and don't have to talk with anyone-- they're sitting around waiting for their pension, maybe an interview on the Today Show. Certain IT companies (especially security-related) love to hire these guys, who sit around thinking up threat scenarios, trying to figure out what a router does, and when they get too boring, they're sent out to trade shows in their bad suits and funny ways of talking.
The employment future of the leaker is not in the hands of this idiot. The HR department is legally obligated to confirm the employment period, and is legally enjoined from telling anything else, not matter what the employee's status at the time of their leaving. Cisco got caught and exposed doing what they do-- screwing over (in this case) the CA education system for millions of dollars. They do the same in many industries, public and private. It sucks to be caught at that, but it happens all the time. And this beefcake with the polyester dress pants will survive his job too, if he just shuts up.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
and posted on Internet.
Unfortunately that was done by upping the BMI with jelly donuts. ;)
That would explain why he looks like a R.O.U.S.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I work at a fairly large company, and when hiring, we check names and personal info against a database.
No, you don't.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
It's a cultural thing, going back to slavery.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
That's just stupid. Which gay Yale frat were you in to get hired by the CIA?
Which is an excellent reason to branch out into far more lucrative industries such as meth production and armed robbery.
Look I understand that certain convictions, not arrests, but actual convictions, should preclude employment in some fields but we've established a bizzaro-world society where trivial crimes become felonies. Peeing in the bushes = registered sex offender for life. WTF
I was thinking the same thing as I read all the "oh no big deal" responses to this situation from people.
Leaking internal data at a company with the connections Cisco has is a bad idea.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
How many American CEOs were in the military, related to someone in the military etc. Being in the PLA does not mean much. It is the ones NOT in the PLA you need to worry about.
So you have a secret blacklist, that is never verified, and never open for appeal? is that even legal?
As far as not hiring people who have been arrested, do you have any idea how easy it it to be arrested? one of my friends was put in handcuffs and thrown the the back of a police car, for nothing more serious than crossing the street when it said "don't walk"
If I knew your name and address, I could have you arrested right this minute. The arrest wouldn't stick, and I would be charged with filing a false report (if they caught me) but it would still show up as arrest for your on that precious blacklist, and you would be out of a job.
In most US corporations, people are promoted based on their ability to suck up to their boss, this mostly consists of things like taking credit for other people's work, and blaming others for their own mistakes.
This leads to the people at the top being very good at making themselves LOOK good, without having any real management skills.
I worked for a large pizza chain, and our district supervisor refused to allow us to stop (or even reduce) delivery during a major snowstorm. She claimed to be at one of the stores delivering pizza in the storm, and if she can do it, so can we.
We found out the next day that she was never at that store, and had actually been sitting at home during the entire storm. One store manager and several assistant managers quit because of this. The district supervisor kept her job of course (and as far as I know, she was never disciplined in any way, for lying to employees or putting drivers at risk)
All you give a shit about is shareholder value. That is all you are paid to care about.
The reason the guy doesn't want the email to leak is because it deals with an ongoing tender. Which he lost, but if you know companies like that, they're not going to take it lying down.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I will now make (finding) you my hobby. Ask around (and) you will find out that I like to work on my hobbies.
Ah, I see this guy's plan. He waits until someone starts asking around, and that's the guy.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
You saw how many references to 'the family' there were in the VP's internet tough guy email...
US was about to ban Hawei because they could had chinese government planted backdoors. Now (yes, im slow) a side note in an unrelated article say that Cisco VP was a CIA operations officer.
Who will WIN, who will reign SUPREAM! /bites pepper
So it's true. Bad-ass lines from action movies really do sound asinine in real life. I'm sure the guy who leaked the memo is just pissing himself with fear. Er, I mean laughter. Pissing himself with laughter.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Most/all large companies have some kind of internal database that will list people as unhireable. It's typically a mix of ex-employees and people who have had contact with the company (interviewes, applications, etc). Get canned from a small town rural paper route at age 14 because you put one too many papers in the bushes, get blacklisted from getting your dream job as a journalist at age 40 with the NYT who are now owned by the same parent company. It doesn't matter that you're now 26 years older, wiser, more responsible, and the jobs are completely different. Stuff like that happens all the time.
And everyone wonders why there is so much unemployment, and so many unfilled job positions, at the same time. It seems like companies go out of their way to NOT hire people.
You're missing the point. The goal isn't to not hire people, it's to do everything in your power to hire the RIGHT people the first time. Hiring the wrong person can cost a company thousands upon thousands of dollars. If it takes you 2-3 months to figure out that someone isn't working out, you've just spent 10-30k in lost expenses on someone. It's like email spam filtering. Sure, you may filter out some legitimate email, but if you can save your users from wasting 15 minutes a day, losing an email every couple months can be excused.
Spam filters don't generally filter out 80-90% of total incoming mail though. Most places interview something like 10% of total applicants.
While I agree that using a database is better than judging by resume alone, my main issue with all this is that the database is secret and not open for appeal. you could be falsely blacklisted (different person with same name for example) and never even know you were on the list, and even if you did find out, you couldn't do anything to be removed.
The most important story is the fact that there is an Ex-CIA guy at a company that deploys routers to pretty much all of the internet. Sounds kind of scary to me.