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Cisco VP To Memo Leaker: Finding You Now 'My Hobby'

Posted by timothy on from the like-a-bad-movie dept.

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."

19 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. Jimmies Rustled by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is why VPs are overpaid children

    1. Re:Jimmies Rustled by 19thNervousBreakdown · · Score: 5, Interesting

      So wait, the Internet Toughguy act isn't a cool grown-up thing to do?

      You'd think a CIA super-spy would have some neat tracking tricks in a guaranteed-to-be-leaked memo, but a visual inspection of the code shows nada, and as for hidden Unicode characters: nope. It'd be interesting to get multiple copies of the memo from different places to compare, but there's nothing suspicious I can see there.

      The thing about confidential information is, there's no such thing at all once you go beyond 10 people or so. More like 3-4 can, maybe, sometimes, keep a secret, but that's pushing it. 2 people knowing a thing is great, because if you didn't tell, you know who did, and 1 is the best of all. There's plenty of ways of getting the behavior you want out of people without being so vulgar as to actually tell them things. He's really got no one to blame but himself for both of the leaks. You think company loyalty exists these days? Hah! I'm sure you'd sell Cisco out in a heartbeat if you saw a profit in it, why do you think your employees, many of whom actually know what it's like to struggle, are any different? You'd think a black-ops specialist would know that, but, obviously, nope.

      And the real tricky thing about threats is, you absolutely, positively, must carry them through, or your future threats will mean (less than) nothing. In fact, if you don't already have the proverbial gun to someone's head (preferably without them knowing it's there), it's best not to make the threat at all, although that does take some self-control, which I understand can be a rare commodity in upper-management, and maybe best saved for more important occasions. Although a credible threat can be absolutely terrifying, silence from someone who has a reason to hate you is a lot scarier than hollow chest-thumping. You'd think such an intimidating beast would know that, 20 years after working for the CIA. Time will tell, but I'm guessing that once again the answer will be a big fat nope.

      Of course, I'm no 007, I learned all this playing a silly internet spaceships game and reading fantasy books. I imagine this spook knows what he's doing, and we're all dancing on the puppetmaster's strings.

      --
      <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
    2. Re:Jimmies Rustled by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm amused at the CIA guy going on about "family trust" .. the CIA makes its living off people who break trust, every day. Sometimes literally the trust of family. Unless Cisco is unlike many other corporations, there's no real trust, family or other wise. If corporations want to be free to fire people, they should expect that employees will happily sell the company out if the right offer comes along. Its the flip side of the mercenary behavior corporations engage in. If they would rather have some employee loyalty, then they need to earn it. And repay the loyalty of employees with loyalty TO employees. Loyalty is expensive. Sometimes in cash money terms, but quite frequently in forgone options.

    3. Re:Jimmies Rustled by MinistryOfTruthiness · · Score: 5, Funny

      One is too many. Zero is the optimal number.

      Managers in my company have this mastered. Nobody knows anything.

      --
      "I know that every word that man just said is true, because it's EXACTLY what I wanted to hear." -- Space Ghost
  2. Dead giveaway by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Dead giveaway by Midnight_Falcon · · Score: 5, Insightful
      The AC is right..he sent out this e-mail, and now is waiting for the potentially paranoid person to start making mistakes, acting nervous, or otherwise creating suspicion on themselves by trying to move suspicion away from themselves.

      He also sent out the email to discourage any other Cisco employees from potentially engaging in leaking as well. Or, to stop the current leaker from leaking by injecting paranoia.
      Had they any leads or information, this step would not have been necessary. The other employees would have been discouraged from leaking by the fact the leaker was busted, exposed, and their career ruined.

    2. Re:Dead giveaway by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 5, Funny

      Looks like someone is going to be on double secret probation.

    3. Re:Dead giveaway by Antipater · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

      But you would have guessed that that would be my reaction - you would have counted on it! So I can CLEARLY not choose the wine in front of me!

      --
      Everything is better with chainsaws.
    4. Re:Dead giveaway by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 5, Funny

      Little do you know that the Cisco VP has spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocaine powder.

    5. Re:Dead giveaway by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 5, Funny

      Cisco has unwisely been fighting a land war in Asia too.

      That's LAN war....

  3. Not impressed. by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If this guy had really been a good CIA ops officer, he would have said nothing until he knew who the leaker was.

    1. Re:Not impressed. by kenorland · · Score: 5, Funny

      If he had been a good CIA ops, perhaps he'd still be working for the CIA.

  4. Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd think his hobby would be more along the lines of "eating cake among other things."

  5. How about by geekoid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  6. Cisco needs to keep their VPs on shorter leashes by WaffleMonster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. A very particular set of skills... by TimHunter · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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."

  8. Who does this asshole think he is? by erp_consultant · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. Re:Assuming said leaker no longer works for Cisco. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  10. The French lesson by dbIII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.