Microsoft Anti-Porn Workers Sue Over PTSD (thedailybeast.com)

An anonymous reader shares with us a report from The Daily Beast: When former Microsoft employees complained of the horrific pornography and murder films they had to watch for their jobs, the software giant told them to just take more smoke breaks, a new lawsuit alleges. Members of Microsoft's Online Safety Team had "God-like" status, former employees Henry Soto and Greg Blauert allege in a lawsuit filed on Dec. 30. They "could literally view any customer's communications at any time." Specifically, they were asked to screen Microsoft users' communications for child pornography and evidence of other crimes. But Big Brother didn't offer a good health care plan, the Microsoft employees allege. After years of being made to watch the "most twisted" videos on the internet, employees said they suffered severe psychological distress, while the company allegedly refused to provide a specially trained therapist or to pay for therapy. The two former employees and their families are suing for damages from what they describe as permanent psychological injuries, for which they were denied worker's compensation. "Microsoft applies industry-leading, cutting-edge technology to help detect and classify illegal images of child abuse and exploitation that are shared by users on Microsoft Services," a Microsoft spokesperson wrote in an email. "Once verified by a specially trained employee, the company removes the image, reports it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and bans the users who shared the images from our services. We have put in place robust wellness programs to ensure the employees who handle this material have the resources and support they need." But the former employees allege neglect at Microsoft's hands.

Comments

sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

until theres a perfect ai that wont get all fucked up from seeing this stuff, it takes a person to catch people committing these kinds of crimes and prevent them for continuing to commit or encourage other to continue to commit them

i dont see an answer to it in the short term, so just take care of the people that gotta deal with this, i suppose?

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Psion]

Until somebody pairs that ai with DeepMind Dream and the poor thing starts spitting out pictures of nightmarish hardcore.

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

No, nobody needs to do it. In the past these sickos used the USPS, and they still should... Send a polaroid via the mail. Done, no snooping. If it's in email it shouldn't be getting snooped, legal or not. Any company even remotely asking an employee to look at these images and videos should be either brought up on criminal charges themselves or compensate these people with at least 9 months a year of paid vacation and a 7 figure salary.

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[TWX]

I'm mildly curious as to the nature of the law that allows the company to effectively act as law enforcement. I'm guessing that buried in the standard licensing agreements are clauses that compel the user to agree to it, but it is still rather surprising.

It's also surprising that Microsoft's HR and legal departments didn't see something like this coming, and take steps to mitigate it. Better counseling, and possibly rotating job duties so that individuals working in this department of the company also work in other departments and do not get immersed in this full time.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[ArmoredDragon]

I suspect that they have some kind of AI that looks for nudes, and then a person looks it over to judge if it's likely underage or not.

So they probably don't look over every email, but somebody over at Microsoft may have a private pornography stash.

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

oh they have that ai. It's called Tay. Gone nazi suicide bitch in 5 mins lol...

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[ProzacPatient]

I think Hollywood just found its next movie plot

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[dbIII]

I'm mildly curious as to the nature of the law that allows the company to effectively act as law enforcement

That is weird in itself but the bad outcome is kind of obvious. It's a company acting like a government but in a half-assed way so of course they are fucking up. They are attempting law enforcement without the "wasteful" extras and finding some reasons why the "waste" was there.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time they turned that thing on it wouldn't shut up about chocolate rain.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo has their "OpenNSFW" classifier, so that's probably a reasonable conclusion.

Part of the problem is a photo/video isn't enough to accurately estimate age down to the day. Not for people, and not for AI. There's just too much variance in the population to reliably extract a date of birth from a single frame of an image.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zl8RRPSKrM

The ideal solution is supposed to be "whitelisting" where every pornographic image/video produced has to be registered with the government along with proof of model age, but then you have issues with prior restraint and accurately measuring what is/isn't pornographic.

Ex. If you had a "jury" from Texas create an MNIST style dataset of "porn vs. not-porn" and had another "jury" from New York create a similar dataset: neural network models trained on the first dataset would likely label novel test data differently than one trained on the second dataset.

It's all essentially the same problem as anti-virus, only worse: anti-virus is binary classification. This is more like taking pictures of trees to try to guess their age down to the second.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

When the porn comes up, if it really was child pornography, wouldn't that make the person viewing it committing a crime??

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[guises]

These aren't all public communications that these people were monitoring. No one has to read my email except the people I send it too. (Not even them sometimes.) No one has to do this.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, M$ can fire them for viewing child porn instead of paying for their psych treatment . This is a corporate win-win.

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

These individuals quite literally suck at their jobs. Once a photo or clip has been identified as containing inappropriate content it only need be hashed, possibly multiple times to account for scaling, overlays or re-encoding but a human should never have to look at it again after that. These idiots probably got wind of plans to replace them automated capabilities and sued preemptively to assure a golden parachute. Move along, nothing to see here.

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[hey!]

Well, that's kind of a strawman argument; the employees aren't saying that nobody should have to do it; they're saying that if management's plans require someone to do it then management should also have a plan for dealing with the mental health consequences.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to know an awful lot about transporting child pornography.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always been confused by this.

I've never seen any statements by Trump that were negative or derogatory towards LGBT. I've even seen a picture of him holding up a rainbow flag, and an openly gay man headlined for him at the RNC.

There's plenty of nasty things one could say about Trump, but I just don't see the homophobic thing at all. Sorry. It seems like a victimhood "me-too".

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[someone1234]

Well, those alleged russian videos (if they exist) could reveal what is "acceptable" to the Big Man.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[ZeRu]

It was just a lie spread by some leftist fanatics. Interestingly, many of the same fanatics mourned over Castro who actually imprisoned gay people.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Rakarra]

I've never seen any statements by Trump that were negative or derogatory towards LGBT.

I thought that for awhile too, but the selection of Mike Pence to run all domestic policy is about as big a 'fuck you' as you can get to LGBT.

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

This is literately the entire purpose of Robots/AI, to do jobs that Humans can physically or mentally not deal with. AI isn't quite there yet, but AI can reduce the amount of amazingly disgusting kinks 4chan tier content and narrow it down to a smaller amounts of human-reviewed content.

Law Enforcement (eg Child predator task forces and such) suffer under the same problems. So do eBay staff who review "PI" (Prohibited Items.) I imagine Facebook and Google(Youtube) have to do a lot of the same kind of reviews.

In most cases maybe we shouldn't be going after these things. Leave people to their illegal kinks, wait for a LEO request before flagging a user as possibly being a predator, serial killer, or whatever. Let the anxious users who flag bad things actually do the "this person is up to no good" and run it through an AI algorithm to determine if there is flesh, blood, bone or something likely distressing and pass it only to humans that aren't going to have nightmares from it.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, the "worst" things Trump is probably racist. There is enough evidence to suggest this, to say nothing of 'mexicans' and 'muslims' mentioned during political campaigns. I don't think he is going to launch a nuclear first strike, I don't think he is quite under Russia's thumb as much as we think he is, since one pointed thing that Trump does is not give a shit about what the media says, domestic or not.

That said, The Republicans in congress are going to ram through as much evil shit as possible, and the people he is surrounding himself with are the evilest people possible, and see it as sticking it to "PC culture" or whatever. Prepare to go back to 1929. The worst outcome is for Trump to be impeached on day one and VP Pence desires to round up all the GLBT people and gas them like the Nazi regime.

Like Trump might be the president the American people deserve, but he's certainly not the worst. The worst people are already in Congress pushing to destroy America by 1000 cuts.

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[arglebargle_xiv]

just take care of the people that gotta deal with this, i suppose?

It's easier to pretend that it doesn't cause problems. We've had the same problem here, police staff who had to examine pr0n and, in another branch, smoke weed during undercover work, were told they had no basis for a claim because neither pr0n nor weed are harmful to anyone. Which was kinda interesting because the basis for prosecuting people for owning weed was that it was harmful and they needed to be protected from it. Unless they were undercover cops, in which case it wasn't harmful.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

The way laws are written. Yes. However, like law enforcement, there is a certain required intent for charges to be filed. Someone who downloads child porn is not the same as someone who is producing it. Much like decriminalizing marijuana or alcohol. The people who have to sit on a bus and smell the skunk-smelling pot smokers aren't going to be charged with consuming cannabis, but the people who actively seek the drug dealers can be, because the crime is about trafficking for sale. That's what CP is. There are producers, dealers and users. For all intents, the way laws are written, are designed only to catch the dumbest people, much like copyright infringement.

It is in fact much easier to charge someone who has child porn with copyright infringement (making unlawful copies of photo or video content of someone without their consent) or voyeurism (eg spying) and the bar is much lower to do that, since you need only evidence that the images were created without the consent of the participant.

Not all "child porn" is actually so. For example, children/preteens/teens may "sext" each other, accidentally (or purposely) their friends, families, to embarrass them or to get them in legal trouble. If the recipient doesn't immediately delete it, or they send it to others, it goes from "viewing child porn" to "distributing child porn" , the latter is considered as bad as murder in some countries courts. If two children sext each other and they are both under 16, there is nothing to charge them with. However if one of their phones is in the possession of their parents, the parent can be. This is why most child porn laws are going to eventually be deleted, along with badly written anti-bullying/trolling laws and will instead be put under copyright law (for the unlawful copying of content without consent of the participant) and the actual "creation" of child porn will go under rape/sexual assault laws to prosecute the actual adults involved with it.

Which goes back to the PTSD thing. Cloudflare is the largest host of child porn, it is unfortunately easy to find because the links are often posted to 8ch , 4chan, reddit, and so forth, but that is just the "common" content that ranges from VHS tapes to stolen webcam/nanny-cam videos that used to proliferate on the alt.binaries.* newsgroups. The less common stuff are things produced in Asia and Europe where age of consent laws are lower or non-existent, and attitudes towards unclothed children aren't considered the same as child porn like it is in North America.

When it comes to PTSD of murder scenes and such, those are posted to the usual places like 4chan/b on purpose, because kids on 4chan are assholes, pirates are assholes, and so forth. People post that stuff because they want to induce PTSD in people. That is why cyberbullying tends to originate entirely from 4chan if not 8ch or reddit.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

NSFW viewers/golden parachute - I see what you did there.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[silentcoder]

He chose Mike Pence as running mate. A bigot who once made it a criminal offense for gays to apply for marriage licenses. He was not okay with just denying them: he jailed them.
And Trump put him a heartbeat from the presidency.

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

When you are communicating on the web, it should be considered the equivalent of talking in a public space.

Probably nobody is listening, but you never know.

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[slashrio]

And such a company should lead those employees through a thorough psychological assessment before exposing them to all kinds of psychologically disturbing pictures.
And the fact that their bosses, when they mentioned their stress, told them to go out to smoke a cigarette or to play a video game to relax, shows a total disregard for the psychological stress those people were subjected to. I think they might easily win this case, depending however on the question whether they were directed to do this kind of work, or volunteered to do it--which would make it a bit weird...

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a much easier way for Microsoft employee to access child porn. All they have to do is put in a request to the hiring manager for an H1B visa for some little girl out of Taiwan or Singapore that looks like a child. Then date the child looking girl while she works for you and has to do what she is told or you will cancel her employment. I have witnessed this personally.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[gnick]

The ideal solution is supposed to be "whitelisting" where every pornographic image/video produced has to be registered with the government along with proof of model age, but then you have issues with prior restraint and accurately measuring what is/isn't pornographic.

Those are the issues you see with this solution? You want to register every pornographic image on the Internet and distribute a whitelist of hashes? Checking each image is going to necessitate a rainbow table hunt. And that won't even cover Anthony Weiner's phone. I don't think you've thought this through.

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[omnichad]

AI can reduce the amount of amazingly disgusting kinks 4chan tier content and narrow it down to a smaller amounts of human-reviewed content.

Thus concentrating the amount that an individual human reviewer has to see. It actually makes it worse because everything they have to see is some degree of terrible.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

They should let pedophiles do this work from prison. Seems like a win win as long as they are allowed private viewing before reporting it.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Talderas]

This would be an incorrect statement and you're basing it on a bill Pence signed into law. http://www.in.gov/legislative/...

This bill reclassified various criminal offenses, including "providing false information to a clerk of the circuit court" from a Class D to Level 6 felony. It didn't create any new crimes or make the crime in question any harsher.

The "crime" of applying for marriage licenses came about from the fact that the online method of applying for marriage licenses did not permit you to select male-male or female-female as a combination as the website was created in accordance with the Indiana law that made marriage between people of the same gender illegal. Thus you had to select one spouse as male and one as female. No one has ever been jailed or even prosecuted for doing such a thing so that claim falls short as well. This crime is not specific to homosexual couples as it is with regard to giving the court false information. A couple that submitted the male spouse as female and the female spouse as male would also be equally guilty of the crime. Perhaps the more damning point against your claim that "A bigot who once made it a criminal offense for gays to apply for marriage licenses" is that homosexual couples could still apply for marriage licenses without breaking the law in question by using the paper form and crossing out the male or female section and writing in the appropriate gender.

But hey, whatever, thanks for perpetuating a falsehood to push your own narrative and belief.

Re:sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[guises]

Using a web-based email client does not mean that email is "on the web."

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Using the term "leftist fanatics" automatically invalidates anything you type.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Coren22]

Except Muslim is a religious group, and Hispanic (not Mexican...) is a ethnicity, I am not sure how Trump could be racist. Also, as he didn't actually say anything negative about Muslims or Hispanics, it is kind of hard to try and pin him as being against these groups anyways. So no, Trump is not racist, except in the eyes of people who find everyone who doesn't agree with them fully as racists.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

No such thing as perfect AI. That's coming from someone who works as an automation engineer.

Re: sucks but as of now someones gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Using the term "leftist fanatics" automatically invalidates anything you type.

leftist fanatic detected

I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

But you couldn't make me twice what I make to dig that deep into the internet. I don't want to remember half the stuff I've seen, and the majority of that was on accident.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

So they admit they monitor customer's personal communications as a matter of policy?

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how you got that from I said, but okay. I was referring to the sick stuff that makes it onto 4chan, rotten.com and the like.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[MightyMartian]

I was pretty much done at 2 Girls 1 Cup. Actually, I was done after Goatse. It's bad enough when that kind of shit creeps up on you, but to actually go looking for it... yikes.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Rick Astley has scarred me forever.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really mind Goatse. First time was a bit of a chock but if you looked at it closer it wasn't all that bad and you got used to it.
Tubgirl was a bit worse, until you got to see the full photo series where it is evident that the liquid is in fact orange juice.

The new stuff like 2 Girls 1 Cup I can't stand at all. I've never seen the complete clip and I have no intention of doing it.
I still don't think it is as bad as zippocat.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

until you got to see the full photo series where it is evident that the liquid is in fact orange juice

Where the fuck were you 15 years ago?

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. How your mind works depends on what you feed it. If you feed it poison don't expect it to be healthy. Know when to say no. There are guilty pleasures like cat videos and failblog. When you diverge into child porn and snuff videos you're not going to have the type of mind that will relate to others. That's like a path to the real dark side. The path of a serial rapist or killer, don't go down that road, there is no happy ending there only tragedy. There are a million other better ways of spending the limited time you have on this planet. I think this is why a lot of people are cutting the TV cord and refusing to feed their brains reality TV and other worthless entertainment. Reality shows aren't that much better for the brain than 2 Girls 1 Cup.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[liquid_schwartz]

I don't want to remember half the stuff I've seen, and the majority of that was on accident.

If the majority of half of the stuff you've seen was an accident then you are seriously accident prone. Or you are quick to blame accidents, not unlike my son who usually swears some obnoxious act was an accident.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Rick Astley, 2 Girls 1 Cup, Tubgirl, Goatse...
Aren't they all celebrities who were at Obama's "I'm Out Bitches" party earlier this week?

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[negRo_slim]

I love arm chair psychiatry.

Re: I don't know how far they had to go

[mmell]

You seem to have confused cause and effect.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[Darinbob]

My arm chair did need the help though. It was deeply depressed and sat in the corner all day.

Re: I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

I gave mine a job.

It holds a bunch of junk and a fan.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Rick Astley, 2 Girls 1 Cup, Tubgirl, Goatse...
Aren't they all celebrities who were at Obama's "I'm Out Bitches" party earlier this week?

I have found the Trump supporter.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

You really shoud see One Man One Jar ... then you are done!

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

That's it? That is what you think of as extreme. Very sheltered. You would not believe what highschoolers watch now.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[CustomSolvers2]

The first video I saw of Inside Amy Schumer was precisely about this kind of 1-cup-and-2-girls stuff. Hilarious!

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm rather ok with 2 Girls 1 Cup and a lot of crap, even ISIS videos without a knife (with a knife are a lot worse but I could somehow watch them)
Seen quite a car crash that seems fatal, dislocated legs and so on.

What I found disturbing though is "prank videos" on youtube where college aged guys do pranks that mostly consist of harassing women in the streets. It's all posted for everyone to see with many thousand views and does not contain an inch of blood or shit or piss or knives etc.
I can laugh at fictional sexual harassment, or even oral accounts (oral meaning talked/spoken), and I'm not a girl but somehow seeing guys grope women but say it's for fun and the camera, I don't like it all, thinking to myself it's going to end badly. Maybe Tubgirl-like things and Chechen soldiers things look like fantasy to me, even when they're real, but this stuff is a lot more real and makes me uneasy.
I love 2 Girls 1 Cup, you can even get the .mp3 somewhere.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[turp182]

Ahh, the 2 girls vid. Reasonably hardcore, but certainly not the worst.

In St. Louis there is actually a house cleaning company called, wait for it:

Two Ladies and a Bucket

I laugh every time I see one of their cars about.

Re: I don't know how far they had to go

[Anonymous Coward]

I outsourced mine to India. Now the chair just writes me angry letters all day.

Re: I don't know how far they had to go

[omnichad]

nature vs. nurture is far too old and unresolved an argument to be settled by your "superior" comment.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[fisted]

until you got to see the full photo series where it is evident that the liquid is in fact orange juice.

For fucks sake, next time mark your post "SPOILER ALERT". Now you've ruined tubgirl for me and I highly doubt it'll ever work again for me.

I-i mean, this is what a friend of mine asked me to post here. He's real mad.

Re:I don't know how far they had to go

[pnutjam]

That's obviously a riff on Two Men and a Truck.

Get a new job....

[Anonymous Coward]

There's plenty of sick fucks out there that would love to get paid to watch that shit.

Re:Get a new job....

[TWX]

And the problem is, like the Presidency, anyone that actually wants the job should be disqualified by default.

Re:Get a new job....

[ffkom]

Why do you assume that everyone who's fine with watching sick videos is unqualified to correctly classify them? There's a very broad range between "being grossed out" to "consenting" to what one watches. Otherwise, everyone who has watched a crime movie would have to be banned from this (and many other) jobs.

Re:Get a new job....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think damage to the amygdala can make someone totally indifferent to this sort of shock imagery.

Re: Get a new job....

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel like I could do this job as everyone tells me I have no emotion and am almost a robot. What does it pay?

Re: Get a new job....

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay? Sounds like people like you would pay Microsoft for the pleasure of having the content all in one place.

Whither privacy?

[Prof G]

Is this how far we've fallen? No more are we concerned with violations of an individual's privacy. Now we are more concerned with the rights of the violators.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

dude if you're worried about pictures you send getting flagged as child porn or snuff films, maybe it's you with the problem

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

This issue applies equally well to, for example, Facebook staff who must review publicly-shared images that have been flagged as inappropriate. Privacy is not a concern; the image was deliberately made public.

But the horrid stuff that some people make public is truly disturbing. Too much exposure to it can absolutely cause severe and long-lasting mental damage, including but not limited to acute depression and possibly suicide. The brain is simply not built to handle too much horror for too long.

We need a better solution to this problem, and at the moment there is no cheap solution.

My vote is AI...once the technology is mature enough. But, that is basically my answer for everything these days.

Re:Whither privacy?

[sjames]

So you're saying they have an un-seeing procedure when they look at someone's personal and private pictures that turn out to be legal?

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I send nude photos of myself to my girlfriend, no-one but her should be able to see them (and vice-versa). I don't give a single FUCK if they want to see it or not. STOP SNOOPING THROUGH MY COMMUNICATIONS YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES.

Luckily, I stopped using Microsoft products entirely years ago and stopped using their OS almost two decades ago.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Sir Holo]

Is this how far we've fallen? No more are we concerned with violations of an individual's privacy. Now we are more concerned with the rights of the violators.

Yes, we have fallen this far – especially judging from the responses to your Comment.

There are still droolers that don't get it, and they never will. Even if they are framed – through no fault of their own – for someone else's misdeeds. Nor even if they make a sarcastic remark that is misinterpreted by MS's spies (or the NSA) as somehow law-breaking, and they end up tangled in our lovely criminal court or even penal system.

Re: Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh there is a cheap,simple way of dealing with the problems created for others by these sick people.
It's called 9 feet of good quality rope and a scaffold,very cheap and avoids the problem of re-offending and the cost of "treating" or jailing them.

Re:Whither privacy?

[msauve]

I think the workers would have a better case if they focused on how Microsoft locked them away and forced them to do the job against their will.

Re: Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea they do. It's called "that's their job and they'll see another thousand before the day is done."
They won't remember much but horror and the ever growing pile of more work.

Re:Whither privacy?

[ShanghaiBill]

dude if you're worried about pictures you send getting flagged as child porn or snuff films, maybe it's you with the problem

You are assuming the pictures came from the sender. If these Microsoft employees get bonuses for finding kiddie porn, like Best Buy empolyees do, then that is a big incentive to plant evidence.

If you think that only the guilty need to fear a moral panic, you should read up on the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic that gripped American in the 1980s. Thousands of innocent people had their lives destroyed by false accusations. Many of these accusations were financially motivated by psychologists charging high fees to retrieve "repressed memories" of "victims", and politicians trying to advance their careers by "saving" children.

Re: Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

A bullet is cheaper. A blade is more expensive but also reusable.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

>I stopped using Microsoft products entirely

And you think that means nobody's reading your email? You are a naif.

Re:Whither privacy?

[rahvin112]

Mod parent up. It's astounding to me how many people are unaware of or deny that the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic in the 80's was a fake scam perpetrated for the benefit of the accusers.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

... Satanic Ritual Abuse panic ...

In my country, it was child-rapist fathers. Some medico noted a correlation between sphincter tension (?) and anal rape which somehow became child-care policy. How this could become fact boggles the mind but it was the 1980s, when every male was treated as a criminal that needed to be caught. Male doctors joined the witch-hunt by somehow inspecting their child patients and notifying child services. The result was some very lengthy criminal cases where the police bleated they were right and everyone else was wrong.

Re:Whither privacy?

[hey!]

Well, it went out the window when you agreed to the TOS you didn't read.

Re:Whither privacy?

[msauve]

It's strange how "TOS" is an acronym for contract of adhesion.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thousands of innocent people had their lives destroyed by false accusations.

This happens daily, no satanic ritual accusations needed.

Hey, there's a guy over there... he's alone... what is he doing? I don't trust him. He must be up to no good. Better call the police just in case. Crime? No, I don't see any crime, or probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion of any crime... but it's a guy, alone, and I don't recognize him. Police will deal with him. Oh, that other guy over there with his girl that is drunk and carrying on, raving and fighting... he's ok, look, he has a girl with him, so he must be normal. But I'm reporting that other guy... because he is alone, and that is weird. Weird isn't a crime? Well, it should be!

People are assholes. Don't be a single man, alone, if you know what's good for you.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Uberbah]

Right - just like how secretaries don't have a sexual harassment claim unless the boss locked the exit door before pressuring them into sex. They can always quit!

Re:Whither privacy?

[Dog-Cow]

How, exactly, are pictures sent to Microsoft "private" from Microsoft's perspective? Is it a privacy violation if you mail me a letter and I open it?

Re:Whither privacy?

[Darinbob]

Depends if they go seeking them out, or if they're responding to reports from users of social sites, forums, etc.

Re: Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Not that I disagree but, we live in a world where people still think the Salem witch hunt and witch hunting in general was a necessary thing. Don't get your hopes up.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Mashiki]

There's a reason in most western countries that police officers/constables who work on sex-related crimes especially for those that are under the age of 16 has special guidelines they're required to follow. That includes pre and post-operation psychological testing, and can't work in that division longer then 6mo in a 3-4 year period. And almost all places have mandatory counseling that you're required to take afterwards that in itself is usually 6mo-1yr.

Re:Whither privacy?

[sjames]

They weren't sent TO Microsoft. They were sent to other users. If I send Joe Blow a letter and YOU open it, it is certainly a privacy violation.

Re:Whither privacy?

[mwvdlee]

You might have stopped using Microsoft, but how certain are you that your recipient's email server isn't hosted by Microsoft?

Re: Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

This will just create new snuff videos to look at. Bonus point if there's some lower body stiffness involved.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Rakarra]

If you think that only the guilty need to fear a moral panic, you should read up on the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic [wikipedia.org] that gripped American in the 1980s.

Some asshole brandishing a firewarm recently walked into the pizzaria implicated in that #PizzaGate nonsense. He went there determined to "free the children" that he was certain were being held there as sex slaves. None of that would have happened if some dipshits didn't go through Podesta's emails and jump to the conclusion "this guy really likes cheese pizza. Wait, Cheese Pizza. C.P. Child Porn!!!!!"

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

If AI gets this advanced we run the risk of the AI trolling us.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. I'm sure msauve won't complain the day his employer fails to properly mark off the elevator shaft and he falls. Or someone mops the floor without any sort of marking and he breaks one of his wrists. Or his employer has him handling lead and asbestos without any sort of protective gear.

I mean, obviously he should have had the foresight to see it coming or quit the second there was any sort of indication that his employer wasn't interested in his welfare. And trying to seek restitution for any sort of damage that should have been expected on the employer's part, given that the whole point of the job is to deal with "hazardous" images precisely because they're so offensive--otherwise, why even bother removing them?--, as this isn't some radically new phenomenon of people being exposed daily to such circumstances and reasonably having issues coping with it...

PS - Seriously, this is yet another case where "the free market" isn't some sort of magic that deals with things. The attitude the GP presents is precisely the situation that leads to the "race to the bottom", since obviously shifting the cost of dealing with mental or physical injuries on the large worker pool is almost always cheaper than the costs of hiring replacements when people burn out from the job or potentially dealing with higher wages so people can independently seek counseling (hint to free marketers: those sorts of pay raises obviously doesn't happen because it becomes the norm that workers are considered throwaways by nearly every employer).

PPS - I think it funny that the sort of people who constantly complain about taxes are so blind to the systemic byproduct of letting free reign to organizations which have zero interest in your well-being beyond the cost of finding a replacement for you. I'd recommend for them to just stop paying their taxes and see how that works for them. In the end, after all, the act of force and garnished wages is a relatively slow problem that only manifests upon them in a meaningful way over an extended period of time. Yet they can't see that one should preemptively pay ones taxes for the same reason they should preemptively hold companies to high enough standards: procrastination and wishful thinking won't someone protect you from the consequences of your choices and your complacency.

Re:Whither privacy?

[jafiwam]

Right - just like how secretaries don't have a sexual harassment claim unless the boss locked the exit door before pressuring them into sex. They can always quit!

Was sexual harassment in the job description? Chances are, the folks at MS had at least some clue what they were getting into, even if during the training.

If you are going to have a panty-clutching pearl-waste response to something, at least do it right. That shit above, was a pathetic effort.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right - just like how secretaries don't have a sexual harassment claim unless the boss locked the exit door before pressuring them into sex. They can always quit!

Except the secretaries' job descriptions do not include them being pressured into sex, door locked or not. These workers knew the job requirements

Re:Whither privacy?

[msauve]

So, you think it's valid to compare unwillingly being subjected to illegal behavior in the workplace and voluntarily taking a shitty job. You're either trolling or an idiot.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this how far we've fallen? No more are we concerned with violations of an individual's privacy. Now we are more concerned with the rights of the violators.

Now go ahead and store all your sensitive and semi-sensitive data in the cloud. Welcome to the surveillance society.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is a fake scam?

Some crooked dude convinces me to sell iPhones that are really just plastic lookalikes, and after selling a bunch of them, I find out that they are genuine Apple iPhones?

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree mass surveillance is terrible, but is this really a case of that? If someone puts that kind of crap on a skydrive account and then posts the share link all over darknet, then it stands to reason that SOME responsible person is going to report it. When it's reported, some poor sap needs to review it and take appropriate action. There needn't be any mass surveillance involved here.

Re: Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or in Trayvons case. A young black male alone.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats sounds like something a first world country would do, this is the US remember, which in the process of being great again.

Re:Whither privacy?

[mongothesecond]

I doubt these employees were suddenly surprised by being asked to review porn. Most jobs like this include such screening questions to avoid people quitting on day 3 when they realize what the job is.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Uberbah]

It's obviously a commentary on the Randian nonsense that if the worker wasn't physically forced into doing something, the employer is blameless - idiot.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Uberbah]

Was sexual harassment in the job description?

They no more expected PTSD than construction workers expected to get mesothelioma from installing asbestos.

If you are going to have a panty-clutching pearl-waste response to something, at least do it right.

Says the person too busy clutching his panties that he missed the point. It's not to say that having to look at obscene images all day == sexual harassment, it's that the conservative line that the employer is blameless unless the employee was physically forced into doing something == bullshit.

Re:Whither privacy?

[msauve]

You're either trolling or an idiot.

- idiot.

Well, I'm glad that's settled.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

If you send Joe Blow a letter using my service, and in the ToS you agreed I could open it and look at whatever I wanted to see if there was illegal activity going on, you can't really complain.

Re:Whither privacy?

[sjames]

I have every right to consider it a violation of privacy. I can also decide I will not agree to a violation of my privacy and skip MS entirely.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Uberbah]

It was indeed - idiot.

Re:Whither privacy?

[msauve]

You don't need to sign your messages by hand like that, you can add a .sig in your profile and it's automatic.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

You have the right to consider it a violation of privacy; everyone has the right to be wrong. If you agreed to let them look at anything you send, it's pretty silly (and wrong) to consider it an invasion of privacy if they actually do, since you told them they could.

Of course, you are free to skip MS entirely. If they then read what you send (to someone likewise not using MS-based email), that would absolutely be an invasion of privacy. And if they didn't tell you that they would read stuff, and did it anyway, that would likewise be a violation.

Re:Whither privacy?

[sjames]

Actually, if I sent something to someone using MS it would most definitely be an invasion of my privacy if MS read it unless they managed somehow to first present ME with the TOS and I agree to it.

I may certainly continue to feel it is an invasion of my privacy even if I reluctantly agree to their terms.

Re:Whither privacy?

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

If you send something to someone using MS, who exactly is violating your privacy? I'd argue it's the person you're sending it to, rather than MS. Joe Blow has granted them the right to read anything sent to him without even consulting you first, no? I mean, certainly criticize MS for asking for that in the first place, but they aren't the ones sharing your messages with a third party.

You can feel however you like. I feel it's unreasonable to complain about the ToS of a voluntary service with plenty of competitors. If this was a monopoly situation, I'd sympathize with your concerns a lot more.

Next it would be coroners

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, if you are not fit for the job, you shouldn't do. Watching such horrific video is part of the job just like cutting dead body is a job of coroner. Neither should complaint about PTSD unless it is shown that everyone doing similar job gets it. If it is specific to your personality, then you should quit the job.

Re:Next it would be coroners

[Anonymous Coward]

If your personality isn't fit for the job, and you tell your boss, then they should transfer you elsewhere. But Microsoft said no, you have to keep doing it or you are fired.

Re:Next it would be coroners

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Microsoft refuse to let them interview for other jobs at the company or were there just no job matches found? If someone isn't suited for their current job, Microsoft isn't obligated to provide them a transfer to another position -- esp. if the employee isn't the best available match for the new job.

Re:Next it would be coroners

[bjwest]

If these people were transfered from another department to do this job, I can see being requred to move them again. If, however, they were hired right into this position, then no, MS has every right to fire them for being unable to perform the task they were hired for. True, it would be nice of them to transfer them, but being nice and doing the right thing is not required (and this IS Microsoft we're talking about here).

Browsing through smut could be a great job

[ffkom]

I vividly remember when "rotten.com", "bme.com", "ogrish" and "The Sickest sites on the Internet" index were a new and highly appreciated kind of never known before entertainment. Sure, looking into the abyss of psychopathia every day might get boring after a while, but it still sounds better than 90% of other jobs on this planet. I guess they just hired the wrong kind of people to do that job. They should have advertised those jobs on above mentioned pages, 4chan, or the likes of it.

Re:Browsing through smut could be a great job

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that 4chan would permit the crazy shit (and probably post it on microsoft.com's front page) just for the lulz.

Re:Browsing through smut could be a great job

[ffkom]

Of course you cannot "outsource" such a job to 4chan as an organization. It's a totally different thing though to hire inviduals visiting there. Of course, while putting some controls into place that if some employee turns out to classify material way different than his colleages, you have a talk with him or finally fire him when he doesn't follow the given classification criteria.

Re:Browsing through smut could be a great job

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're talking about doesn't even come close to what those guys are talking about. There's a difference between goatse and tubgirl and watching an infant have sexual acts performed on them. I'd describe it more, but I've tried to block it out my memory, and even now there's some things you just can't unsee. While I'm here, I'd also like to point out that when people equate drawn porn to actual child pornography, I immediately disregard that person's opinion because these people don't know what they are talking about.
 
Source: I've removed illegal content off 4chan.
 
PS: I'm not sure if the folks at Microsoft got to appreciate the legal differences between what kinds of depictions of animal torture/murder are and are not legal. It's actually very clearly defined!

Re:Browsing through smut could be a great job

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. After a lifetime online nothing short of ISIS execution videos even phases me anymore - and I'm pretty sure I could get over that if I had to - so for the right salary I'd take this job.

Re:Browsing through smut could be a great job

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear you. I learned the true meaning of the term NSFL.

I really can't handle some things.

Re:Browsing through smut could be a great job

[Anonymous Coward]

You still have the capacity to be viscerally affected by CP and you signed up to be a janitor on 4chan? The fuck is wrong with you?

Even if it was always forbidden, if the sight of animal torture or child abuse did anything other than make you giggle and start posting pedobear, you weren't nearly jaded and mentally fucked up enough to be on /b/, much less modding it. (At least old-/b/. It's gotten progressively shittier (read: normiefied) over the years)

Re:Browsing through smut could be a great job

[Anonymous Coward]

bme.com... thanks for that flashback ... NOT!!!!

Re:Browsing through smut could be a great job

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody has access to janitor /b/ except global janitors and moderators, but illegal stuff is put into everybody's queue so it gets removed ASAP. Did it occur to you that individuals who are "jaded and mentally fucked up" don't have the right attitude to volunteer, be vetted in, and remain a janitor for longer than a week? There are 69 (well, 70 including /qa/) boards on 4chan, and many of them are non-pornographic at all. Janitors only look over one or two boards, and most of the removed content is not pornographic at all, it's mundane stuff like talking about politics on the wrong board, or posting verbal diarrhea, asking for an anime recommendation on /a/, that sort of stuff.
 
I've done my time on /b/ as a user and I've seen some nasty stuff, but I'd still have to place body mods, mutilation, beheadings, and all manner of depraved pronography featuring adults on a different level than infants being penetrated (and other such things). I'd put animal torture (including snuff, which I personally disagree as being singled out for illegal status in the USA) between the two tiers, and anything drawn doesn't really register. Just because I don't like to see it and I don't like to remember it doesn't mean it viscerally affects me. I do think people who giggle at child porn belong in an institution. Those who create and spread it deserve to be in jail forever. Further, if you post anything illegal to 4chan, you are an idiot and deserve the party van.
 
However, what you say is true for at least some people who volunteered: they were usually gone within a month. I can't blame them. 4chan provides ZERO COMPENSATION for volunteers, and it's made very clear that they will see illegal content and be required to remove it. On the other hand, the volume of illegal content posted on 4chan (and seen by any given janitor) is actually fairly small. Microsoft's employees (and other employees in similar positions) get subjected to a constant stream of this type of content, and deciding whether a post is about video games or not isn't part of their job description. I've seen some companies' content guidelines, and they typically have several tiers of content reviewers, and nasty stuff is typically escalated to these guys who need to do the job of reviewing it and separating what's just breaking the site rules and what's breaking federal law and should be forwarded to the NCMEC and FBI.

Re:Browsing through smut could be a great job

[aristotheron]

infant snuff porn is probably the worst possible thing in the world

Re:Browsing through smut could be a great job

[Anonymous Coward]

Human vivisection.

Re:Browsing through smut could be a great job

[coofercat]

Ahh... the old school is "just pull yourself together" psychiatry, eh?

This isn't about having to look at sick stuff - it's about not being given sufficient mental/emotional support for doing so. Being told to take a smoke break works about as well as telling soldiers just to look away when their pals get limbs blown off. All MS had to/has to do is provide sufficiently qualified and useful counseling/psychiatry to the people they hire to look at this stuff (ie. have the facility and give them paid time to use it) and only let them return to work when they're ready to do so.

Re:Browsing through smut could be a great job

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're talking about doesn't even come close to what those guys are talking about. There's a difference between goatse and tubgirl and watching an infant have sexual acts performed on them. I'd describe it more, but I've tried to block it out my memory, and even now there's some things you just can't unsee. While I'm here, I'd also like to point out that when people equate drawn porn to actual child pornography, I immediately disregard that person's opinion because these people don't know what they are talking about.

Source: I've removed illegal content off 4chan.

PS: I'm not sure if the folks at Microsoft got to appreciate the legal differences between what kinds of depictions of animal torture/murder are and are not legal. It's actually very clearly defined!

Bad OPSEC posting that here, W.T. Snacks, especially since they were removed to your private collection...

simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

farm it out to prisoners...

Re:simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, a ready set of applicants would be had from the registry of sexual offenders too.. Seems like a match made in, er.... Well Not heaven...

Re:simple solution

[hambone142]

Outsource it to India.

Re: simple solution

[fubarrr]

outsource it to Japan

Hire former combat soldiers

[Anonymous Coward]

I am slightly serious here. If you've been in front line combat, there's little that will shock you. Plus if you already have PTSD, you qualify for treatment.

OK slightly more serious, if this is what the internet has finally become, let's just torch it and start over. Without videos and twitter.

Re:Hire former combat soldiers

[volodymyrbiryuk]

Or maybe we should get rid of civilization altogether..problem solved.

Re:Hire former combat soldiers

[NotInHere]

The billionaires still need us to build machines for them that replace us as servants, only then we will be killed.

Re: Hire former combat soldiers

[Anonymous Coward]

That's some salty jealously. Sorry your life is so fucking shitty. Maybe you should have stayed in school and not done all those drugs?

Re: Hire former combat soldiers

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, I graduated and stayed on the drugs. :(

Could have easily been prevented

[Anonymous Coward]

This is only a problem because the workers screening content weren't using Linux. Had they been using Linux, nobody would be suffering from PTSD due to viewing tremendous amounts of awful content. Linux is the solution to all of our technology problems, and the world just needs to figure this out.

Re:Could have easily been prevented

[PPH]

workers screening content weren't using Linux

Oh, I don't know about that. Having to view "Please install Flash 11.0 to view this content" over and over would probably give me PTSD.

I heard about this in South Park

[Notabadguy]

Is this like South Park's "Sex Addiction" episode (http://southpark.cc.com/clips/267345/sex-addicts) where the only explanation for people who want to have sex with lots of women instead of maintaining monogamous relationships is a wizard alien who cast a spell on men?

There is truly some disgusting pornography that will make me gag - but if I were watching it professionally as a job, I imagine I'd get inured to it, the same way that sanitation workers, septic cleaners, etc get accustomed to the sensory unpleasantness that they are exposed to.

Since there are a LOT of nanny groups out there, and this is a unique lawsuit...I suspect that the two employees found a fetish while they were working, that it carried over to their personal life, interrupted typical marital (and boring) sex with a preference to masturbating to...Brazilian fart porn, or Japanese Elephant sex parties, or whatever it was - which in turn led to familial strife, which in turn is now leading to a lawsuit blaming watching porn for psychological trauma.

I've been in two wars fuckers. I've been shot, I've killed, I've had friends killed - I know PTSD. Complaining that you get PTSD from watching porn (even fucked up porn) is like saying that watching Saving Private Ryan entitles you to entrance to American Legion and VA benefits.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[MightyMartian]

Jurors complain of similar effects from some of the evidence they're provided, and they are only exposed to horrifying images for fairly limited periods of time in most cases. I don't mean to denigrate your experiences, but if you think PTSD is limited to combat, then you don't dick-all about human psychology.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[ffkom]

People are just very different. I totally believe that some people genuinely "feel what they assume people on the screen feel when the images were recorded", and people who are like that are just not the right people for the job. Just like I wouldn't be the right person for any job done at great heights, since I don't feel comfortable walking on some shaky structure above an abyss.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind, a lot of this may be child porn-- and that there is a lot of twisted shit worse than "Brazilian fart porn". There is also stuff like animal "crush" videos that could really fuck with someone. The other thing is, soldiers are mentally trained (and screened). These guys are just average desk-potatoes being exposed to this shit, and based on what evidence that it won't leave them fucked up? Thanks for your service, and I'm sorry you've had to watch friends die before your eyes, I've been there, it's fucked up. But perhaps you should admit to yourself that as you don't search out the most depraved shit on the internet, you might not know how horrific it is, or what effect it could have have on an average person.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that Microsoft is making a big deal about hiring more people on the autism spectrum, why don't they look into staffing this team from that pool?

I know some segments are more socially sensitive but surely there's a group that's able to focus on the task whole still being enough socially disconnected to not get more mentally screwed up by seeing this crap.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why does the United States Navy, USMC, and Intelligence Community offer insanely high incentive pay and PTSD counseling for domestic billets with similar roles?

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[fahrbot-bot]

There is truly some disgusting pornography that will make me gag ...

Try watching CSPAN and get back to me about gagging.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Someone once insulted me on the Internet. Now I have PTSD just like a combat vet, because it is the *same*, right? where do I go for the benefits now ? /sarc

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[sconeu]

This. I was a caregiver to my ALS-stricken wife for three years, and after she passed away, I was diagnosed with PTSD. It's not just combat that's stressful.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

Liar. You're so fucking full of shit. You're just a troll. People don't brag about the shit you're bragging about. And it is wickedly disrespectful to people who really did serve. You're a piece of shit.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[JaredOfEuropa]

You'd be surprised. Maybe this suit is unique (I've no idea) but the phenomenon certainly isn't: this is a common complaint of people dealing with this kind of material; like police detectives. I've heard that the people dealing with kiddy porn on a daily basis generally don't last very long on that detail; apparently it is not something that you get desensitised to very easily. And a lot of them complained of symptoms that are at least very similar to PTSD. Maybe war isn't the only way to get messed up emotionally, tough guy.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[bill_mcgonigle]

This. I was a caregiver to my ALS-stricken wife for three years, and after she passed away, I was diagnosed with PTSD. It's not just combat that's stressful.

possibly CPTSD? Similar situation here.

Here's an interesting video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think there's only one "type" of PTSD?

The human brain is really complex. Soldiers have their particular form of PTSD, people who have been in abusive relationships have their form of PTSD, people who work for Microsoft have their type of PTSD etc.

They're all still PTSD. It's very typically arrogant of soldiers to try and claim that they have a special mental disorder that they get to own and no-one else is allowed to have it.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

What these people are exposed to is worse than most people can picture in their minds. These are the images that drive people to mental break downs, depression, and potential suicide from the levels depravity they are forced to so.

Tell me, do you think you could stomach watching a video of a man butt raping and infant and laughing about it before taking a nail gun to them? Because that is some of the stuff they are forced to endure and I am not even exaggerating about it because a guy was arrested for streaming that shit on the deep web a while back.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg these people have to deal with. They end up seeing things so sick and fucked up they can never shake that memory from their mind. These are people who honestly have worse jobs than most could imagine looking through the sickest of images posted by many people who think they can show off in anonymity.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[DerekLyons]

There is truly some disgusting pornography that will make me gag - but if I were watching it professionally as a job, I imagine I'd get inured to it, the same way that sanitation workers, septic cleaners, etc get accustomed to the sensory unpleasantness that they are exposed to.

There's a difference between sensory unpleasantness - and the depths of human depravity. In normal human beings, it's almost impossible to unsee the latter and it gets inside your head in ways chest thumper he men like yourself can't seem to imagine or grasp. And this isn't the first time this has been reported among image moderators, or (and the individual above comments) among jurors for trials concerning this material.
 

I've been in two wars fuckers. I've been shot, I've killed, I've had friends killed - I know PTSD. Complaining that you get PTSD from watching porn (even fucked up porn) is like saying that watching Saving Private Ryan entitles you to entrance to American Legion and VA benefits.

I know several people with PTSD (not just combat vets but other vets from high stress positions, as well as cops and and emergency room medical professionals). One thing they all have in common is they don't brag about it. Nor do they use it as an excuse to put other people down. (And that's setting aside the idiocy of the false equivalency you set up.)

Re: I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone can get PTSD. My 11 year old was diagnosed with PTSD after years of abuse from his mother.

That's not to belittle your combat experience, OP - just letting you know it's not _just_ combat that can cause it...

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

This just shows you how weak minded we've gotten. Everyone dies. That is something you need to learn how to accept rather than using medication to suppress it.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a counselor. You're an idiot. Stop talking about subject of which you know nothing. Also, look up the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[lgw]

PTSD has become an over-broad term. I don't like that: it should be limited to having an involuntary physiological and psychological response to some stimuli, that interferes with normal life. We need a different term for "I'm reminded of something disturbing I saw once", to distinguish that from "I'm suddenly flooded with adrenaline, reaching for a weapon, trying to find and kill the threat in the milliseconds before it kills me". That kind of conditioned physiological response isn't limited to combat, but it's different in kind from anything that follows from seeing some disturbing images.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[rahvin112]

PTSD isn't just from war numb nuts. It can happen from anything that you can't get out of your mind and begins to interfere with everything. From your comments you clearly don't have any idea what PTSD is. Which given how well the military treats it isn't surprising at all. But I suppose it's a step up from the 40's where we simply shot the sufferers as cowards.

That's what you are, a slight step up from someone that shoots people for cowardice for severe psychological trauma, and you should remember that, every single time you comment about PTSD.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

...except for the whole "in exchange for reduced sentences" part of the deal. If the odds of treatment or recovery are effectively 0%, then we shouldn't be letting them back into society, let alone letting them back in earlier than originally planned while feeding them a constant stream of their particular disfunction.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

This just shows you how weak minded we've gotten. Everyone dies. That is something you need to learn how to accept rather than using medication to suppress it.

There is a medication that suppresses death? I'd like some of that.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

... .Brazilian fart porn, or Japanese Elephant sex parties ...

Yeah, you're a hero and we should all say "fuck you, I got mine", just like you do. It's comments like this that prove that many people can't even begin to understand what "fucked-up porn" really means.

... get accustomed to the sensory unpleasantness ...

Alas, a large number of people can't ignore pain: They're moderately empathic, highly sympathetic and seeing physical torture such as rape, or worse child rape, cannot be forgotten.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[interkin3tic]

If I break my leg doing something stupid while drunk, or if I break it while saving an infant from a burning building, the leg is still broken. They put a cast on it either way. If they've sustained psychological damage from policing porn for a paycheck, it doesn't matter if yours is more noble. Not sure why you're turning it into a competition. Is your ego really that small that you need to brag to people you don't know online?

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to university. That was very stressful. I was an engineering major. Most people don't know what it's like to be assigned more homework than can be physically completed in the time allotted.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[hey!]

PTSD has specific diagnostic criteria even including exclusion criteria (e.g. not due to substance abuse). The term isn't overbroad, it's just misused, like "Type A personality", which doesn't mean what people think it means.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

complaining that you get PTSD from being in a war makes you a bad soldier, go back to kidergarden boy

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

meh combat vets are overrated psychos that go killing people for money, yeah they sell you all the for freedom thing and for the flag and country.. just a bunch of psychos killing people. thanks for your service psycho

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Notabadguy]

If a court will buy that diagnostic criteria for PTSD, this seems like a cut and dry lawsuit:

Repeated or extreme indirect exposure to aversive details of the event(s), usually in the course of professional duties (e.g., first responders, collecting body parts; professionals repeatedly exposed to details of child abuse). This does not include indirect non-professional exposure through electronic media, television, movies, or pictures.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Skuld-Chan]

I agree its not as serious as what you had to deal with, but I had a similar job screening content and I ended up needing therapy to have a semi-normal life.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

They're only guilty of child porn possession: so they have not demonstrated* themselves to be a danger to society. We only lock them up to reduce demand for the commodity so people will stop manufacturing it.

*If statistical significant correlations were enough to imprison people we would just send every adult male to prison.

If every convict helps convict three other convicts: even if you were to release them after the third conviction, that's still exponential growth of pedophiles in the wild.
Model probably looks something like this:
[total danger to society](t) = -[(number of pedophiles paying off their debt to society)e^(2t)]+[initial # of pedophiles] + 7000000000[e^([rate of pedophiles born]t)] + 7000000000e^([rate of pedophilia transmission]t)

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter got me PTSD once. I got better. But it was very real.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Calydor]

PTSD: Post TRAUMATIC Stress Disorder.

I emphasized the relevant word for you, but hey, if you're not traumatized by watching kids get raped for eight hours a day, five days a week, maybe you should get a job with Microsoft?

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[jandersen]

It's the helplessness and the loneliness that does it, isn't it?

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

You're full of shit, and to top it off, you're a fucking idiot. And probably a Trump supporter.

What a wanker you are.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

The post I was replying to said, "They're already in prison so they're effectively harmless. Their odds of "treatment"/recovery are already effectively 0% so it's not like we're ruining something that isn't already permanently damaged goods." This is inconsistent with your proposal that they're not a danger to anybody (effectively harmless because they're in prison and permanently damaged goods).

If you're the AC who made the original post, then you're not making a good case for autistic people being good at logical thought.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

These people are not complaining that they're getting PTSD from 'watching porn.'

They're seeing animals tortured. They're seeing children abused by their parents. They're seeing infants sexually assaulted.

This isn't porn. This is heinous behavior that they're seeing on a daily basis.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[omnichad]

it is not something that you get desensitised to very easily

It would probably be worse if you did - I'm not sure which is really worse for your mental health and ability to interact with society.

Re: I heard about this in South Park

[fubarrr]

YOU lack moral fibre pussy

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[MightyMartian]

Oh for chrissakes, PTSD has been around forever. Ever heard of "shell shock"?

Re: I heard about this in South Park

[TimMD909]

I think the "dick-all" part is what's bothering people...

Re: I heard about this in South Park

[DerekLyons]

Uh huh. Ten years in the Submarine Service and I lack moral fiber. Sorry, try again. You don't even get a copy of the home game.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

Give the job to people who are not getting out (life in prison or more than one life sentence) in exchange for a nicer cell and some spending allowance.

Re:I heard about this in South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

What you need is a psycopath they are pretty much immune to unpleasant emotions anyways.

I Can Relate!

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked as a contractor doing search engine testing for MSN Search. I had to see all sorts of terrible things. Including one day when I had to go through sites full of auto-playing videos of Nick Berg being beheaded. It was a low-paying, low-skill job that killed my computer, but I NEEDED the paycheck.

Re:I Can Relate!

[hambone142]

I have sort of a photographic memory. When I see things of this nature (not specifically) it really sticks in my mind.

I even turn my head when I see a dead cat on the road. The image sticks with me and I don't want it there.

I say outsource the dastardly job to India. We pollute other countries with chemicals, we may as well pollute their minds too (if they'll take the job).

Sounds like a pretty easy job for a type

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd take that job any day. I'm pretty sure i've seen all forms of human and animal abuse possible by now thanks to various image forums i frequent.
You cannot subject 'normal' people to the absolute worst of humanity and expect them to stay sane. You seek out the 'abnormal' who, while understanding the actions are wrong and thus are able to categorize them as such, aren't damaged by them; who disassociate those actions from the real world or who are meerly disinterested in the damaging effects of anything that isn't happening to them.

That kind of job needs a special kind of weirdo who would actively seek out an ISIS execution video or mexican drug cartel beheading out of simple curiosity and would watch it until the very end.
And if you're reading this microsoft HR team; i'm your guy, give me a call. I use windows 10 so you already know who i am, what i like, where i live, what my front room looks like and my inside leg measurement.

Re:Sounds like a pretty easy job for a type

[Bryan Ischo]

More power to you. I made the mistake of visiting rotten.com once in the late 90's, and somehow morbid curiosity caused me to spend about 2 hours looking at the worst stuff that I could see on there, I couldn't tear myself away because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And afterwards I went into a sort of depression for several days. I have never gone back and have actively avoided any situation in which I might see something similar. If I had to watch that stuff on a regular basis I would either, like you, somehow disassociate myself from the feelings that I have about such things, or go crazy. I don't think either is a good outcome personally.

However, if such people have to exist, then I am thankful that they do and that they can protect myself and those I care about from these things. So to everyone who has to do it - I owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude, and I hope you are paid very well.

Another silly lawsuit

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for a company where the customer service team would screen for inappropriate material. During the interview process, prospective employees were asked point blank whether they can deal with hardcore porn, graphic death, and other crap people post. They were then asked to view some of the videos and again asked point blank whether they could deal with what they saw. For the most part, people who accepted an offer did their jobs and used it as a stepping stone to other positions. Others actually liked the job and happily looked at pics and watched videos with nary a blink. Then there were those, like in the MS lawsuit, that were shocked to discover the interviewers were serious. "Wait what!?! I didn't think you actually wanted me to look at that stuff. I WANT A SAFE SPACE!!!"

Re:Another silly lawsuit

[ffkom]

The company you speak of might have had the right hiring concept, but unless someone with first-hand knowledge of the situation at Microsoft tells us, we cannot know how they did. Could be that some snowflake had the job of hiring people for the screening team and thought it would be a great idea to hire the most compassionate people as to favour strict verdicts on the screened material. Wouldn't be the first time those hiring had no experience in the position to fill and no idea of the qualifications required...

Re:Another silly lawsuit

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for a company where the customer service team would screen for inappropriate material. During the interview process, prospective employees were asked point blank whether they can deal with hardcore porn, graphic death, and other crap people post. They were then asked to view some of the videos and again asked point blank whether they could deal with what they saw. For the most part, people who accepted an offer did their jobs and used it as a stepping stone to other positions. Others actually liked the job and happily looked at pics and watched videos with nary a blink. Then there were those, like in the MS lawsuit, that were shocked to discover the interviewers were serious. "Wait what!?! I didn't think you actually wanted me to look at that stuff. I WANT A SAFE SPACE!!!"

You obviously have no idea how PTSD works. Prior to being attacked in my own home by a pair of coke heads, I didn't either.

  You don't have a choice, and your reaction isn't exactly "I want a safe place" - if you see something and you're helpless to do anything about it, you switch into fight or flight mode. Because you can't do anything about it, you stay that way, and you have to find ways to deal with it. At any given time during a recall, you can get really agitated or panicked, and you can either be dangerous to those you care about, or become a helpless pile of tears.

  Anyone can suffer from PTSD, and there are breaking points for even those who can shrug off a hard core dead puppy rape video now and then. Shame on a corporation the size of Microsoft for failing to at least consult anyone remotely trained in human behavior to review this job before staffing it.

Well it may not be suitable for humans but...

[burtosis]

Isn't Tey out of a job? Sounds like the perfect fit.

They're allowed to do this why, exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

So is Microsoft now a branch of the Justice Department? Or are they part of the FBI? Homeland Security?

..wait, what's that, they're not? Then why in the ACTUAL FUCK are they snooping through people's emails as if they were Law Enforcement!?

I don't like or want any CP being sent around or the people who are into CP being allowed to run around loose in the world, but: it is NOT the job of a private corporation, even one as fascist and authoritarian/dictatorial as Microsoft, to ENFORCE THE LAW. If they suspect someone of trafficking in CP, they should refer it to the cops, NOT INVESTIGATE IT THEMSELVES, DAMNIT!

Get the FUCK out of our private communications, you goddamned bastards!

Re:They're allowed to do this why, exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why in the ACTUAL FUCK are they snooping through people's emails as if they were Law Enforcement!?

No, no... Law Enforcement require a warrant. :^)

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

"They "could literally view any customer's communications at any time.""

Wait. What?

Re:What?

[Khyber]

English must not be your first language.

Microsoft has employees that can effectively spy on you for no reason at any time if you're using any of their services.

Much like how Google does it. The reason you can't reach a human is because the humans are too busy spying on you and stealing your data.

Re:What?

[Sir Holo]

"They "could literally view any customer's communications at any time.""

Wait. What?

It's always been that way. The deal is free email, etc. accounts for you, and in return the service provider spies on you, selling the details of your personal life to whoever it is that thinks they can profit from having or using it.

It's sold mostly to aggregators – who operate like the credit bureaus – but have few, if any, of those pesky regulations to rein them in when people apply their reports as if they were 100% accurate. You have no recourse if you find an error. Hundreds of companies have a "profile" on you. You have no means to discover who they are. . . or why you didn't get that job promotion that you were in line for. HR bought a copy of your profile from abcdwxyz.com, which is rife with errors, but HR people are stupid, and will read it as truth. Perhaps someone with a similar name has a felony, or worse the report incorrectly states it.

Why Microsoft does not make their spying abundantly clear will hopefully come back to bite them in the ass.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

No no no! I was told time and time again that only computers looked at the data I store/send/receive. Are you telling me that those people were lying?

Re:What?

[guises]

Of course not, only computers look at your data. Humans look at copies of your data that the computers then produce. See the difference?

Are these roles time limited?

[nbannerman]

As per subject - are these workers doing this stuff full time, year in, year out? In the UK, even the Police who do this are limited to two years on a team that has a responsibility to view the kind of content we're talking about here. Is this the case in companies such as Microsoft? (Note - this was told to me by a copper a few years ago, so, pinch of salt, etc!)

Re:Are these roles time limited?

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar story with my local police service: people in similar positions are provides both counselling services and mandatory rotation to less exposed investigative areas (~6 months max IIRC).

Re:Are these roles time limited?

[phorm]

The upside for the cops is that they also get to sit and testify against the bastards and (hopefully) see them get sentenced for it.

Re:Are these roles time limited?

[Anonymous Coward]

They rotate in the US, too. Source: interviewed w/ DoJ's child exploitation and obscenities division.

Re:Are these roles time limited?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand how this is legal. Outside of law enforcement or a courtroom, isn't intentionally viewing child porn illegal? How is a private company permitted to pay people money to watch illegal content all day?

But

[JThundley]

But they knew this was the job, right? Why would you take a job and then keep working a job that you can't stomach?

I'd be great for this job, I'm dead on the inside.

Re:But

[bobbied]

Let's be fair... Sometimes the paycheck and benefits are more important. I remember times when I put up with some serious garbage because I had a wife and kids at home for whom my paycheck was the only thing that paid the mortgage, utilities and kept food on the table. So I put up with it until I could find another job. It was NOT a happy time at work, but the family and I survived without loosing the house or going on welfare.

Let's also be far and point out that most of the time there ARE other options for unhappy work situations...

Re:But

[JThundley]

So that employer made you miserable; did you sue them?

Re:But

[luther349]

yea when you have bills to pay you tolerate alot look at are current employment practices its dam near Chinese slave workers why because someone will take the job no matter how shitty.

Re:But

[Kjella]

But they knew this was the job, right? Why would you take a job and then keep working a job that you can't stomach?

Because it would be very bad for evolution if the brain became dysfunctional whenever you experienced something traumatic. It has a range of self-defense mechanisms from immediate responses like adrenaline and emotional shutdown to permanently repressed memories and even split personalities and everything in between. We're able to force ourselves to do things way past the point we get emotionally scarred by it, we bottle it up sometime swithout really realizing it until it bursts.

It's even in the little things, some years back I was on a diet and it was a lot of broccoli as stomach filler to keep me from munching on everything else. I was tired of broccoli, but I was also tired of being fat. So I kept eating broccoli until it hit some kind of tilt, after that I just couldn't stand the taste of it for a few years. Even the smell of it was just revolting to me. I'm guessing it was the job they had, money they needed and thought they just had to grow a thicker hide. So they pushed themselves to do it but instead of becoming immune they hit some kind of tilt, except theirs is a bit worse than mine.

Lots of people experience that looking back in retrospect, how could put up with that kind of abuse or neglect or living like that, well mostly because biology encourages us to look past the negatives. Doesn't matter if you're a sex slave trapped in Fritzl's basement for years, you don't end it. You endure. Maybe it's a long, miserable and apparently hopeless fight but people who go through hell might come out on the other side, reproduce and carry on the genes. Those who figure this shit isn't worth living for don't. It's a morbid rationality to it.

Re:But

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't know. From TFA:

Already a Microsoft employee, he was âoeinvoluntarily transferredâ to the Online Safety Team in 2008, he alleged in his lawsuit. Soto âoewas not informed prior to the transfer as to the full natureâ of his work, and was allegedly told that he would be reviewing âoeterms of useâ violations. A Microsoft employee policy mandated that he and all other Online Safety Team members remain in their new posts for at least a year and a half before transferring again, he claims.

Soto and his wife, also a Microsoft employee, had wanted to work for the company for years, and moved to Washington state specifically to take Microsoft jobs. He was stuck in the job for another 18 months, at least, he claims in the lawsuit.

When Soto began working with the newly created team, he says he learned heâ(TM)d actually be sharing information on crime rings and child pornography with police. The job required him to view photos and video showing âoehorrible brutality, murder, indescribable sexual assaults, videos of humans dying and, in general, videos and photographs designed to entertain the most twisted and sick-minded people in the world,â

Re:But

[PPH]

Ãoe à Ãoe à Ã(TM)

OK. Now I've been triggered!

Re:But

[Anonymous Coward]

You shouldn't take such a job because the official line from the company is that they have a ' robust wellness program'.

This is corporate speak for lowest cost policy and least likely to be useful enough to be used except by the extremely stupid or those with children or in other desperate situations.

Their policy mostly complies with whatever laws that the company thinks they won't gets sued for enough to make the plan cost too much. At the best this lawsuit will move those goalposts a tiny bit. Most likely it will show up as a line item on a fiduciary report buried in some SEC filing for approving the massive profit statement for Wall-Street that will be conveniently paid to an offshore company to avoid domestic taxes.

The problem is much much bigger than this lawsuit. But it all boils down to that in America:

• Breaking a leg is a real illness but breaking a brain is a joke worthy of laughter or scorn.
• You should have to pay your way for your healthcare otherwise you are just a leach on my hard earned money.
• My tax dollars should not go to help you, just me.

The result is that I need more of my pre-tax money for guns. So I can to protect me from all the homeless crazy people. People out of work because of their mental problems. Problems which are "all in their head" so are not real problems.

And it's stupidity.

Anything that restricts the risk pool to spread the costs around is the opposite of a healthy medical insurance plan. That it cuts the profits is the most pure Capitalist argument you can make. The need for as big a pool as possible also why healthy people receive tons of offers for insurance they do not need. An insurance plan needs as many healthy people in the system to pay for the few sick. And as a healthy person you need as many sick people in the policy so their sickness gets fixed. Otherwise you risk that it comes to take you out, too. Because that's how sickness works: it hurts everyone it comes in contact with, ignoring all social barriers, race, creed or cloth. This risk pooling is why most first world countries just pool everyone together. It's the biggest pool you can get. And you're a real person so going to pay taxes anyway if you like it or not.

Corporate and privatize medical insurance is by definition a sick system. It encourages smaller groups and creates pools of naturally high risk people - like people who have to look at child-rape-murder porn for days on end for their job without somehow becoming emotionally damaged.

But nobody has the balls to take a gun to privatized medical insurance industry's head and start over. It would cost too many 1%-ers too much money. So Nationalized Healthcare insurance would be "Evil Socialism." As American children learn in school and from TV, winning World War II and the Cold War means "Socialism" is EVIL and lost to the GOOD God-given Private Capitalism of the U.S.A.

Single Payer Health Care in the United State might as well be licking the Devil's Nutsack and giving in to the commies while pissing on Jesus' grave. But I believe that "Socialism" would come to America long before the massive cultural change to fix mental health care there. You are required to kill the meme that illness in the head is not illness. Or that people can't be hurt by what they see or hear. And these are things wrong with American culture right down at the core.

Re:But

[Uberbah]

Willfully obtuse? The claim in the lawsuit isn't "oh, I was unhappy with my job so gimme money".

Re:But

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:
"Already a Microsoft employee, he was “involuntarily transferred” to the Online Safety Team in 2008, he alleged in his lawsuit. Soto “was not informed prior to the transfer as to the full nature” of his work, and was allegedly told that he would be reviewing “terms of use” violations. A Microsoft employee policy mandated that he and all other Online Safety Team members remain in their new posts for at least a year and a half before transferring again, he claims."

Re:But

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't think of a reason why someone might do that then it says a lot more about your ability to empathise or understand other people than it does about anything else.

Re:But

[JThundley]

Sure it is. It's "I was unhappy and it took time and money to fix that and the company should have helped me stay happy instead of allowing me to get more and more unhappy."

Re:But

[david_thornley]

You seem to be confusing happiness and mental health. The complaint is that the job gave the employees PTSD, which is a recognized medical condition with standard diagnosis criteria. It's an occupational health hazard, and the law has dealt with those for a long time.

In ironic related news...

[fahrbot-bot]

They got dinged on their Employee Review for *not* watching porn at work.

You can look on your computer. MS servers, network

[raymorris]

> I'm mildly curious as to the nature of the law that allows the company to effectively act as law enforcement

By that you mean "look at what's on their servers"?
You can of course look at see what is on your computer. Similarly, Microsoft can look at what is on their computers.

This was well established in cases in which companies were monitoring their network and their computers, which employees were using for personal use as well as for work. Companies, including ISPs and mail providers, can for example have filters to block users from sending out spam. In this case, Microsoft has decided they don't want child porn and certain other material on their systems, and has taken steps to remove it.

Unfortunately, either policy - allowing companies to access their own systems, or not allowing them to access their systems, has problems. If users cared, standard mail clients and other GUI clients would have made GPG/PGP easier, everyone who cared would have been using encrypted email for the last 20 years and it wouldn't be an issue. For whatever reason, people don't care enough to use a GPG/PGP enabled mail client.

I know who could do the job

[GuB-42]

Some people would absolutely love to do this job.
They already have a nice list of potential candidates, too bad they sent it to the police instead of the HR department.

If you can't handle it don't take the job

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen some pretty horrendous stuff in my time and I know quite a few technical and casual users have too. Some of us are a bit tougher and can handle this sort of a job without issue and without psychological counselling even if some of the shit out there is really really gross, disgusting, and flat out disturbing. If you can't handle seeing someone get their dick cut off, S&M, tortured, burned to death, water boarded, raped, beaten, shit on, or whatever then just maybe you shouldn't have taken that job in the first place. I'm of the opinion that everything should be encrypted end to end and such monitoring shouldn't even be possible- but if you are going to do it- or take a job that involves that you better be prepared to handle it.

Funny.....

[ogdenk]

Funny.... I'd have PTSD from being forced to engage in warrantless surveillance. Splitting hairs because it's "Microsoft's server, since they aren't the feds they can do anything they want" doesn't make it a good thing to do. They are effectively acting as law enforcement and assisting the feds in sidestepping the 4th amendment. The few people they catch doesn't warrant the intrusion on many people who didn't deserve it. Much like the patriot act and butthole searches at airports. Especially if they report "other crimes" which may be victimless.

THAT would give me PTSD. If I wanted to be law enforcement and "catch bad guys" I would have gotten a criminal justice degree and worked in law enforcement where there's proper checks and balances.

Re:Funny.....

[Anonymous Coward]

> Funny.... I'd have PTSD from being forced to engage in warrantless surveillance.

If it's not the government performing the surveillance, or if it's not a non-governmental entity performing the surveillance on governmentally-"owned" data, then no warrant is required. This is a _good_ thing. This lets you -as a private citizen- look into things that happen around you without worrying about being fined and/or jailed.

While I full-throatedly assert that the third-party doctrine needs to be entirely overhauled to match the way Americans interact with third parties (and snitch-for-pay needs to be _seriously_ reined in), I just as enthusiastically assert that private citizens and companies absolutely need to be permitted to perform investigations into the things that happen around them and/or on their premises.

Re:Funny.....

[ogdenk]

Private citizens maybe but I think e-mail and cloud storage providers should be treated more as "common carriers" and only respond to legit legal requests for such data rather than enthusiastically embarking on witch hunts to do law enforcement dirty work. What you're sort of advocating would be like the post office reading all of your sealed mail in just in case you might be a pedophile and letting law enforcement know you might be a pothead.

Why shouldn't I expect the same rights that I enjoy (theoretically, not in practice) with telephones and snail mail to carry over into the digital realm? The USPS is govt run in name only these days and is more of a private organization. Would you be cool with UPS searching all of your packages because a computer said there could be pictures of underage titties in there somewhere?

What this boils down to is the government is using private companies to circumvent the constitution using the same old "think of the children" tripe that brought us the drug war with a double-dose of tyranny and it's sickening.

Re:Funny.....

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's not the government performing the surveillance, or if it's not a non-governmental entity performing the surveillance on governmentally-"owned" data, then no warrant is required. This is a _good_ thing. This lets you -as a private citizen- look into things that happen around you without worrying about being fined and/or jailed.

So, same rules that allow your landlord to look through your mailbox (which is technically owned by him)?

Re:Funny.....

[omnichad]

So, same rules that allow your landlord to look through your mailbox (which is technically owned by him)?

Not in the US. In the US, a mailbox is federal property - even one that you privately buy for yourself.

Re:Funny.....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is just cheaper than outsourcing it to the KGB to get around the Constitution.

oh puck I want that job.

[Anonymous Coward]

I cut my teeth on Benny Hill nude scenes.

More info about 'internet content moderators'

[BlueToast]

This is an article I posted years ago but is still relevant (and I have taken liberty to link to the The Daily Beast article as well). Thought I would drop this here:

URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/...
Title: [AMA Request] Moderators of the Internet whose job is to filter out illicit image uploads such as pedophilia, pornography & grotesque images

Behind Facebook, Google, Flickr, ImageShack, Thumblr, Instagram and many other well known companies offering hosting for photos is someone who has the sole responsibility of going through and moderating image uploads to filter out pedophilia, [illegal] pornography, disturbing & grotesque images, sacrificing their physiological health for the sake of many. I am sure most people even here on the internet even at a place like reddit probably never know much more than the fact that there has got to be someone doing it as algorithms and computers do have their limits. Without a doubt, a job like this most certainly must have an emotional, mental, pyschological, and social cost. There are many possible questions to ask such a person about their own lives and their job.

Below are my questions. I will add more as people contribute questions.

1. [2013/11/24 @ 0139, -6 GMT] What is your official job title?

2. How many friends do you have? Do you find it difficult to be "normal" around them? Do they know what you do for your job? How do they support you (or not)?

3. Same questions as in #2, but in regards to your immediate family rather than your friends

4. Is your job temporary/part-time/consultant-type, or official employee working full time? What kind of benefits and perks do you receive?

5. Are there any rules or regulations that are in place by the company for the sake of people who take this job position due to the nature of the job?

6. How much time do you spend rejecting/approving images? Does the system you use for performing your job show you 'all images without bias' or only show you images that algorithms picked up as possibly illicit? How often do you take breaks (or are required to)?

7. Are you required to perform any other activities or job functions beyond this (perhaps as a way of therapy)?

8. How do you get paid? How much do they pay you? Do you think they pay enough? (especially due to possible long-term consequences)

9. Maybe I have already asked this, but how do you cope with the things you have seen to keep yourself sane, normal, and contained?

10. What does it feel like emotionally and mentally? What kinds of thoughts run through your head on the job, on break, outside of job at home, amongst friends and family, etcetera?

11. If you have already moved on to another job at a different company of different functions, is this something you put down on your resume or told them about that you did as your previous job?

12. Do you feel paranoid? Do you feel like someone is watching you / someone that might be trying to corner and flag you a pedophile/pervert/sick person?

13. How did you find this job?

14. [2013/11/25 @ 1234, -6 GMT] Why did you choose this job? Did you know fully well what you were going to be doing?

15. Are married and do you have children? How do you feel around your children? How does your job affect you in this part of your life?

16. How long have you been doing this job (or have you done this for in the past)?

17. [2013/11/29 @ 0006, -6 GMT] What would you say the character/personality traits/type a person would need to have and be to make them more qualified and capable for this job than other people (possibly applying for the same job, or just in general)?

Relevant links for curious minds to get some thoughts started while waiting for someone who has done this job or presently is performing this job to pick up this AMA Request:

*

The one time prison labor might make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Get people with convictions for this kind of thing to do the final verification. You can't trust an individual con; but you can set it up so cons in different prisons on the other side of the country do the same job. They'll do it for pennies on the dollar and they're already psychologically damaged and probably willing to volunteer.

If that doesn't work out, at the very least there should be a law that private employees doing this job get the same kind of care FBI agents get, assuming it's good care.

One possible solution to the problem.

[techno-vampire]

You can probably reduce the stress in the workers monitoring the porn by giving them two extra breaks to work off some of the physical tension their work leads to and a private fapping room so that other workers don't have to watch them. It probably won't help much with those watching the violent videos, but then again, we all know about people who get turned on by that.

Re:One possible solution to the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the most pointless, ineffective solution for stopping or aiding with trauma-induced disorders I've seen in these comments. So, "congrats" on that.

This is how it works in liberal areas.

[Anonymous Coward]

People who don't want to work (aka liberals) simply sue corporations for their money. And then libtards wonder why those of us who live in red states, which are a net PAYER of tax dollars, voted for Trump. Fucking rediculus.

Watching Micro Soft porn daily would give me PTSD

[iamacat]

I mean, won't everyone have nightmares about shrinkage with constant exposure to these materials?

What is the source of the content?

[MobyDisk]

What was the source of the data that were these workers filtering? Hotmail emails? Office 365 files? Azure storage blobs? I am more interested in this story from the surveillance angle.

There is so much evil in this post it

[Deliveranc3]

boggles the mind.

Surveillance, censorship, repulisive materials, just EW.

I can't even grasp it.

normal people are very affected by the stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to look at the ogrish type sites when they came out.. but it seemed like 15 minutes was about all I could take before I felt bad. I don't mean sympathetic, but mentally bad. I suspect that most of these peoples time is spent rummaging through mundane things and discovering a terrible thing rarely. If it were all lined up and non stop it wouldn't take long at all to have mental trouble. Regarding people who think cartoon atrocities are the same as real, I wonder if they have viewed too much of he real thing and get a "trigger" then equate the non harmful cartoon for someone actually getting hurt.

Re:normal people are very affected by the stuff

[strstr]

Yeah ogrish type stuff can hurt a person. I could see the gore causing a persons brain to get fucked up, although it might be a temporary effect but the kiddy open stuff I don't think has a negative effect it just gives you a boner. Seriously its just sex like adult porn which everyone uses and doesn't get PTSD from.

https://www.obamasweapon.com/

Similar story about Google from a few years ago

[slashcross]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/reyha... No lawsuit from this one, or at least none mentioned. Same lack of support, though. I don't remember if anything came of this being posted.

You mean his GF's sex video?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's worried that his private sex video from his girlfriend is viewed by some snotty perv in Microsoft. And apparently he's right. Or he's worried that some business meeting on Skype is viewed by Microsoft employees, which has a name: industrial espionage.

Or he's worried that some Trumpesk figure will have his little list of people he wants to get back at, and Microsoft will do that for him. Or perhaps some politicians is being spied on to influence elections, or some scientist or some judge or or or...

Re:You mean his GF's sex video?

[coofercat]

For espionage to take place you have to use the information you get from listening into a skype call inappropriately (ie. telling someone who can use the information themselves, or otherwise using it yourself). For example, you overhear Verizon and Yahoo setting a price for the takeover deal. You talk to your pal at Google and give them the price, after which Google makes a counter offer for Yahoo. If you hear them setting the price and do nothing with the information, then nothing happens at all (and there are usually procedures where you disclose what you've heard to your legal people to vindicate yourself of any possible issues in the future). The worst you could be done for is evesdropping/privacy invasion or similar. However, given the ToS, you couldn't even be done for that because you're doing it in the course of your duties as defined by your employer (none of which would be true if you somehow did it yourself from your basement).

MS isn't doing anything unique here - they have people and algorithms looking for CP and other illegal material. Anything that looks suspicious gets reviewed by a human and acted upon. All the major providers are doing the same thing in some form or other. If you don't want your stuff spied on, encrypt it, or use a different means to communicate.

They might just win

[Anonymous Coward]

About 15-20 years ago I knew a cop in large-ish city.

He'd done a several-month stint of anti-kiddie-pr0n duty. Several months was all they let you do at one time. Counseling was available to these officers and if I recall, it wasn't optional.

Being forced to look at that stuff as part of your job is hazardous and we've known it for at least a decade and a half, if not many decades.

And the internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I get PTSD from reading slashdot.

Life hardens you

[Anonymous Coward]

How would we ever have doctors if they went around claiming PTSD each time they see a mangled body? What about undertakers? Morgue workers? Nurses? Surgeons afraid to cut patients?

A *video* of this upsets you so much you suffer PTSD, yet doctors have to deal with it face to face? You realize a big part of the soldiers experience is the shell shock, literally the endless day to day "I get killed next" mentality. Yet watching a video you get none of that.

I doubt this video haunts your days. Once you've seen a few bikers scraped off the tarmac, and a confirmed the id of a few dead relatives at the morgue, you realize we're pretty much meat in a butchers shop.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=299_1320002757

Re:Life hardens you

[Boronx]

Emergency room doctors I know are probably all untreated PTSD.

Re: Life hardens you

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I understand, a lot of soldiers when in war say they are already dead. Apparently having the mindset that you are already dead or have a 100% chance of dying, helps relieve some of that pressure. If you put it in your mind that you are already dead then what's the worst that can happen? You die?

Granted this type of thinking doesn't work for everybody.

Re:Life hardens you

[MikiHickel]

Actually, having to see it over and over...it does still haunt me. It has been ten years and it's still hard to think about. The reason I commented was that I can see how seeing people doing terrible things all day can break something in you. I'm sure there are plenty of cases of doctors who are haunted by specific cases. Same with any of the other professions you mentioned. There is regular death and crime, and then there are those cases that are outside the norm that cause trauma. These people were tasked with finding the worst of the worst and had no support? That's asking a lot of a regular person.

Does this mean Microsoft is hiring?

[aristotheron]

I would love to get PAID to view that kind of content

Re: Does this mean Microsoft is hiring?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you've just admitted that you would love to look at CP/snuff/torture videos and pics?

Ok.

Fat fuck troll APKoff his neds again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Awww, the poor fat fuck baby is back to trolling and delusions again.

Sucks for cops too

[phorm]

Thankfully when I was a BB admin I didn't see any of that. Messed up stuff that got people banned, yes, but nobody was stupid enough to post actual KP on the boards I managed.

I have a friend who worked in law enforcement in "cyber crime" though. Apparently that stuff is part of what he deals with, and you really can tell it takes a toll on a person. I doubt it's like most people imagine. Some people are so fucking depraved that normal people can't even fathom how bad they can be.

Technology...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microsoft applies industry-leading, cutting-edge technology to help detect and classify illegal images of child abuse and exploitation."

AKA employees.

Re:You can look on your computer. MS servers, netw

[Anonymous Coward]

You can of course look at see what is on your computer. Similarly, Microsoft can look at what is on their computers.

Hm, what about that exception for technical companies providing "a place" for users and not being responsible what is published on their servers?

If Microsoft is policing at least some content, does it make it responsible for what gets through their filter?
They cannot claim at the same time "it is user content we are not looking" and "we are looking and we removed X or Y"

Re:You can look on your computer. MS servers, netw

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary is terribly written, it doesn't explain, clearly, that Microsoft was looking at material on its own servers. Read it through again, it's VERY misleading in that regard.

Think of it as insurance policy

[Anonymous Coward]

Pence is assassination deterrence.

Re: Think of it as insurance policy

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. There's a reason Biden got to be VP.

Re:You can look on your computer. MS servers, netw

[geekmux]

The summary is terribly written, it doesn't explain, clearly, that Microsoft was looking at material on its own servers. Read it through again, it's VERY misleading in that regard.

TFS reads: "could literally view any customer's communications at any time."

Perhaps it should be clarified, since there is a significant legal difference in rifling through employee data vs. customer data. Employees sign documents and accept that usage of corporate systems and networks gives up almost all semblance of privacy. Customers expect privacy to a certain degree because laws demand it.

And unless Microsoft's hiring practices practically invite criminals and child porn addicts, I highly doubt Microsoft justified an entire team to monitor their employees in this way.

Why?

[allo]

Why didn't they quit? They knew what they were hired for, then they saw what they saw and still did not quit ... and now they sue?

And MS should just have hired people from 4chan. They don't get PTSD over such stuff.

Re:Why?

[omnichad]

I don't know if you know this, but a lot of people aren't in a financial state where they can just quit a job and not lose their car, home, etc.

Re: Shooting off your cocksucker again troll?

[Jesus H Rolle]

"Do-moss". It's pronounced "do-moss".

What exception? DMCA safe harbor?

[raymorris]

> Hm, what about that exception for technical companies providing "a place" for users and not being responsible what is published on their servers?

I'm not sure what statute you might be referring to. Are you thinking of DMCA safe harbor? DMCA is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Service providers aren't liable for *copyright* violations if they follow the prescribed procedure for handling complaints - and following the prescribed procedure normally involves looking at the material which is the subject of the complaint in order to match up the hosted resources with the specificity of the complaint. (Don't take the whole site down if one image is the subject of dispute.)

Re:What exception? DMCA safe harbor?

[Anonymous Coward]

'm not sure what statute you might be referring to.

Criminal possession and conspiracy. Seriously, if MS is paying their workers to remove content from their website but they had a policy that "child porn is okay", do you NOT think they should or would be criminally liable? Once you start actively seeking out content, you're vetting content and are held to a much higher standard than otherwise. It's why finding drugs in your home is a presumption of ownership and responsibility. But landlords of a property aren't generally held responsible for what their tenants have, unless they either (1) turned a blind eye to criminality or (2) actively sought out criminality and effectively let said criminality pass.

Are you thinking of DMCA safe harbor? DMCA is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Service providers aren't liable for *copyright* violations if they follow the prescribed procedure for handling complaints...

Read above and consider Napster and various domains that have been seized. The DMCA does not grant you the ability to conspire or engage in willful ignorance of misconduct of a service you provide. Yes, there's a gray area about just how much editorial control you can exercise before you're liable or how much you have to actively pursue possible violators. That generally falls into the realm of "common sense". Certainly, "common sense" in this case amounts to "if MS only looks for illegal X, Y, and Z content but not A even knowing A is clearly illegal", they're on the hook. Missing some X, Y, or Z because some employees aren't due diligent enough would probably slide, though, as long as they have a reasonable reporting and resolution process.

My personal guess? MS isn't doing enough searching for A, but the government isn't willing to actively punish MS unless/until it's politically beneficial--ie, they're not doing enough with "the war on terror" or "the war on drugs" or "letting CIA agents read through their favorite celeb's personal email".

It's company servers, not employee or customer

[raymorris]

> Perhaps it should be clarified, since there is a significant legal difference in rifling through employee data vs. customer data.

Legally, in the US, Microsoft is rifling through their own hard drives. Note I'm not suggesting I think this should be the law, I'm stating this *is* the law, as affirmed by many courts over many years. Suppose a hacker, who is neither an employee nor a customer, put malware on the machine. How would Microsoft find malware that bad guys have hidden on their servers? Only by thoroughly looking through the whole drive. Is Microsoft allowed to look through their own servers, in order to find malware, file corruption, deduplication opportunities, or any other reason they want to look at their own equipment? Yes, under US law. There are good arguments for changing that, and there are good arguments for not changing it.

> Employees sign documents and accept that usage of corporate systems and networks

Customers agree to 20 pages of TOS too. Part of the TOS *informs* the customer that MS already has the right to examine their own equipment. Once you hand a document to a service provider, saying "please put this on your web server for me" or "please take this to Gmail, and ask them to take it to Bob", they may look at what you've handed them before they do anything else with it. That's good when bad guys hand them a malware file, asking MS to distribute it.

 

Re:It's company servers, not employee or customer

[geekmux]

> Perhaps it should be clarified, since there is a significant legal difference in rifling through employee data vs. customer data.

Legally, in the US, Microsoft is rifling through their own hard drives. Note I'm not suggesting I think this should be the law, I'm stating this *is* the law, as affirmed by many courts over many years. Suppose a hacker, who is neither an employee nor a customer, put malware on the machine. How would Microsoft find malware that bad guys have hidden on their servers? Only by thoroughly looking through the whole drive. Is Microsoft allowed to look through their own servers, in order to find malware, file corruption, deduplication opportunities, or any other reason they want to look at their own equipment? Yes, under US law. There are good arguments for changing that, and there are good arguments for not changing it.

> Employees sign documents and accept that usage of corporate systems and networks

Customers agree to 20 pages of TOS too. Part of the TOS *informs* the customer that MS already has the right to examine their own equipment. Once you hand a document to a service provider, saying "please put this on your web server for me" or "please take this to Gmail, and ask them to take it to Bob", they may look at what you've handed them before they do anything else with it. That's good when bad guys hand them a malware file, asking MS to distribute it.

Maintaining corporate servers to prevent infections is a far cry from maintaining an entire fucking team to rifle through customer documents and pictures in search of illegal content, essentially acting as an extension of law enforcement while raping privacy laws and destroying Rights protected by the Constitution, so let's drop the bullshit needs-of-a-SysAdmin excuses. I hand my mail to the mailman. Doesn't give them any legal right to read it just because it sits on their truck.

Re: It's company servers, not employee or customer

[Anonymous Coward]

Difference being the mailman you're refering to is a government entity held to over a hundred years of law instituting citizen privacy from governmental predation. This is why private post companies are held to the same standard. Email by contrast is a new technology and the rulings in court by short-sighted judges has resulted in a separation between a company hosting a file transfer service (which broadly is what email is) and the actual physical post. I don't agree with it, and like you I think there should be a hard privacy line, but until the law changes Microsoft is essentially bulletproof on this. Unfortunatly it seems like the world is tipping in the opposite direction faster, where the expectation of privacy is less of a virtue and more of archaic ball and chain holding back progress, so I'm not holding my breath

World's smallest violin

[Anonymous Coward]

So your career was spying on people's private communications, and now you can't sleep at night.

Good.

Think of the children...

[cjjjer]

No wait....

Think of the adults...

I am so confused now...

re: severe psychological distress

[King_TJ]

They said -- After years of being made to watch the "most twisted" videos on the internet, employees said they suffered severe psychological distress.

Ok, but who will compensate me for watching Tosh.O all those times in came on late night TV?!

USPS does legally open packages. Moral != legal

[raymorris]

> Doesn't give them any legal right to read it just because it sits on their truck

Did you mean "moral right" and accidentally typed "legal right"? The United States Postal Service is in fact authorized by law to open packages at their sole discretion. UPS and Fedex open packages - you can read about it on their web sites.

Because USPS is part of the government, they are constrained by the fourth amendment and therefore don't open first class letters without a warrant (but don't need a warrant for packages). Microsoft is not the government and is therefore not constrained by the fourth. Like Fedex and UPS, they can and do open packages customers hand them.

> while raping privacy laws

Which privacy laws would those be, exactly?

Frankly, it's very common to think about what you think the law *should* be for any situation and for some reason our brains confuse that with what the law *is*. I'm not sure why, but intelligent people tend to do that for some reason.

Re:USPS does legally open packages. Moral != legal

[geekmux]

> Doesn't give them any legal right to read it just because it sits on their truck

Did you mean "moral right" and accidentally typed "legal right"?

No, I meant legal right.

As in the same legal protections that require a warrant for certain USPS correspondence, as you so aptly pointed out.

As in the same legal protections that require a law enforcement agency to obtain a warrant if questionable content is discovered under the bullshit guise of "maintenance" activities (this was just discussed here with the FBI getting burned over illegal searches related to Best Buys' Geek Squad)

As in the same legal protections that allowed Apple to effectively tell the FBI to fuck off when it came to dismantling encryption designed to protect a citizens privacy.

The Constitution was designed to ensure that morals have fuck-all to do with it, and we *should* be protected by it.

AI would be perfect for this kind of thing

[Godai]

This is where if he had a reliable AI that could do the watching, it'd be faster *and* it wouldn't screw up the hapless people who currently have to watch it.

That said, I worry that watching snuff films and porn was why Skynet decided to nuke all the humans.

Re:AI would be perfect for this kind of thing

[Anonymous Coward]

It might warp the AI if had any sort of learning on the job. AI might start seeing things in innocous pictures if its sample set was primarily complaint generating pictures.

Re: USPS does legally open packages. Moral != lega

[Anonymous Coward]

How is the USPS is legally allowed to open packages without a warrent? Because they say they can on their website? If they are government wouldn't that make them required to follow the law?

Re: Quit trying to play "jailhouse lawyer" raymorr

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL god damn someone pissed APK off. Looks like he's taking it one step further and damn near doxing Ray. I expected to see some links but got stuck in a loop on a link back to the god damn thread we are already in.

I'm guessing Ray called out APK in the past. What I don't get is, how he feels this is HELPING his software. I'd change my name if I was APK. Open source my software and fork it under a new name lol.

Shooting off your cocksucker again troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't shoot my mouth off without knowing what I'm talking about" - by raymorris (2726007) on Thursday December 31, 2015 @09:29AM (#51215379)

Raymorris you shoot your mouth off f'ing up in 2 security fuckups https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5351503&cid=47379233/ & https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5351503&cid=47374033/ + raymorris = scriptkiddie https://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8895203&cid=51726265/

&

Tell us how ONLY 'newer script kiddie tools' have stringlength built in (when PASCAL had it for ages - my fav tool) https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8472509&cid=51114383/ YOU BLUNDERING WANNABE!

* TRYING TO "downmod hide" this 2x too? LMAO @ U https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10107605&cid=53652073/ & https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10107605&cid=53652409/ guess you don't like being exposed as a FAKE eh? No questions asked.

How long until your sockpuppet fake accounts run out of those downmodpoints raymorris? Let's find out.

APK

P.S.=> You like to talk behind others' backs like the gossiping bitch TROLL you are raymorris https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9880997&cid=53312265/ well, here I am letting YOU TALK in those links, showing your FAILS wannabe ... apk

It sounds made up

[strstr]

I dont think these people got PTSD. I happen to be friends with a neuropsych who does QME evals for California- majority like 90% of people who come in claiming a work place injury are faking it to try to get out of work. He'll start off his testing and if they exhibit signs of faking he will give it to them straight: either walk out of my office now and I will write the testing wasn't completed or, finish up and I'll write you were faking.

I just don't think humans get PTSD that easily and the condition itself is mostly non-existent- people have the diagnosis but don't have the symptoms from the DSM which sound psychotic. I bet this guy is faking like a motherfucker. Its the perfect crime. Each component of the lawsuit crafted to extract some dollar off Microsoft- it might work it might not but really all these mother fuckers saw was some kids bholes. The guy wants to make it sound bad because he knows the general public hasn't seen any kids bholes and they will think there is some kind of negative trauma from seeing it when scientifically its no different than seeing adult bholes at the most he ever got was a boner he secretly whacked off to routinely.

https://www.obamasweapon.com/

That would be the 4th amendment, a constraint feds

[raymorris]

> As in the same legal protections that require a law enforcement agency to obtain a warrant

That would be the fourth amendment, which says the federal government not unreasonably search our "houses, papers, and effects". It does not say you may not search your own house, and it does not say Microsoft may not search theirs.

The 14th amendment, as interpreted, applies the 4th to state governments. Microsoft is not the government, and it's not your house - it's Microsoft's.

Re: Quit trying to play "jailhouse lawyer" raymorr

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to read. It's other way around Apk fried raymorris alive on his tech screwups and scheming to troll apk https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10107605&cid=53653901/

Shooting off your cocksucker again troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't shoot my mouth off without knowing what I'm talking about" - by raymorris (2726007) on Thursday December 31, 2015 @09:29AM (#51215379)

Raymorris you shoot your mouth off f'ing up in 2 security fuckups https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5351503&cid=47379233/ & https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5351503&cid=47374033/ + raymorris = scriptkiddie https://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8895203&cid=51726265/

&

Tell us how ONLY 'newer script kiddie tools' have stringlength built in (when PASCAL had it for ages - my fav tool) https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8472509&cid=51114383/ YOU BLUNDERING WANNABE!

* TRYING TO "downmod hide" this 2x too? LMAO @ U https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10107605&cid=53652073/ & https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10107605&cid=53652409/ guess you don't like being exposed as a FAKE eh? No questions asked.

How long until your sockpuppet fake accounts run out of those downmodpoints raymorris? Let's find out.

Quit trying to play "jailhouse lawyer" raymorris - you FAILED that along w/ your many failed 'businesses' too!

APK

P.S.=> You like to talk behind others' backs like the gossiping bitch TROLL you are raymorris https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9880997&cid=53312265/ well, here I am letting YOU TALK in those links, showing your FAILS wannabe ... apk

4chan???

[acoustix]

Microsoft could outsource this work to the upstanding community at 4chan. They're experts in this stuff. Hell, they'd probably do it for free.

Re:That would be the 4th amendment, a constraint f

[geekmux]

> As in the same legal protections that require a law enforcement agency to obtain a warrant

That would be the fourth amendment, which says the federal government not unreasonably search our "houses, papers, and effects". It does not say you may not search your own house, and it does not say Microsoft may not search theirs.

The 14th amendment, as interpreted, applies the 4th to state governments. Microsoft is not the government, and it's not your house - it's Microsoft's.

You're right. Microsoft is not the Government. A Microsoft employee is granted no more legal authority than a member of the Geek Squad when they go rifling through "their" houses searching through *other* citizens papers and effects, as if they hold that responsibility.

That activity is specifically reserved for a member of law enforcement. Also known as a representative who *is* beholden the uphold the Rights of citizens, including the 4th, who will execute such activity only when reasonably justified.

And when anti-virus/malware systems are automated enough these days to not need human eyes searching through documents, that weak-ass SysAdmin excuse doesn't even justify a search as reasonable to warrant law enforcement involvement to begin with.

Invaders

[Anonymous Coward]

When I attempted to change the password for my Microsoft account, the process took 30 days. Microsoft is not well, at the present; they've been "invaded" by a group of psychos that're looking for something that doesn't exist.

Faking PTSD maybe?

[ErichTheRed]

It sounds to me like these people are trying to get a retirement plan paid for by Microsoft. It makes sense -- I'm pretty sure people saw some disturbing things -- but I doubt it rises to the level of PTSD. No one with two brain cells to rub together would share anything truly illegal over Hotmail or any of the other platforms provided by Microsoft. Everyone (should) know that free email and social networking sites will mine every single byte of data you give them, and that includes scanning it for terms of service violations.

Also, I think there's different levels of tolerance people have for disturbing stuff. A lot of people can just take it at face value and report the offenders without internalizing it. People who don't have this personality type shouldn't work in a position like this. Microsoft was dumb on two counts -- forcefully transferring employees to this group and not finding something else for them to do when they started showing signs of cracking up. Microsoft's a big company -- I highly doubt there is no wiggle room in the HR budgets to "park" people someplace until you find them a permanent spot after they don't work out on one team. It seems to me like you need to rotate people in and out of this duty to keep them somewhat mentally healthy.

I'm pretty dead on the inside in terms of being negatively affected by things I see, but I don't know if I could do this work full time. It would really depend on what they actually were looking at on a daily basis. I just don't think it rises to the level of "PTSD." Unless people are really more fragile than I think, I have a hard time believing most claims of PTSD, even in combat situations or similar. Unfortunately, unless AI becomes 100% reliable, there are going to have to be groups of people like this who do nothing but trawl through sick stuff so that other people don't have to see it.

Re:Faking PTSD maybe?

[PPH]

Also, I think there's different levels of tolerance people have for disturbing stuff.

Could be a bunch of H-1B workers freaked out over images of women without hijabs.

Geek Squad was paid by govt to search CITIZEN's hd

[raymorris]

In the Geek Squad case (which is not yet decided), the technicians were paid by the GOVERNMENT to search computers belonging to private CITIZENS. Therefore there is a fourth amendment issue.

Microsoft is not an agent of the government, so there is no fourth amendment issue.
Also, Microsoft is not searching your computer, they are searching their own computers.

Right now I'm looking on my computer to see what, if anything, you put anything on my computer. Do you think it's illegal for me to look at what's on my computer? Under what law? Do you think the fourth amendment says I can't look at my own computer? You might want to read the Bill of Rights, if that's your understanding.

Right now, Microsoft is looking on Microsoft's computer to see what, if anything, you put on Microsoft's computer. You may not like that, and you may decide to not use Microsoft's services, but there is no law against Microsoft looking at their own equipment.

Re: USPS does legally open packages. Moral != lega

[Anonymous Coward]

But it is the law. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws) There was a moral panic about birth control which was considered obscene. This is before other supreme court made some ruling on free speech and these laws are still in place.

Re:Geek Squad was paid by govt to search CITIZEN's

[geekmux]

In the Geek Squad case (which is not yet decided), the technicians were paid by the GOVERNMENT to search computers belonging to private CITIZENS. Therefore there is a fourth amendment issue.

Microsoft is not an agent of the government, so there is no fourth amendment issue. Also, Microsoft is not searching your computer, they are searching their own computers.

Right now I'm looking on my computer to see what, if anything, you put anything on my computer. Do you think it's illegal for me to look at what's on my computer? Under what law? Do you think the fourth amendment says I can't look at my own computer? You might want to read the Bill of Rights, if that's your understanding.

Right now, Microsoft is looking on Microsoft's computer to see what, if anything, you put on Microsoft's computer. You may not like that, and you may decide to not use Microsoft's services, but there is no law against Microsoft looking at their own equipment.

Microsoft is not merely "looking" at their own equipment. They are executing an unreasonable search of customer data in order to find information that potentially can and will be used against you. Using a bullshit not-the-Government excuse does not magically justify that action any more than an excuse to maintain server health does. ISPs can legally indemnify themselves, so this activity isn't even justified under some kind of corporate legal mitigation either. If 3rd parties are rewarded when they discover data or provide leads, that can feed corrupt activities such as planting evidence, which is yet another reason this kind of activity should be scrutinized or banned.

And the Government attempting to outsource work in order to escape the constraints of the 4th Amendment (Best Buy case) is also unjustified, which is one of the reasons the case is under so much scrutiny. I won't be surprised if following the budget trail for the department at Microsoft leads to the same source of funding.

And we wonder why privacy advocates harp on encryption so damn much.

Re:That would be the 4th amendment, a constraint f

[nasch]

That activity is specifically reserved for a member of law enforcement.

How do you figure that? The 4th amendment certainly doesn't say anything about what non-governmental actors can and cannot do, so you must be getting it from somewhere else.

Re:Geek Squad was paid by govt to search CITIZEN's

[adamstew]

Have you actually read the terms of service that you agree to when you sign up for an e-mail account from Microsoft? Obviously not. Because if you did, you'd see that you agreed to let them look at pretty much anything that is sent/received/stored on any Microsoft service for the purposes of detecting and reporting: anything illegal, activity that exploits/harms/threatens to harm children, spam, anything that they (in their sole an infinite wisdom) determine to be inappropriate, engage in fraud, accessing Microsoft's or anyone else's services illegally, copyright infringement, and transmitting malware.

First off: Microsoft is not the government. They can search their own property (their servers) at any time for any reason. 4th amendment does not apply
Second: Even if Microsoft was the government (*shudder*), you gave consent for them to search your communications when you signed up. If the police show up at your house and ask "can we search your house?", if you say yes, then anything they find can be used against you...warrant or not.
Third: The indemnification you talk about only applies to copyright. Any other illegal activities that are perpetuated through their services they can be liable for if they are complacent in them happening on their services.

If you don't like Microsoft searching your e-mails for possible illegal content, don't use Microsoft's e-mail services. That is literally your only recourse. I agree with you in that i'd prefer that no one but me reads my e-mails. This is one of the many reasons why I run my own e-mail server. But Microsoft is within their rights to search your e-mails.