Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) only need four lines to represent 0000 (zero) to 10001 (nine), or a single line into a serial-to-parallel shift register to get eight lines, with the old school logic chips (i.e., 4000- and 7000-series). This board allows you to do more with less.
Medical people are required by law to report all forms of child abuse.
I'm not medical. I'm just a guy in the IT department for a hospital. In fact, I was a contractor on a special project to replace the computers. My coworker and I followed hospital policies. If we were mandated reporters under the law, we would have to sign a legal statement acknowledging that particular role and the hospital would have provided additional training. After all, the hospital has policies for mandated reporters.
All the historical references cited in the article are military and/or dictatorship control. I didn't see any examples of corporate control. In fact, I don't think I ever heard of anyone using the Nuremberg defense in a corporate scandal.
I believe San Francisco fixed that problem with their public toilets with a paint that makes urine splatter back. The bums don't like being splattered on. Go figure.
Your hospitals legal and or security team have absolutely no legal authority to tell you not to report something to the proper authorities, nor can they legally instruct you not to report it as they would themselves be in breach of a raft of laws.
My coworker and I were not mandated reporters under the law. Neither security nor legal told us not to call the proper authorities. We followed hospital policies, security initiated an investigation, the hardware was confiscated, and the employee got terminated three days later.
You know that some Slashdot readers will be foolish enough to not resist their curiosity, and google for that.
If you're looking for child pornography, you're not going to use a commercial search engine. Google has an entire department that looks at nothing but pornography and does a good job at flagging illegal pornography. The file name I provided was a made up example.
California. Which does list "a commercial computer technician" as a mandated reporter. However, the hospital never informed me that I was a mandated reporter.
On and after January 1, 1985, persons entering employment which makes them mandated reporters must sign statements, provided and retained by their employers, informing them that they are mandated reporters and advising them of their reporting responsibilities and of their confidentiality rights. (P.C. 11166.5 (a))
Do you realise you have just admitted your guilt in aiding a felony?
I didn't commit a felony under the law as the specified law didn't apply to me. I was never informed by the hospital that I was a mandated reporter. Besides, my role in the affair was incidental. I was only aware that child pornography was found, but I didn't know any of the specific details involved. I wasn't interviewed by security. I didn't have have a recorded conversation with the hospital attorney. Everything that happened at the hospital is what typically happens at many Fortune 500 companies.
Following policies also can get you in jail. Good luck with that strategy...
Which is why my employer (the government), the prime contractor and subcontracting agency I work for each require that I take mandatory training on the proper policies to follow each year. With a few obvious exceptions, these policies are no different than the policies of many Fortune 500 companies. Breaking these policies is where people get into trouble.
As someone who has to provide tech support to family and friends I realize how hard it is to "just make it work" for those who couldn't care less about the technical details.
If you're not charging your relatives for tech support, you're doing it wrong. The fastest way to discourage relatives is to quote the hourly rate of your local mechanic ($100 in my area). If your relatives won't pay to have a mechanic fix the car, you can bet that they won't pay to have you fix the computer.
Yes and no. IT staff have an obligation under HIPAA to protect confidential patient information by ensuring that the PC as a whole is working correctly. While confidential patient information may be sitting on the hard drive, IT staff doesn't have any business reason to look at it. When it comes to confidential patient information, ignorance is bliss.
How do you know that this one in particular was illegally dumping?
He probably made the assumption that anyone who is trying to avoid county dumping fees must be illegally dumping stuff out in the country. A vending machine is a mostly empty wooden box with some metals, a sheet of glass or plastic, and some electronics. A properly broken down vending machine can be recycled with very little going into the regular trash.
My retired father used to have a modest recycling operation that ran next to his trailer home. He would help a neighbor dismantle old vending machines to avoid expensive county dump fees, cleaning up and providing free wood for a retired neighbor to build chicken coops for sale and separating the metals to take to the recycling center. That's how he spent his free time and made $50 a month at the recycling center. Someone complained to the county and the county wasn't thrilled that someone was circumventing those expensive dump fees. So he was ordered to cease operations or face prosecution for running an illegal business from home.
If you bothered to read the Wikipedia article, you would noticed that "superior orders" is limited to the military and often used as excuse for knowingly doing something wrong but blaming someone else. This doesn't apply to the situation that I described.
The first question is: Were you and your coworkers following hospital policy by investigating the contents of user files when it appears you were tasked with as you say a "PC refresh project?"
A PC refresh project is replacing old PCs with new PCs. In this case, it was replacing 1,500 PCs and deploying 3,000 flat screen monitors. If the user's Windows profile wasn't already pointing to the network share, we would change it from the C: drive to the network share and Windows copy the data to the network. We monitor the copying process to make sure that the files are copied over to the share. We keep an eye out for any large collection of personal music, videos or picture files that aren't supposed to be on the PC per hospital policies, which users are reminded of three times in email prior to replacing the PC. If personal files are found, users are requested to delete their personal files and reschedule to have their PC replaced. My coworker noticed a series of unusual file names — "jenny_does_daddy.jpg" — during the transfer process that prompted his curiosity and the child pornography collection was found. He reported it as required by hospital policy.
The second question is: If the files had contained normal (legal) pornography would you still have reported it?
Yes, as required by hospital policies. Many Fortune 500 companies also have similar policy requirements for both legal and illegal pornography.
The last question is: If the files had contained HIPAA protected client/patient information, would you and your coworkers reported yourselves for violating HIPAA privacy laws (and most likely been fired)?
We had no reason to look at any HIPAA-related data that belonged on a PC. If I caught a coworker browsing for patient data or taking home a hard drive that wasn't wiped and destroyed, I would report him to my supervisor as required by hospital policies. Security made the determination that files were child pornography prior to confiscating the hard drive from old PC and the new PC.
I would guess that any future employers would read your story and make damn sure not to hire your company if you or your coworkers are going to take it upon themselves to 'investigate' the contents of a customer's machine because some filenames were 'odd.'
What I did was fairly routine in IT. If suspicious activity occurs during the course of my job, I'm obligated to report it and let management decide what to do. That's why employers hired me for the last 20 years. The people who don't follow policy are the ones who shouldn't be hired.
This is the rub of the story and the legislation.
If you think that's bad, my current job has PCs with HIPAA and classified data. HIPAA can send you to jail. Classified data can get you the death penalty. As long as I follow policies, I don't have a problem.
Based on my experience as an IT technician in Silicon Valley for the last 20 years, you're more likely to get fired for not reporting child pornography than getting fired because an accused user was proven innocent in a court of law.
Depending on how zealous local law enforcement is, having a naked baby lying on sheepskin picture can be regarded as child pornography and charges can be brought against the parents.
I think accidentally finding this would put such a person in a guilty position instantly because it was on his system and he observed it.
Not necessarily. Some forms of spyware will drop child pornography files on your PC, incriminating the user without their knowledge. The hospital required "intent to possess child pornography" as a reason to terminate the employee. That employee made a huge scene in the back hallways over a three day period — which security recorded on their surveillance cameras — provided the "intent" needed. A regular user would have a requested a loaner laptop until the mystery of the disappearing PC got resolved.
Schools that loan laptops to students to take home and have the ability to turn on the builtin camera remotely have run into this issue. The odds of a teacher or administrator turning on the camera while the opened laptop is in the bedroom of a undressed child is pretty high. That's a good enough reason for parents to prevent their children from having computers in the bedroom.
You're overlooking the fact that my coworkers and I were following hospital policy by informing and cooperating with security. If we haven't followed policy, we would have face immediate termination and possible legal action. We did our jobs within hospital policy, our contracts and under existing law. I have a clear conscience regarding this matter. If the law required mandatory reporting, that responsibility should lie with the hospital administration. Hospitals, like many corporations these days, will happily sweep a scandal underneath the carpet if given a choice in the matter.
Next, teachers who hear students talk about violence are forced to report the student to the authorities.
You must not be a regular/. reader. An article from earlier this week was about a UK Muslim boy being questioned by authorities after his teacher reported that he mistakenly wrote that he came from a "terrorist house" for a school assignment.
Slashdot Mirror
*cough* Linux *cough*
4 gpio ports?
Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) only need four lines to represent 0000 (zero) to 10001 (nine), or a single line into a serial-to-parallel shift register to get eight lines, with the old school logic chips (i.e., 4000- and 7000-series). This board allows you to do more with less.
Medical people are required by law to report all forms of child abuse.
I'm not medical. I'm just a guy in the IT department for a hospital. In fact, I was a contractor on a special project to replace the computers. My coworker and I followed hospital policies. If we were mandated reporters under the law, we would have to sign a legal statement acknowledging that particular role and the hospital would have provided additional training. After all, the hospital has policies for mandated reporters.
The article explicitly says military OR Civilian.
All the historical references cited in the article are military and/or dictatorship control. I didn't see any examples of corporate control. In fact, I don't think I ever heard of anyone using the Nuremberg defense in a corporate scandal.
The bums still piss in the stairwell, however.
I believe San Francisco fixed that problem with their public toilets with a paint that makes urine splatter back. The bums don't like being splattered on. Go figure.
Your hospitals legal and or security team have absolutely no legal authority to tell you not to report something to the proper authorities, nor can they legally instruct you not to report it as they would themselves be in breach of a raft of laws.
My coworker and I were not mandated reporters under the law. Neither security nor legal told us not to call the proper authorities. We followed hospital policies, security initiated an investigation, the hardware was confiscated, and the employee got terminated three days later.
You know that some Slashdot readers will be foolish enough to not resist their curiosity, and google for that.
If you're looking for child pornography, you're not going to use a commercial search engine. Google has an entire department that looks at nothing but pornography and does a good job at flagging illegal pornography. The file name I provided was a made up example.
Where do you live?
California. Which does list "a commercial computer technician" as a mandated reporter. However, the hospital never informed me that I was a mandated reporter.
On and after January 1, 1985, persons entering employment which makes them mandated reporters must sign statements, provided and retained by their employers, informing them that they are mandated reporters and advising them of their reporting responsibilities and of their confidentiality rights. (P.C. 11166.5 (a))
http://www.fccap.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30&Itemid=40
Do you realise you have just admitted your guilt in aiding a felony?
I didn't commit a felony under the law as the specified law didn't apply to me. I was never informed by the hospital that I was a mandated reporter. Besides, my role in the affair was incidental. I was only aware that child pornography was found, but I didn't know any of the specific details involved. I wasn't interviewed by security. I didn't have have a recorded conversation with the hospital attorney. Everything that happened at the hospital is what typically happens at many Fortune 500 companies.
Following policies also can get you in jail. Good luck with that strategy...
Which is why my employer (the government), the prime contractor and subcontracting agency I work for each require that I take mandatory training on the proper policies to follow each year. With a few obvious exceptions, these policies are no different than the policies of many Fortune 500 companies. Breaking these policies is where people get into trouble.
As someone who has to provide tech support to family and friends I realize how hard it is to "just make it work" for those who couldn't care less about the technical details.
If you're not charging your relatives for tech support, you're doing it wrong. The fastest way to discourage relatives is to quote the hourly rate of your local mechanic ($100 in my area). If your relatives won't pay to have a mechanic fix the car, you can bet that they won't pay to have you fix the computer.
IT staff must be included in that category, no?
Yes and no. IT staff have an obligation under HIPAA to protect confidential patient information by ensuring that the PC as a whole is working correctly. While confidential patient information may be sitting on the hard drive, IT staff doesn't have any business reason to look at it. When it comes to confidential patient information, ignorance is bliss.
How do you know that this one in particular was illegally dumping?
He probably made the assumption that anyone who is trying to avoid county dumping fees must be illegally dumping stuff out in the country. A vending machine is a mostly empty wooden box with some metals, a sheet of glass or plastic, and some electronics. A properly broken down vending machine can be recycled with very little going into the regular trash.
Actually, my father just put the non-recyclable stuff into the trash.
My retired father used to have a modest recycling operation that ran next to his trailer home. He would help a neighbor dismantle old vending machines to avoid expensive county dump fees, cleaning up and providing free wood for a retired neighbor to build chicken coops for sale and separating the metals to take to the recycling center. That's how he spent his free time and made $50 a month at the recycling center. Someone complained to the county and the county wasn't thrilled that someone was circumventing those expensive dump fees. So he was ordered to cease operations or face prosecution for running an illegal business from home.
As my mother told me about the birds and the bees, dogs are expert lickers.
If PC comes under suspicion of having child pornography, a forensic examination of the log files may reveal who viewed the files.
If you bothered to read the Wikipedia article, you would noticed that "superior orders" is limited to the military and often used as excuse for knowingly doing something wrong but blaming someone else. This doesn't apply to the situation that I described.
The first question is: Were you and your coworkers following hospital policy by investigating the contents of user files when it appears you were tasked with as you say a "PC refresh project?"
A PC refresh project is replacing old PCs with new PCs. In this case, it was replacing 1,500 PCs and deploying 3,000 flat screen monitors. If the user's Windows profile wasn't already pointing to the network share, we would change it from the C: drive to the network share and Windows copy the data to the network. We monitor the copying process to make sure that the files are copied over to the share. We keep an eye out for any large collection of personal music, videos or picture files that aren't supposed to be on the PC per hospital policies, which users are reminded of three times in email prior to replacing the PC. If personal files are found, users are requested to delete their personal files and reschedule to have their PC replaced. My coworker noticed a series of unusual file names — "jenny_does_daddy.jpg" — during the transfer process that prompted his curiosity and the child pornography collection was found. He reported it as required by hospital policy.
The second question is: If the files had contained normal (legal) pornography would you still have reported it?
Yes, as required by hospital policies. Many Fortune 500 companies also have similar policy requirements for both legal and illegal pornography.
The last question is: If the files had contained HIPAA protected client/patient information, would you and your coworkers reported yourselves for violating HIPAA privacy laws (and most likely been fired)?
We had no reason to look at any HIPAA-related data that belonged on a PC. If I caught a coworker browsing for patient data or taking home a hard drive that wasn't wiped and destroyed, I would report him to my supervisor as required by hospital policies. Security made the determination that files were child pornography prior to confiscating the hard drive from old PC and the new PC.
I would guess that any future employers would read your story and make damn sure not to hire your company if you or your coworkers are going to take it upon themselves to 'investigate' the contents of a customer's machine because some filenames were 'odd.'
What I did was fairly routine in IT. If suspicious activity occurs during the course of my job, I'm obligated to report it and let management decide what to do. That's why employers hired me for the last 20 years. The people who don't follow policy are the ones who shouldn't be hired.
This is the rub of the story and the legislation.
If you think that's bad, my current job has PCs with HIPAA and classified data. HIPAA can send you to jail. Classified data can get you the death penalty. As long as I follow policies, I don't have a problem.
With Big Data today it's easier to write a script.
Based on my experience as an IT technician in Silicon Valley for the last 20 years, you're more likely to get fired for not reporting child pornography than getting fired because an accused user was proven innocent in a court of law.
Depending on how zealous local law enforcement is, having a naked baby lying on sheepskin picture can be regarded as child pornography and charges can be brought against the parents.
I think accidentally finding this would put such a person in a guilty position instantly because it was on his system and he observed it.
Not necessarily. Some forms of spyware will drop child pornography files on your PC, incriminating the user without their knowledge. The hospital required "intent to possess child pornography" as a reason to terminate the employee. That employee made a huge scene in the back hallways over a three day period — which security recorded on their surveillance cameras — provided the "intent" needed. A regular user would have a requested a loaner laptop until the mystery of the disappearing PC got resolved.
Schools that loan laptops to students to take home and have the ability to turn on the builtin camera remotely have run into this issue. The odds of a teacher or administrator turning on the camera while the opened laptop is in the bedroom of a undressed child is pretty high. That's a good enough reason for parents to prevent their children from having computers in the bedroom.
You're overlooking the fact that my coworkers and I were following hospital policy by informing and cooperating with security. If we haven't followed policy, we would have face immediate termination and possible legal action. We did our jobs within hospital policy, our contracts and under existing law. I have a clear conscience regarding this matter. If the law required mandatory reporting, that responsibility should lie with the hospital administration. Hospitals, like many corporations these days, will happily sweep a scandal underneath the carpet if given a choice in the matter.
Next, teachers who hear students talk about violence are forced to report the student to the authorities.
You must not be a regular /. reader. An article from earlier this week was about a UK Muslim boy being questioned by authorities after his teacher reported that he mistakenly wrote that he came from a "terrorist house" for a school assignment.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/16/01/20/1245216/10-year-old-muslim-boy-probed-for-terrorist-house-spelling-error