Blow the Whistle, Lose Your Job? 839
ccnull writes "You're a systems admin. On a routine PC repair, you discover a trove of child porn on an employee's PC. You call the cops. The employee pleads guilty and goes to jail. Then what do you do? You get fired. InformationWeek has an interesting expose on whistleblowers who lost their jobs, they say, because they publicly embarassed the company. The company has another version of the story. No matter what the reality is, at the center of this is a good question: If you discover illegal goodies on a machine, what should you do about it?"
Well, DUH... (Score:3, Informative)
Remember, a "company" doesn't exist. It's just an idea held by a group of people. Think of these people as your friends, because even if you don't like them, they are. They help provide for your welfare.
Would you report your best friend's smoking weed? Would you report your father for voeyerism?
Report this matter to your boss, and document (in writing) that you did so. Having effectively wiped your hands of the matter, enjoy your job.
Reason for Being Fired (Score:3, Informative)
Re:tell your boss and not the police.....?? (Score:3, Informative)
According to the employer's response, that's exactlty what happened in this case.
What happened after that, and why, is less clear.The problem with the other option - covering it up - could be that some children would continue to be abused.
Re:How about go through proper channels? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:How about go through proper channels? (Score:5, Informative)
call the cops (Score:2, Informative)
There should be a law againist punishing whisle blowers.
Re:How about go through proper channels? (Score:5, Informative)
That does seem to be what they did in this case, and the empolyer insists they were commended for their actions and fired for completely unrelated reasons.
The whole thing seems fishy to me, but that's why we have courts -- to allow both sides to present their positions, instead of jumping to a conclusion based on what Information Week has to say. It's a shame that a ludicrous sexual harssment claim has to be the vehicle for justice, though.
Re:He deserved to lose his job (Score:3, Informative)
It wasn't until AUGUST that these two employees actually went and talked to anyone directly:
In any case, and complain if you like, but this is much more serious than having, say, some MP3s or something (which very arguably could be legal), since those aren't originating from the abuse of someone who will most likely become scarred for life.
In South Carolina (Score:3, Informative)
If you discover illegal goodies on a machine...... (Score:3, Informative)
Only partly agree (Score:3, Informative)
Creating a record of your interactions is helpful because if they fire you depending on the state, you may be able to sue, or at least complain to HR regarding your treatment. Being able to document your interactions is helpful.
Next you give your company the opertunity to go to law enforcement. Ask your boss how long he or she needs for this process. Again document, etc. and them if necessary (and only after good-faith avenues are exhausted) do you go to law enforcement. I would give warning to the management at this point that if they do not deal with the legal implications, that all your interactions on the matter will be handed over to law enfocement too for your protection (so they don't accuse you as an accomplice).
At this point they have trouble firing until after the police are involved, but if they push back too far, then that might become part of the investigation.
My own opinion is that you should look out for the interest of the company as well as trying to see that justice is done. Of course if they refuse to take up the oppertunity, then you probably don't want to work for them. And when your story appears in the news, maybe they will think twice next time....
Act in good faith and the rest will work out...
Then again, there are illegal things (like mp3's) and illegal things (like child porn) and they are not created equal.
Re:Reason for Being Fired (Score:3, Informative)
The story submitter says that these people were fired because they gave the company a bad light, but this wouldn't even be about the company, since they were being outsourced.
The way these things usually go is like this:
Very Big Outsourcing Customer: "One of your employees embarrassed one of our employees publicly. This embarrasses us publicly. What are you going to do about it?"
Small Outsourcing Provider: "We will fire that employee, as quickly as we think we can get away with it, on any pretext we can find, and make sure he serves as an example to other employees to keep their mouths shut about you and yours."
Big companies that buy from small companies exercise the power of the purse to get their way all the time, just like the US government does to make states pass legislation it can't itself pass (viz. 21 drinking age).
For many, reporting child porn is required (Score:5, Informative)
Why shouldn't a computer support person have similar protection under the law, especially in this day and age, where so much of the porn is in digital form?
This is not about acceptable use. (Score:3, Informative)
And technically, if you have knowledge of a felony and don't report it, YOU have committed a crime, as well.
Secondly, if you are sitting in front of my computer, yes, it's my business what you do with it. You can make arguments about the quality of a work environment, sure... but ultimately, NO, you DONT have a right to do whatever you want with a computer that is not yours.
Furthermore, as someone in charge of the company's computing resource, you absolutely DO have the right to snoop around, especially when company policy dictates that computers are not for personal use and all data on all computers belong to the company.
As for people installing things you tell them not to... tighten up your controls and *prevent* them from installing it.
Tell HR (Score:4, Informative)
The policy at my employer is for us to tell our boss who then tells the VP HR.
In every case I know of the employee was fired and in one case where child porn was found the employee was arrested on the spot.
The right call at most companies is to punt the situation to HR and let them deal with it.
Two hierarchies, and a note on competence (Score:5, Informative)
the article says: "For two hours, Perry tried to fix it, uninstalling and reinstalling antivirus software, but the system continued to malfunction. The next day, Perry gave the PC to Gross to back up, fearing it might crash and lose valuable data."
Any technician that "fix things" repeatedly installing and uninstalling the same software doesn't deserve the job... but that's my opinion...
We can't really judge the competence of the IT guys from how the news article describes their actions. Even if this is InfoWeek, you still can't assume that the reporter is technically competent enough to accurately sum up the actions described to him by the people he interviewed in this case. Reporters misquote and describe poorly all the time (I've been quoted in a newspaper 3 or 4 times and I think once were my words accurately transcribed).
And to report the problem to police is wrong, there is an hierarchy in the company, if they thought that the company wasn't acting accordingly to the case, the should anonymously fill a complain with authorities...
I keep seeing people saying "These people should have gone through the proper channels." This argument doesn't fly on two counts:
1) They did in fact go to their supervisor first. Their supervisor took it up the chain and police action resulted. Once police action resulted, it became a criminal matter and anyone with actual knowledge of the crime is perfectly entitled to take what they know to the police.
2) There are two hierarchies at work here, not just one, and they operate in parallel, not serially. One is your office's corporate hierarchy, which deals with matters relating to the operation of the business. The other is the legal hierarchy, which deals with matters relating to the legality of various actions. In this case, both came into play -- but the corporate hierarchy can't trump the legal one, or preempt it.
If you want another reason why it's not only justified but required to go to the law or otherwise make sure law enforcement is informed of a felony in progress in the workplace: Your office policies are a matter of contract law between you and your employer, and contracts are not allowed to force one party to commit a crime, or become an accessory to a crime. So if a crime is being committed in the workplace, you are required to report it to the legal authorities (or see that it's reported) if you know about it, and you may be required to report it to your boss.
None of the above should be taken as saying the company wasn't in the right in firing them, but the workers are justified and required to go to the law with what they knew, even if they knew it as a result of violating corporate policy (in which case the company is justified in firing them for said violations). The company doesn't get veto rights of any kind over the reporting of a crime in the workplace.
To make an analogy, if you broke into an employee's office to play a prank, and found a rape in progress, would you call the cops, or would you call your boss (assuming your boss isn't the rapist)? At that point it ceases to matter why you were there, for purposes of who to report the crime to, but it may matter in that you might lose your job over it (which is, really, as it should be).
Enron: Re:Chain of command bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
They didn't keep her on because she did something vaguely assoicated with the right thing.. They kept her on because firing her would make it harder to keep the mess covered up. She did not have a very encouraging estimate of the half-life of your average whistle-blower.
The US Government has (or, at least, had) very elaborate procedures in place to protect whistle-blowers from retalation. I don't know if those are still in place, but that's really the only way that an employee can be sure that blowing the whistle won't result in a blown job.
Re:Nothing at all (Score:2, Informative)
As for you flaming, thats your business. You don't have to believe me though, federal regs are open to the public
Re:Nothing at all (Score:3, Informative)
But what you have utterly failed to comprehend here is the third word in your post. Government. Since you are working as an employee of a government agency then you are considerably more restricted in what you can and cannot do. If a federal employee technician sneaks a peak at someone's personal files, sees kiddie porn, and reports it, then even a mediocre attorney could twist it into an illegal search and seizure because it was an agent of the government who did it. But in the private sector you're just Joe Citizen, and it would not only be legal to report it it would be mandated by law in some states to report it.
There's a huge difference in workplace regulations between government and private sector jobs (and I have worked IT in both).
Re:#1 Reason why DVD-R is a must at work... (Score:5, Informative)
In what way does some anonymous pervert in New York downloading images that someone probably posted months or years previous from someplace hundreds or thousands of miles away constitute encouraging anything? Be serious for a second and think rationally about how these images are produced and get disseminated.
As a writer I've researched the matter, and the fact is that 99% or more of what most people would consider "child pornography" to be (hardcore sexual images of pre-adolescent or early adolescent minors) comes from two sources. Once-legal magazines and videos that were published in the 1970's before any child pornography laws existed, and which were later scanned or captured to digital format, are one source. Child molesters who film their abuse and pass it on to "friends" online are the other.
Now, with regard to the former, no one possessing such images can truly be said to have been encouraging anything--the abuse occurred 20 or 30 years previously, when the abusing was just as illegal as it is today yet the filming and distribution were not explicitly illegal yet. It is *exactly* the same situation as viewing concentration-camp footage--no one doing so is encouraging or discouraging anything. It's simply a heinous relic of the past. No one makes money off it anymore--it's no longer a commercial industry and hasn't been for 20 years and more.
Regarding the latter, yes, if you are one of the "friends" to whom the child molestor sent his imagery, then you can truly be said to be encouraging the abuse. However, most people who view child pornography view it as distant links in a tenuous chain, after it has been e-mailed between countless people and posted to websites and posted on USENET hundreds or thousands of times. This becomes a very gray area both ethically and morally, even though the law makes no distinction. Posting the material, passing it on along the tenuous chain, could reasonably be argued to be a subtle form of encouragement of what is depicted. That's an argument that makes some sense, though is still ambiguous. However, what if the college professor in this case merely downloaded the images for his own private viewing and never passed them on to anyone, never posted them anywhere, never became another link in the chain because the images stopped at his hard drive and weren't further disseminated by him?
Well, then the idea that he encouraged anything at all through his possession, but not dissemination, of the imagery, becomes far from convincing. In fact, I'd say the argument fails entirely--facelessly copying a digital file off a public forum like the Net isn't unethical *or* immoral on its face. Yet, it is still illegal, although one can clearly say it *might* be unjustly so.
There is no commercial industry in such material being "fed" by the consumer. That's a common misconception. The child molestor does what he does for the sex and power, and shares the material with people he deems as like-minded. Those people can be thought of as supporting him and the abuse, but somewhere along the line the imagery leaves the purview of him and his "friends" and just floats through the electronic ether for strangers to find.
However, what most people would consider child pornography is not the same as what is actually considered child pornography in the U.S. It's a much broader category, which includes nude images as well as hardcore videos of 16 and 17 year olds which were produced legally in parts of Europe until recently. In places where the age of consent was 16 and child pornography laws stated that child pornography constituted imagery of people below that age, adult material featuring 16 and 17 year olds was once as common and legal as adult material featuring 18 and 19 year olds is in the U.S.--and yet U.S. law makes no disctinction between this material and something produced by a child molestor raping a young girl or boy. One has to seriously question the rationale there, since
The nature of abuse (Score:2, Informative)
My father physically and sexually abused me, and took movies of me as well; this happened 30 years ago, but for all I know they may be floating around the net right now. My mother suspected the abuse, but did nothing to prevent it and only stepped in to stop it when he threatened to kill me. I don't have a relationship with either of my parents now.
I know and can admit that I'm a very screwed up person. I have seen psychiatrists and therapists throughout my life to deal with the very real emotional scars left by this abuse (and all replies stating something to the effect of "get over it" or "stop being so self-involved" will be summarily ignored). I have attempted suicide once. I have met many people who similarly suffered due to child abuse. My best friend is an abuse survivor, who thus far has received no therapy for her trauma.
Unlike most of the other screwed-up people out there, I am taking the personal responsibility to try to solve my problems. I don't have a problem with saying that it is my parents' fault for the state I'm in, but that it is *my* responsibility to get out of that state. Personal responsibility is not in vogue right now, but I hope that changes.
Here are some thoughts about abuse, pornography, and trauma.
1. Viewing sexually explicit images of children indicates a treatable disorder or sickness. Sending someone to prison for possession of child pornography is only slightly more helpful than killing that same person. Samuels (from the article) will go to prison, where he will most likely find no resources to help him with his problem, to help him understand himself why he found those images exciting, and how that kind of thinking is damaging to himself and others. He will leave prison only older but no wiser, and just as likely to desire sexual images of children again. But, probably, a great deal more careful about it.
2. For nearly all child sex offenders, the issue is totally about control. Not sex, but control. It is about the control of a defenseless individual, and the offender gets sexually excited primarily due to the control, perhaps secondarily due to the child (or not at all). This offender is not that different from someone who beats, controls, or otherwise abuses a spouse for sex (but the trauma is naturally much worse on the child than a spouse).
3. The laws in the US dealing with child abuse are abominable and out-dated. I'll stop right there with my opinion, and you can check out "Just Before Dawn" by Jan Hindman. It systematically and scientifically investigates the nature of abuse and does away with many of the myths surrounding causes of abuse, types of abuse, and resultant trauma, and points out the problems and gaping holes in our legal system and victim support system that do little to help the victim, the child.
4. I like porn, probably like many of you. While I am beginning to form what most of you would call "normal" relationships, I have relationships also with several strippers and hookers. I know something about sex workers that many of you don't, or at least aren't thinking about while you're getting off: the overwhelming majority of all porn stars, hookers, and strippers were molested as children. There was a study done several years back (sorry I don't have a reference for it) that reported that out of a few hundred porn stars surveyed, 98% of them reported being sexually abused as a child. I haven't known hundreds, but all the hookers and strippers I have really talked with have told me of their child abuse, most little or no prodding.
It's funny when you hear Greg Giraldo on "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn" make a joke about how American society is obsessed with pushing the limits, "how we want to set a land speed record in a car, see how many hot dogs you can eat in
Re:Not My Job (Score:4, Informative)
from
http://198.187.128.12/colorado/lpext.dll/Infoba
18-3-402. Sexual assault.
(d) At the time of the commission of the act, the victim is less than fifteen years of age and the actor is at least four years older than the victim and is not the spouse of the victim; or
(e) At the time of the commission of the act, the victim is at least fifteen years of age but less than seventeen years of age and the actor is at least ten years older than the victim and is not the spouse of the victim; or
from the US criminal code, http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2256.html
(8)
''child pornography'' means any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, or other means, of sexually explicit conduct, where -
(A)
the production of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct;
(B)
such visual depiction is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct;
(C)
such visual depiction has been created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct; or
(D)
such visual depiction is advertised, promoted, presented, described, or distributed in such a manner that conveys the impression that the material is or contains a visual depiction of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and
**End of law quoting
Note that it would be COMPLETELY legal for 2 14 year olds to have sex. However, I do think that if another 14 year old was to photograph this, then that would be child porn, even though the act itself is completely legal. This is incredible to me, that an act can be legal, and a recording of that act, with the conscent of all to be featured in that recording is illegal!
Also, these laws do not take into acount the age of the person who posses the child pornography. What if a person who is 17 has pictures of other 17 year olds having sex with other 17 year olds? It would be legal for all of those people to have sex, but it is a FELONY for some of the latter to make a picture, and give it to the first person? That is really incredible.
Re:#1 Reason why DVD-R is a must at work... (Score:3, Informative)
Article is here [eloquentapathy.com].