(no subject)
I'm on the Computerworld.com mailing list, and today received the following:
Ethically dicey situations
IT staffers often see personal and private information as they go about fixing computers or moving digital data as part of their jobs. Computerworld is working on a story about IT and ethics. We're looking for real-life stories in which an IT employee has, in the course of his everyday job, discovered that co-workers or higher-ups were spreading secrets, ignoring regulations, flouting company policies or breaking the law. Tell us at ethicstales@gmail.com please include a safe reply address to correspond with our reporter in strictest confidence.
First, I sent them a copy of my Blog Post, " When They Throw the Party" about a woman who was fired for circulating salary information that she wasn't even supposed to have.
Below is another account I'm planning to send them.
The names below have been changed to protect the victim.
I was working for a company known as FinancialCampus. The the company still exists, but only as line item and a few servers for a larger firm. To the best of my knowledge, none of the employees involved in these incidents are still with the company.
Frank, the Network Administrator, did a side business fixing up the personal computers of employees. By "Side business" I mean he would accept things like a six pack as payment, but he did all of this on company time and with company resources.
One thing he did was set up an old computer as a department MP3 server. Any MP3s he found on the computers he fixed or anywhere on the network were copied to this server and made available to his friends in IT. He did the same thing with any pornography.
One day, Anne brought in her personal computer for him to upgrade Internet Explorer. This was actually work related, as she did a lot of course editing from home and needed a newer version of IE. The next day, Frank called several people over to his desk and started showing folks a slide show of images he'd copied from her computer. They were shots of Anne at a bachelorette party where she gotten VERY friendly with the male stripper.
Frank copied all the photos to the departmental porn server.
The following week, once he'd returned Anne's computer, I deleted her photos from the server. Frank was furious when he found out they were gone, as his abysmal backup practices meant he had no other copies. Frank figured out I was the one who'd deleted the photos, and promptly changed all the passwords so I no longer had access to the server.
The CTO, who outranked me, knew about the entire incident and had been among those laughing at the photos. He was of the opinion that anyone who worked on a computer should feel free to copy any data they wanted off it.
After getting lectured for "Hacking" the Network administrator's Porn server, I went to the company owner and told him about the incident. He was furious, not about the invasion of privacy, the fact the Network Admin was searching computers for porn when he was supposed to be working or the fact that people were looking at porn during office hours.
No, he was upset about the copyright liability related to the MP3s. He'd never cared about the ten unlicensed copied of SQL Server Enterprise he's had the Network Admin install, or the 30 unlicensed copies of Office 97, but the MP3s were an issue.
He had the MP3 server shut down.
I told Anne what had happened, and she said she didn't want to pursue the matter further, as she needed the job.
Ethically dicey situations
IT staffers often see personal and private information as they go about fixing computers or moving digital data as part of their jobs. Computerworld is working on a story about IT and ethics. We're looking for real-life stories in which an IT employee has, in the course of his everyday job, discovered that co-workers or higher-ups were spreading secrets, ignoring regulations, flouting company policies or breaking the law. Tell us at ethicstales@gmail.com please include a safe reply address to correspond with our reporter in strictest confidence.
First, I sent them a copy of my Blog Post, " When They Throw the Party" about a woman who was fired for circulating salary information that she wasn't even supposed to have.
Below is another account I'm planning to send them.
The names below have been changed to protect the victim.
I was working for a company known as FinancialCampus. The the company still exists, but only as line item and a few servers for a larger firm. To the best of my knowledge, none of the employees involved in these incidents are still with the company.
Frank, the Network Administrator, did a side business fixing up the personal computers of employees. By "Side business" I mean he would accept things like a six pack as payment, but he did all of this on company time and with company resources.
One thing he did was set up an old computer as a department MP3 server. Any MP3s he found on the computers he fixed or anywhere on the network were copied to this server and made available to his friends in IT. He did the same thing with any pornography.
One day, Anne brought in her personal computer for him to upgrade Internet Explorer. This was actually work related, as she did a lot of course editing from home and needed a newer version of IE. The next day, Frank called several people over to his desk and started showing folks a slide show of images he'd copied from her computer. They were shots of Anne at a bachelorette party where she gotten VERY friendly with the male stripper.
Frank copied all the photos to the departmental porn server.
The following week, once he'd returned Anne's computer, I deleted her photos from the server. Frank was furious when he found out they were gone, as his abysmal backup practices meant he had no other copies. Frank figured out I was the one who'd deleted the photos, and promptly changed all the passwords so I no longer had access to the server.
The CTO, who outranked me, knew about the entire incident and had been among those laughing at the photos. He was of the opinion that anyone who worked on a computer should feel free to copy any data they wanted off it.
After getting lectured for "Hacking" the Network administrator's Porn server, I went to the company owner and told him about the incident. He was furious, not about the invasion of privacy, the fact the Network Admin was searching computers for porn when he was supposed to be working or the fact that people were looking at porn during office hours.
No, he was upset about the copyright liability related to the MP3s. He'd never cared about the ten unlicensed copied of SQL Server Enterprise he's had the Network Admin install, or the 30 unlicensed copies of Office 97, but the MP3s were an issue.
He had the MP3 server shut down.
I told Anne what had happened, and she said she didn't want to pursue the matter further, as she needed the job.