College Fires IT Admin, Loses Access To Google Email, Successfully Sues IT Admin For $250K (theregister.co.uk) 277
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Shortly after the American College of Education (ACE) in Indiana fired IT administrator Triano Williams in April, 2016, it found that it no longer had any employees with admin access to the Google email service used by the school. In a lawsuit [PDF] filed against Williams in July, 2016, the school alleges that it asked Williams to return his work laptop, which was supposed to have the password saved. But when Williams did so in May that year, the complaint says, the computer was returned wiped, with a new operating system, and damaged to the point it could no longer be used. ACE claimed that its students could not access their Google-hosted ACE email accounts or their online coursework. The school appealed to Google, but Google at the time refused to help because the ACE administrator account had been linked to William's personal email address. "By setting up the administrator account under a non-ACE work email address, Mr Williams violated ACE's standard protocol with respect to administrator accounts," the school's complaint states. "ACE was unaware that Mr Williams' administrator account was not linked to his work address until after his employment ended." According to the school's court filing, Williams, through his attorney, said he would help the school reinstate its Google administrator account, provided the school paid $200,000 to settle his dispute over the termination of his employment. That amount is less than half the estimated $500,000 in harm the school says it has suffered due to its inability to access its Google account, according to a letter from William's attorney in Illinois, Calvita J Frederick. Frederick's letter claims that another employee set up the Google account and made Williams an administrator, but not the controlling administrator. It says the school locked itself out of the admin account through too many failed password attempts. Williams, in a counter-suit [PDF] filed last month, claims his termination followed from a pattern of unlawful discrimination by the school in the wake of a change in management. Pointing to the complaint she filed with the court in Illinois, Frederick said Williams wrote a letter [PDF] to a supervisor complaining about the poor race relations at the school and, as a result of that letter, he was told he had to relocate to Indianapolis.
default judgment (Score:5, Informative)
They got a default judgment against him, they did not win on the merits of the case. Default judgments are not so final when the other party wants to fight about it some more.
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As a ex-employee he is fully entitled to be a big a dick as he wants with regard to his ex-employer. Not a good idea as it damages you image for future employment but you are now free and the company can only suspend payments to you. What was on the notebook or not on the notebook is truly imaginary.
The reality is google were the dicks for not promptly and properly assessing the case and returning service. The claim should be against google and not the ex-employee. The university in turn should wake up to
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It was clear he had taken company computer without permit and destroyed property(the data within) that was not his(even if he had assumed he could take it and wiped it at once just to not have anything of the school), if you want to leave with company equipment after your employment make sure you have it in letter that you might take it.
Goggle being a dick is good, it shows that they care about the security and will take time if you screw up whoever you are.
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Is it?
I mean, as a sysadmin, he might have a work laptop at home in case he needed to access work from home. Given he was FIRED, I doubt there was enough time to go and reclaim and return all hardware. Heck, maybe security accidentally packed it into his box - it's not like he's going to have t
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My statement was more about principle, rather than this particular incident. In this case the person admitted to having the password and was seeking to extort payment, that is problematic (the information was not theirs to sell, they did steal the by denying access to it by the proper owners). The hardware, well, the employer has to prove it is theirs and the contractual conditions under which they gave the employee that hardware, before they can try to claim it back. Obviously they did not simply claim it
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My statement was more about principle, rather than this particular incident. In this case the person admitted to having the password and was seeking to extort payment, that is problematic (the information was not theirs to sell, they did steal the by denying access to it by the proper owners). The hardware, well, the employer has to prove it is theirs and the contractual conditions under which they gave the employee that hardware, before they can try to claim it back. Obviously they did not simply claim it was stolen, hence it ownership is questionable, they can only really sue for it's return. Google is still largely at fault for the problem, they simply did the cheap thing, fobbed it off and failed to deal with it properly.
No, he did not admit to having the password. The contingent offer to help was to work with Google to get the password reset. King Richard move for sure, asking for 200K.
He worked entirely remotely and was the last IT employee remaining when they demanded he move to Indianapolis.
Apparently, there was also a racial discrimination back and forth with lawyers involved, prior to filing suit. The 200k demand was in light of the perceived discrimination.
He returned the laptop when asked for it.
This is not a cle
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it would be entirely reasonable to wipe it to eliminate any possibility of using it to access work materials illegally.
MAYBE. But their former employee is still under the obligation to deliver all their company security credentials and information; passwords, etc, in their brain or in their possession, required for their operation to continue after the employee is released. And acting to destroy any of the above would clearly be malicious justifying charges against their former employee.
Also MAYBE
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[...] destroyed property(the data within) [...]
I routinely wiped the PCs I've used before returning to an employer. Those PCs are reimaged anyway. The Fortune 500 companies I've worked for stored user data on the network, which I leave alone as my data is just spreadsheets that tracked my daily assignments.
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Which, as an IT administrator, should have been his job?
Re:default judgment (Score:4, Insightful)
No organization should be entirely dependent on the employment of one person, as that organization suffers if that one person is not there. This particular organization failed to structure itself this way, and as a consequence paid a price for it, and that price should not be further borne by the now-former employee.
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They got a default judgment on his merit of being an asshole, that's for sure.
If I wasn't an asshole, I would be working in IT.
What an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
ALL sysadmins have thoughts of what they would do as "revenge" for getting fired. Hoarding passwords is something that has occurred to all of us, at one time or another. It's such an easy thing to do.
But you can't do that stuff. It's unethical, and immature, and unprofessional. Not to mention, you'll end up getting sued, and YOU WILL LOSE.
This guy sounds like a whiny little bitch, and he never should've been hired in the first place. When you hire sysadmins, you need to hire people that seem trustworthy, first and foremost.
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ALL sysadmins have thoughts of what they would do as "revenge" for getting fired.
It is never crossed my mind so not quite all.
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Good plausible deniability there. I see what you are doing... Sure... You've "never" thought about it once...
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You have far less reason to doubt his claim than the "ALL sysadmins" claim which, since it's an absolute, is undoubtedly false.
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There are two thoughts any sysadmin should have:
Then think how many of those things you could do by accident if someone persuaded you they needed your help whilst drunk or, in many cases, merely by being knocked down by a bus and spending three months in hospital. The end result of this thinking should be.
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A post like that deserves a real name next to it, not A/C, so you can be recognized for a clear, well-thought out response.
Re:What an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
O COME ON...SERIOUSLY? You have such little integrity that you actually believe that anyone who has ever been a sysadmin covets keeping passwords or even fantasizes about it as revenge?
You know its been said that the 'measure of a man is not what you do when people are watching but what you do when nobody is watching'...I really hope I never interact with you.
There are still people in this world that have morals/personal integrity that they live by both in thought & deed regardless of who may or may not 'know' they are doing so.
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O COME ON...SERIOUSLY? You have such little integrity that you actually believe that anyone who has ever been a sysadmin covets keeping passwords or even fantasizes about it as revenge?
You know its been said that the 'measure of a man is not what you do when people are watching but what you do when nobody is watching'...I really hope I never interact with you.
There are still people in this world that have morals/personal integrity that they live by both in thought & deed regardless of who may or may not 'know' they are doing so.
Not only that but if you do have these thoughts then perhaps you should take a step back and re-evaluate your life and line of work? Sounds like it is time to get another job if any employee gets this angry with her or her employer or frustrations with the day to day job.
I have never thought about doing such a thing in the I.T. field. However, I have had angry thoughts about these things on past employers. I quit these jobs as I figured at this point I may not be a good fit for the company culture or positi
Re:What an idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to make it harder for somebody to break into your house - what is the first step ?
Oh right, it's asking "How could I break into it right now".
Thinking of how one could take revenge does not imply any desire to act on those thoughts - it implies doing your due diligence as an admin by looking for weaknesses in the setup that need to be fixed and fixing them before somebody else can exploit them.
So, sorry, but if you've never sat down and thought "how could I take revenge on this company if they fuck me over" - you are not doing your JOB. Because it means, if somebody else (rightly or wrongly) feels they have been fucked over, you won't know what revenge they may want to take, and you won't have put the systems in place to prevent it.
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These days a lot of people seem to be worried about being replaced, perhaps by offshoring or just by someone cheaper. In that case, there is little incentive to make the system robust enough to survive your exit from the organization.
It's long been the dream of everyone in tech. Become so essential to the business, usually by being the only one who can perform a vital function with no possibility of replacement within standard notice periods.
Good wages and conditions are a great insurance policy and motivat
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Has it ever crossed your mind what would happen if you got hit by a bus? It sounds like the school didn't have proper succession protocols in place.
They fired the admin. From that moment forward he wasn't in charge of doing anything for them. If they needed access to something they should have thought of that before hand.
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Has it ever crossed your mind what would happen if you got hit by a bus?
All the time.
As a sysadmin most of my job is planning for contingencies and that is one of them. The hardest part of that is making sure that I keep my contingency up to date with all of the correct credentials needed AND that someone can access and implement it.
Every now and then I hit up the people responsible just to make sure they can access everything they need.
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Well it sounds like the guy in the story didn't do that. He probably should be reprimanded or fired or something. They just need to be sure to do it AFTER he fixes the situation because they're screwed if they do it before. Oh wait...
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They have a second set of staff? Sounds like they could cut staff in half, outsource it to h1b and then fire you to cut costs by 75% over all.
No second set of staff, the ones we have are well trained and unlikely to all get hit by a bus at the same. Most of them could step in and take over my duties at any time and I can step in and do their jobs as well. Even so, we keep a good repository of documentation and procedures so any half decent sysadmin can at least keep things going by himself until he gets the hang of things and a new team gets put together.
I even have all of the documents put together as to what sorts of people whit what skills a
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Allowing one person to have the power to cripple your organization is a recipe for disaster.
In every article I've read that's exactly what happened with this organization. They fired everyone for refusing to locate to Indianapolis.
He was the last one standing and they fired him then Administration tried to play IT and log into their old accounts and got themselves locked out.
At my job the second I'm no longer employed your IT problems become not my problem.
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Mod parent up. Guy may have been a jerk after the fact, but the company put their foot in the bear trap willingly.
Never crossed your mind? (Score:2)
Really? That makes me doubt you are a good IT tech, because you don't think of all possible options. It's fundamental to the job of IT to consider as many possibilities...
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I'm with you. I left my sys admin job with everything documented and in good order. Because I was actually good at my job. And I knew I wouldn't be fired or have a hard time finding a job.
Just be good at your job.
Good at your job is fine if you are leaving and looking for another job. When you get sideswiped by idiots a few rungs up on you it's a different story. When they view contracts as challenges in how hard they can screw you, that's even worse.
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Then leave.
I have been there done that. Having a negative attitude and being bitter is grounds for termination.
Even if you try to suck it up your language, mannerisms, and reactions to stresses show someone no one wants to do business with. Guess who then gets the poor performance evaluation or let go? YOU.
Part of being competent at your job is loving your company and what you do. It is part of integrity. Yes, I have experienced bad things both sides from me my employer to myself reacting angrily. At this s
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Part of being competent at your job is loving your company and what you do.
What kind of Stockholm Syndrome bullshit is this?
I'm good at what I do. I enjoy what I do. I'm on good terms with my employer but I do not love it. It's misguided and unhealthy to love a company. A company won't love you back. A company can't love you back.
LK
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Not Stockholm. Stockholm is BE HAPPY YOu HAVE a job!
I am advocating leaving if you are not passionate as those are always top performers who are always pleasant when shit hits the fan rather than whine and make excuses.
You can say that is screwed up but it's reality unfortunately. Who wants to be forced
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This has been how I leave jobs. I delete my own access prior to walking out the door.
My own access is just standard user rights like everyone else. The administrator account(s) remain. However, admin accounts are never enabled for remote access.
And in fact you do the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a plan should you get killed or otherwise be unable to provide the passwords. Where I work, in addition to there being more than one IT staff, all the passwords are safely locked away where the Dean can get at them, if needed. We make sure that even if we are all gone, whoever comes after can get access.
These days the university has policies to that effect but we did it before then because that is what you do. You have a disaster plan, and that plan includes what happens if you aren't around.
Re:And in fact you do the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
When I go on vacation, I like to go places where there is often no phone or internet service. If there is anything that my department cannot handle while I'm out, that's a problem. It's a problem I fix as soon as possible. It's been quite a few years since anything that "needed" my attention turned out to be something besides "we didn't bother reading the documentation." I expect a backlog of issues they couldn't handle as efficiently as I could, but nothing they couldn't do if they just read and learned more.
My predecessor once bragged that my employer would never be able to keep him from being able to log back in. He left on "good" terms, so I didn't have to immediately ensure that wasn't the case. That was nice since it did take me more than a month to ensure his access was truly disabled without interrupting any services. My replacement shouldn't need more than a day.
If I'm ever hurt, I expect my job to be waiting for me when I get back. I don't expect it to visit me in the hospital or at my home when I'm recuperating.
If I win the lottery* one day, I expect to call HR and let them know that I'll come in for an exit interview after a few months in a tropical resort. I expect them to miss me and need to pay three times my salary for my replacements. I expect to get invited to office Christmas parties.
*I don't expect to win the lottery. I don't buy lottery tickets, but according to the way I understand math, my odds of winning are exactly the same for planning purposes.
Once in a while I get a call from somebody who wants to sell IT in a box type outsourcing. I don't dismiss the idea out of hand because there's a lot of scut work I wish I didn't have to spend time on, but so far, I can't rationalize the cost. I know they can't replace us, but sometimes I think it would be nice to separate our true work from the work that just fills the low priority moments. There's a very slim chance that somebody with a poor sense of what we actually do will get one of those calls and think they can save money by replacing us. In our offices, I expect that idea to be dismissed immediately, but maybe personnel will change or somebody will make a stupid decision and I'll get to hand over the passwords to my replacement. My next employer will have a dozen references vouching for me and in three months I'll get offered my old job with a salary high enough to make me, at least briefly, consider taking them up on it.
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A stored-in-a-safe envelope is still a single point of attack, albeit good for emergencies. If you want to distribute the password and know you have time to recover it, see Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme [point-at-infinity.org] or overview [stackexchange.com] for how this would work. Basically: for T total users force a quorum subset Q of
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ALL sysadmins have thoughts of what they would do as "revenge" for getting fired. Hoarding passwords is something that has occurred to all of us, at one time or another. It's such an easy thing to do.
But you can't do that stuff. It's unethical, and immature, and unprofessional. Not to mention, you'll end up getting sued, and YOU WILL LOSE.
This guy sounds like a whiny little bitch, and he never should've been hired in the first place. When you hire sysadmins, you need to hire people that seem trustworthy, first and foremost.
Look the issue here is simple:
1) Their IT management sucked and he was allowed to use a personal email account for his admin duties despite their "rules" (rules can always be made up after the fact). So I would fire all the way up the chain of command to the CIO/CTO.
2) They _fired_ him. The caveat to that statement is he wiped a laptop that was not HIS property.
If he had simply returned the laptop and refused to help them, no harm no foul - you do not owe your past employers ANYTHING especially if they fire
Re:What an idiot (Score:5, Informative)
That wasn't really the case here. The IT shop apparently had a crew of a dozen or so people. They all had admin rights on the Google domain plus some root admin account. When they fired Williams, (according to the court docs), the laptop was sent back with the root account set to auto-login. Apparently the company they had outsourced the IT to either wiped the machine or did something to it where the root account got locked out or the password changed. The only other account that had admin access was William's personal google account (which was supposed to be removed from admin rights).
He didn't want to work with them anymore to help them recover their admin account, which they screwed up. They ended up suing him. He ended up losing because he didn't show up to all the court dates, because he couldn't travel to Indiana because he was not able to take his kid with him to Indiana (because of a ruling from family court).
If he would have shown up to court, he actually would have won. It was the school's responsibility to secure their property before firing him (including logins, etc.) They didn't, and they can't expect him to even answer his phone after they separated. He was actually in the right, by law, to ask for compensation for working with them, as a new contract work for hire. This is pretty standard case law, and the LRB has postings about it all the time. Now, he could have been in the wrong if there was a policy about not associating the domain admin account with your personal account, but that clearly wasn't the case since it was well known that it was done and they didn't bat an eyelash about it.
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I have a similar story if a very minor one. I was visiting a friend in Ottawa, and wasn't sure where he lived. I thought I found the place, but prior to parking around back I parked out front to go knock on the door to make sure it was the right building. I didn't notice but I happened to be parked in front of a fire hydrant (which is illegal). So my buddy came to the door and we were chatting for a few moments and he mentioned that he though I was getting a parking ticket behind me. So I walked over and ex
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Actually it's worse... or rather stupider. He offered to fix it (which really is just involves filling out and submitting a web form) if school settled a lawsuit for $200,000.
Now let's assume this guy is totally in the right as far as the claims in his lawsuit are concerned. That doesn't give him the right to hold his employers' systems hostage until he gets what he wants. Those systems still belong to them.
What was he thinking? Of course the courts are going to order him to hand over the metaphorical ke
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Another way of looking at it is that the school needed to employ him again to help them recover from their mistake. It was their mistake, they locked themselves out through incompetence (relying on auto-login). He declined to accept their contract due to the pending lawsuit against them, but offered to reconsider if they settled it.
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Not according to the summary, but let's go with your interpretation of events. He wanted $200,000 in consulting fees for what? Spending literally one minute filling in a web form changing the admin's email address on an account. Still stupid: he should have demanded $2 million, because that's a never-get-hired-again dick move.
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ALL sysadmins have thoughts of what they would do as "revenge" for getting fired.
Whenever I get let go on a contract, I never consider revenge. I feel sorry for that company letting go of one their best IT workers and look forward to the 40% raise at the next company.
Re: What an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe because it's the ethical thing to do, and perhaps he'll want to work in IT some time in the future. But that ship has probably already sailed.
My guess is that this guy is in his early 20's, first IT job probable, and doesn't realize the ramifications of what he's doing, career-wise.
I'm old enough to have been laid off several times, and most of those times I forgot to document something or whatever, and I helped out my former comrades when asked, well after my termination, because you build a rep in this business and this childish garbage will follow you around forever.
The idiot is elsewhere (Score:2)
If it is an outsourced service it should be to a provider that will listen to the person paying the bills instead of refusing to deal with anyone other than the ex-employee.
When something like this escalates to the point where someone is going to jail I'd say there are multiple fuckups and a scapegoat who probably deserves jail far less than some of the others involved.
After the ridiculous
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I totally agree with you!
You need to be professional and think about your career. You train to keep your skills up to date, you maintain a network of contacts in the field and work on having a good reputation. Why sabotage that work with a vengeful act that will probably hurt you more than your target. You might even feel bad about it later when you reflect upon what you did.
He was probably was young and still thinking "job" and not "career".
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Right.. because simply filling in a few blanks that you, yourself left (to help out previous co-workers you might even get along with fine)... vs doing an entire job based off 1 day's work is EXACTLY the same thing. *sigh*
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He didn't blackmail anyone. Don't be such a cunt.
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If policy is to save admins passwords on laptops then the school is at fault for having dumb policies.
If only there were experts which could be hired to be on staff to address these kinds of silly policies. Shame the entire industry has no such people.
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It was not his property to wipe.
Unless it was. Bring Your Own Device is a thing now despite obvious complications like this.
Re:What an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like someone else setting up the account used Williams's personal email to link him in, and he never removed it (likely because a lockout could ensue). I am not so sure that he is really to blame here.
Any equipment that has seen any mixed personal/business use has always been forensically wiped prior to returning to my employers.
None have ever complained.
Hoarding passwords is a dick move and not okay.
Even as PO'd as I am at my former employer, if I was in a similar situation I would have made them the offer of:
re-instate my work domain account and email, give me a cube for a week, and pay me as a contractor on a 1099 for that week.
In exchange I'll use my personal email account that someone else (apparently) linked to unwind this and remove my access after adding someone else and verifying their access works.
That is reasonable and prevents me from working for free, disentangles the mess, and most importantly to the court system, doesn't look like an extortion attempt.
Re:What an idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes that's the right way, but in this particular case it looks like something caused a lockout and his personal email is the failsafe. While that should *never* happen, it did. I would then handle it as I said.
As to the escort out mentality: I agree with it. of 100 people you let go, 99 can be saints, but that 1 devil will cost you more than the 200 weeks of pay you "lost" by just paying them not to show up their last pay period.
Re: What an idiot (Score:3)
Any equipment that has seen any mixed personal/business use has always been forensically wiped prior to returning to my employers.
None have ever complained.
Folks should be careful when they do this. In the US legal framework, a personal asset that has been heavily tainted by business use is basically treated as a business asset. The only obligation the business has is to pay fair value of the personal asset.
So wiping corporate data to remove your personal data should only be done if that is OK with the company. Removing your personal data is fine. Not mixing personal and corporate data is best.
This doesn't apply to most other countries that lean the other wa
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This is corp property I'm talking about no less. /. here.
All my employers have had a "Personal use" policy that I strictly follow, e.g. my posing on
I never store business critical *anything* on my computer, nor do I store personal critical anything on my computer.
My laptop is used as a disposable asset; upon return it's wiped.
That said, I think the only reason I've never had grief about said policy is that my last email to my boss has always been the UNC path to all data, source, docs, etc.
Re: What an idiot (Score:5, Funny)
>What would have happened if he'd been hit by a bus?
To answer your question I set up an experiment in which over 3000 people were hit by a bus under laboratory conditions. I carefully monitored the outcomes in all cases and can report my preliminary findings. With 99% probability, when a human being is hit by a bus, that human dies. The full paper will be submitted to NATURE for peer review and publication later this year after dealing with some anomalies in the test data (in one case... the bus died).
Terry Childs... (Score:2, Interesting)
Reminds me of Terry Childs.... Not sure it's so malicious as of yet. There are a lot of idiots who can spin their own lack of technical knowledge into supposed misdeeds.
Sometimes people just assume you are to blame because you were simply the one who "did something" to the machine before they came along and messed it up.
I had a boss who was given my password to the company laptop but contacted me accusing me of locking him out after employment because the machine booted with numlock emulation and if you ar
Dude plays race case, threatens upper management.. (Score:5, Interesting)
>> The culture of American College of Education (ACE) has become very toxic over the last 6 months and seems to affect only the African American demographic of our college. I know our HR manager is relatively new and may not know the history of the college regarding a few past discriminatory practices that were resolved by legal actions...I suggest that all members of upper and middle management at the company take diversity and sensitivity training.
How does that read? "I want less racist managers and if you don't make me happy I may find an attorney to help me play the race card..."
Maybe he had a point, but I could understand how a lot of people in the college might be looking to drive him out, regardless of his IT skills (or lack thereof).
Re:Dude plays race case, threatens upper managemen (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it was a legitimate complaint?
Holding passwords hostage isn't the answer, but nothing inherently wrong with bringing attorneys into it. No company wants to hire or even interview tech workers over 45, and Slashdot is happy to talk about lawsuits with regards to that issue.
Re:Dude plays race case, threatens upper managemen (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe that's because the majority of slashdotters don't need to worry about waking up black or female. Waking up old, however, awaits us all...
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Speak for yourself. I plan on dying a young 400 pound hacker good at cyber.
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Maybe that's because the majority of slashdotters don't need to worry about waking up black or female. Waking up old, however, awaits us all...
Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.
And I strongly disagree with the GPs assertion that there is "nothing inherently wrong with bringing attorneys into it."
That seems to be such a pervasive sentiment that it has made our society one that actually believes we need lawyers to behave like reasonable people. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy that has been created by - you guessed it - lawyers.
Re:Dude plays race case, threatens upper managemen (Score:5, Insightful)
That disclaimer having been made, this sounds like a situation where the sys admin became a malcontent because he was left out of the loop on a lot of things,,,something which often happens when someone works remotely. He claims they refused to promote him to management, likely because he was working remotely and they did not think it was practical for him to manage people he never saw (they may have been wrong, but I understand why they felt that way). As for the secret meetings he alleges, I doubt they were secret. There were probably a bunch of meetings they did not mention to him because they were not directly related to his job and not worth setting up a way for him to attend remotely. Then they probably forgot to include him in some meetings they should have because A) he worked remotely and B) they had not invited him to the other meetings (the latter which there was no reason to include him in).
Having read the whole story, it reads like there was a change in administration and the new administration did not like that Williams worked remotely and was trying to find a way to get rid of him if he would not move to where he could actually come into the office (something he could not do). I think he read the writing on the wall (Sidenote: by the time the writing is on the wall, being able to read it does you no good) and wrote his letter in an attempt to intimidate them into leaving things the way they were.
My skepticism for his account of things is not because I do not think it could have happened that way. My skepticism is because the story is almost entirely from his side of things and everything still has explanations that do not require malice on the part of the Institution or its staff.
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If you read his lawsuit (linked in TFA), he claims that he was given management duties without the matching promotion. He also claims there were typical pressure/bullying tactics like making him account for his time in 15 minute blocks. And this was the guy who apparently held the keys to the (email) kingdom...
Of course he might be lying, but it would be pretty dumb to file a lawsuit making easily verifiable claims like the 15 minute thing or the nature of his work, which will be documented on both sides, i
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need more details (Score:5, Insightful)
If his account wasn't the controlling account, and the school really did lock themselves out, they started the problem. If he used rng for a good strong master organizational email password, and it got wiped as the laptop got returned, he may not have it to return. (one wonders about the state of the school's backups...) As an employee you can't just assume the school is going to go retard on you and require you to provide copies of stuff they ought to already have. To the school's credit, he ought not to have wiped the computer before returning it, that's his bad.
When I last changed jobs, it was well known that I had copies of work-related data on personal drives, as I mirrored them to several around the shop for everyone to use the tools and data on. I was asked to delete that data on my personal drives when I left, which I did. I found out months later that the GM went on a wiping spree, intent on nuking ALL the service drives. (bright lad, that one) I was asked later by the SM if I had that data. nope. The SM finally found one last service drive in an old service machine that had been replaced and mothballed, saving enormous headaches. If they'd have lost that data for good, tough. NOT my problem.
It does sound like Williams isn't going out of his way to be cooperative, but it also sounds like the school is expecting more than they are entitled to in the way of cooperation. Will need to get more details on both sides. Even if he "violated policy" while he was working there, that'll be tough to find any legal liability over. You fired him, that's what you do when they violate policy. That doesn't also mean you're allowed to fine, sue, or break his knuckles after you've parted ways.
I just want to know if the Laptop was REALLY (Score:2)
wiped and disabled, or if he just ran Linux or *BSD on it and everything is still there, they just figure "not Windows or Mac, ergo broken, he must be trying to fvck us."
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Last day is this Friday (Score:2, Insightful)
Last day is this Friday, and I am feverishly working to plug as many holes as I can. What management doesn't realize is we don't have a leak so much as it turns out the boat was made out of salt and it has been raining for six months.
I have no idea if they'll be contacting me after I leave to see if I can throw them a life preserver. But I do know this: the price of life preservers is going up.
That said, I'm not scuttling the lifeboats, but if I were, I'd deny it and try not to get caught in the act.
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Last day is this Friday, and I am feverishly working to plug as many holes as I can.
Ugh. TMI, dude.
Forma Pauperis (Score:2)
What good is Software as a Service (Score:5, Insightful)
If the company providing it can't/won't reset your accounts when a manager leaves. That's the point of paying Google bucks for this.
As tempting as it may sound.... (Score:2)
...you don't get to run off with the root passwords. They are not your property, and you will end up on the wrong end of the shit stick.
Got what they deserved.. (Score:2)
Makes every IT person look unprofessional (Score:2)
Whenever I see stories like this, and there are a lot of them, I'm reminded that the executive crowd is seeing the same news. Has anyone ever stopped to consider the possibility that part of the offshoring and outsourcing has been to mitigate against the "anti-social jerk sysadmin" issues? I'm not perfect, but one thing I do as part of my job is to be as professional as possible. There are always bad apples, but it's rare to see stories about a lawyer stealing client funds or a doctor intentionally mistreat
Re:"Race Relations" (Score:5, Insightful)
Compare this generation to the generation that fought WWII.
You mean the generation who literally, in the truest sense of the word, would attack a black guy if he was talking to a white woman? The ones who tried to bar blacks from integrating into a white university and which the National Guard had to come out and protect the kids who only wanted an education?
You mean that generation?
Re:"Race Relations" (Score:5, Insightful)
>You mean the generation who literally, in the truest sense of the word, would attack a black guy if he was talking to a white woman?
Not everyone back then was a Democrat, dude.
Re:"Race Relations" (Score:5, Funny)
>You mean the generation who literally, in the truest sense of the word, would attack a black guy if he was talking to a white woman?
Not everyone back then was a Democrat, dude.
Yesterday's Democrat (or Republican) is not anything like today's.
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Applying contemporary morality to situations and circumstances of the past is like saying someone was a bad doctor in the 1950s for not sending a patient in for an MRI.
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Plus, the point wasn't to assert moral superiority, but rather to point out that nostalgia goggles te
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And not just from "bad to good", really just towards different.
Consider the attitude of the WWII generation to torture and the attitude of the current one fed on "24" and similar shit. In many ways the people 100 years ago would judge us and find us wanting. That was one of the minor themes of John Birmingham's World War 2.1 books which open with a 21st century naval fleet ending up in the middle of WWII.
Re:"Race Relations" (Score:4, Funny)
Eeeeehhh WRONG !
At every point in history, no matter how bad society looks to us, there are voices sounding LIKE us. For every past evil there were people speaking out against it AS IT HAPPENED. So there was NEVER a time it was OKAY to do those things and there were ALWAYS people saying it's not.
Columbus set up a slave trade and committed several mass slaughters as soon as he met native Americans. The death toll from his actions is estimated at 5 million people in 50 years.
BUT At exactly the SAME time that was happening: Bartolome De Las Casas was out there saving their lives. Politically advocating for them to have equal rights, calling for an end to slavery.
No, these things were always evil, and there were ALWAYS people saying so. All that changed is that it took decades (or centuries) for the majority to listen to them.
But being the ones who are following in the spirit of those who demanded better of mankind, and demanding better of our own peers now... no my friend, we will NOT be looked at the same way. Homophobes and Transphobes will. We will be looked at like I look at Las Casas.
When it comes to how you treat other people there IS a clear morally superior and morally inferior line - and that line is clearly defined and has been for 3000 years. You're just standing on the wrong side of it and you imagine everybody else does too.
You think there were no whites in America in the 1940's and 1950s who were utterly disgusted with the behaviour you're describing ? You think there weren't some white people on the busses with the freedom riders, standing in solidarity with them, getting beaten up with them ?
They are always there. A few months ago in South Africa when black student protestors marched on parliament to protest fee increases - a row of white volunteers walked at the front of the march, not because they were in charge: but so if the police got brutal there would be white people between them, they were there as voluntary human shields.
So - go fuck yourself telling me this generation isn't capable and prepared to fight, not prepared to face severe violence from deadly armed enemies (that same policemen, remember, were the ones who brutally massacred 34 strking miners just brief while before). This generation is happy to be human shields to protect those without a voice so they can speak up. To put their lives on the line so that others can get a chance to be heard.
There has never been a generation MORE like the greatest generation than this one. The babyboomers were a disgraceful bunch of fat slobs who were extremely happy to use every government handout they could get (or invent) to raise their own lives up, and then dismantled those very same systems so that the next generation wouldn't have them (because once they didn't need them anymore, they didn't want ot fund them anymore). Now considering that they only got to use these things in the first place because the greatest generation WAS funding it - they were the exact opposite of that generation.
The only thing that changed - is what they consider worth fighting for, the world is different. They don't want to kill Muslims because they know you're an idiot to be afraid of Muslims. They don't want to bash gays, and they don't care if their friend has a penis under her dress. They do care about you not making her difficult life harder and they WILL fight to protect her.
And if need be - they will stand in front of her so you have to shoot them first.
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Re: Blacks are sociopaths (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Blacks are sociopaths (Score:5, Interesting)
That's been my experience as well.
Actually, when I got fired (after training my H1-B "assistant") most of my things were already in a box in security's arms by the time I got out of the office - barely took five minutes too. They pretended my trackball was their property as well, never got it back. Old walkman either.
Two months later I get an email demanding my personal (not work) email password because they'd occasionally sent me documents through it - even though they were warned not to do so - and had lost some. Not "could you send us some of those old docs we'd mailed to your personal address", let alone a "please?", no, a piece of snailmail from legal accusing me of stealing my own hotmail address. That I've had since highschool.
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These repeated attempts were e-mails sent to my old work e-mail. The one they automatically shut down immediately after I quit. They had my phone number, stable e-mail address, updated address, and my boss was still in contact with me weekly.
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Ha! I had the same thing happen to me. (Score:5, Interesting)
I owned a small consulting company in the late '90s and we were hired to do some work for a VPN vendor. We had to sign a rather onerous NDA and then they stiffed us on payment after six months' work and proceeded to ship what we had built anyway. The "separation" was acrimonious and involved court just so we could get paid.
Two years later, the president of the company contacts me begging for archival copies of what we'd produced, as they suffered some sort of catastrophic event and had lost a lot of source code.
I rather gleefully told him that (a) I had to take him to court to get him to pay me for shipping our work last time around, and (b) as per the NDA that they made a serious issue of in court, we had dutifully wiped everything we had ever worked on for them, and good luck.
I smiled for about a month after that.
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>> hoping I had kept a copy
THAT sounds like a trap to me.
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It's the Trump way of doing things. Don't get upset when a lowly serf tries it as an "opening bid".
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Nope he was refusing to do any further work for them till all outstanding legal action between them was resolved. This is a perfectly rational and entirely reasonable position to take.
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Disagree that for 200k he would unlock it for them. Fails the sniff test, and sounds like he screwed them on purpose.
I've worked at one company where management fired a long-term programmer responsible for a dial-up server. He refused to turn over the password until he got paid $250K. Management threatened to take him to court. But he had negotiated a clause in his contract to cover a situation like this. So the company paid him because it was cheaper than a lawsuit.