if you’re actually interested in the story behind this report, here ya go
suggest more appropriate community for it in the comments
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Years ago I worked in IT policy enforcement. My job was to review what employees were doing on the internet that fell outside of what was permitted. We had automated systems that did most of the work but I was responsible for looking at exceptions. I would occasionally send my wife a note telling her that I was coming through to my home office and that no one should talk to me. I would retreat to my office and emerge when I had calmed down enough to interact with people.
My boss told me when I started in the role that it was only possible to do it for so long before you needed to stop. He told me that I could raise my hand at any point and say, “I can’t do this anymore.” and he would take me off.
I worked in corrections. The people I was watching were staff who worked directly with the offenders. I saw some truly fucked up stuff.
some ppl really need big sign on the wall reminding them that the employer is always watching their corp laptop. It’s thankless hecked up job to be a bouncer
So these people were not only depraved, they were idiots, too? Did they decide that their home Internet was too slow for their illegal content, so they’d do it at work? Crazy.
They were often range officers, the guys who sit in the range office (the range is a hallway with cells in it). They were bored at night when the offenders were in bed asleep.
There had never been effective enforcement so they got away with it. It took some time for the message to get out that we were watching and that there would be consequences.
If you don’t mind, can you give a general sense of the fucked up stuff people were accessing? Maybe place behind a clearly labeled spoiler tag so users can decide to view or not.
There was a lot of violence and sexual violence, torture, and extreme bondage. Things like clamping that result in obvious injury are considered obscene in Canada. Menacing is considered obscene. There were also murder and suicide videos.
The people who were fired weren’t fired because of what they were looking at but because they refused to acknowledge what they were doing. One guy who was looking at extremely violent porn said “Yes, it was me. I have a problem.” He got counselling and kept his job. A guy who was looking at violent bondage fought for weeks until I was able to correlate logs, password changes, MAC addresses, and door access logs to prove beyond any doubt that it was him. He was fired on the spot
That sounds sooo concerning. There are prison guards that have a fetish for sexual violence, look at violent porn while at work, and they still get to keep that job. Not saying they should be punished, but that person should in jo way be allowed to have power and control over vulnerable people that have jo voice or freedom of movement. Not only that, but that is the guy that was caught. There are surely more that are going undetected.
Being placed in prison is one of the worst things that can happen to someone. Not because of the restrictions on freedom, but because the things that happen to them. They are treated with complete disrespect, exploited for practically free labor, exploited by companies that have monopolies on services (e.g. telephone, food, etc.), abused by guards, sexually assaulted, violently assaulted, and sometimes killed. If you speak up, no one believes you and you’re almost certain to face revenge. Then once you get out, everyone treats you like a piece of shit.
Of course there is recidivism. Society treats people like savages with no possibility for escape, so what other options do they have?
Our work environment was pseudo legal, outside of the bounds of normal government office work. We were able to write our own policy, perform our own investigations, and even hold our own trials. I was involved in several disturbing investigations. A couple resulted in people getting fired.
One of the things I liked was the fact that I was able to deal with people who were simply out of bounds. I could call them and say, “Hi. It’s MapleEngineer. I just wanted to remind you that we can see everything you do online and that you have obligations under [policy]. There is nothing in writing and if we don’t talk again no one will ever find it about this conversation.” That solved 95% of the problems. 4.9 percent were handled by their manager if I saw them in the logs again. Very few results in formal investigations but I was never wrong.
I wonder were there any victimless crimes? for example watching porn at home from corp laptop
if so, do you know how the trials of such cases usually went? or it’s all one-on-one conversations/decisions?
I was only looking at things coming in and going out through the corporate firewall. We were in a correctional environment so porn was prohibited. I was mostly interested in things that were illegal or dangerous. I dealt with anything that wasn’t criminal. Anything that wad criminal I referred up them responded to requests from the investigating officer when they came. I often got requests from managers to pull full histories and look for things that were outside of my remit like wasting time at work. I refused those requests and any that were overly broad. Once an investigator got to know me they figured out how to make requests that I would agree to fulfill.
Not on you, but forbidding porn due to it being a correctional environment seems inhumane. I’m sure they’d be happier with access to at normal porn. Restrict illegal shit of course
The problem is that many of the people inside are violent sexual offenders and porn can be used as currency in the illegal prison economy. I have no issues with porn personally but it was my job to enforce the policy. I was really only interested in illegal porn which is clearly defined in Canadian law.
Was there a reason for not only allowing connections to specific whitelisted domain’s?
There were a number of people who had the legitimate and sanctioned need to access prohibited material (I was one of them). At the time (and even now) it is virtually impossible to open every website that someone might need to access. Personal use was allowed as long as it didn’t impact your work and was inside the guardrails. We tried using Websense back then and it was a disaster. Virtually everyone complied with policy. There were a very small number who didn’t and I was responsible for catching them.
it sounds like you can get provided for till the rest of life if you sue your previous employer. Gotta order up few kevlar shirts to court hearings just in case tho
I left there almost 15 years ago and have been working for US companies in international security. I have never looked back.
Apparently the people who have to review flagged items on social media, including law enforcement, really do suffer emotional issues. Like having to watch horrific child porn or torture videos. I get that someone has to do it, but I just couldn’t subject myself to that.
