 The LimitPremium
join:2007-09-25
Greensboro, NC
kudos:2 | reply to Linklist
Re: I'll ask the obvious.. Actually, he/she doesn't even need to give notice. Learned about this the hard way. |
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openbox9Premium
join:2004-01-26
japan
kudos:2 | Depends on state law and your lease. Landlords typically have unrestricted access to the property in the event of potential harm to life, limb, or the property itself. Outside of that, landlords must typically give notice. |
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CXM_SplicerLooking at the bigger picturePremium
join:2011-08-11
NYC
kudos:1 Reviews:
 ·Verizon FiOS
| said by openbox9:Depends on state law and your lease. Landlords typically have unrestricted access to the property in the event of potential harm to life, limb, or the property itself. Outside of that, landlords must typically give notice.
Sure, that is perfectly understandable. Broken water pipe, broken window, smell of smoke... the landlord has a need and a right to protect the property. What some (not you) seem to be saying here, though, is that if you came home from work and found your landlord rifling through your desk drawers or bedroom dresser or kitchen cupboards under the excuse of 'protecting myself from your possible illegal activities' that it would be perfectly legitimate. Sorry, I don't think so. There are often landlords arrested for putting hidden cameras in tenant spaces... why would this be illegal if the landlord just wanted to make sure you weren't violating the law?
If a landlord (or Verizon to bring it back to the topic) KNOWS you are doing something illegal then yes, he/they can get in trouble for allowing it to continue. That is not legal carte blanche to conduct investigatory searches at their whim. |
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openbox9Premium
join:2004-01-26
japan
kudos:2 | said by CXM_Splicer:if you came home from work and found your landlord rifling through your desk drawers or bedroom dresser or kitchen cupboards under the excuse of 'protecting myself from your possible illegal activities' that it would be perfectly legitimate. Sorry, I don't think so. Agreed. That's illegal in every jurisdiction that I'm aware of.said by CXM_Splicer:If a landlord (or Verizon to bring it back to the topic) KNOWS you are doing something illegal then yes, he/they can get in trouble for allowing it to continue. That is not legal carte blanche to conduct investigatory searches at their whim. Agreed. Do we know if VZ exercised carte blanche investigations of users' data? |
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Reviews:
 ·Frontier Communi..
| reply to CXM_Splicer
Did they purposefully go digging through his files or did they come across them in the course of routine system maintenance? That may be seem unlikely but it's not completely outlandish.
To make an analogy, you're a telco guy, I presume you've used alligator clips and a buttset in the course of your duties? Suppose you plug into the wrong pair while troubleshooting my line and overhear one of my neighbors planning a murder. Do you remain silent? Hell, let's go more to a much more mundane level, suppose you hear my neighbor bragging to his buddy about the woman he banged last night. Do you disconnect from the pair as quickly as you would if you had plugged into an active fax line, or do you listen for a few seconds? Be honest with yourself as you ponder your answer, humans are very curious creatures.
I manage backups for dozens of servers at my current job. Some backup solutions dump out a report that includes the timestamp, date, and name of every single file on the system. I don't have the time to do anything with these reports besides skim them for errors, and a lot of that 'skimming' is done with the assistance of software like grep. That said, occasionally I do notice the metadata contained in these reports, and I can't say I'd be inclined to ignore something that hinted at child pornography, or any other serious crime for that matter. |
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| "Do you disconnect from the pair as quickly as you would if you had plugged into an active fax line, or do you listen for a few seconds?"
I always disconnected right away. It's a little different when you are there on site with on side of the call. When it's someone you don't know or will never meet I think people don't feel as guilty about it.
I do analysis on VoIP calls for customers where we often run captures of all calls in the course of troubleshooting. Most of the time I can find what I need without listing to the audio stream but we do tell the Point of Contact that when we run an analysis that there is a chance that someone will listen to the one or both sides of the audio stream.
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I do not, have not, and will not work for AT&T/Comcast/Verizon/Charter or similar sized company. |
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CXM_SplicerLooking at the bigger picturePremium
join:2011-08-11
NYC
kudos:1 Reviews:
·Verizon FiOS
| reply to openbox9
said by openbox9:Agreed. Do we know if VZ exercised carte blanche investigations of users' data?
No. Someone was speculating that maybe that's how the material was discovered. |
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 aaronwtPremium
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA
·Verizon FiOS
| reply to Crookshanks
said by Crookshanks:Did they purposefully go digging through his files or did they come across them in the course of routine system maintenance? That may be seem unlikely but it's not completely outlandish.
To make an analogy, you're a telco guy, I presume you've used alligator clips and a buttset in the course of your duties? Suppose you plug into the wrong pair while troubleshooting my line and overhear one of my neighbors planning a murder. Do you remain silent? Hell, let's go more to a much more mundane level, suppose you hear my neighbor bragging to his buddy about the woman he banged last night. Do you disconnect from the pair as quickly as you would if you had plugged into an active fax line, or do you listen for a few seconds? Be honest with yourself as you ponder your answer, humans are very curious creatures.
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You disconnect as soon as you hear voices on the line. That was always the case for me. I would get off the line much faster if I heard voices than if I heard a fax transmission. The last thing I wanted was someone accusing me of snooping. |
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CXM_SplicerLooking at the bigger picturePremium
join:2011-08-11
NYC
kudos:1 Reviews:
·Verizon FiOS
| reply to Crookshanks
said by Crookshanks:Did they purposefully go digging through his files or did they come across them in the course of routine system maintenance? That may be seem unlikely but it's not completely outlandish.
To make an analogy, you're a telco guy, I presume you've used alligator clips and a buttset in the course of your duties? Suppose you plug into the wrong pair while troubleshooting my line and overhear one of my neighbors planning a murder. Do you remain silent? Hell, let's go more to a much more mundane level, suppose you hear my neighbor bragging to his buddy about the woman he banged last night. Do you disconnect from the pair as quickly as you would if you had plugged into an active fax line, or do you listen for a few seconds? Be honest with yourself as you ponder your answer, humans are very curious creatures.
I think how they discovered the files is an important question that needs to be answered.
I could probably go on for hours about all the shit I have heard... a lady crying on the phone with her therapist, bank transactions/telephone orders, a guy talking in baby-talk to a woman but quickly went back to his executive voice when he answered his cell phone, two women that went back and forth with 'Praise Jesus', 'Hallelujah', 'The Lord is Great', and various other religious sayings for over an hour, some guy trying to arrange a threesome with his girl friend and another woman by telling each of them that the other one was in to it... on and on. You very quickly learn (in the first 6 months in the company) that 99.9% of the conversations are mundane, boring, routine shit. Workers wouldn't seek out random conversations just to find something interesting, the odds of it happening are just too small and there is work that needs to be done. If I heard people planning a murder, I would probably not assume they were serious or they were actually planning it rather than just talking BS. Sure confronted with clear evidence of something nefarious I would call the police but it hasn't happened yet in 20 years. I have come across things that I have chosen to ignore... a marijuana garden, theft of electricity... but not where someones life/safety was questionable.
Human curiosity aside though, there are technical reasons why I would hear peoples' phone calls that are fundamentally different than someone with backup duties on multiple users' systems. I agree that if you noticed a file 'little kid getting raped.jpg' you would/should investigate further (and I can't say that isn't what happened here). But I think you would agree that extracting *.jpg from a user's backup and viewing the pictures would be 'wrong'. I don't know HOW it happened but I think that Verizon owes that explanation to its customers. |
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Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
| said by CXM_Splicer:Workers wouldn't seek out random conversations just to find something interesting, the odds of it happening are just too small and there is work that needs to be done. Never suggested otherwise! We all have better things to do. My example was even more mundane than what you have outlined, clipping into the wrong pair for a few seconds. Human curiosity is going to keep most people plugged into that pair longer if they hear something interesting (particularly if it's sexual.... we are all pigs) than they would if they heard the hiss of a fax machine. It might only be ten seconds, then you realize you have better things to do, but that's nine more seconds than you would have been plugged into the fax line. 
said by CXM_Splicer:I have come across things that I have chosen to ignore... a marijuana garden, theft of electricity... but not where someones life/safety was questionable. Ah, grow ops. I came across two of those in my days working for the WISP. Never did anything about it, consenting adults and all that. Can't say I'd keep my mouth shut about theft of electricity, if for no other reason than the champs who do that often tend to burn down their houses.
said by CXM_Splicer:IBut I think you would agree that extracting *.jpg from a user's backup and viewing the pictures would be 'wrong'. For sure. It's an invasion of privacy that is not remotely justifiable from a technical standpoint. More to the point, you know 90% of those .jpgs are going to be pictures of the cat and grand-kids. I have better things to do than browse them!
said by CXM_Splicer:I don't know HOW it happened but I think that Verizon owes that explanation to its customers.
You won't get one. Legal won't let them, because either way it exposes them to liability, for not finding kiddie porn in the future, or for invading their users privacy. It's a lose lose for them. Might find out if the case goes to trial and the evidence is entered into the public record, but it'll probably get plead out as do most criminal cases.
I really would hazard a guess that it was something similar to the backup reports I mentioned earlier. This guy was stupid enough to store child pornography in the cloud, somehow I doubt he was smart enough to use generic file names. |
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