When information technology people go bad

Search for aliens costs school employee his job: Man used computer program that bogged down system; will cost $1M to fix

Now SETI@home is not that difficult to remove from one computer (I've run it on and off on mine)...but Brad Niesluchowski, who was an Arizona school system's information technology director, put it on 5,000 computers for nearly 10 years. While that speaks of dedication to the cause of finding alien intelligence, it also bogged down computers in the system and will cost a great deal to remove it from all of the computers. SETI@home specifically states (as I recall) that you should only put it on computers that you have a complete right to.

In many ways far worse, although somewhat more limited in scope but much darker in intent, one of the University of Kentucky's systems integration analysts for information technology, Robert N. McAllister, was charged with possession of child pornography. Officers found more than 500 images and videos of partially naked children and children involved in sexual acts on his laptop and have seized a computer owned by UK.

UK employee pleads not guilty to child porn charges

Which reminds me of this piece:

The dark side of the internet

"The darkweb"; "the deep web"; beneath "the surface web" – the metaphors alone make the internet feel suddenly more unfathomable and mysterious. Other terms circulate among those in the know: "darknet", "invisible web", "dark address space", "murky address space", "dirty address space". Not all these phrases mean the same thing. While a "darknet" is an online network such as Freenet that is concealed from non-users, with all the potential for transgressive behaviour that implies, much of "the deep web", spooky as it sounds, consists of unremarkable consumer and research data that is beyond the reach of search engines. "Dark address space" often refers to internet addresses that, for purely technical reasons, have simply stopped working.

And yet, in a sense, they are all part of the same picture: beyond the confines of most people's online lives, there is a vast other internet out there, used by millions but largely ignored by the media and properly understood by only a few computer scientists. How was it created? What exactly happens in it? And does it represent the future of life online or the past?

The article discusses Freenet, a software programme that allows the user to explore the web without being detected. It's been used by paedophiles, criminals, terrorists, and other nefarious types in addition to law-abiding citizens wanting anonymity. Of course, a lot of that type of material appears on the normal Internet as well, but the deep web is estimated to be much larger and largely unsearchable by standard search engines. The article's worth a look at.

Good (riddance)

Man gets 120 years in child porn case: Ex-girlfriend is already in prison for filming man's attempted rape of infant

They don't mention the possibility of parole, something I hope he never gets. He had over a million child pornography images on his computer and molested who knows how many children. More than one girlfriend helped him in this. The man is sick and deserves to be put away far from children for the rest of his life. Kudos to the young woman who came forward as a teenager and who is now a 21-year-old wife and expectant mother. She approached authorities after seeing an episode of Law & Order regarding child sexual abuse.

My hope is that the children and their families are able to get the counseling they need to soften the effects of the abuse (I don't know if you ever really overcome it, to be honest, but you can come close).

An update

Remember Brenda Biesterfeld, the library aide who was supposedly fired for tipping police to a paedophile looking at pornographic images of children in the library? This is the Tulare County (California) Library's side:

'Ms. Biesterfeld received an evaluation following three months of her employment and received an overall rating of 5 on a scale of 10. Goals for improvement included the proper completion of the cash report, proper documentation of the collection of fines, the importance of seeking clarification of policies and procedures, developing clerical skills, working on assigned tasks and keeping her supervisors informed of all problems and community complaints. Ms. Biesterfeld failed to improve...'

'Regarding the specific incident... Ms. Biesterfeld did not tell her supervisors that the patron was accessing child pornography, and thereafter she neglected to notify anyone in management of the events which transpired, including the suspect's arrest until after they had occurred and failed to advise that the library's computer had been seized... There were additional performance deficiencies and policy violations that were discovered which led to her release.'

Thanks to Birdie from LISNews for the quotes and links.

Stories discussing the updated details of the firing can be seen at KMPH and the Fresno Bee.

Although it sounds like there was just cause for her termination, what she did in tipping off the police was still the right thing to do.

But she did the right thing

Sometimes you can't just sit back and catalogue or classify...sometimes you have to take action. One librarian did--and lost her job over it.

California Librarian Fired for Reporting Man Viewing Child Porn

Lindsay Librarian Fired for Reporting Man Viewing Child Porn

The supervisor told her to make a note on the man’s library account and tell him to stop looking at the pictures. Biesterfeld felt that the authorities needed to be alerted, so she called the police anyway. When police did get involved, they found thousands of images of child pornography. 39-year-old Donnie Chrisler was arrested, and a day and a half later; Biesterfeld was out of a job.

There's a time when our desire to protect the privacy of our patrons has to submit to the greater good. And whilst that greater good is sometimes hard to define, I think most of us agree that protecting children from exploitation and possible abuse is more important that anyone's anonymity as a library patron surfing the net.