8/2     Lawrence Livermore Natl. Lab employee arrested on child porn
        charges.
        http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_4120530
        The thing I think is iteresting here is that the Lab has gone into
        damage control mode.  (Press releases that say things like, "We
        are fully cooperating with the police," etc.)  Do you really need
        damage control in a case like this?
        \_ I don't know what grant or funding politics are like for
           that sort of organization, but I assume there is quite a bit
           of nastiness that goes on when competing for govt. money.  It
           would be pretty easy to insinuate shit like "well, their people
           are just surfing for kiddy porn on taxpayer dough" to the press.
           I've seen worse.  -John
           \- Livermore is an employer with +10k employee ... dont you think
              this is just a matter of statistics? It's not like they were
              running a massive bittorrent p0rn server. Resources spent
              playing Big Brother costs real money, and imposes real costs
              [should the computer security people run "find *.jpg"
              in people homedirs and have somebody spend 10hrs a week
              looking these over?]
              \_ You're preaching to the saved.  Pr0n at the workplace, if
                 you consider it a problem, is not something you can solve
                 technically, and I argue this constantly (it's a management
                 issue.)  Unfortunately, there's a combination of factors,
                 such as many managers not wanting to take ownership of
                 talking to employees whose work is being affected by non-
                 work stuff, over-zealous HR people, legal guys worried about
                 harassment suits and senir management who see this sort of
                 thing in a very binary manner, that often results in demands
                 for excessive "pre-emptive" measures.  But in this case I
                 was just commenting on the logic behind the "damage control"
                 that op asked about--I don't know the politics that surround
                 LLNL, and was assuming that this was just pre-emptive to
                 avoid the case being misused by someone overly zealous or
                 with a political agenda.  -John
              \_ It's odder than that, all the porn was at home, none
                 was at work.  So to my mind, LLNL has absolutely nothing
                 to do with this.  Never the less, I think John has a
                 point about politics. (Digression from above: LLNL DOES
                 put a lot of man power into watching out for porn at
                 work.) -op
                 \- i didnt look at the details carefully, but if what you say
                    is true, this is a good example of "if the press wants to
                    do a hatchet job on you, no matter what steps you take,
                    thay can allways paint it as unreasonable" [save the
                    thay can always paint it as unreasonable" [save the
                    children, your tax dollars at work etc]. which isnt to say
                    "do nothing" but dont let "the standard of care" be "what
                    will satisfy a reporter with a small brain". [at various
                    times i have been involved in "appropriate use" compliance
                    issues and there is a very strong correlation with the
                    overall resonableness and cleverness of people working in
                    this area and their distate for being involved ... the one
                    person who was enthusiastic about this was a lying, incom-
                    petent sack of shit, who did a lot of underhanded political
                    things here, had no respect of anybody reasonable and some
                    what creepily made it part of his job to visit some of
                    the tagged WEEB site to make sure they were perverted/
                    pornish.]

        \_ Wen Ho Lee got reamed for far less. -proud American
           \_ To be fair, leaving around diskettes of nuclear secrets
              is a lot worse than child porn.
              \_ And your basis for saying he did is...?
                \_ I thought he pled guilty to carelessly copying
                   classified nuclear crap to data cassettes and leaving
                   it in unclassified areas, probably for a job interview?
                   I don't think he was out there selling our secrets
                   to the Chinese, he was just really careless.  Feel
                   free to prove me wrong.
                   \_ No, he didn't plead guilty to that.
                   \_ he was being single out because he is Chinese.
                      There are plenty of people in the lab do exactly the
                      same thing or worse but they end up in... hmm...
                      \_ I bet they don't anymore!
                      lecture hall of MIT instead of solidary comfinment
                      for 23 hours a day, shackled from waist down, for
                      9 month.  May be you should really work for Christopher
                      Cox (author of "The Cox Report", now Chairman of SEC).
                      \_ and dude I don't know Chinese but I KNOW your
                         English is better than this, what is your problem?