UPDATED 5PM: I added a couple of war stories about a similar experience I saw while in Baghdad, Iraq.
Is this too good, or what.
It seems the IT Director and the network administrator at the City of Tavares hacked into management's emails and read them. Then, the department assistant used the information to send out anonymous emails slamming the city.
Recently, there were articles in the press about the Tavares, City Manager, John Drury, requesting a salary increase, and apparently the articles were based on the anonymous emails sent out.
Somewhere, someone got suspicious and the Administration hired a consultant to track down who was using the inside info, and they...
got em in a 41 page report.
Government workers need to watch out for, and RESPECT email privacy rights, and kudos to City Administrator John Drury for tracking down the culprits. However, keep in mind that in Florida, emails are subject to sunshine open records laws, and anyone could have filed an open records request to get all emails from specific people, and would have gotten them. However, there are rules to redact or edit out certain subjects, and salary discussions could have been one of them. Thus, a normal requester might not have received the emails that discussed salaries.
Finally, as always, we have a "war story" about a similar incident:
I was working in early 2006 in the US Embassy, Baghdad, and was assigned to assist a new financial controls group under a newly designated CFO for the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office (IRMO). I took two weeks leave, and then returned in late January. The new CFO was in place along with five other staff from the military and a civilian contracting firm. Two days later, the CFO is complaining about his inability to check his email, and it went on for most of the day. Then a senior IRMO staffer walked in, asked the CFO to go to a meeting, and while he was gone, a team from the IT department came in, unplugged his computer, and took it out of the office.
It seemed the new CFO had gotten fed up with the Embassy bureacracy, and had been writing letters complaining about fiscal mis-management to the press. So, like in the example below, management had a team review his emails, apparently found the ones sent to the press, and fired him. He was gone in three days. DON'T USE COMPANY EMAIL TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THEM.
Then there was the time when an automatic search routine of ALL staff emails in the Dept of Justice office (where I had a desk in 2004) found some military officers who had copied SECRET military electronic files from a separate military only secret computer network to their own emails in the NON-Secret email network. A major problem is many military used only the secret system, but if civilians or State Dept people had to communicate to them, they had to use the non-secret network. The security guys shut down the entire mail server for all the Reconstruction teams for 3 days while they tracked down who did it. Those guys went home, and maybe faced sanctions later.
vj
Here is the article, but go to the TV station website HERE to see reporter Berndt Petersen's TV video which has more info.Workers Accused Of Critical Emails May Be Fired
Posted: 5:43 pm EDT July 14, 2010Updated: 7:03 pm EDT July 14, 2010
TAVARES,
Fla. -- The city of Tavares plans to fire three employees by
the end of this week after it hired a company to look into their work
computers, WFTV learned Wednesday.The investigation was conducted
after someone at city hall wrote letters criticizing how the city was
spending money.Two of the people facing termination are
information technology workers accused of hacking into the computers of
the top officials at city hall. It's all spelled out in a 45-page
report.Inside Tavares City Hall, there are now three empty desks
and the workers who sat in the chairs likely won't' be coming back."We
have employees working together to hack into computers and that just
can't be tolerated," City Administrator John Drury said.Drury
plans to fire information technology director Ed Vedder, computer
network administrator James Austin, and administrative assistant Pam
Huckins. The two computer experts are accused of opening and reading the
private emails of top city officials. The secretary is accused of
using that information to write anonymous letters that slammed the city.Drury
said this is not merely office gossip."I think breaking into
someone's office, going into their computer, downloading the
information, is different than going to the water cooler," Drury said.WFTV
reported on the anonymous letter, which criticized a proposed $25,000
pay raise for Drury. Within a few days, the city brought in an outside
expert to examine every computer to find out who authored the letter and
who stole the private emails."Is this move and these
terminations in any way retaliation because you didn't get that salary
increase when you wanted it?" WFTV reporter Berndt Petersen asked."Not
in any way whatsoever. It's unfortunate of the timing of these issues,
but they're completely separate," Drury said.Pam Huckins told
WFTV she did not write those letters. She has a lawyer and wants to
clear her name.As for the city administrator's pay raise, city
council could vote on a smaller salary increase next week.Copyright 2010 by wftv.com. All
rights reserved.
