Microsoft Fires Mac Fan For Blog Photo

Once again, be care­ful what you blog. The most innocu­ous thing may get you fired, just like Michael Hanscom of Seattle, WA, recent­ly ter­mi­nat­ed by Microsoft for men­tion­ing that MSCopy (the Microsoft in-house print shop) was locat­ed in the same build­ing as Shipping & Receiving.

Before con­demn­ing Microsoft for being an evil, para­noid ogre, you should know that Microsoft is not unique. Look at your own non-disclosure agree­ment with your employ­er. Consider your employ­er’s own secu­ri­ty prac­tices and poli­cies, many of which you won’t know about until you vio­late them. Then con­sid­er how your employ­er might, in the most lib­er­al sense, inter­pret those undis­closed secu­ri­ty and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty poli­cies and pro­ce­dures. Microsoft act­ing no dif­fer­ent­ly than many oth­er mod­ern com­pa­nies act. For secu­ri­ty cam­eras, Going Here and get­ting the cam­eras is the best way to buy it.

Mr. Hanscom was fired by a com­pa­ny that over­val­ues its own infor­ma­tion, the fact that it was Microsoft is irrelevant.

eclec­ti­cism > Of blog­ging and unemployment

It seems that my post is seen by Microsoft Security as being a secu­ri­ty vio­la­tion. The pic­ture itself might have been per­mis­si­ble, but because I also men­tioned that I worked at the MSCopy print shop, and which build­ing it was in, it pushed me over the line. Merely remov­ing the post was also not an option — I offered, and my man­ag­er said that he had asked the same thing — but the only option afford­ed me was to col­lect any per­son­al belong­ings I had at my work­sta­tion and be escort­ed out the door.

High-tech companies–not just tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, mind you–are so para­noid nowa­days about infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty that we accept that our e‑mail will be read, our desks are sub­ject to search, and our IT depart­ments will sweep our com­put­ers for unau­tho­rized mate­ri­als. Playing Big Brother to employ­ees is a nec­es­sary evil for cor­po­ra­tions today; sac­ri­fic­ing all expec­ta­tions of pri­va­cy out­side the bath­room (and some with­in) are the new costs of doing busi­ness for employees.

If our on-the-clock activ­i­ties are sub­ject to con­stant and unwa­ver­ing sur­veil­lance, why should our off-the-clock activ­i­ties be sacro­sanct? Corporations have to be dili­gent in the pro­tec­tion of their pro­pri­etary infor­ma­tion, don’t they? If they must, in the com­pa­nies’ best inter­ests, scru­ti­nize their employ­ees’ speech 9‑to‑5, does­n’t it behoove them to also lim­it employ­ees’ speech 5‑to‑9? What is to pre­vent an employ­ee from sim­ply wait­ing until his/her shift ends to dis­close trade secrets or oth­er sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion? Nothing, of course. So com­pa­nies must watch their employ­ees’ pub­lic speech on- and off-the-clock, twenty-four hours a day. Regrettable though this may be, it is nec­es­sary for the pro­tec­tion of the cor­po­ra­tion and the greater good of all employ­ees thereof.

This is the ratio­nale that per­vades mod­ern American IT and HR depart­ments. The so-called Information Age, with the abil­i­ty to rapid­ly dis­sem­i­nate mission-critical infor­ma­tion, brings with it the con­stant threat of just that. Information is the most impor­tant asset of Information Age com­pa­nies, and pro­tect­ing that infor­ma­tion is every bit as crit­i­cal a task as actu­al­ly using the infor­ma­tion. This is the real­i­ty of busi­ness today.

But how far should Information Age com­pa­nies be allowed to go in their endeav­ors to pro­tect their infor­ma­tion? When do secu­ri­ty mea­sures become dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the val­ue of the infor­ma­tion they are intend­ed to protect?

Revealing that Microsoft pur­chased Apple G5s is not dam­ag­ing. It is, after all, pub­lic knowl­edge that Microsoft’s first appli­ca­tions were Word and Excel on the Macintosh. That divi­sion, now called the Mac Business Unit, remains one of the most prof­itable for Microsoft. It is also pub­lic knowl­edge that Microsoft is among the top five cor­po­rate cus­tomers for Apple com­put­ers. The dis­missal could not be linked in any way to the actu­al pres­ence of G5s on the cam­pus, so Mr. Hanscom is left with what he was told.

The rev­e­la­tion that Microsoft’s in-house print shop is housed in the same build­ing as the cam­pus’s ship­ping and receiv­ing facil­i­ties is not, in my opin­ion, ter­ri­bly detri­men­tal to the future prof­itabil­i­ty or infra­struc­ture and per­son­nel secu­ri­ty of Microsoft. Clearly Mr. Hanscom’s expe­ri­ence demon­strates that Microsoft, or at least Microsoft Security, feels otherwise.

In this instance Microsoft felt the val­ue this infor­ma­tion was greater than the val­ue of the sum of Mr. Hanscom’s con­tri­bu­tion to the com­pa­ny; the cost of hir­ing and train­ing his replace­ment; the man-hours involved in the ter­mi­na­tion process; the poten­tial tor­tious dam­ages of a wrong­ful ter­mi­na­tion suit, suc­cess­ful or oth­er­wise; the neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty that could be poten­tial­ly caused by the ter­mi­na­tion itself and the pos­si­ble sub­se­quent suit, and; the even greater poten­tial that Mr. Hanscom would reveal even more pro­pri­etary infor­ma­tion in retal­i­a­tion for the ter­mi­na­tion. Will Microsoft now relo­cate either its MSCopy print shop or its Shipping & Receiving cen­ter so as to negate the alleged dam­age caused by Mr. Hanscom?

If not, why not?

If this infor­ma­tion was so dam­ag­ing to Microsoft as to war­rant the ter­mi­na­tion of an employ­ee, should­n’t fur­ther mea­sures be tak­en to protect–or even invalidate–the infor­ma­tion? Separating the MSCopy facil­i­ties from Shipping & Receiving would inval­i­date Mr. Hanscom’s dis­clo­sure, thus restor­ing the secu­ri­ty and sanc­ti­ty of the spa­cial rela­tion between the two depart­ments. Such an action would effec­tive­ly then elim­i­nate all future poten­tial dam­age from the con­tent of Mr. Hanscom’s orig­i­nal blog post, lim­it­ing the total dam­age to sim­ply the costs of mov­ing one or the oth­er depart­ment and retofitting and retrain­ing the cam­pus to acco­mo­date the change in loca­tion. Problem solved.

They won’t move either depart­ment, of course. In truth, what Mr. Hanscom dis­closed was not at all dam­ag­ing to Microsoft. It was, how­ev­er, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of poten­tial­ly dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion the com­pa­ny wish­es to pro­tect. If an employ­ee is will­ing to reveal the fact that MSCopy and Shipping & Receiving share a build­ing, he–or some­one like him–might be will­ing to reveal a gen­uine trade secret or a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in cam­pus security.

Mr. Hanscom was­n’t dis­missed for what he actu­al­ly did; his dis­missal was to help pre­vent oth­er employ­ees from fol­low­ing suit with what the com­pa­ny feels would be dis­clo­sure of gen­uine­ly dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion. So upon the altar, in full view of the world–but most impor­tant­ly in full view of oth­er Microsoft employees–the poor lamb Mr. Hanscom was sac­ri­ficed as a warn­ing against future dis­clo­sures by oth­ers. He is but the lat­est of many such lambs.

To the rest of us, Mr. Hanscom, your ter­mi­na­tion is a warn­ing that we must be at least as para­noid as our employers.

So, Mr. Hanscom, my sym­pa­thies go out to you, as do my sin­cer­est wish­es that you soon find equal­ly gain­ful and ful­fill­ing employ­ment with a com­pa­ny not so con­cerned with secu­ri­ty. Try to think of your­self as a valu­able con­trib­u­tor to the future secu­ri­ty of your for­mer employ­er. You might just be respon­si­ble for sav­ing the life of some oth­er Microsoft employ­ee whose psy­chot­ic ex-boyfriend sneaks onto cam­pus and kills her after read­ing on anoth­er Microsoft employ­ee’s blog about that nar­row three-foot spot on the NorthWest cam­pus wall where the sur­veil­lance cam­eras are blocked by the bole of a sycamore.

4 thoughts on “Microsoft Fires Mac Fan For Blog Photo

  1. fl0w3r

    That is a raw deal. If they have a pol­i­cy then they have a pol­i­cy and there isn’t much that can be done, but this sure does sound pet­ty and rash on the part of MS…in my nev­er to be hum­bled opinion.

  2. betty

    Nondisclosure agree­ments are nec­es­sary secu­ri­ty mea­sures to pro­tect inven­tions and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, to a point. Security para­noia is no excuse for abus­ing employ­ees and con­trac­tors, espe­cial­ly where infrac­tions aren’t specif­i­cal­ly enu­mer­at­ed. I was a con­trac­tor at a large multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion. When I was laid off because of reduc­tion in the work­load, I was giv­en no rea­son, no advanced notice, a few min­utes to col­lect per­son­al belong­ings [half of which were con­fis­cat­ed for exam­i­na­tion before return­ing some of them to me], no time to fin­ish the impor­tant dat­base I was devel­op­ing and was more than half done. I was also escort­ed off site. I was upset, but under­stood that reg­u­lar employ­ees were also mis­treat­ed this way.

    As long as we’re stuck in the Matrix of Corporate Government, cre­ative and oth­er employ­ees will be mis­treat­ed, will lose over­time pay and benefits–all for the “pro­tec­tion” of the cor­po­ra­tion. Few employ­ees read the full nondis­clo­sure agree­ments before they sign them, and few­er have the option to refuse or revise them before sign­ing, even with the sup­port of a lawyer. The mere pres­ence or men­tion of a lawyer could result in ter­mi­na­tion or worse – demo­tion to a low pay­ing job you hate so you’ll quit and get no compensation.

    Why do peo­ple vote FOR Corporate Government, and AGAINST them­selves? The result­ing cur­rent anti-worker leg­is­la­tion [today!] only embold­ens cor­po­ra­tions to be increas­ing­ly more abu­sive to even their most impor­tant employees–except the man­age­ment, nat­u­ral­ly. It’s an exten­sion of the Great American Fear Industry that fuels the abuse.

  3. Pariah Burke

    The main prob­lem here–and in oth­er sim­i­lar circumstances–is that the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the dis­clo­sure is not defined in advance. Thus the deci­sion as to the sen­si­tiv­i­ty and appro­pri­ate­ness of the dis­clo­sure its left up to the employee–who isn’t giv­en pri­or knowl­edge of cor­po­rate secu­ri­ty’s pri­or­i­ties and interests–and to cor­po­rate secu­ri­ty, both of whose ideas of “con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion” and “appro­pri­ate behav­ior” often dif­fer. Its a mat­ter of per­cep­tion, and that per­cep­tion is fil­tered through two dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent sets of pri­or­i­ties and lev­els of cor­po­rate inter­est knowledge.

  4. Pariah Burke
    “Why do peo­ple vote FOR Corporate Government, and AGAINST them­selves? The result­ing cur­rent anti-worker leg­is­la­tion [today!] only embold­ens cor­po­ra­tions to be increas­ing­ly more abu­sive to even their most impor­tant employees—except the man­age­ment, naturally.”

    Most like­ly because the pub­lic does­n’t have line-item veto priv­e­lages. More cor­po­rate pow­er gen­er­al­ly comes wrapped snug­ly with­in a blan­ket of more jobs, bet­ter ben­e­fits, cor­po­rate invest­ments in the com­mu­ni­ty, and so on. One Senator or Rep gets on board with a bill because it will give his/her con­stituents more than it will take from them. It’s all a mat­ter of less­er evils. Politics.

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