OT: legal obligations

[Tyler Aviss]

As well they should be, though it appears to be the fine for this is
only $1000. My experience with some schools (both as a student and -
previously - as a staff member) is that they will often sweep issues
of violence or other distasteful activities under the rug, trying to
deal with them (poorly) internally rather than face the embarrassment
of the publicity.

I'm not sure if this really translates to IT though. To play devil's
advocate on both sides: the possession of certain varieties of
pictures is not legal, but can come about in a legal manner (the
aforementioned warez site banners). Anything which strongly points to
abuse would likely be a case for reporting. I wouldn't at all hesitate
if I was repairing a computer and came across pictures of abuse
wherein the PC owner was obviously involved (for example, in the
picture/video committing the illegal act). If the owner was "very
likely" involved (pictures of his/her own child in an abuse situation,
but the owner is not visible in the picture) I would likely seek legal
advise about notifying the owner (he/she may not be involved in the
abuse), but still lean towards also making a police report.

There are a ton of scary grey areas though. How about pictures of the
teen son/daughter which may be taken by his/her significant other? How
about when kids download questionable images?

That last one I know somebody who had an experience wherein a computer
he was repairing contained images/links that appeared to be on the
young side, as well as various links to material involving explicit
activities with animals. The thing was that those images were under
the younger son's account, which was passworded, and the mother really
didn't appear to know enough to have been the culprit.

Personally, one of the scenarios that scares me the most is when I am
re-imaging or re-storing hard-drives and backing them up to my USB
storage drive. Who knows what kind of crap is going to end up on
there, and even after it's deleted it could perhaps be restored. These
days I don't do side-work though, and it's not a situation I'm likely
to run across in my day-job, but it's still a scary thought.





On Jan 16, 2008 3:32 PM, Evan Leibovitch <evan-ieNeDk6JonTYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Tyler Aviss wrote:
> > "Most provincial and territorial child welfare laws require those
> > (including professionals and members of the public) who suspect that a
> > child is being maltreated to make a report to the appropriate child
> > welfare authority."
> >
>
> The timing of this is interesting, considering that a precedent was set
> recently on this issue. A school principal and VP were recently charged
> for being aware of a sexual assault of a student in their school and not
> reporting it.
>
> http://www.thestar.com/article/291584
>
> This is the first time, apparently, that criminal charges have been laid
> for failing to report.
>
> - Evan
>
>
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
>



-- 
Tyler Aviss
Systems Support
LPIC/LPIC-2
(647) 477-1784
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists