I hope he gets the maximum sentence:
Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today announced the arrest of the alleged owner and operator of a revenge porn website who facilitated the posting of more than 10,000 sexually explicit photos and extorted victims for as much as $350 each to remove the illicit content.
“This website published intimate photos of unsuspecting victims and turned their public humiliation and betrayal into a commodity with the potential to devastate lives,” Attorney General Harris said. “Online predators that profit from the extortion of private photos will be investigated and prosecuted for this reprehensible and illegal internet activity.”
Kevin Christopher Bollaert, 27, of San Diego, was arrested today in San Diego by California Department of Justice agents and is being held in San Diego County jail on $50,000 bail. According to documents filed in San Diego County Superior Court, Bollaert has been charged with 31 felony counts of conspiracy, identity theft and extortion and is facing possible jail time and fines.
Scumbag.
BruceFromOhio
Aye, scumbag indeed.
Law Enforcement Essay Question: How to prevent or discourage other scumbags from embracing this business model?
Another Holocene Human
Extortion. Yes! Sig’m!
Another Holocene Human
@BruceFromOhio: “I have scandalous photos. Pay me.” is extortion, is illegal, has always been illegal, and I’m glad it’s getting prosecuted since it’s a “thing” again.
Extortionists used to target teh gheyz and women having affairs & so on.
maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor
Mr. Boellaert has a future on Wall Street, methinks.
Ben Cisco
What a douchcanoe. Hope he gets a nice long sentence.
YellowJournalism
Is this the same one where the mother of a victim went after him and Anonymous got involved?
Glocksman
This is being discussed on some tech sites and the consensus is that he’s probably going down due to the extortion charges.
What’s more iffy are the ID Theft charges, as CA state law on the subject potentially conflicts with the first amendment.
A rumor is that some of the pics posted were of minors and he refused to take them down even after being notified.
If true, I’m sure there’s some Federal charges waiting in the wings after California gets through with him.
different-church-lady
God, what a scumbag. He should have instead fled the country and turned the photos over to journalists. [ducks]
Sly
“Revenge porn website” is not a wholly inclusive term for what these cesspools actually do. While most bill themselves as “get revenge on your ex-girlfriend,” they regularly include naked pictures of unwilling women just for the sake of having them.
@YellowJournalism:
No, that’s Hunter Moore.
Betty Cracker
He’s not only a douchetanker, he’s a WHINY douchetanker:
What a piece of shit. Making license plates should be the good thing he does with his life.
Pharniel
@Glocksman – Stolen photos fall under computer/ip theft issues. If someone hacked your account and distrubted private photos of yourself that you took of yourself you’d be looking at data theft statutes (which are grimdark) + copyright infringement.
Also, too they don’t call it ‘jail bait’ for nothing.
They could also (at the federal level) go after him for not having his 18 U.S.C. §2257 ducks in a row. You can see just about all the major pr0nz sites have a banner talking about it. Basically it’s his job to prove that all models were over 18 and he has to do that with a birth certificate.
Honestly if the CA law doesn’t stand up in court I see a great many 18 U.S.C. §2257 cases for these sites.
different-church-lady
@BruceFromOhio:
The big problem is scumbags don’t think like you or I or other normal people. There’s already a disconnect between what is disgusting and their impulses, so normal people have a hard time engineering discouragement that’s effective. Threats of punitive action do no good, because they’re already divorced from realistic risk/reward evaluations.
It’s always been my observation that criminals may have many dysfunctions, but laziness isn’t one of them. Try to discourage a scumbag, and the scumbag will stubbornly redouble his or her efforts.
Xecky Gilchrist
And just think, if Snowden hadn’t blown the whistle, nobody would ever have known about this.
Villago Delenda Est
Most likely literally.
Villago Delenda Est
@different-church-lady:
For example, Newt Gingrich. Ted Cruz. Mitt Romney. George W. Bush. Richard Cheney. Ron Fournier. David Gregory. Everyone employed at Politico.
Need I go on?
Villago Delenda Est
@maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor:
Or Tiger Beat on the Potomac. See my 15.
Belafon
@Xecky Gilchrist: This sounds like something the NSA could have forwarded to the FBI. “Yeah, boss, I’m working. Look, I found this site. It needs to be reported.”
raven
Read more at http://quotes.dictionary.com/gentleman_chicolini_here_may_talk_like_an_idiot#jscwvldsfO64kjAz.99
Glocksman
@Pharniel:
My understanding is that the ID charges result from him posting the ‘model’s’ contact info, including address, phone, and email/social media information.
Merely ‘annoying’ speech isn’t and shouldn’t be illegal under the first amendment.
Harassing speech? Possibly. That’s why I said there might be potential first amendment issues.
That said, I could be completely off base about the basis for the ID charges.
SarahT
@different-church-lady: Ha !
Cathie from Canada
Monty Python had a skit about this once —
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrRZVCg31fE
Amir Khalid
This was extortion, plan and simple. I’m surprised that Kevin Bollaert could ever have thought it was a legal business.
SiubhanDuinne
@YellowJournalism:
@Sly:
NPR’s On the Media replayed an interview Bob Garfield did with him a couple of years ago. Just as disgusting to listen to that creep now as it was in 2011.
Edit: “that creep” = Hunter Moore, not Bob Garfield.
Another edit (because I can): Am unable to link, but if you look up On the Media, find this week’s programs, and scroll down about six stories, the feature is called “Revenge Porn’s Latest Frontier.”
Roger Moore
That’s “Job Creator” to you, bub. Whatever will America do when this kind of creative, entrepreneurial spirit is crushed by the power of the state?/randroid
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
The rights of others, particularly “negative” rights, do not concern me. Only my own rights are important.
/randroid
Violet
@Betty Cracker:
Awww…see he doesn’t feel like he’s committed a crime. So he hasn’t. That’s how it works in conservatopia. See: Zimmerman, George, et. al.
Citizen_X
Scumbag? Hah! A Libertarian hero!
Fine him all the Bitcoins.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
Besides, the pictures are of women, so no important rights can possibly have been stepped upon. It’s not like he did anything bad to a human being like a fetus or anything.
The Other Chuck
@Belafon: Really? The last thing I want the NSA involved in is domestic law enforcement. That slope is slipperier than a greased weasel.
scav
Even sleezier example of essentially the Mug-shot racket, only with less reality, more sex and crap motives from the original providers of ‘content’.
Hill Dweller
@Villago Delenda Est:
Add Chuck Todd to that list. The twitter machine tells me he was on the Today show this morning using PO’s disapproval ratings to prove he was finished, because his approval rating had ticked up since their last poll.
I think every WH correspondent sitting in the front row is a Republican plant.
schrodinger's cat
@Hill Dweller: Can we add David Brooks to that list? I think HAL can take care of him.
Gravenstone
$50k seems a trifle light, especially if the site was lucrative and he has money available to post. I’d prefer they made it $50k per photo he posted.
Mandalay
Any lawyers? Is there anything inherently illegal about posting highly embarrassing images that were taken legitimately?
For example, what if someone had taken a photo of their former spouse naked, or of their drunken college roommate who has become a prominent politician, with their knowledge, consent and approval at the time. And then ten years later the photographer chooses to post those images on their web site.
Are there any existing laws which can force such images be removed from the web?
gnomedad
Yeah, but Harris is a Dem and Not A Real American If You Know What I Mean, so how long before this is another nail in the coffin of liberty?
burnspbesq
I would be happier if bail were a lot higher, and that he be required to surrender his passport and wear a tracking device if he is able to post bail. This guy seems like exactly the sort who would jump bail and disappear. He’ll be the next “First Amendment hero” yucking it up in an Ecuadoran embassy somewhere.
mike with a mic
@Mandalay:
Laws don’t matter honestly. Once something is on the internet it can never truly be removed. It’s there forever for anyone who wants it.
And trying to legally fight this stuff never works either. There have been countless incidents where embarrassing images and videos have been uploaded that made life miserable for people and in some cases drove people to suicide. As long as the video itself is legal and it’s not documenting a criminal act, that’s the end of it. If you could take down site for ruining someones life youtube would have been yanked long ago and the StarWars Kid would never have been famous.
Moral of the story is don’t take nude photos of yourself. If you must take nude photos of yourself do it with old fashioned film, develop them yourself, and for the love of god don’t transfer them to digital format, and don’t fucking share them either.
Mandalay
@burnspbesq:
Riiiiight….because Ecuador has a long record of harboring folks who post revenge porn and then try to exort its victims.
Your vile racist swill is duly noted.
The Other Chuck
@Hill Dweller: Well it’s true, Barack Obama is not getting re-elected POTUS.
Belafon
@The Other Chuck: I was trying to make a joke about someone at the NSA “checking out” the site. I could have substituted the FBI directly, or some other group.
Caveat: I don’t actually think all that many people are “investigating” these sites on government time.
EconWatcher
My kids are still very young, but very soon I’m going to have to start pounding into their heads that pictures and text can go anywhere, and the internet is forever. It’s a scary world.
I’m very glad that the multitude of dumb stuff I did as a teenager could not be instantly memorialized with a camera and then sent around the world. My kids are going to have to be smarter and more careful.
The Other Chuck
@gnomedad: Harris is also blah (or close enough to it), so you bet the usual suspects will be screaming their fool heads off. Not like they ever stopped.
Belafon
@Hill Dweller: How often do they need watering?
srv
Damn, where else are people supposed to go to fufill their wetsuit fetishes now?
@mike with a mic: 30 million kids using snapchat prove Puritanism is on the way out.
Mandalay
@mike with a mic: Bummer. I suspect that there are an awful lot of kids in college right now who are dreading that Goldman Sachs or Google will discover some inappropriate two minute movie they made with their partner when they were 18.
rollSound
@Mandalay:
IANAL, but I’ve always found the “ownership” claim by the posters of such material to be questionable. I think it is perfectly reasonable that someone might have given such material as a gift with no expectation or permission for the recipient to publish the material elsewhere. Private use vs. publication rights. One could then claim fraud on the part of the poster for saying the subject of the photos gave a release (for the publication rights). I would certainly go after a website for multiple counts of accessory to such fraud.
Betty Cracker
@EconWatcher: I’ve got a 15-year-old daughter. We’ve been emphasizing “the internet is forever” with her since she was a toddler, poor kid. It’s just something you have to do now.
Mandalay
@The Other Chuck:
We are already there.
mike with a mic
@Mandalay:
Any competent company that will pay you a remotely decent salary scours the internet for your entire history before they make you an offer. People not getting hired for stupid shit they put up on facebook, or dumbass comments they made on facebook is already a thing. It’s starting to trickle into college admissions as well. Putting something on the internet is the same as taking an add out in the newspaper and putting it there, or putting it up on a billboard. It’s not going away, and you can’t magic it away later once you realized what a dumb idea it was.
And really, if someone is stupid enough to allow nude photos of themselves, making sex tapes, or texting people dick pics it’s an indication they aren’t all that bright to start with.
All of this is a case of people ignoring the dangers of technology and only wanting to see the good.
The Other Chuck
@mike with a mic: It’s one of the reasons I’m happy to have a fairly common name. Plus, I’ve said some mean things, some crude things, but nothing that would show me to be a racist/sexist/homophobic twatwaffle. Anyone who wouldn’t hire me for saying “twatwaffle” on my own time is no one I want to work for anyway.
EconWatcher
The recent movie Disconnect (which is pretty good and thoughtful, BTW) is all about how communication technology has in some ways driven us further apart from each other, encouraged predatory behavior, and allowed moments of carelessness to become life-destroying.
aimai
@different-church-lady: Thats not really true. I mean, maybe their calculation fo risk and reward is different but very few people do smash and grabs, for example, when they can steal more stealthily. And very few people will risk a certain and extreme punishment if they aren’t pretty sure they will get away with it. Its not that this guy didn’t evaluate the danger of what he was doing like a normal person would–he just evaluated it under the laws and sense of anonymity he had before Kamala Harriss got involved and started focusing on ways to prosecute him.
Kay
@EconWatcher:
What they don’t get is that a juvenile transferring pornographic images of another juvenile is a crime. It can be a felony in Ohio. They just have no earthly idea how very bad it can get for them. Transferring. Sending, storing, etc. in any way.
I think they only consider an adult/adult transfer of an image of a juvenile, because that’s the classic creepy “stranger” scenario.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: You should check out the concept of personality rights. Generally, there are to sides tot he personality rights coin, the right of privacy and the right to control the use of one’s image. The right to control the use of one’s image is what comes into play here. I would say that if someone is posting “naughty” pictures of someone else, it would behoove that person to have a signed waiver of those rights by the subject of the photo. It is not remotely my area of expertise, however.
mike with a mic
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s not how it works though. Let’s quit talking about the naked/sex angle of this. There is a long history of people creating videos of themselves, or letting others, where the video got out and their lives were straight up ruined. Stuff that seems simply like Star Wars Kid. Youtube is still up despite people constantly trying to take it down for this sort of thing. Hell Daniel Tosh makes a living out of scrounging the internet for people who fucked up like this and made international jokes out of themselves. People kill themselves over this stuff.
If you want to keep your image don’t create digital media of yourself, and keep in mind that everyone with a smart phone is waiting for you to do something stupid so they can take a video of it and then upload it to the internet for all time. Once digital media is created it’s forever. More so than worrying about the NSA you should worry about everyone with a smartphone fucking your shit up.
Roger Moore
@mike with a mic:
Lots of companies may check your history, but the actually competent ones care a lot more about your recent work history than whether you made a sex tape when you were 18. A company that refuses to hire people who have made fools of themselves online is drawing from a pretty damn thin and internet illiterate pool.
Omnes Omnibus
@EconWatcher: @Kay: I think we are going through a cultural shift about these kinds of things akin to that that has taken place regarding drug experimentation by politicians. Remember the freakout of Clinton and pot vs the “who gives a shit, of course he did” attitude by the majority regarding Obama’s pot and coke experimentation? Sexting is going the same way. There will be some rough spots as attitudes adjust, but I doubt anyone will care in 20 years if Sen Vanessa Hudgens had a nude selfie back in the day.
Mandalay
@mike with a mic:
Ugh. I had no idea it was that bad. You certainly make a pretty solid argument, but I wonder if it is fair to state that those who end with embarrassing stuff on the web “aren’t all that bright to start with”. Sure, many may have been reckless or imprudent when they were younger, but do we (never mind Google and Goldman Sachs et al) really want all our corporations to automatically exclude applicants because of former indiscretions? They might be excluding an awful lot of bright, adventurous, fun loving people.
ranchandsyrup
The saga of uber douche canoe Hunter Moore is instructive on revenge porn.
Omnes Omnibus
@mike with a mic: Most of this law is reactive. It doesn’t prevent some one from posting the naked/embarrassing/racist.etc. video in the first place, it does give that person whose rights were violated a cause of action against the violator. It is how our torts system works.
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
I’m not sure about that, though a smart DA could probably get you for harassment if you refused to take the pictures down on request. Doing what this jackass did- posting the pictures with identifying information and then demanding payment to take the pictures down- is pretty clearly extortion.
PhoenixRising
And we have a winner at #37, with the first victim blame.
The reason we have laws against identity theft, slander and blackmail is that all speech is not equally protected. And I think making an example of a handful of these vultures, who are leveraging differing social expectations between (older/younger), (men/women), students/colleges) is the best remedy.
Not telling people never to take pictures of their junk. I’m objectively anti-junk-photography, but I’m not in charge of that for everyone.
Keith
@Sly: Too true. Sometimes, the results can be career ending. Case in point, a teacher at a Christian Academy near Cincinnati. Her phone stolen, she learns that pictures from the phone were posted up on a revenge porn site. By whom we do not know – but it was not clear there was another affronted party (ex-boyfriend for instance) involved.
School finds out.
School (Xtian) goes with blame the victim and cans the teacher – because someone got upset.
Sistine chapel north of the Ohio River has a no nakedness on the ceiling cats policy I see.
Then just to show you how the Internetz (don’t) rule you have this couplet … at end of article:
Good on you WCPO – as for the rest of the ‘Netz – barely two comments in … some spiteful individual purporting to be
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Companies exclude people from employment for all sorts of reasons that end up with the company not getting the services of all sorts of “bright, adventurous, fun loving people.” Companies are often dumb – just like any bureaucratic organization. Bureaucrats frequently work to avoid failure rather than achieve success. They work to minimize to themselves, to their department, and the the organization as a whole. Often in that order. Why take a chance on the genius who drinks when there is a nice, above-average family guy who is just like everyone else in the department? Companies don’t really want “bright, adventurous, fun loving people.” They want people who will come to work and do just enough work not to get fired.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hill Dweller:
Well, I didn’t intend for the names mentioned to be all-inclusive. Obviously, there are more, like Chuckles the Toddler. Also, too, Mark Halperin, Charles Krauthammer…well, I don’t want to go on forever…
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus:
There you go, bringing reality into it again.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I would be amazed if that was the case at Google and Goldman Sachs. I would think that being smart as a whip was their number one requirement, and strong evidence of that (via academic and/or job achievements) would be a prerequisite to even get a job interview.
Trollhattan
Tried to conjure up a Bob Filner joke to hang on this guy, but failed because he’s probably a small “l” libertarian who would have said, “I wanted rid of him because he’s a commie, not because he grabbed a few boobs–who doesn’t do that?”
Yatsuno
Speaking of Jackasses. Fuck. Me. Running. How many people is he going to get away with hurting/killing?
Trollhattan
@The Other Chuck:
Ever worser, according to Preznit Blahmann, she’s teh HAWT. Double penalty.
Mandalay
@mike with a mic:
Now you now have me wondering whether employers may also be doing a routine annual internet “check-up” on their existing employees as well.
Then they might learn that the quiet guy in accounts came out last February, the receptionist on the front desk was arrested for DUI in June, the grumpy guy in marketing had a really ugly divorce in October, and the CFO’s wife was arrested for shoplifting and diagnosed with mental problems.
Would digging all that dirt up be illegal?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: They still want people who conform to a certain pattern of behavior. HR is going to forward the resumes of the guys who are bright enough to do the job and don’t seem weird. Are there exceptions? I am sure there are, but most bureaucracies function the why I described. How many woodworking companies are going to hire a physics PhD to run a lathe? Very few. HR is going to see that person as anomalous and not recommend the person.
NCSteve
Somehow, I’m reminded of Ayn Rand’s gushing in her journal over child murdering sociopath William Hickman, upon whom she modeled Howard Roark:
http://exiledonline.com/atlas-shrieked-why-ayn-rands-right-wing-followers-are-scarier-than-the-manson-family-and-the-gruesome-story-of-the-serial-killer-who-stole-ayn-rands-heart/
Trollhattan
Speaking of douches, my kid’s elementary school and the local middle and high schools all went on lockdown this morning. We parents didn’t know why, only that it happened. (Last time was a dude who got into a fatal gunfight with the cops, across the street.) Turned out to be a kid returning from a hunting trip who decided to show some buddies his (shotgun?) on the street, while camo-clad. Considering the forthcoming Sandy Hook anniversary, I can understand why somebody called the cops.
A hunting license does not necessarily mean you’re smart.
beth
@Yatsuno: I’m assuming he’s getting his guns back now too. That chick’s crazy.
Roger Moore
@beth:
It’s hard to imagine any other kind of woman wanting to be associated with George Zimmerman.
Yatsuno
@Roger Moore: There is always a type of woman attracted to the “bad boy”. I have a feeling she’s also a bit of a fame whore.
WaterGIrl
@beth: That’s chick’s crazy is right. I will not be surprised if she ends up dead at some point, courtesy of Zimmerman.
Amir Khalid
@beth:
I’m not entirely convinced she really wants to get back together with him. She’s already aware that she’s not the first woman he’s done this to. And that he’s violent and manipulative and knows his way around the law. I think she’s aware that pressing charges against him could mean spending many months in the public eye, as it did for the late Trayvon. So she hopes he’ll just stay away from her and become some other woman’s problem.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yatsuno: Don’t they want the bad boy to be somewhat attractive in some way?
Jebediah, RBG
@Yatsuno:
I have been assuming that, given his reputation, he will have an encounter with someone who will assume he is a threat. That person will “stand his ground” against GZ – and GZ, being newly dead, will be unable to contradict the shooter’s account of the incident.
ruemara
@Mandalay: After my experiences with employees from both, I mock your assumptions. For a very, very long time.
fuckwit
I’m glad Harris has won this case– extortion is extortion and is fucked up and should be prosecuted. But something about Harris’s tendency to be anti-porn in general and anti-sex worries me. When she was in office in SF she went on a crusade (and I choose that word very, very deliberately) against prostitution. That’s the main reason why I didn’t support her for CA AG.
Sex (gay, straight, whatever), porn, prostitution, and marijuana should all be legal, taxed, and regulated. I’m in favor of consenting adults engaging enthusiastically in all of the above. When officeholders go on a crusade against those things, they’re not on my team. Sorry, that’s the libertarian bit still remaining in me and it probably will always be there. Again, extortion is not consenting, so congrats to Harris here in this case. But when she went after prostitution in SF, she couched it in supposedly going after sex trafficking/slavery/abuse, but instead she went after all of prostitution in general, so I’m suspicious of her motives.
I don’t know why she tends to go after sex-oriented cases. Some personal history perhaps? If she’s an abuse survivor, I’d understand and sympathize, but I’d still not agree with her turning that into some kind of public crusade against sex/porn/prostitution/etc.
Or maybe she realizes, purely cynically and self-centerdly, like Gingrich did, that sex is irresistable to headline-makers, and she can get tons of media exposure by going for the sex-related cases. In which case, meh, I definitely wouldn’t trust her.
I expect Rethugs to be Puritans and be irresistably drawn towards sex scandals– either fulminating about them, prosecuting them, engaging in them (i.e. Diaper Vitter, Ted Haggard, etc), clutching pearls over them, or all of the above. I don’t expect it from supposedly liberal Democrats.
Maybe she’s all on the up-and-up, but if the next headline I see about Harris has to do with a sex-related case, I’ll continue to be wary of her.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
Good luck with that. George Zimmerman doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’s good at taking no for an answer. I won’t be the least surprised if his next reason for getting in trouble with the law is for stalking his ex, though whether it’s the ex wife or ex girlfriend is an open question.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
So? How many people with PhDs are actually going to apply for a job to run a lathe? Very few. And how many companies looking for candidates with doctorates are going to hire a lathe worker? Very few. But this has absolutely nothing to do with otherwise viable candidates losing out on jobs because they did two minutes of cell phone porno when they were in high school.
Maybe for the woodworking company, but not at Google, where the employees who would end up working with the applicants have a big say in who gets offered a job. And many other companies as well I’m sure. And being safe and conventional is actually something of a liability for getting into Ivy League schools – just having stellar grades and nothing else to offer would be underwhelming to them.
PhoenixRising
@fuckwit:
OFFS.
Perhaps instead of trying to impugn her motives for enforcing the law as a DA and AG, you’d like to cough up your Fuckwit-Approved Plan to crack down on trafficking and exploitation of undocumented women & girls?
I’m sure there’s a simple way to end slavery for runaways who are being drugged into acquiescence with their pimps, while keeping law enforcement on the right side of your personal bright line of how much interfering with the other, ethical, freely-chosen kind of (illegal) prostitution is okay. So when you’re ready, share with the class.
Meanwhile take 10 and reflect on what it says about you that your reaction to a woman in that role doing her job is, Poor little victim.
Mandalay
@ruemara:
And I heartily mock your lame anecdotal evidence.
If an employee at Google or Goldman Sachs only did just enough not to get fired they wouldn’t last.
burnspbesq
@Mandalay:
Say what, now? Even by your standards, that’s an utterly clueless comment.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay:
So? That has nothing to do with getting a job in a bureaucratic organization. Maybe Google doesn’t do what I described; if that is the case, it is more likely to mean that Google isn’t a bureaucratic organization than that what I said was wrong. I don’t work with Google (the company), so I cannot speak to that. I have however worked for or with a number of large bureaucratic organizations over the years and I stand by my characterization.
Roger Moore
@PhoenixRising:
There’s something to be said for the idea that pushing any business into the black market ensures that it will be run by criminals who are wiling to break other laws in the process. Legalizing and regulating seems to have done a decent job of taking other businesses out of the hands of the worst kinds of criminals. It might help to try it with prostitution.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
You and and I aren’t in Zimmerman’s thrall. But when you’re the victim in a situation like hers, it distorts your judgement. The thing you fear most is the bully; you believe there is no protection against him, and that your worst move is making him mad at you again. But it’s really the bully who picks his moment to get mad — that’s how he keeps control, and his ability to terrify you. I can very easily imagine he persuaded her that pressing charges wouldn’t work this time either, and that this was her least-bad option.
Omnes Omnibus
@PhoenixRising: Legalizing and regulating the sex trade could very well make it easier to avoid abuse. Among other things, requirements for drug and STD testing could be implemented. Sex workers, by no longer being outside the law by the nature of their work, would be in a better position to report abuse. There is no silver bullet, though.
Steve in the ATL
There is no one at my company who has time to google every employee every year to see what they’ve been up to. I suspect anyone who said he had that kind of free time would end up on the wrong side if a RIF in short order.
John Revolta
Well, here’s MY favorite part………
Bollaert has been charged with 31 felony counts of conspiracy, identity theft and extortion and is facing possible jail time
O_o
Mandalay
@Amir Khalid:
A factor not mentioned yet is that she is pregnant, and Zimmerman is the father. Of course that does not mean that she should automatically stay with him, but it must play a huge part in her evaluation of what to do next. Even if she leaves him, he will almost certainly be granted access to their child for 18 years.
aimai
@Roger Moore: Since thats not in Harris’s hands thats not an option. She has to enforce the laws on the books–perhaps she chose not to enforce the laws against prostitutes so much as against Johns and that is what has fuckwit pissed off? Because Prostitution in CA has always been illegal, what wasn’t enforced were the laws that affected the Johns.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I worry a lot that the fact that I’ve been open about my mental illness problems and my autism, usually under my real name, has been a part of the reason that I have been unable to get a job. Maybe; maybe not. Just being unemployed for an extended period of time before I started my job hunt because of recovering from a nervous breakdown would be enough without any sort of explanation.
Then again, I also think that being open about them has been an important element of my recovery. And if it has been a negative in the job hunt, all I can say is, “Fuck you.”
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I challenge that assumption. I would think the way recruitment at Google works is far more like they way recruitment works at Harvard and CalTech than at a woodworking company. Your notion that companies “want people who will come to work and do just enough work not to get fired” just seems ridiculous, and does remotely not match my own experience. Google isn’t the only place where candidates get interviewed by their prospective peers as well as HR.
Also see post #93 as for some independent anecdotal evidence.
Amir Khalid
@Mandalay:
Is she really pregnant? The police seem to have their doubts.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay:
Evidence of what?
Most jobs at most companies require doing a set of tasks. Over and over again. Companies want people who will do their set of tasks. If your work experience as been different, you have been lucky to be in a industry/field or at a level where creativity is rewarded. Don’t assume that fits the rest of the working world. Why do you think the movie Office Space resonated with so many office workers? The people who are working in customer service call centers or factories are being rewarded for for being creative or interesting. They’re just doing their jobs, and their employers want only that from them.
Mandalay
@Amir Khalid:
Ah, you are absolutely correct. I had read that she was pregnant in the media so I assumed it was true. My bad.
I therefore retract everything I said in the previous post.
ruemara
@Mandalay: you’re not very clued in with corporate culture.
different-church-lady
@mike with a mic:
This is true, but you are describing what’s prudent, whereas what we are talking about is what’s lawful or ought to be lawful. Two different things.
different-church-lady
@ranchandsyrup: Lie down with dogs, get Ebola.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay:
By definition, they would.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus: This is what you originally claimed:
.
Companies want people who are a good fit for the position, and will do their job well, and their recruitment processes will vary for many reasons. But no company wants “people who will do just enough work not to get fired”. That’s absurd. You are correct that someone with a doctorate would usually not be a good fit a a job as a lathe worker; they would probably feel unfulfilled, and would likely seek alternative employment pretty quickly. But that is a separate issue entirely.
I think you are confusing the position of employers with the position of some of their employees when it comes to doing “just enough work not to get fired”.
shelly
He should go into politics. He’s got the ‘Bull-shit non-apology’ down pat.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not at all, because performance monitoring necessarily happens over a period of time. They would survive in the short term, not in the long term. The stakes would be raised: your performance needs to improve from its current level, or you must leave.
If someone loses their temper at work and punches their boss on the nose they lose their job instantaneously. But that is not the normal scenario. The normal scenario is that an employee is advised that they need to improve, and given a period of time to make the necessary improvements.
Jack Welch at GE famously had the 20-70-10 rule…
So in that scenario you could be working way far above the minimum required to keep your job for 12 months, until it came to the annual review. Then, if you were in the bottom 10% relative to your peers you were gone. Microsoft had a similar policy under Ballmer. Do you really think Ballmer and Welch would agree with your claims? Realize that their criteria for keeping you was simply that you were not in that bottom 10% rung. Your criterion of doing “just enough work not to get fired” does have any meaning at all for Welch and Ballmer. Their approach is qualitatively different.
John
@Omnes Omnibus: One place that an internet misstep can affect you getting a job is in your ability to get a security clearance.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay:
No, most jobs don’t offer much of a chance to move up. The companies are looking to fill them with people who will meet their standards. If they hire “bright, adventurous, fun loving people” those people will become bored or want to move up into positions that don’t exist or challenge the status quo or do something other than make their share of product or move their share of paper from in- to out-box during the next fiscal quarter. Most companies want to hire drudges for most positions. The reason workers don’t do more is because they know there is no point to it.
I get the impression that you have not worked with a lot of real bureaucracies. In that environment, the safest course for HR, who has no idea what a corporate counsel, a C++ sys admin, or a tool and dye maker actually does, is to look at the list of things that the department was hiring said it want and send over people who are as close to a prefect match to that list as they can find. So that is what they do. And the bright, adventurous, fun loving people get left off the list because their resume had weird stuff. Then everyone in the department has the same haircut except for the black guy who shaves his head.
Omnes Omnibus
@John: I never said it didn’t.
@Mandalay: In the situation you describe, doing just enough not to get fired simply means staying out of the bottom 10%.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yatsuno: It’s just the weirdest series of unfortunate coincidences, isn’t it?
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: He might want to take a look at the one common factor in all of his interactions with other people. Himself.
SiubhanDuinne
@Trollhattan: That must have been utterly harrowing as a parent. I’m so sorry you had to go through that, and grateful there was no headline-inducing damage.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
If he were the kind of person who could do that, he might not have gotten into so much trouble with other people in the first place.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Actually, most companies have now realized that the Welch “fire the bottom 10 percent” is absolutely fucking disastrous for the company, because when you clear out the first load of deadwood, that means that the bottom part of your middle 70 percent suddenly becomes the “10 percent problem,” so you fire them. And then fire the next 10 percent. And the next.
How long does it take you to work your way through that entire 70 percent of employees who were doing a decent job, but were unlucky enough to be slightly lower than their peers?
SiubhanDuinne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): You are a rock star, and I love your attitude! The more people who simply put themselves out there, “This is who I am,” the quicker we will get potential employers, landlords, heck, even law enforcement and judicial folks, to see mental illness for what it is, a FUCKIN ILLNESS, not a moral flaw.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
You might want him to, and I might want him to, but I really don’t think GZ has the self-awareness to recognize himself in the patterns that simply jump out at everyone else.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Let me rephrase it. It would behoove him to take a look at the one common factor in all of his interactions with other people. Himself.
Because, as someone noted above, someone soon is going to have a reasonable fear for his or her life while dealing with GZ and decide to stand his or her ground.
Yatsuno
@Mnemosyne: At my old job, my boss utilised a variation of this principle, but instead of firing the bottom 10%, they were coached much harder than the middle and upper folks. He was awesome enough that none of us upper tier folks felt neglected, but he reserved termination for only the cases where it was clear the hiring was a mistake.
That office has grown to the point where he’s not the full time training coordinator. I haven’t gotten to compare notes with him yet, but hey I have three months to do that coming up.
Cassidy
@Mandalay: They’ve been harboring an alleged rapist. That’s worse IMO.
BrianM
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Rock on.
BrianM
@Mandalay:
Microsoft has ditched their employee rating policy now that Ballmer is out:
The political animal’s way of keeping out of the bottom 10% is to make sure other people are in it.
BrianM
@Mandalay:
Somewhat relevant is The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office” which also divides workers into three categories: sociopaths, the clueless, and losers.
Cervantes
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): What you need to look for is a job that requires courage. You’d be a shoo-in. Good luck.
Howard Beale IV
@Cathie from Canada: Proving once again, that Monty Python was so far ahead of the curve that it’s seriously spooky.
(and I can recite that routine cold.)
Howard Beale IV
@Mandalay: Welch’s policy wasn’t limited to GE-many of the underlings in GE’s sprawling enterprises who left and went to other companies imposed that diktat to the companies who hired them-with just as disastrous results to those corporations.
Welch was also notorious for realizing all to late that this methods were counter-productive-and his methods for always beating last quarter’s earnings we just shy of being criminal.
Howard Beale IV
@Betty Cracker: The reality is that at some point there’s costs involved in storing such large swatths of data-while the NSA uses tax money the reality is that many links and pages are slowly turning into dead-ends and are no longer accessible unless a particular incident is so egregious that everybody has a copy.
fuckwit
@Mandalay: This kind of policy infuriates me. Cisco actively managed this way; I guess they got the idea from Neutron Jack. OK, now extrapolate that to the whole workforce. Fire your lowest 10%. Nobody else will hire them since they’re the lowest 10%, and everyone is following Neutron Jack’s advie. Now they have no jobs, permanently. They have no money, which means in America they have no food, no shelter, and, until Obamacare, no medical care. This is euthanasia by slow execution. Just line us up against the wall and shoot us all, since we lowest 10% are clearly not human nor deserving of life.
Mandalay
@BrianM:
Exactly. That was the perfect strategy for destroying trust, loyalty and goodwill on a team, promoting the backstabbing of co-workers, and ensuring that employees did not share their knowledge and expertise with others. Make yourself look better than your peers by any means possible, so that they get fired instead of you.
I suspect a lot of talent at Microsoft must have fled just because of that destructive, asinine policy. It’s good that it’s dead now, but I find it incredible that it lasted so long.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh FFS, I described that dismissal policy in great detail to demonstrate the complete absurdity of your claim that companies want to recruit people who will “do just enough work not to get fired”.
Their approach was certainly brutal and ham-fisted, but they were striving to have the most talented workforce possible, which is the antithesis of the approach that you claim they follow.
Mandalay
@Howard Beale IV:
I wasn’t aware that Welch had ever recanted. AFAIK he still stands by that approach, but I’d be happy to learn that he has reconsidered.
AxelFoley
@different-church-lady:
Oooh, I see what you did there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Okay, if, extrapolating from your Jack Welch example, bureaucratic companies are trying to recruit the most talented workforce possible – at all levels, why are so many companies fucking over their workers with pay, hours, and benefits (e.g., Walmart, McDonald’s, etc.) ? My answer: they don’t care about getting the most talented workforce possible, except in certain positions; they care about getting warm bodies who are capable of doing largely rote work. Do you think MS, Goldman Sachs, and GE put a lot of time into recruiting, training, and coaching support staff or maintenance workers? In the working world, there are a lot more support staff, customer service, and maintenance worker jobs than there are systems engineer, lawyer, and investment banker positions. I reiterate that I think you are looking at this from a very sheltered perspective.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus: Look, you were the one who claimed “Companies don’t really want “bright, adventurous, fun loving people.” They want people who will come to work and do just enough work not to get fired.”.
All companies. No exceptions. No caveats.
You really might want to reconsider your premise. It’s absurd.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Read the statement in the context of the whole paragraph. The weasel words were there. And, yes, it was a generalization. As such, I think it stands: Most companies, for most jobs, just want someone who can show up and do the work to an adequate standard. Is that better? If not, then we simply disagree.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
While we’ve already had the obligatory finger-wag at the victims, I’m stuck on the question of: WTF is the deal with the men who used and supported the website? Obviously Mr. “I’m-weely-sorry-now-that-I’ve-gotten-caught” had a financial motive. But why are there so many men willing to make this website profitable?
It’s not like it’s difficult to find nude pictures of women. The men who supplied the pictures went to a lot of trouble to make sure the pictures were not consensual, and the men who used the website knew that’s what they were getting. And they gleefully harassed the women at home and work, and will probably get no consequences of any sort.
xian
@Sly: i was hoping it was hunter moore.