• 3 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 23rd, 2023

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  • There were a number of people who had the legitimate and sanctioned need to access prohibited material (I was one of them). At the time (and even now) it is virtually impossible to open every website that someone might need to access. Personal use was allowed as long as it didn’t impact your work and was inside the guardrails. We tried using Websense back then and it was a disaster. Virtually everyone complied with policy. There were a very small number who didn’t and I was responsible for catching them.



  • There was a lot of violence and sexual violence, torture, and extreme bondage. Things like clamping that result in obvious injury are considered obscene in Canada. Menacing is considered obscene. There were also murder and suicide videos.

    The people who were fired weren’t fired because of what they were looking at but because they refused to acknowledge what they were doing. One guy who was looking at extremely violent porn said “Yes, it was me. I have a problem.” He got counselling and kept his job. A guy who was looking at violent bondage fought for weeks until I was able to correlate logs, password changes, MAC addresses, and door access logs to prove beyond any doubt that it was him. He was fired on the spot




  • I was only looking at things coming in and going out through the corporate firewall. We were in a correctional environment so porn was prohibited. I was mostly interested in things that were illegal or dangerous. I dealt with anything that wasn’t criminal. Anything that wad criminal I referred up them responded to requests from the investigating officer when they came. I often got requests from managers to pull full histories and look for things that were outside of my remit like wasting time at work. I refused those requests and any that were overly broad. Once an investigator got to know me they figured out how to make requests that I would agree to fulfill.


  • Our work environment was pseudo legal, outside of the bounds of normal government office work. We were able to write our own policy, perform our own investigations, and even hold our own trials. I was involved in several disturbing investigations. A couple resulted in people getting fired.

    One of the things I liked was the fact that I was able to deal with people who were simply out of bounds. I could call them and say, “Hi. It’s MapleEngineer. I just wanted to remind you that we can see everything you do online and that you have obligations under [policy]. There is nothing in writing and if we don’t talk again no one will ever find it about this conversation.” That solved 95% of the problems. 4.9 percent were handled by their manager if I saw them in the logs again. Very few results in formal investigations but I was never wrong.


  • Years ago I worked in IT policy enforcement. My job was to review what employees were doing on the internet that fell outside of what was permitted. We had automated systems that did most of the work but I was responsible for looking at exceptions. I would occasionally send my wife a note telling her that I was coming through to my home office and that no one should talk to me. I would retreat to my office and emerge when I had calmed down enough to interact with people.

    My boss told me when I started in the role that it was only possible to do it for so long before you needed to stop. He told me that I could raise my hand at any point and say, “I can’t do this anymore.” and he would take me off.

    I worked in corrections. The people I was watching were staff who worked directly with the offenders. I saw some truly fucked up stuff.








  • Two months ago the lymph node under my left collar bone got very inflamed. I went to the doctor who ordered an ultrasound and chest x-ray. The ultrasound was, “worrying” so they ordered a CT. The CT suggested that my lymph nodes had gone bad. I spent the last two months afraid that I was going to leave my kids unsupported as one was finishing her first year of university and the other his first year of high school. A couple of days ago I got the best possible news under the circumstances that I have Hodgkins Lymphoma which is curable and I am expected to go on and live a long life.


  • That largely depends on who you talk to.

    Christofascists think I’m bad. White supremacists, white nationalists, racists, anti-vaxers, neo-Nazis and Nazis, anti-choicers, anti-maskers, Covid deniers, vegan extremists, incels and incucks, Puritans, the US Taliban, magats and the anti-reality crowd, the convoyists, the Save-The-Children crowd and Queen Dildo and her ragtag band of morons, PETA, the rabid pro-gun I’m-terrified-of-everything-so-I-need-a-grenade-launcher-to-buy-donuts crowd, and others think I’m bad but so do the tankies, and trans extremists, the anti-gun crowd, and others who hate the first group. Just about everyone who lives in an echo bunker would think I’m bad.

    I do things that many people think are bad but they tend to be the controlling-what-other-people-do mob but generally I think I’m a good person and the people around me seem to think so too no matter where they lie on the political, religious, or social spectrum.