Massachusetts Victimizes Innocent Employee

I cannot resist commenting on the callous and vicious treatment accorded to an innocent employee of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Department of Industrial Accidents. Not only did they fire him and charge him criminally based on invalid "evidence" of placing child porn on his departmental laptop, but, as is usually the case with governments, they continue to refuse to apologize and to put things right, despite the horrible impact such false charges have had upon his life, including his reputation.

As well, they did not do any investigative due diligence before taking such actions, and his ass was only saved [the criminal charges were dropped for lack of evidence] because he hired a forensic investigator to demonstrate that his employer gave him a laptop already infected with viruses and malware that caused the laptop to visit internet child porn sites. Apparently, the only place porn could be found on the computer was in the Internet Cache. The investigator was able to prove that this occurred as a result of malware causing the browser software to visit such sites.

No doubt, many people may refuse to believe such a thing can easily happen. Another computer expert who confirms the claims of the forensic investigator says:

"I have a demo on my web site of how to do "preloading" in javascript. Is javascript enabled in your browser? If so, my demo shows how I can create a web page that quietly downloads images from arbitrary URLs, without showing them to you. This may be used to load those images into your browser's cache. It has valid uses, such as to speed up subsequent downloading of other pages from my site which use those images. But I can just as easily fill your browser's cache with porn. Unless you know how to scan your browser's cache (or have the sense to purge it frequently), you'll never know what I've done to you. My code (actually my web server) also tells me your IP address, which I can use to send the authorities in to examine your browser's cache.

I'd be willing to testify in court how easy this is. And give the court a copy of my code (though they could easily download it from my web site ;-)."

Back to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Department of Industrial Accidents. They have once again shown how stupid and vicious politicians and bureaucrats often are when dealing with the public and their employees. There is no excuse for such behaviour. They could have done the due diligence necessary to fully investigate the basis for a possible case against Mr. Fiola, but they did not. Why?

My long experience with government bureaucrats, police, and politicians reveals that they often go off half-cocked, seemingly preferring to do as much damage as possible, and rarely make the effort to find out if they have evidence supporting their actions. But what is even worse, is that after they have been found out, and their incompetence, laziness and pettiness has been revealed, they refuse to acknowledge their faults and to make reasonable efforts to set things as right as possible, preferring instead to stonewall and ignore or cover-up.

Since over a year has gone by since the firing, the false allegations and the false criminal charges, and they have done nothing to rehabilitate Mr. Fiola's reputation and compensate him for his pain, the only conclusion I can reach is that I have characterized them correctly. If only I believed in Hell, I would wish them a long slow burn when they reach their deserved destination.