(I just started working at Google, and getting at any user data, eg for debugging of a complicated problem, is the single biggest pile of paperwork they make you do. Even anonymized logs.)

People would go through users telephone logs, listen to their voicemails and read their SMS messages. If you had the right access, it was a wide open system with little or no safeguards on it. I think back on it now and am appalled, but at the time it was a kind of running joke to the guys in tech support.

My contract agency requested that I provide them with a company directory. I found the least helpful way to comply with that I could, with minimal information. Though thinking back on this, I 1) probably shouldn't even have done that, 2) should have refused the request, and 3) should have reported the request to the client.

And that's one of the, generally, more upstanding contract shops I've dealt with (still have occasional relations though no further gigs to date).

Dealing with ethics in the heat of it, especially where an engineering mindset tends to "this is a problem I should figure out how to solve" can be ... interesting.

More story time.

I worked for a firm providing services to a large revolving consumer credit organization. These companies are essentially two things: a really impressive transactions processing network (the volume of traffic they handle is immense), and branding.

Think of all the credit card commercials you've seen. That's the branding side at work.

As a contractor of theirs, there was a requirement to go through their data security training.

And while, yes, PII (personally identifiable information) was a concern, the vast bulk of the message, and emphatically highest concern, was with the brand, business plans, and similar information. That is, a company with vast holdings of personal information (described by a military acquaintance with intelligence ties in the late 1990s as "more than we've got" from the perspective of the TLAs, though that status may have since changed), was more concerned with how its trademarks and marketing campaigns were protected was ... revealing.

I would expect better controls against wiretapping, reading texts, accessing smartphone location data, etc. but identifying which physical circuit is serving a customer (and, consequently, where that customer lives) would seem to be a pretty basic bread-and-butter operation for AT&T. Not really a place where you could afford to go through a bunch of paperwork or an approval process.

The data's already there to run that sort of analysis. Unless they for some ... very difficult to imagine... reason don't log the actions of their own staff.

On the AT&T part though, I agree fully. Individuals should not have access to that sort of information.

It's like being a fugitive. They have your credit cards. They have your bank accounts. They have people watching everyone you might make contact with. You'd better believe they have your phones. They can cut the power to your house; they can force your alarm company to disarm your security system, they can break down any physical security you have, no matter how strong. They have bigger guns than you, more of them, more people to fire them, and more time. You're going to lose.

We barely trust government with that kind of power, and government in theory has internal controls. Can you imagine being an ex of someone with that kind of power and an anger problem?

This guy's story hit me on roughly the same level as the fact that BTK worked for ADT, installing alarm systems for people who were afraid of BTK.

Whether or not this guy was actually abusive is immaterial; it's the fact that his job at a telecom makes him impossible to hide from.

Well, maybe. I wouldn't be saying kind things about anyone who disappeared with my kids.

I'm not saying that this wasn't an abusive, dead-beat husband/father. Only that the information we have isn't enough to make that assumption.

"On the AT&T part though, I agree fully. Individuals should not have access to that sort of information."

Me too - but we also don't know if he went through proper procedure to get it... it does seem very unlikely, though.

Is that describing a man who's happy he's rescued his children, or happy he's re-established dominance over somebody who attempted to escape?

Is the child-rescuer or the dominator more likely to be an abuser?

(Admittedly, this is not the narrative I think is more likely, but it doesn't seem like all that remote a possibility either. Vengeful feelings are ugly, whether we consider them justified or not.)

But when you're relating the story to others, are you going to describe that satisfaction at seeing "the bitch" brought low? Or are you going to describe the relief from having your children back? People tend to relate portions of a story which they consider to be important; if this guy is describing to his friend the satisfied feeling of getting one up on her, then that sends some pretty heavy signals about why he broke the law and company policy to find her.

For instance, 10 years ago when the court determined support, it only looked at what the Father's income was. In some state's, it's a percentage of up to 40% of your income if you got a judge that didn't like you. This means if you're 22 and working at Pizza Hut making $8/hour and the judge says for child support you have to have 40% of your wages garnished to pay support would put you well under the poverty line. This is regardless of whether your girlfriend had a cushy corporate gig making $60K a year with full benefits.

Nowadays, there's been a big push for father's rights and father's rights attorneys are becoming a lot more common. The courts are starting to change course on a lot of previous frameworks. For instance, just on the income issue alone, most courts now look at both parents income when deciding child support. What if your girlfriend isn't working? Too bad, the court now takes into account if you have a college degree and basically assigns you a "potential income" based on previous work history and educational background to come to an estimated income.

It's a lot fairer, but there were some really long, painful years being an unwed father and having to pay support.

Your cognitive biases are being exploited by people with an agenda.

If my wife took off with my kid, I'd use any means at my disposal to find them - in spite of the fact that I'd never dream of doing that in any other circumstance.

They're her kids (as far as we know) at least as much as they are his.

Also, the story used the word "girlfriend", not "wife". They're not married, so he has no legal claim to them.

What? Where do you live? Third world country? Does your country still allow children to have less than 2 parents on their birth certificate?

I think you read too much into it. Consider the context. I am talking about the what-if "me". When I talk about myself and branch off to talking about my kid, it's usually going to be "my kid" or "my son" (as here).

If I'm in a discussion where I'm talking about the unit "us" as parents, it is "our kid" or "our son", and it's the same if my wife and I are discussing our son. (Seriously - that 'our son' wasn't contrived, it's all about the context. I'm talking here about both of us, so I automatically wrote "our son")

And when the kid in question pisses me off, it's definitely "do you know what your son did?" ;)

> The father being the kind of person to overreach his authority at work in order to locate his own kidnapped children sounds like good enough reason to leave

Let's assume, though it's not stated outright, that the kids are biologically theirs. The story uses the word "girlfriend". So they weren't married. So legally, the kids were actually hers; he has no leg to stand on.

If you'd said "their kids" I wouldn't have objected -- maybe LaGrange wouldn't either -- but there's no way it's right to refer to these kids as "his".

EDIT: Sure, it's possible it was just his way of dealing with stress, he might have had parental rights, police ignored the "OMG my wife went crazy" narrative for the first time in recorded history (go look hyperbole on wikipedia before you nitpick), the coffee was really awful and the bees really stung him, but it's definitely less likely, and it's hard to believe someone brings that up in this thread for any reason other than the one they ascribe to SJWs.

FTFY. Seriously, there are legal mechanisms for such situations, if you seriously think he was not the abuser there. Though I suspect you're just an MRA troll.

We simply have no information to make the sorts of conclusions you are making. You are making assumptions based on what appears to be your views on the matter. As further evidenced by you bringing in Mens Rights Activism with your comment about the parent poster being an "MRA troll", for no reason. Or perhaps you're just trying to taint the discussion by making it about womens/mens rights. When it could just simply be either an abusive stalker boyfriend or a crazy girlfriend that kidnapped kids.

Even the wording you chose to use now, "abusing privilege", is loaded with negative connotations.

@LaGrange, I don't know why you assume the man here was the evil actor. There wasn't enough information in this story that would justify this inference, and re-iterating this stupid meme that it's always men that are at fault is not helping anyone.

And just an FYI: privilege is still a word, and it still gets used in conversations? Do you jump on sysadmins when they talk about "privileged processes" and complain that they're using "SJW flamebait" language?

Like every other word, this one has to be understood in context in which it is placed. Within the context of this thread, world "privileged" stood out as something placed there to invoke associations with the wider SJW narrative. If I "jump on" someone for something, I do it for ideas presented, not for words used.

Not because I'm some sort of abusive father, or asshole that wants to stalk people. But because I want to protect my son. There you go, a perfectly valid and simple reason for a normal, non-abusive person to break rules in order to do good.

For all you know he did this in cooperation with police and HR. You leap to conclusions with zero supporting information.

I think we're pretty fucking sure he didn't do this with the police and HR.

Context is king, we need not assume anything about the relationship in the anecdote. It's completely irrelevant to the fact that AT&T failed in it's data protection requirements.

-- Anyway, I didn't say his used of "bitch" proved anything. But I've seen enough people in abusive relationships to know that it's a clue. The fact that he would illegally (and surely, contrary to company policy) abuse his position as an AT&T employee to stalk her further clarifies the picture.

But NATURALLY, they're his kids because it was unspecified and you identify with the father, and because them being his kids makes her a bitch. Now it's internally consistent!