You really consider that being treated like a criminal? Personally I don't want access I don't need anymore and I feel better knowing that I know it was properly revoked. I don't want the keys anymore either, I make sure I turn those in when I leave.

Certainly there may be some arraingement where you may not revoke all access but, that should be explicit. I remember at a previous job we allowed someone, who didn't even leave on his own terms, to retain his email address for a time until he could get a new personal address and transition.

Its not about being a dick, its about make the split clean.

Hell when I was laid off I had my access revoked 4 weeks before my last day. Man sitting there with nothing I could do was great, I spent most of the day updating my resume and looking for new jobs. Losing your access is great.

Let's help out our editors! Let's propose 4/1 stories that we'd like to see, and we just mod up/down good ideas & bad ideas. Maybe they'll take notice.

Good 4/1 stories:

Slashdot Beta code adopted for official North Korea website.
Bill Gates first in line at Apple Store to buy Gold iWatch.
World returns to normal as Hell, Michigan, begins to thaw.

First just to be clear, I'm not disagreeing with your analysis, I agree it is completely spot-on.
If anything my counter is directed at Nintendo and this choice of policy (not that anyone there would be reading this nor care if they did)

The thing with this line of reasoning is that there are many people like myself who aren't willing to purchase something we can't see or know anything about before buying it.

If I can't see screenshots of the amazing graphics, videos demonstrating the game play mechanics, see the first impressions from reviewers I respect the opinion of, or otherwise get some idea the game may be something I would enjoy playing and get value out of - I simply will not be purchasing it at all.

I have no problems paying a high price for something I believe will be of high value to me.
I also have no problem paying a low price if the value is expected to be low but still there.

What I do have a problem with is paying any price for something of unknown value. I simply refuse to do so.

Not to mention if it was a smaller less recognizable gaming company, going out of your way to hide all details about your game before getting my money strongly implies they know they are peddling garbage, and I can only assume such a purchase was designed to be a scam to take my money while providing no value.
It's worth noting that even the large companies like Nintendo are not immune from this gut reaction feeling. Only their past track record keeps me from assuming the worst.
But I still have to question what they are trying to hide, and why they can't be honest about their product so I can make an informed purchase.

Despite the fact their behavior is intended to prevent lack of sales, the reality is their behavior directly results in a lack of sales.

How? Please be detailed.

He upheld the laws of the USA, upheld his oath to the US government and the NSA.
He violated no conditions of his oath what so ever.

The NSA can not require someone to swear an oath to break the law and betray the US constitution in any legal sense - yet that's exactly what they tried to do.

Breaking a promise to be a criminal does not make you a criminal.

The oaths required from the DOE, DOD, and DOJ all explicitly demand you do not follow illegal orders, do not break laws without explicit exception, and to report to the higher authorities any illegal orders given - all of which Snowden did to the letter of the law and his oath.

In short, if you demand I follow an order of yours, do not bitch and claim I'm a traitor to you when I do exactly as you demanded from me, because then everyone will see your demand and accusation as the bullshit it is.

That must be why Nintendo partnered with Playboy to promote the Nintendo exclusive release of Bayonetta 2.

http://wiiudaily.com/2014/10/nintendo-partners-with-playboy-to-promote-bayonetta-2/
http://bayonetta2.nintendo.com/
http://www.playboy.com/galleries/pamela-horton-nintendo-bayonetta/slide-1

But if you haven't locked out the persons accounts BEFORE they state their intention to quit, you have already 100% failed at stopping Bad Things(tm).

Part of doing Bad Things(tm) is not to pull the action movie cliche of laying out your evil plans to the good guy before leaving him bound yet quite alive to escape and use that very knowledge against you.
You plan and execute your Bad Things(tm) while you still have the ability to do so, not after the time where there is an equal-to or greater than zero percent chance someone could prevent it.

Hypothetical - If you intended to murder someone, would you:
A) sneak up on them unexpectedly to assure the best chances of success? or
B) inform the target of your intentions so they can take steps to protect themselves and/or steps to prevent you from doing so?

True you may get lucky that the one doing Bad Things(tm) is stupid and does just that, but that isn't 100% either, and isn't something one should put themselves in a position to have to bet on either way.

The only sure fire way I am aware of to predict the future regarding when employment will be terminated is if it was initiated by the company.
You'll note in the case of terminations the above policy is almost always followed as a matter of course already.

But unless you can read minds, it's probably safe to say you won't accurately predict an employee leaving before they themselves decide that is an option and choose to act on it.

About the only exception is if the company is making that employees life so miserable already that quitting is the only logical choice - but even then I would argue that is the company initiating it, even if it is an indirect, round-about, and dickish way to do so.

Since you are way too late by this point to do anything to stop Bad Things(tm), why harm the professional relationship further? Treating them as a criminal can't possibly help you or the company in any way, so why cause a non-zero percent chance of harming you or the company by such actions?

I bring this up any time someone is leaving, and even when I have left places. You should review all access, change all passwords he may have had, revoke all access that he had.....and you do this....as much for his benefit as for yours.

He is leaving, he is naturally the person who is going to be blamed, either directly (he did it) or indirectly (Oh he used to do that, and hes gone now....). Thats normal, and some amount of it is fine. However, you owe it to yourself AND to him to be sure there is no question that, if there is an incident, there is no reason to suspect him.

Nobody wants to be in the situation where there was a compromise after an employee left, and now there are questions. If there is an incident there will be questions either way, but the only person who benefits from his still having access is the attacker whose actions are the problem.

I felt better knowing my access has been fully revoked and there was little chance of there being questions later.

> ... if it's on the company computer, it's on the company's time

So when I fired up my work laptop at 11 pm to watch a movie on amazon prime while I played videos on my desktop, you are saying that is company time which I should be compensated for? Pretty sure the company would tend to disagree on that, maybe I should ask if they want me to add those hours to my timesheet?

Doesn't sound as automatic as it could be, frankly, at this point the system has been so abused and overused it needs some serious brakes put on. We should make appeals mandatory, in fact, we should eliminate the plea entirely....no right to waive a jury trial, no right to plead guilty. You are charged, you MUST defend yourself, and if convicted, you get an appeal which can't be tried in the same district.

and if you are not convicted, the prosecutor is.

But how do we know, without in depth review, whether or not evidence they used had been illegally obtained by this pair in the course of their extracurricular activities? Seems to me this casts doubt on the entire bushel of apples.

I honestly tend to think its the result of unprecedented safety. We are hard wired to be on the look out for danger, when there is no danger and we will find it if we look for it. As you make real danger more and more rare, sensitivity goes up.

People being murdered every day can be a fact of life, people murdered every few days is a tragic situation, a person murdered every decade is a major news event.

Also we have an issue of expanding scope. Lets take car accidents, mundane ones are local stories, odd ones are regional, and that strange few times a year spectaculars are national.

If you decrease the numbers, all that changes is scope, you still get as many stories, they just come from wider areas.....so the input never really changes even if the output does.

These airplane incidents are international news and run for days and weeks as such.... which makes them seem a lot more common than they really are because they take up such a disproportionate amount of the news when they do....because news isn't meant to be boring and mundane, it is, by definition, the unusual and the rare.

This. I simultaneously have no problem saying he was right to break the law, in fact, did the right thing overall (some of it questionable but, extreme circumstances seem mitigating enough to me) and saying the law these cops broke was a just law, and a law which they deserve punishment, far worst than anything he did.

They broke the publics trust, he undermined bad law. He assisted the public in moving forward and avoiding violent criminal gangs who they might otherwise need to be in direct contact with to get drugs. They extorted him.

Let me put it this way, I would call the punishments proportional if they were imprisoned until they die of natural causes then proportionally....he should get a medal of honor. That would be about right.

No what I was saying is the "terrorists we are used to" are generally fools the FBI setup to make headlines to justify their overhyped jobs. My particular favorite is the dude they approached asking if he could get a shoulder fired missile.

Over the months they watched him, he stalled and bumbled and utterly failed to do anything of note, except be told by contacts he had from previous legal buisiness that he couldn't get one. The entire time the only thing he did on his own was download a sales brochure off the internet to show them. Seriously....

they handed him contacts, they handed him fake papers, they handed him the missile itself..

What are they protecting us from exactly when they have to create the terrorists before they can find them? Its a bullshit jobs program from the TSA to the FBI.

But wouldn't such a determination be based on the specific facts and timelines, which, the court should be quite capable of determining without the help of advantageous timing by prosecutors to avoid their pervue....I mean I would think....or do you think the courts incompetent to make such a determination, hence we need this sort of secrecy?

I always see that, sometimes even on systems I co-administer and its like....really? YOu don't even change the fucking alias so someone can't just go "gee I wonder if phpmyadmin is installed?" and go to the fucking default URL.

I know its convinent as fuck but this is bad practice in production even if you are not running a multimillion dollar black market operation. If you are dumb enough to expose that to the internet, at least expose it with a URL you chose ffs.