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I was sitting in a cafe in Ogilive Station in Chicago a few months ago, and one of the guys at an adjacent table was telling a story. His girlfriend left, took
by superuser2 12y ago
I was sitting in a cafe in Ogilive Station in Chicago a few months ago, and one of the guys at an adjacent table was telling a story. His girlfriend left, took the kids, and didn't tell him where they had gone.
But, he says triumphantly, "the bitch forgot I work for AT&T."
He the describes, with pride, the look on her face as he showed up at her new house.
Disgusting.
- Qzmp 12y agoNothing your post gives a reason as to why she left with the children without saying. Might that not be a disgusting thing to do to a father? Assuming there was no violence in the relationship I have no problem with the father using all and any means to find his kids.
- LaGrange 12y agoActually, the father being the kind of person to use his job to stalk his ex sounds like good enough reason to leave, and save any other sentients from him in the process.
- thaumasiotes 12y agoLet's rephrase this, using only the same information from the original comment: > 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
- LaGrange 12y ago> The father being the kind of person to overreach his authority at work in order to locate and kidnap children sounds like good enough reason to leave 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.
- zo1 12y agoQuote from the post we're talking about: "His girlfriend left, took the kids, and didn't tell him where they had gone." 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.
- LaGrange 12y agoI think that abusing privilege from his job instead of going to the police is evidence enough.
- zo1 12y agoYou're still making big assumptions based on your opinion of a person or specific action. We still don't know if the guy was abusive or not. And until we do, it's just as reasonable to think that he used other means to solve his problem because he was desperate/determined or maybe he was in fear of his children's lives, etc. Even the wording you chose to use now, "abusing privilege", is loaded with negative connotations.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoWorse. I bet this wording was on purpose, but the important word is not "abusing", it's "privilege". The SJW flamebait word. @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.
- LaGrange 12y agoYes, I'm the SJW. And I think that flame bait was a dude going off with "hey, maybe the abuse was totally justified". Pretending that there isn't enough information where the dude straight out admitted he abused his privileged situation (literally, in this case) is completely ridiculous, but hey, not surprising from someone who thinks "social justice warrior" is an insult.
- ScottBurson 12y agoLaGrange is right about one thing: your description of the children as "his own" is unwarranted. 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".
- LaGrange 12y agoThat's because the only way they're not jumping to conclusions is in word - assumption that it's the guy's kid (sure, possible) is one, but I really don't believe there's no ill will in the entire "desperate father whose evil partner took his children, and couldn't get the police to do anything about it. Also probably starving, cold, and he got stung by bees a lot. And the coffee was awful." narrative. The abuse of position (there, have a word other than privilege, are you people allergic or something?), the slurs , the suggestion they weren't actually married and the rather proud attitude all suggest that the guy wasn't exactly a nice person caught in an awful situation. 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.
- kolinko 12y agoWhat would you do if your children were kidnapped?
- LaGrange 12y agoIt definitely sounds like the father wanted to kidnap them, so sue AT&T, I guess?
- mikeash 12y agoI'd call the police. Is that strange?
- GrinningFool 12y agoIt's a matter of perspective. 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.
- ScottBurson 12y agoThe repeated use of "his kids" and "my kids" (in cases where the poster is imagining being in his situation) in this thread is quite fascinating. 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.
- psykovsky 12y ago> 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?
- GrinningFool 12y ago>> The repeated use of "his kids" and "my kids" (in cases where the poster is imagining being in his situation) in this thread is quite fascinating. 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?" ;)
- ScottBurson 12y agoThe part where he called her a bitch didn't seem like a clue? It does to me.
- Ntrails 12y agoIf someone took my children away from me without any opportunity to see them again I'd call them considerably worse than that. 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.
- slowmotiony 12y agoWhat the hell? The woman took his kids and somehow he's a monster because he called her a bitch?
- ytNumbers 12y agoIf he even cared a tiny bit about his kids, then he would treat their mother with respect.
- kevingadd 12y agoThe use of 'his' here is pretty suspicious. The original story says 'the' kids. We don't know whether they're her kids from another relationship, kids they had together, or his kids from a previous relationship. They could be adopted. 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!
- ejain 12y agoEven if you don't have a problem with the guy, you should have a problem with AT&T giving a random employee access to such data.
- zo1 12y agoThat's not the tone that the parent poster was responding to. It was the tone that implied that this was some sort of dead-beat, abusive husband/father. On the AT&T part though, I agree fully. Individuals should not have access to that sort of information.
- superuser2 12y agoIt's viscerally disturbing because you are completely powerless against someone like that. You may have changed everything about your life to get away, but just by wanting something as simple and commonplace as a phone, you make yourself vulnerable to him again. 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.
- GrinningFool 12y agoI assume you refer to the quote: "the bitch forgot I work for AT&T." 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.
- 6d0debc071 12y agoIsn't this what the police are for? If she just up and left, they didn't get a divorce and he should have certain rights to contact with his kids. Even if they got a divorce he'd probably still have certain rights established when custody was worked out.
- zo1 12y agoYou would think that, hey. But I've been recently reading up about the subject, and it seems that father's rights when it comes to children and their custody is wildly skewed in favor of the mother. Look online and you'll find countless stories about perfectly reasonable fathers not getting custody, while they claim the mother is bad (Crazy,addict,something).
- at-fates-hands 12y agoWhile this may have been true 10-15 years ago (I speak from experience and have been through this horrible system) things are starting to turn around. 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.
- zorpner 12y agoI've been recently reading up about the subject ... Look online and you'll find countless stories... Your cognitive biases are being exploited by people with an agenda.
- eru 12y agoDoesn't AT&T have any privacy safeguards? (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.)
- confluence 12y agoMost companies are poorly run. Security and privacy safeguards are either non-existent or easily overridden.
- zo1 12y agoAnd some of them rely on the goodwill / honesty of the employees that have access to said sensitive data. Might not be the best way to go around it, but it does happen.
- dredmorbius 12y agoMore to the point: confidentiality of customer data is at best a secondary concern, and often not at all, until it becomes "a problem" (lawsuit, news scandal). 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.
- confluence 12y agoGotta focus on them core competencies. Identical services don't market themselves, someone has got to spend a lot of money to convince people of their uniqueness, and that makes security secondary.
- tomp 12y agoWould the police deal with this kind of kidnapping?
- ScottBurson 12y agoProbably not, since they weren't married.