Category: Uncategorized

The case of the clueless insurance adjuster

A psychcentral.com blog entry details the plight of Nathalie Blanchard, a 29-year-old IBM employee from Quebec.

As the story goes, Nathalie took a long-term sick leave from her job due to depression. Following the advice of her doctor, she took a vacation to get away from her problems. Then one day, her monthly sick-leave benefits quit coming in. Nathalie’s call to Manulife, the insurance company which handles her benefits, had the most surprising of answers: based upon pictures posted to Facebook, the company had reached a conclusion that she was once again fit to work.

Well, not surprisingly, Manulife’s version, filtered through their PR department, is different:

According to CBC news, the insurer has confirmed that they do indeed use Facebook to investigate their clients, but the company claims that it wouldn’t “deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook”.

It is obvious to me that whoever made this decision is at best uneducated about depression. I have had friends who suffer from depression and the appearance of happiness in one moment is far from any indication that one is “cured” of depression. It’s not that simple. Notwithstanding the fact that the photographs document that Nathalie followed the doctors orders, I have to wonder what the heck the people at Manulife could have been thinking here.

Indeed, it makes no more sense to make this judgment than it does to take a picture of an insomniac appearing to be sleeping and present that as evidence the person is “cured,” as alluded to later in the article. Whoever said “common sense isn’t so common anymore” was definitely on to something.

The Dallas experiment

The New York Times reports on a rather disturbing development at the Dallas Morning News.

Some of the senior news editors, specifically the sports and entertainment segment editors, are being asked to report directly to the general manager in addition to maintaining a relationship to the editor and managing editor.

[Bob Mong, the editor of the Dallas Morning News,] said the announcement caused some unease among reporters and editors, and “they had all the questions I would hope they would have, and believe me, they’ll be very vigilant.” He said editors were told explicitly to fight back if they were told to do anything unethical.

Another quote further down the article states that the change grew out of a situation where no advertising employees focused on an online section added by the sports department. While this is certainly one way to keep the problem from recurring, in general I have to question the prima facie connotations of news people reporting to those in charge of advertising sales. It definitely gives the implication that ethics are being set aside even if in reality the ethical issues are being addressed adequately.

I can only imagine how fast the FCC would swoop down on a TV or radio station that did something like this. I wish I had more time to keep an eye on the Dallas Morning News over the coming months to see just what becomes of these changes. Or maybe I won’t have to, and those asked to compromise ethics in reporting the news wind up being part of the news instead. It is understandable that reporters don’t want to wind up being the subject of reports themselves, but should this become a trend it has the potential to trigger the downfall of news reporting as we know it today. And that would be a shame.

Apologies for the slightly glitched version that was posted earlier. I am in the middle of testing some new blog editing software that did not function as well as I had hoped.

Taking down the weasels: Google sues the scam artists

Better late than never. Credit goes to ReadWriteWeb for being the first place where I read about this recent development.

It’s rare I find something a large corporation does that is worthy of praise, but this is one such situation. The official Google blog reveals that, finally, the corporate behemoth has decided it’s time to drag the weasels into court. Yes, weasels. Anyone remember those posts? (It’s a three-part series, in case you weren’t around in April when I first posted them.)

I lament that it took Google at least eight months to catch on to what was obviously dubious appropriation of their trademark. In fact, with the inclusion of “Google” in the dictionary, the company has already come dangerously close to losing its trademark.

At least, we hope, a few scam artists will be bankrupt shortly, and the sunlight from Google’s official blog will probably scare the rest of them into hiding for a while.

A victim of his own honesty

What could our justice system possibly be thinking when they prosecute cases like this?

A recent Mashable post chronicles the tale of Matthew White of Sacramento, California. Matthew is 22 years old and about a year ago downloaded what was represented as a copy of College Girls Gone Wild. Let's just say it was mislabeled and I don't doubt for a moment Matthew would have not bothered downloading the file were it truthfully labelled; it contained child pornography.

So Matthew deleted it, and thought that was the end of that. About a year later the FBI shows up at his family's house, and his family lets the agents inside and allows them to examine the computer, presumably without a search warrant.

The investigators recover the "deleted" copy of the mislabeled child pornography and now Matthew faces 20 years in prison. The truly sad part of this is that according to the story, Matthew plans to plead guilty and accept a 3.5 year sentence.

Hopefully someone out there knows Matthew and can relay a copy of this post to him. The last thing you want to do is plead guilty (I've already left a comment to this effect on the original Mashable post). Were I in Matthew's situation I like my chances in front of a jury.

Of course, the best way out of this situation is simply to deny the agents entry to the premises or access to the computer without a warrant. At that point their options are either to come back with a warrant or cease pursuing the case.

I don't know what crime Matthew committed that is worth sending him to prison for 3.5 years and branding him a sex offender for life. If the FBI is looking for people to make an example out of, surely they could pick someone who actually intentionally downloaded child pornography and kept the files instead of deleting them? At the least, Matthew should get a pardon. There is no sense in ruining the life of someone that young who acted in good faith and in all likelihood, was ignorant of whatever law he may have technically violated.

Shame on you, FBI agents that worked this case. Here's hoping your time holding the badge is short-lived.

Taking one on the wallet

Ever watched a sporting contest of some type where the performance was so bad you wished you could get your money back? Well, that wish came true for some soccer fans across the pond recently.

Sky News reports that after a particularly disastrous contest in which the home team, the Wigan Latics, lost 9-1 to the visiting Tottenham Hotspur, the players for the home team decided as a gesture to the loyal fans they would refund the purchase price of the admission tickets to the fans who paid to see the game.

Mario Melchiot, a defender for Wigan, told the team’s Web site:

“We feel that as a group of players we badly let down our supporters yesterday, and this is a gesture we have to make and pay them back for their tremendous loyalty.

“There is not a lot else to say, just that as a group of professionals we were embarrassed by the way we performed, we feel it was below our standards and this is omething we feel we owe to the fans.

It’s great to see that the players owned up to their dismal performance.
Admittedly, this kind of gesture is something I would like to see a bit
more often but I feel it should be reserved only for the worst of the
worst, where the stench of defeat fills the entire stadium. An example would
be the 59-0 loss the Tennessee Titans suffered at the hands of the New
England Patriots (were it to happen at the Titans’ home stadium).