Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Lawyer: Microsoft “Covers up Alleged Misconduct, Mischaracterizes Evidence [...] Protects the Perpetrators and Retaliates Against Victims.”

Misconduct



"...Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux."

--Larry Goldfarb, Baystar, key investor in SCO



Summary: Microsoft moves legal department to India and the whistleblowers come out to tell the truth about how Microsoft operates

IN THE previous post we discussed Microsoft's funding of SCO, which is attacking Linux in the courtroom. Microsoft loves to sue its competitors using "dummy companies" (see the lawsuits against Google for example), which works out pretty well because Microsoft decreased its legal budget by 15%, it fired 450 of its lawyers, and according to the following two news reports, Microsoft will "outsource general legal work to India".



Microsoft Corp. has entered into an agreement with legal outsourcing provider CPA Global to offshore legal work to lawyers in India.

The technology giant began a pilot scheme with CPA in October and formally rolled it out at the end of 2009. A team of between three and five qualified lawyers at CPA are handling multi-jurisdictional legal support work, including legal research, for Microsoft. The lawyers are based in CPA's offices in Gurgaon, near New Delhi.

Microsoft has been outsourcing basic intellectual property and patent renewal work to CPA for five years, using a team of around 70 CPA staff. However, the new arrangement for general legal work operates separately.


Also:

Software giant Microsoft will begin outsourcing general legal work to India after signing a deal with legal process outsourcing (LPO) company CPA Global. The news comes as CPA outlined plans to expand its Indian workforce from 600 to 1,000 by the end of 2011, and hinted at opening another outsourcing centre.


Microsoft's massive layoffs and migration to India is not news. What definitely is news ought to be the following major report from Courthouse News:

Fired Worker Calls Microsoft 'a Lawless Place'



Calling Microsoft "a lawless place," a longtime worker claims in a class action that he was fired in retaliation for reporting supervisors' misconduct. He claims the company "routinely produces and/or condones deficient investigations, covers up alleged misconduct, mischaracterizes evidence, refuses to preserve or provide pertinent facts and data, protects the perpetrators and retaliates against victims."

Craig Bartholomew worked for Microsoft for 21 years, he says in his complaint in King County Court. He says he was fired after complaining that his supervisors had created a "dysfunctional environment that was harming Microsoft and risking certain of its programs and objectives."

"Microsoft has twice tried to cover up what really happened, first wrongly claiming his termination was a layoff or RIF. Neither was or is true," according to the complaint.

According to his complaint: "Microsoft can be a lawless place. Courts have found that its key executives have violated the law and/or sought to circumvent court rulings. Powerful employees, because of their perceived value to the company, has (sic) been protected. Employees who have reported misconduct by senior management have been punished or fired based on trumped-up charges.


It is hard not to recall the i4i trial misconduct which had Microsoft fined $40 million some months ago. This is clearly a company that disregards the law, even today. The new lawyers from India are likely to be more obedient to their masters and thus be less prone to retaliation. The above is not the first whistleblower by the way; putting aside allegation of Microsoft orgies and drug parties [1, 2], there is a long history of Microsoft's abuse of the law. A US government official once said that "the government is not trying to destroy Microsoft, it’s simply seeking to compel Microsoft to obey the law. It’s quite revealing that Mr. Gates equates the two."

Now, it's not just legal abuse. Let's take the Xbox for example. It led Microsoft to getting sued for homophobia [1, 2, 3] (homosexual employees and clients) and a former Xbox employee who was trying to save customers (Xbox 360 put lives at risk). Microsoft ended up retaliating by firing him for saying the truth.

“It is hard not to recall the i4i trial misconduct which had Microsoft fined $40 million some months ago.”Looking at Microsoft's financial department (we've just covered legal and technical), a former Microsoft employee is slamming the company for tax evasion [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] and it is reasonable to suspect more malpractice, especially given the shady past of financial fraud [1, 2] (Charles Pancerzewski from Microsoft's financial department was paid millions of dollars to shut up about misconduct/fraud after he had produced evidence of it). Another former Microsoft financial executive might be leaving the Seattle area based on this news. Is he following the footsteps of the CFO?

Our reader Chips B. Malroy wrote to us earlier about this comment from Mini-Microsoft (mostly anonymous Microsoft employees) which says: "I don't know how this is hidden, but fact is that Microsoft earns a lot just moving money across countries, betting on currency fluctuations. A lot of people in Finance are dedicated to this. When you have 60billion to move around, we are not talking about pennies here..."

"So MS might be playing the money game," argues Malroy, "and getting away with it because they are an international company. This is most likely another way to evade taxes as well... playing the currency markets." One of our readers has said to us the same thing for a couple of years now. It is too difficult to prove with any certainty because it requires audits. In a later post we will show what Microsoft has just been doing with President Obama.

Speaking of whistleblowers, here is Joe Wilcox sharing yet another confession from former employees of Microsoft. "There were a ton of bozos" is the summary.

Do middling, middle managers run Microsoft? That's the consensus among the former Microsofties who shared their work stories with me over the last couple months. The new work week starts with another Microsoft Confessional -- the fourth in four days -- from 13-year company veteran Boris, which isn't his real name, of course. Boris was smart enough to see the end coming, and he made preparations in the days before his May 2009 layoff. He learned to read middle managers the way a genuine fortune teller might read tea leaves.


"Microsoft Needs More Traitors," says this new article from BNET:

Most companies dream of having loyal employees and managers. They want people who will follow the company strategy and stick to their jobs. But at Microsoft, a culture of loyalty has turned into slavish devotion to outdated strategy, outmoded thinking, and personal fiefdoms that today threatens to bring the company down.

[...]

Really? Microsoft focused on one narrow example and ignored every other criticism — the VP in charge of Office refused to adapt the product line to tablet computers, poor timing on Web TV and MP3 players, lost share in key product areas, and the steady exit of the company’s smartest employees. Yup, it was ignoring significant criticism because that’s not part of the program. It would just make the people in charge look bad.

Maybe the problem is that many traitors already work at Microsoft. They just don’t realize it.


Over at the Huffington Post, Microsoft's Jim Allchin is quoted as saying "we were smoked". It's one of the Comes vs Microsoft exhibits that include Allchin's “we are not on a path to win against Linux”, "we feel a huge threat from Linux", and "there’s going to be a patent lawsuit on Linux."

"Government attorneys accuse Microsoft of using its monopoly position to bully, bribe and attempt to collude with others in the industry, while illegally expanding and protecting its Windows franchise."

--The antitrust case: a timeline

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Let's Hope GNU Makes it to 100
Can GNU still be in active use in 2083? Maybe.
GNU is 40, Linux is Just 32
Today it's exactly 40 years since Richard Stallman sent a message regarding GNU
GNU/Linux and Free Software News Mostly in Tux Machines Now
We've split the coverage
Links 27/09/2023: GNOME Raves and Firefox 118
Links for the day
Links 27/09/2023: 3G Phase-Out, Monopolies, and Exit of Rupert Murdoch
Links for the day
IBM Took a Man’s Voice, Pitting Him Against His Own Work, While Companies Profit from Low-Effort Garbage Generated by Bots and “Self-Service”
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Links 26/09/2023: KDE, Programming, and More
Links for the day
Mozilla Promotes the Closed Web and Proprietary Webapps That Are Security and Privacy Hazards
This is just another reminder that the people who run Mozilla don't know the history of Firefox, don't understand the Web, and are beholden to "GAFAM", not to Firefox users
Debian More Like an Exploitative Sweatshop Than a Family
Wiltshire is riding a high horse in the UK, talking down to Indians who are "low-level" volunteers in his kingdom of authoritarians, guarded by an army of British lawyers who bully bloggers
Small Computers in Large Numbers: A Pipeline of Open Hardware
They guard and prioritise their "premiums", causing severe price hikes due to supply/demand disparities.
Microsoft Deserves a Medal for Being Worst at Security (the Media Deserves a Medal for Cover-up)
There are still corruptible/bribed publishers that quote Microsoft staff like they're security gurus
Real Life Should be Offline, Not Online, and It Requires Free Software
Resistance means having the guts to say "no!", even in the face of great societal burden and peer pressure
10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware
There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site
This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation)
Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism
There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back
We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links
There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging
We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world
First Iteration of Techrights as 100% Static Pages Web Site
We want to champion another decade or two of positive impact and opinionated analysis
Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding
some remaining links for today
Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows)
The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies
SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux
It's not about the clients, it's about money
Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025)
We've already begun the migration to static
Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered
Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products
Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window)
They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash
Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful
We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware)
Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot
Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either
the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
United Workforce Always Better for the Workers
In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer