This Piece Got this NYC Blogger Arrested

[Smarmie Doofus]

A little background. Francesco Portelos is a NYC public school teacher locked in a marathon legal battle w. the ed bureaucracy here. (Go to his blog if you want to know the specifics of this: www.protectportelos.org) His website's been driving TPTB here crazy. He ( legally) FOILs and publishes all sorts of interesting an embarrassing data re. the department and the public info of individuals of which the dept. is comprised.

I posted about it in the ed forum a few weeks back. I'd like to get more generalized feedback.

Anyway (remember: this is the short version)they (unnamed... at this point...individuals in the DOE) appear to have "trumped up" a false charge of "hacking" based on the tongue-in-cheek blog entry below. Charges were dropped by DA at arraignment but that was 33 hours after he was handcuffed and jailed. His acct. of the jailing is the next post on his blog and it isn't esp. pretty.

I'm interested in what DUers have to say from a first amendment/free speech POV.... more than an educational POV. ( Though it's hard to completely separate the two since teachers here and everywhere these days are increasingly on the defensive re. job security, academic freedom, tenure protections, and the rest.)

Here's the piece in question:

>>How to “Hack” the DOE Payroll Portal and Give Yourself a Raise

http://protectportelos.org/how-to-hack-the-doe-payroll-portal-and-give-yourself-a-raise/

by Francesco Portelos on February 25, 2014
Tired of being abused with extra work that isn’t helping your students, given less time, less autonomy and not even a raise since 2009? Fellow NYC UFT members do not be angry…just “hack” the payroll system like I did and take what you worked hard for. If you read my post DOE’s Digital Duct Tape, then you’ll know that one of the many forms of punishment the DOE lawyers have placed on me was barring me from accessing the DOE Payroll Portal (payrollportal.nycboe.net) for over a year and a half. On that payroll portal a NYC DOE employee can:

Get copies of their pay stubs
Change Direct Deposit account information
Change if they want paper copies still printed out and mailed
Check their CAR or Cumulative Absence Reserve days
That’s all I can think of…..
When I asked my union for assistance, after waiting over a year for access, a UFT lawyer stated the following:

“The DOE is not going to give you access to a computer system while your 3020-a charges are pending. The DOE believes that the nature of the charges against you justifies treating you differently than most other employees with respect to computer access.”

I of course asked who, specifically, gave that answer or made that decision, and my union decided to not provide me with that information. The answer I received from the UFT was “The manner in which it was communicated to me in no way discloses who made the decision.“ Unless it was scribbled onto a piece of paper and strapped to a carrier pigeon, they must know who is responsible. If not, find out.

Can you believe that? “The DOE believes that the nature of the charges against you justifies treating you differently than most other employees with respect to computer access.” If I could “hack” the system, then I wouldn’t need access, would I? That’s like saying “Hey…give me the key to that vault that contains diamonds. Sure I can break in, but a key would be so much easier.”

In any case, I thought I’d at least try and “hack” the payroll system. It was like someone who has never played the violin, but picks one up and makes the most God-awful noise.>>>>

[PoliticAverse]

1. Has he consulted an attorney about a possible false-arrest lawsuit? n/t

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. He's got multiple atty's for multiple purposes at this point.

If I understand correctly, he's adding it to a civil lawsuit that's already in the works re. retaliation on the job for whistleblowing, etc.

From a taxpayer's POV, however... "that don't mean shit." The city will cover whatever civil damages are incurred. These people are public employees and as such have personal immunity no matter HOW depraved their actions.

So basically, *I'll* pay for the false arrest.

Just as I paid for 21 million dollars the city had to pay out to 2004 GOP convention protesters who were illegally arrested by Bloomberg, Inc.

[Smarmie Doofus]

3. Here's a link to his account of the 33 hours he spent in jail:

http://protectportelos.org/does-workplace-bullying-continues-my-33-hrs-behind-bars/