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For me it's too early to decide if they got screwed or not. The article does not answer why they got toasted. For the sake of argument I will surmise they got booted (get it?) for reporting and subsequently embarrassing the professor.
That would be wrong. He committed the crime. There are no proper search laws for an IT tech doing the job, so they didn't violate search and seizure law.
As IT is my chosen, though yet to be employed in field, this could have some direct bearing on my welfare.
Photo lab dudes and dudettes, along with teachers, healthcare professionals, etc. have the responsibility to report certain things they see. With that responsibility they have procedures to follow, and protection if they do.
It would be good for someone to apply this to ITers as well. There are many dastardly things kept on computers, many techs will find them while looking for bugs, that "lost" file, things of that nature.
I can tell you that at least once while, or after, fixing a computer some idiot, I mean "user," accused me of "breaking" or "hiding" something. This always comes back to the user's technical ignorance, but I'd hate to be blamed for child porn, a virus, stolen credit card numbers, illegal entries. Nor would I accept being punished for exposing those who are at fault.
It's always made me uncomfortable that sometimes, no matter how much I try and tell someone, they remain utterly, completely, convinced I "broke it."
I couldn't accept that on the scale we're talking.
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I can sum up the clash of religion in one sentence:
"My Invisible Friend is better than your Invisible Friend."
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