Boston, MA–Kevin, a reader, writes:
Glenn, this is a great story concerning the type of women you want to be involved with. She did not sell out her husband when he was charged wrongly with child pornography. In fact he said this about her, “My wife is very, very understanding. She took the bull by the horns and found an attorney. I was just paralyzed, I couldn’t do anything. I can’t describe the feeling to you. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. It’s just devastating.”
A very frightening example of how decent men can be falsely accused in this high tech and anti-male age. According to A Misconfigured Laptop, a Wrecked Life (IDG News Service, 6/17/08):
When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts issued Michael Fiola a Dell Latitude in November 2006, it set off a chain of events that would cost him his job, his friends and about a year of his life, as he fought criminal charges that he had downloaded child pornography onto the laptop. Last week, prosecutors dropped their year-old case after a state investigation of his computer determined there was insufficient evidence to prove he had downloaded the files.
An initial state investigation had come to the opposite conclusion, and authorities took a second look at Fiola’s case only after he hired a forensic investigator to look at his laptop. What she found was scary, given the gravity of the charges against him: The Microsoft SMS (Systems Management Server) software used to keep his laptop up to date was not functional. Neither was its antivirus protection. And the laptop was crawling with malicious programs that were most likely responsible for the files on his PC.
Fiola had been an investigator with the state’s Department of Industrial Accidents, examining businesses to see whether they had worker’s compensation plans. Over the past two days, however, he’s become a spokesman for people who have had their lives ruined by malicious software.
Read an interview with Fiola here.