She also recommends using filtering software, ongoing employee education and diligent monitoring. It gives notice that just because a computer is sitting on your desk, that doesn't make it your personal property. Attorney Arthur Silbergeld, a Los Angeles-based partner with the firm Proskauer Rose and chairman of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn., said maintaining employee hotlines or having ethical compliance officers who operate independently from the organization are also deterrents. While taking these steps won't eliminate sabotage, it will minimize it. Computer systems aren't the only targets of sabotage.
Products are also fair game.
Sometimes the goal is simply to humiliate a corporation. RTMark, an Internet-based company just named one of Yahoo Internet Life's 100 Top Sites for 2000, is the merry prankster of corporate sabotage. The group's most celebrated case was the 1993 Barbie Liberation Organization caper, in which RTMark operatives switched the voice boxes on 300 Barbie and G.I Joe dolls and then restocked them on toy shelves across America. Our goal is to harm the corporate person, which is not a living person. We want to tarnish their image.