False pretences by a lying boss

Summary: The Sirius ‘Open Source’ CEO seems to be lying about clients, not just lying to clients; it’s used as an excuse for a witch-hunt against Sirius staff

TWO days ago we showed that the CEO asked to speak “urgently” with Rianne. A day before that we showed he had said the same to me, her husband. Same words, as shown here before (we shared a complete trail of correspondence).

He said there was a “matter that has been brought to my attention” and to paraphrase what he said to Rianne while he recorded her, a client complained about being mentioned by me. But who is this client that caused the CEO to see or envision an “urgent” need to “discuss a matter that has been brought to my attention?”

Who is it?

It’s a client, he claimed, but he did not name anyone. Two weeks later he showed a supposed piece of evidence, but that did not match what we could verify. Hence, we believe he was lying on the call. He was trying to make up excuses for his proactive stalking. To Rianne he said something to the effect of, I want you to come to the meeting because someone brought this to my attention… and on the phone he insisted that the investigation was initiated because of an outsider. He was quite likely lying about that, basically manufacturing a set of false pretenses.

We’re dealing with a big problem here. We’ve been dealing with this kind of problem for a whole year. We have a pathological liar running the business based on a foundation of lies he cannot remember or keep up with.

After I saw who’s said to have been mentioned in IRC (only once and with a typo; it’s a famous person anyway — one who is known to millions of people and whose name is mentioned on the Internet every day) I decided to get in touch and fact-check the accuser.

As readers are aware, the accuser was in deep denial over the LastPass breach (more on that later this month; we wrote a lot about it last month). He kept rejecting the idea LastPass was not secure. Even a year ago one colleague said to all peers in a “Handover to Shift 1 (16/07/21)” that “I’ve found that emailing stuff from Lastpass doesn’t actually work, so if he doesn’t receive the email then this might be the issue. Is sending via Lastpass any more secure than sending via our email?”

I wasn’t the only person antagonising LastPass. The technical staff didn’t like LastPass and didn’t trust it. But management did not care. LastPass is assumed to be right even when it’s lying. Same as Sirius management.

Anyway, after the LastPass breach was confirmed by LastPass itself (just before Christmas; this timing was chosen by LastPass and was intentional… to lessen the damage) I informed the person whom the accuser insinuated had complained.

Here’s my message to him:

Report of LastPass Breach, Your xxxxxxxxx Passwords Compromised

Hi xxxxxxxxxxxxxx,

Sorry for the bad timing, but LastPass intentionally reported this when people were away on holiday.

People have a moral responsibility to do what’s ethical and a duty or implicit obligation to properly inform clients so as to avert major disasters (like systems and Web sites getting hijacked/defaced over the holidays).

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/22/23523322/lastpass-data-breach-cloud-encrypted-password-vault-hackers

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2022/12/23/lastpass-password-vaults-stolen-by-hackers-change-your-master-password-now/

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/12/lastpass-says-hackers-have-obtained-vault-data-and-a-wealth-of-customer-info/

I’m writing to you as a Sirius veteran. I worked in the company for nearly 12 years. I know that your passwords (maybe private keys also) are in LastPass and LastPass got compromised. Now even LastPass itself admits it. In simple terms, this means hostile actors may now possess complete copies of access credentials and can in turn access your systems directly or indirectly, along with data etc. This poses a ransomware threat and can result in penalties for improper data protection.

I’ve personally warned about this for years (specifically LastPass). I brought up security breaches in LastPass, but I got threatened for my concerns. The company lacks basic understanding of security. To make matters worse, my warnings were used to push me out and Sirius did the same to my wife, who didn’t even say anything. It’s collective punishment for doing the moral thing.

You need to study what the LastPass breach means to you because Sirius put your sensitive data (keys/passwords) in LastPass.

Knowing the style of management at Sirius, I’m sure they’ll use some defamatory smears and ad hominem attacks/lies against me, but the simple fact is, you must change passwords and keys NOW.

I resigned from Sirius earlier this month; they still use LastPass and failed to respond each time I brought up the issue, including less than a month ago. There are many other issues inside the company, but they go well beyond the LastPass threat: http://techrights.org/wiki/Sirius_Open_Source

Sincerely,

Dr. Roy S. Schestowitz

Within a few hours he responded to my E-mail as follows:

Thanks very much Roy for the information. We had a very good working relationship with you and take the threat seriously. We wish you success in your future endeavours and we’ll be in touch. I wish you happy holidays and a very good new year!

Sent from xxxxxxxx
Regards, xxxxxxxx

So it was already obvious from his tone or the words that he did not complain about being mentioned.

So I went on and explained to him what had happened:

If you don’t mind me adding something, please see the attached.

This is from the letter xxxxxxxx sent to my wife months after in some very, very informal IRC channel (lots of typos, too) I had mentioned your good journalism though only after someone in the channel linked to one of your articles, not knowing that I was supporting xxxxxxxx. He has been my friend for over 15 years, but I never told him about clients. I kept that confidential.

xxxxxxxx insisted that I had mentioned a name of a client (you are very famous regardless if client or not) only when someone else (not me) linked to your work. He might want xxxxxxxx to think it’s done routinely, but you were the only such person I mentioned (and only once). There were only a handful of people in that IRC channel, all technical people.

He intimidated my wife, who had nothing to do with this, and insinuated that you contacted the company to complain because your name was mentioned. He gave only one such example, so we were simply left to assume you complained. In reality, we believe xxxxxxxx went on a fishing expedition, spending several weeks trying to frame me and when he saw your name (with a typo even!) he thought he found something to leverage in order to get rid of me (despite doing nothing wrong; they just cannot afford to pay workers!).

This is from the letters sent to my wife (yes, like an authoritarian regime) to engage in punishment through a loved one, rendering her unemployed and unable to support her parents in xxxxxxxx. He accused her of breaching rules because her spouse mentioned your name in some very tiny IRC channel a long time ago. This isn’t how investigation gets done; it is a witch-hunt.

I’m telling you this because they likely kept you in the dark about what they had been doing. Attached are the portions of the letter regarding the accusations against Rianne and the so-called ‘evidence’, which is a two-person IRC chat (myself talking to an old-time friend whom I do activism with, including thousands of press links about xxxxxxxx).

Kind regards,

Roy

The attachment is a screenshot that shows his name. It is carefully redacted below to avoid identification (by words, name, date, and URL):

To summarise, it seems rather apparent that Sirius clients did not complain about me. This was likely about an insecure CEO (without experience) trying to silence a dissenting voice of reason, who simply refused to lie to clients.

Video download link | md5sum 167f4206cc0f8c61665c361b14b015f3
Chronology of Botched Sirius Hatchet Job
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Having lost any real understanding of Free software, my former employer also lacks understanding of free speech; somehow conversations that I was having with a friend online (not mentioning the company or staff) are spun as ‘evidence’ that my wife did something wrong and this backfired on the company; it also shocked our lawyers that the company was dumb enough to do this

TODAY’S video is a little different and it was recorded without prior preparation (nor post-recording edits) in OBS Studio, which has just had a major new release.

Viewers can now see one of the letters we’ve received from the ‘UK’ CEO of Sirius ‘Open Source’ (probably sent from his home, as the company no longer has an office). Scare quotes around ‘UK’ because the company now pretends to be American (despite having almost no American staff) and around ‘Open Source’ because the company rapidly abandons its Open Source roots. Shown above is the phone used in conjunction with Asterisk, which is Free (or Open Source) software. This phone won’t be of use anymore due to lots of outsourcing of what’s left of the company.

Also shown in the video is the controversial koala which became a theme here (this post offers some context), a photo of us in a post-wedding party, and other stuff that the stalker (‘UK’ CEO of Sirius ‘Open Source’) was collecting for weeks in an effort to frame innocent people. What is that all about? Is he trying to show that he found something that does not exist? Sirius knows these two people run Tux Machines, and Sirius even exploits that to market itself. In IRC, Sirius was never mentioned! Not by name.

The video above hopefully helps explain the absurdity of this whole situation. It shows example pages with IRC logs in them, falsely asserting those have something to do with my wife (she is not even in IRC, it’s just me and a friend). In the later parts the latest article and meme are shown and explained in passing. It’s better to just read them, the video tries not to repeat what’s already in them.

Summary: The ‘UK’ manager at Sirius ‘Open Source’ decided to start stalking an innocent worker, trying really hard to somehow associate her with things she wasn’t involved in (probably to avoid paying compensation as the company was rapidly collapsing)

THE past two parts explained how the company communicated with myself and with my wife, basically taking extreme action before even bothering to contact us.

Then, the company was writing the same letters to both of us (both to Roy and to Rianne, albeit separately) like it’s the same person, sometimes forgetting to even change the names in the letters, which contained totally irrelevant paragraphs. Lazy management. Lousy skills. They didn’t even bother distinguishing! We’re not talking about legally-valid letters here; those weren’t based on law but a bunch of gobbledegook with endless reuse or copy-paste of stuff, not even offering much original content and just following mindless and legally-inapplicable portions. We’ve already shown some parts while hiding more personal parts. The company did not bother truly customising the letters and, as noted here before, forgot to change the names sometimes! How awful! No wonder the company keeps losing clients!! Quality has fallen sharply.

What we’re dealing with here is a very cheaply-made and very poorly-executed hatchet job.

There was no need to produce any letters. On the surface one can see they just want to extrajudicially attack staff. No need to print any letters either as that would waste paper. Not good for the environment… the company likes to pretend to be green by not printing things… while the CEO drives around in a car that’s like 4 times bigger than what’s needed. In more recent years one got the impression he can no longer afford even a shirt!

In an upcoming video we plan to show Rianne’s letter. We’ll show it’s folded (because the CEO does not have a suitable envelope or cannot afford one). Maybe he chose to fold everything to save envelope money (stamps) given that Roy’s letters weren’t folded.

The weirdest thing is, the CEO was becoming rather creepy and spooky, spying on us and especially on Rianne, taking screenshots of her photographs like a scene from Jeepers Creepers. No return address on the envelopes; maybe he lives in some lair/cave somewhere.

The writing style is also quite primitive. He used proprietary software (Google) and pasted (pushed through) screenshots of text into that. Any moron knows that the way to process a PDF is, copy text, don’t make screenshots of text! It’s like a newbie authored the letter/s, so in the evidence (so-called ‘evidence’) is a bunch of screenshots with remarks that mostly take out of context what’s in the screenshots. Those screenshots show stuff like an informal chat about us depositing coins (change) in the bank. How on Earth is that even of relevance? Is he trying to mock people who use physical currency instead of Apple stuff?

Speaking of Apple stuff, we don’t suppose he wants the Cisco IP phone (they recently decided to replace all of them with proprietary spyware anyway), so we don’t know whether to toss it in the bin or find a way to recycle it. It’s too large for any envelope currently in our home and we don’t know where to send it. Mr. Big Shot Boss, send us a clue. Is it too “old” and “hobbyist” for you to accept? It’s not Apple and it’s not “clown computing”, so we’re left to assume it’s “obsolete”. That’s the way you think anyway. Never mind if this phone was always far more reliable than the “clown computing” garbage you brought to the company and insisted on even after it had failed all the workers; again and again and again…

The letters contain totally irrelevant text and some facts you don’t like to hear about the company you claim to lead. You’ve mostly oppressed this past year. That’s no true leadership.

So what to do with those letters you mailed us? Should they be treated like pathetic love letters from a long-lost boyfriend, who maintains an unhealthy obsession? Should we tear it all and throw it in the trash can? It’s small enough to fit in the bin, but maybe it’s better to keep that as a souvenir. You have been wasting paper, time, and toner, reinforcing the idea or the perception you don’t know how to run a company. You were introduced to us as a person who had created a successful company, but public records show just a one-man company or a defunct two-person company (dissolved a decade ago). So either we’re blind to some very big company that doesn’t bother mentioning you or we’re dealing with a pathological liar who relishes in high self-esteem.

We can’t help wondering why the CEO felt a need to send a physical copy of his letters. Maybe because that’s a culmination of several weeks of him stalking people. Those letters are like ‘trophies’ to him, even if about 90% of them are mindless screenshots of his proprietary Web browser (he’s like some very dumb uncle who includes the whole browser in the screenshot instead of just framing the contents of the page). Well, perhaps we should be thankful for these physical (hard) copies because a) we don’t need to print it ourselves; we can bring it to lawyers easily. b) I have something for my recording (to show in the upcoming video). Cheers!

Anyway, there was no need to send it, I have all the logs and can access things with full context, unlike some lousy screenshots that lack a corresponding URL. Did you ever think any labour tribunal would deem a two-person chat (or screenshot thereof) admissible? Maybe that’s rather revealing; the company is now run by rookies.

Video download link | md5sum e7d0e62fcd938f1c783acdc8e9ff6afa
Picking on Innocent Workers
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Today we focus on what Sirius ‘Open Source’ ‘Inc.’ (shell company) did to my wife this past November; it wasn’t just irrational but suicidal (if the company could still be taken to court; it’s trying to dodge the law at this point)

THE ‘UK’ CEO of Sirius ‘Open Source’ (it’s a UK-based company, it only pretends to be American!) has aggravated/upset staff and now he’s in a bit of a panic, trying to silence those whom he mercilessly hurt with false accusations and accusation inflation, basically looking to cover up misconduct and lying by simply shooting the messenger (who had spoken about this internally for years before doing anything else, however subtle).

“What sane person would go ahead with such a witch-hunt?”The series is getting longer and longer because the tail of scandals stretches further and further, almost as fast as we deplete what we have. We’re receiving additional information, which helps explain what exactly happened earlier this winter. The company wants to pretend everything is normal, but in reality this is a total catastrophe.

The video above is commentary about the latest 3 memes and article. What makes it exceptional is the low quality of the accusation against my wife, Rianne. What sane person would go ahead with such a witch-hunt?

Shooting first, asking questions later? Sirius UK or Sirius Ukraine?

‘Big Shot’ boss: You’re accused of doing nothing. You committed an act of “nothingness”. Merry Xmas, Rianne!

Summary: A manager at Sirius ‘Open Source’ has accused my wife, Rianne, of basically nothing at all! She did nothing, hence she’s considered “guilty”; she resigned following this unwarranted bollocking, seeing that the company had gone broke and hid its presence in a network of shells, impeding potential lawsuits for compensation; today we reveal the full chain of correspondence and offer related context

THE LIAR AT SIRIUS has not only picked on yours truly; he also picked on my wife. Presumably being married to me means that any accusation against myself is also equally applicable to her.

How does that work? It goes like this:

Even the letters to me get reproduced and are then being sent to her (with her name instead of mine) and the only connection the company was able to find is that she wanted to raise money for koalas amid very deadly wildfires in Australia. I re-post her blog post under my name (she has no account in Techrights) several years ago and this astoundingly becomes ‘evidence’ against her. Just wow!

Don’t believe me? Watch…

Accusation #1:

This is the Bytes Media site, not Techrights. Nothing suggests she runs Techrights. That she runs Tux Machines is nothing new; she has done this for nearly a decade already. This is not even surprising and the company’s own site — even at this very moment — boasts about it:

Accusation #2:

Notice the author on the right; this was posted originally in Tux Machines (by Rianne), then merely copied by me.

Accusation #3:

This is about editorial work in Tux Machines, not Techrights. It’s worth noting that he even stalked the old (now retired) site of Tux Machines to ‘prove’ a connection — a fact that the company boasts about in its very own site! Even right now! They’ve failed to removed our names from the site even more than a month after we had resigned. Maybe they worry clients would find out things had gone really sour at the company.

Accusation #4:

They failed at basic reading comprehension if they think a blog post in Tux Machines implies Rianne does write Techrights. What is the above even meant to imply???

We’re astounded the company wasted not just time but also physical paper sending us (by post) the above, as if to make some point (the lawyer thought the same upon seeing this). We’ll come back to this later when we cover this travesty some more. It is a cautionary tale to anyone else who gets bullied by bosses, based on nothing at all! It cannot be overstated (nor understated) that she did nothing at all. Nothing!

Over a day ago (we saw this hours after it had been posted) Major Hayden wrote about “red flags” (Major Hayden is a sysadmin who worked in a number of well known companies). He said a couple of days ago: “Survival in almost any company requires you to believe that your contributions create value for someone somewhere. You also need a belief that your chance for further opportunities in the company should improve as the product improves. [...] When red flags start to appear, talk to your manager about them as soon as possible! Don?t let them fester and get worse while you?re silently becoming more and more upset and stressed. Try to bring them up with your manager in the context of your experience with them.”

It seems like a common issue; Hayden worries that the company where he worked started lying to clients (or, as he puts it more politely, wasn’t honest with clients). Such pathological liars or gaslighters or bullies are drowning the boat that all of us are in. In this particular case we deal with a sociopath who has no time to read my E-mail but has several weeks to carefully read years’ worth of IRC logs in my site, my wife’s site, and my wife’s old (now retired) site! Some productivity right there…

Amazing, keep up the great work, Mr. CEO! Unless you’re the only person left in ‘your’ company (he hasn’t been in the company as long as we have; he’s fairly new).

The “big shot” Mr. CEO fails to grasp that the company brought the criticism upon itself by mistreating staff for years, then lying to them and about them. As the Internet meme goes, “you must be new here,” Mr. CEO! Let us tell you a little about the company’s history. The staff can teach you a thing or two.

This is a CEO who has no clue how to manage the Wiki and we need to lecture him, explaining to him that as manager he is the one responsible for adding clients to the Wiki (after a couple of years as CEO he still did not know that!).

Anyway, amid all this self-defeating campaign against my wife came this letter that was folded to save money and still belongs right in the wastebasket. Yes, he didn’t even want to pay for a proper envelope. Must be a budget issue…

Now it’s our turn to show and to explain what a pathetic and likely illegal thing he embarked on. So we decided to take screenshots in December or even do some videos (e.g. show in OBS/Webcamoid just how ridiculous this entire thing was). There’s lots more on the way…

At the end of the day the company left itself bruised badly by bullying staff for years. It made some previously-ambitious and motivated staff less loyal or even disloyal.

Outsourcing is what’s left of the company now (it’s a middleman, reseller, parasitic firm that’s severely hobbled and unable to contribute). There are almost no geeks with technical skills left, just mostly self-appointed ‘managers’ who don’t do their own job, just pocket the money or surplus off of geeks, some of whom work all night long on shoestring budget. It’s an exploitative relationship; the managers are milking the brand (productive past staff earned reputation like this!) and the remaining staff — not to even surmount the abuse against staff since 2019, i.e. 4 years ago. We covered this before.

In the communications below one can see how it all started and later this month we shall talk about why it’s a kangaroo court, definitely not compliant with British laws. Aside from E-mails, the boss had her put on call; he recorded her (yes, audio and video) while she was baffled over what this thing was all about. She had no clue. Because she did nothing and hadn’t said anything.

It was certainly a waste of recording, but the E-mails that followed showed eagerness to harass and intimidate her. We’re dealing with a barely-trained manager pretending to be a cop, picking on a totally innocent person who has no clue what’s even going on or why.

Here is everything in chronological order and accompanying notes/explanations.

This is how it started:

Dear Rianne,

Could we please have a call urgently to discuss a matter that has been brought to my attention?

Would you be able to join a video call at this link? [redacted]

I will telephone you shortly to discuss timing.

Kind regards,
[redacted]

She wasn’t checking her personal E-mail account in real time, so then he phoned our personal landline at home (not the company’s phone! Perhaps that too was disabled/suspended already) to draw her attention to an E-mail having been sent. Upon logging in and checking Thunderbird she noticed her company account had been suspended (or at least dysfunctional).

She responded quickly regarding another such “weirdness”:

Hi [redacted],

I can’t login to [redacted] it says your account has been disabled.

Regards,

Rianne

Notice they failed to actually inform her and never said what had happened. They took action prematurely or shot before asking any questions. We’ll revisit this some other time and explain why it may be a breach of British law.

He responded (still by E-mail, they suspended everything, so they contacted her via personal E-mail):

Hi Rianne,

You don’t need to be logged in to Google to use that link. You can post that link into any browser window and join the meeting.

Could you please re-try?

Thanks,
[redacted]

She said:

I’m in.

He said:

Hi Rianne,

I can’t see you listed as a participant in the meeting attendees?

Let’s try a Zoom call instead.

Would you be able to join a Zoom meeting with the following details? :

This should again just work via any web browser.

To give you time to get it set up, can we please meet at 14:30?

Many thanks,
[redacted]

And she replied:

Hello [redacted],

Ok, I’ll see you at 14:30.

Best,

Rianne

After the call, which revealed absolutely nothing at all, he had the audacity to say “you are formally suspended” without even specifying anything that she had done wrong!

Here’s the E-mail:

Dear Rianne,

Further to our meeting by video conference earlier today, please see attached letter confirming our discussion that you are formally suspended from your role of Support Engineer with Sirius Open Source.

The attached letter provides further information about this action.

Kind regards,
[redacted]

This above-mentioned “letter” provided no evidence at all.

She responded after a couple of visits to lawyers.

Hi,

I believe I was unfairly treated on several grounds, including relevant protocols.

Here is the gist of the issues:

1. no due process
2. no evidence presented (or claims merely alluded to without context/link)
3. guilt by association (almost identical letter, too)

Roy and I visited lawyers on Friday and on Monday. We spoke about the facts in length.

We don’t yet wish to escalate this matter and would rather settle amicably.

Rianne

He did not even respond to this E-mail. He just simply ignored anything that did not suit his twisted agenda.

Days later he wrote:

Dear Rianne,

Please see the attached letter regarding your attendance at an investigation meeting tomorrow.

Kind regards,

An “investigation” for nothing basically; they accuse another person and then try to engage in ‘guilt’ by association (the other person isn’t guilty of anything either).

Rianne responded, politely:

Hi,

Please be patient. My lawyer will respond to you soon. I will not attend any meetings prior to that.

Best,

Rianne

Well, if that wasn’t bad enough he then kept pushing “Reminders” by E-mails, despite having not received any input to the effect he wanted. He kept postponing each time the kangaroo ‘court’ was empty, as it was likely constructed in violation of the law.

Days later Rianne followed up:

Hi,

The meeting with the lawyer was today. The legal rights are now clearer. Cooperation with your instructions are now possible.

Best,

Rianne

Suddenly the company ‘discovers’ they left something out:

Dear Rianne,

Thanks for your message.

As per our letter, you are entitled to be accompanied by either a work colleague or by a Trades Union representative.

Just to be clear, it is not Sirius’ responsibility to run or operate a Union. Trades Unions are independent bodies that operate separately to employers so that they can work for the benefit of their members.

It is also not Sirius’ responsibility to nominate a suitable Trades Union. It is a right under UK law for each employee to make an individual decision to choose whether or not they wish to join a Union. Sirius is an equal opportunity employer and makes no distinction at all between those who are members of a Trade Union and those who are not.

Kind regards,

That was not good enough:

Hi,

That does not answer my main question or my main point. The point is, you’ve presented me with a false dichotomy. That also does not follow the protocols, as per my lawyer.

Regards,

Rianne

In order to keep this post relatively concise we’ll come back to this at a later date when rights of staff are discussed further.

Some hours later, after seeking legal advice, she noted that she deserved (legally entitled) to be accompanied by someone else:

Hi,

My lawyers say I can be accompanied not only by a trade union person. Sirius doesn’t have a union.

Best,

Rianne

It was like talking to a wall because they did not facilitate what was allowed and in fact they had hidden those rights until she pointed those out (or after Mr. Boss was belately speaking to a professional at the company’s side). They kept pushing and pushing for another meeting:

Dear Rianne,

Thank you for your reply.

Please see the attached letter regarding your attendance at a re-scheduled investigation meeting.

Kind regards,

They even pushed this until December:

Dear Rianne,

Please see the attached letter regarding attendance at a disciplinary hearing this Friday 2nd December.

Kind regards,

Many “Reminders” followed, but still no compliance with rules. The company wasn’t interested in actual facts, laws etc.

Rianne gave up at this point, seeing the company wasn’t interested in any input about law and protocols. She resigned in December:

Dear [redacted],

I am writing to announce my resignation as a support engineer in Sirius Open source Ltd. effective today, 2nd of December 2022. This was not an easy decision to make; I have been working with Sirius for nine years, but it feels like this has come to an end. The situation recently hasn’t been managed/handled according to laws; this hassle could have been avoided if only the rules and protocols have been followed.

Sincerely,

Rianne

It took the company nearly 10 days to reply to that.

Dear Rianne,

Please see attached letter regarding your resignation.

Yours sincerely,

This was covered here before, as the contents of the letter were truly absurd.

To summarise, Rianne and I wished to send a formal document to the employer as a response to trumped-up accusations. We knew it would help if legal representatives (like someone in his/her capacity as a lawyer) could acknowledge that this is our position and that they’re there to take the matters further upon instruction from the clients. Not to endorse the message (statement) but to assure the company that the clients have legal representatives and are presently considering further action, such as lawsuit or whistle-blowing. At the end we chose the latter, seeing the companies was acting like an eel, hiding behind rocks and shells, especially weeks before the bullying began. The company changed its address 3 times in just 5 weeks, leaving both ‘companies’ with the address of its accountants, i.e. a phony registration (even if technically it’s legal to do so).

We assume that most readers don’t bother reading the PDF, as it is long, but it might help to have this series at the site (blog posts or wiki) at all times; it might help other people in case — or at the time — of similar incidents. Ever since we resigned we spotted at least 4 blog posts in the FOSS-centric blogosphere that we felt were inspired by us (but could not actually prove the correlation). Geeks like to focus on coding, testing, tickering etc. Sadly this means not many are aware of their legal rights and this leaves them vulnerable to sociopaths who somehow made their way into management positions in companies whose products/services they don’t even understand. Heck, they do not and cannot understand the staff either! Maybe that counts as management, but that’s not actual leadership and it usually ends badly as both clients and staff get fed up with the lies, the threats, the endless (false, baseless etc.) finger-pointing, and mostly cover-up. Charlatans and imposters are toxic to companies where the atmosphere or the work climate can rapidly deteriorate, causing colleagues to leave and creating critical vacuums (e.g. systems nobody can maintain or knows how to patch, extend etc.), begetting unpaid pensions, a lack of payslips (violation of British law by the way!), no actual servers and so on.

For those who want to get a quick roundup of the wrongs and the injustices done to my wife, here is the gist of the issues:

1. no due process
2. no evidence presented (or claims merely alluded to without context/link)
3. gross accusation inflation
4. guilt by association (identical letter, too)
5. the company has a history doing this to couples, e.g. one blind colleague based in Germany; it was very serious and it went to court (cost the company or its Directors — a manager and the CEO — a lot of money, went on for a long time, settled at the end)

Portions of E-mail correspondence prior to the abuse and resignation is now included here along with further context that anyone can judge independently. Attachment of an employee handbook (may not be very similar to the latest version) isn’t possible for confidentiality reasons and PDF versions of the letters sent will likely be shown in the next post, albeit only on camera. Employment contracts (printed for us, to be brought home) don’t say much at all, so staff was basically compelled to sign some “Web pages” online, consenting to largely unknown terms. Later on in this series we’ll show he we were pressured to sign new contracts ‘by surprise’ without any legal advice available.

In Rianne’s own words: “I think my employer does not wish to settle amicably, and it seems to boil down to a manager’s ego rather than anything wrong I did.”

Unless this was a case of digital “swatting” (someone who hates us trying to falsely report us to the employer, possibly anonymously), this is the employer manufacturing a ‘case’.

The cheaply-made hatchet job never goes far. It only backfires. The victims always remember.

Video download link | md5sum 78ce96faf8912afd2ac377912e79bd6c
Sirius Kangaroos
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Unable to justify its business practices, Sirius ‘Open Source’ starts a witch-hunt against people who found the courage to discuss the matter, both internally and in private (not naming the culprits)

THE above video covers what was published earlier today because verbal clarifications may help those with severe reading comprehension and/or a sinister agenda (that’s Matthew Garrett).

The real chronology here is, I spoke about things wrong with the company (confidentially and internally). When that failed to work, repeatedly even, I consulted other people on the matter. Then started a campaign of retaliation against me — an effort to silence me and cover things up, as usual. This is the new management style.

Among the many scandals (we still have many left to mention) Sirius staff members have a manager who brought 3 women (one former wife) into the company despite lack of relevant experience/skills, resulting in mistakes that clients noticed (for instance, pasting an entire handover into the command line!). An insider or outsider might joke that it looks like giving them jobs in exchange for sex. Apparently pointing this out is the issue, whereas the real issue remains unaddressed. But the main issue here has nothing to do with sex; the issue is lack of qualifications, overt nepotism, and special access given in exchange for bedroom stuff/favours. This is a well-known yet under-reported problem in the tech industry. Last year a whistleblower told us that she was compelled to have sex or even orgies in order to get/keep a job.

There has been other petty stuff like going after staff for saying lies are lies, but never handling the actual lies or the liar. CEOs won’t hold themselves accountable. They won’t investigate or fire themselves either, despite making ridiculous assertions to that effect.

This is what happens when pathological liars run a company, sometimes like a tightly-knit family in the “club” sense, not pseudo kinship that makes a better work atmosphere (companies acting like a family isn’t the same as companies being actual families or sex partners).

It was always about protecting his ego

Summary: After years of bullying and persistent lying by Sirius management (it had done this to colleagues, too) came a fabricated ploy/plot to remove dissenting workers

T has now been over a month since I left my job and started writing about what had happened (not for 12 years but particularly the past 4 years, especially after Gates Foundation had passed money to the CEO under an NDA!).

It has since then been apparent that the company, Sirius ‘Open Source’ (Sirius now tries to get rid of these articles), is trying to gag me and censor me. That won’t work. It’ll only embolden me further.

As it turns out, Sirius is run by stalkers. Yes, what on earth do they even do all day? Spy on people. They should do their job, but they don’t (we’ve provided ample evidence of their failings and inability to do very basic stuff like payslips — a legal requirement!).

So while workers stay up all night (fixing flaws, incidents etc.) they go behind their backs reading years-old IRC logs, fishing for ‘dirt’ so as to avoid paying compensation or separation fees. Yes, the company was broke, so it decided to take this route.

Today I wish to share full communications (albeit redacted) about what happened in November. There was an account suspension, without any due process, as one insecure and insincere manager failed to follow protocols. The manager then did the equivalent of not just refusing entry to the building but handing a box with belongings from the desk. It is unjust and likely not legal (dubious as per British law given the circumstance). It is mean-spirited and vindictive. To be clear, I did nothing wrong, but the company was broke and wanted to deflect. In weeks that followed the manager was once again relying on truly poor legal advice, if any at all!

We assume they did the same to some colleagues, so we show their process for ‘ousting’ technical staff, based on lies, while moving their ‘shells’ into secret addresses (and instead placing the address of an accountant, impeding possible litigation against the company).

Here’s how it all started:

Dear Roy,

Would we please have a call urgently to discuss a matter that has been brought to my attention?

Would you be able to join a video call at this link? [redacted]

I will telephone you shortly to discuss timing.

Kind regards,
[redacted]

He wanted me to use Google.

I then responded:

Can we do the discussion over email instead?

Regards,

[Roy]

He then suggested Zoom.

Hello Roy,

No. I’m afraid not. We are required to have a call.

Please see the meeting details below.

The meeting will be brief.

Many thanks,

Later:

Hello again Roy,

We are waiting for you in the call now as soon as you are ready please.

Thank you,

Then:

Hi Roy,

We have successfully been able to use the technology to have a call with your household this afternoon, so we understand that it is not a technical issue that would prevent you from taking a Zoom call. I have also just tried to ring the landline which has now rung out.

It is very important that we speak as the matter is serious and urgent.

Can you please let me know if you are free to join a Zoom call now. Otherwise, you are due on shift at 17:30 and we will speak then.

Can I remind you that a failure to attend for work without a satisfactory explanation would potentially lead to disciplinary action under the terms of your employment contract.

Kind regards,

Notice they use my impending shift to make it seem like “disciplinary action”; they didn’t even let me in (to carry out work).

Then he (there are two people above, only one talking though) suggested other proprietary things (yes, everything this “Open Source” company nowadays uses for communications is proprietary!), but that’s not the main issue. As it turned out, they had blocked me from Slack too, so I wrote:

I cannot access Slack. I tried from several PCs.

Regards,

Roy

Then he said:

Hi Roy,

Thank you for your reply. I wasn’t asking you to join via Slack, I sent you a link to a Zoom call.

Can you please join a Zoom Call now with the following details.

Many thanks,

I also said:

> Hi Roy,
>
> Thank you for your reply. I wasn’t asking you to join via Slack, I sent you a link to a Zoom call.
>
> Can you please join a Zoom Call now with the following details.

Hi,

I think it must be done in writing so that things can be presented and checked within context.

Regards,

Roy

By this point I had already realised what it was about. He was reading years’ worth of IRC logs and trying to build (frame) a ‘case’ against me. To be clear, simply talking (mostly in private) about the issues with the company is seen as unacceptable as if the company is a religion or cult. Even if nobody (not even the company) is named!

Then he escalated (the mask fell) and showed his real intentions:

Hi Roy,

This call is not itself part of an investigation and is not in itself a disciplinary hearing.

We are simply trying to inform you of a matter that has been brought to our attention so that we have properly communicated with you and to confirm your working status.

Nothing needs to be presented or checked in this call, there will be time for anything like that later.

It really is in your interests to hear what we have to say and we can take matters from there.

As it is currently your formal work shift time, the management instruction that I am giving you is to join us on this call now, nothing else.

If you could please join the Zoom call now we can have a short call.

Regards,

And what is this “investigation” about? We’ll come to that later. The short story, it’s based on a lie.

I responded as follows:

> Hi Roy,
>
> This call is not itself part of an investigation and is not in itself a disciplinary hearing.
>
> We are simply trying to inform you of a matter that has been brought to our attention so that we have properly communicated with you and to confirm your working status.

By suspending my account I think you pre-judged my “working status” before we even had a chance to communicate or clarify.

> Nothing needs to be presented or checked in this call, there will be time for anything like that later.
>
> It really is in your interests to hear what we have to say and we can take matters from there.

I prefer to do this by E-mail or text, as it is more suitable a medium and ‘paper trail’ is needed.

> As it is currently your formal work shift time, the management instruction that I am giving you is to join us on this call now, nothing else.

I cannot even access my account. I think you pre-judged my status.

Regards,

Roy

Now the other manager got angry and fired off this E-mail with all caps and typos:

Roy,

You are employed by this company, and it is current your work shift.

The perfectly reasonable management instruction is that you join Andrew and me in the Zoom cal NOWl: [sic]

Failure to do so will be a clear breach of your employment contract and company policies.

[redacted]
Sirius Founder and Group CEO

I responded as follows:

> Roy,
>
> You are employed by this company, and it is current your work shift.

My account is currently suspended. You took action before speaking to me.

Regards,

Roy

They knew I was right. It upset them. Then came this:

Hi Roy,

We have acted entirely within our rights as your employer and within the strict terms of your Employment contract and as communicated in our company Employee Handbook.

Nothing has been pre-judged, and no findings have been reached as the investigation process has not yet been carried out.

Indeed by failing to attend even a call and refusing to answer the phone, you are preventing yourself from receiving precisely the information that we are trying to provide.

Again, we are not at the stage where findings will be assessed, we are simply attempting to carry out the very first step of a process which is to communicate with you.

We have now been waiting in a call for nearly an hour, are you able to join us now?

If you do not join us on the call by 17:30 we will take this as a failure to comply with a properly issued management instruction, we will close the call and we will investigate this incident as a potential disciplinary issue too.

Regards,

He got the time wrong.

Correction, if you don’t join us on the call by 18:30

They wanted me to dance to their music, which was lies and distortion of what I had actually said. I responded as follows:

> We have acted entirely within our rights as your employer and within the strict terms of your Employment contract and as communicated in our company Employee Handbook.

The contract is a ‘two-edged sword’ that also protects my rights as an employee. At the moment I see myself as prejudged with account suspension (without me even being made aware of anything).

Regards,

Roy

It had already become very obvious that they were trying to engineer ‘departure’ of people based on a construction of lies.

I later on the same day received what they had planned all along:

Dear Roy,

Despite our repeated requests, you have failed to follow a properly issued management instruction to attend a call to enable us to inform you of an alleged breach of company policy by you that may amount to gross misconduct.

You have therefore also potentially further breached company policy by failing to attend work for your designated support shift in the manner requested, despite very clear, written management instruction requiring you to do so.

Given your refusal to take a call that would allow us to inform you of the alleged misconduct, you have therefore left us no choice other than to act by email.

You are formally suspended from your role of Support Engineer with Sirius Open Source with immediate effect.

The attached letter provides further information about this action.

Regards,

To be very clear, what they allege to be “misconduct” is me wanting a proper conversation based on facts. They did not want that. Then they alleged that me not being able to cover my shift (before they had suspended the account) was “misconduct”. They basically set up the whole thing like this.

There was no due process as severe/drastic action had been taken before even hearing the ‘accused’.

So of course I consulted an employment lawyer about this. I spoke to a couple of people, who were rather shocked by the way Sirius had handled it. It seemed like it about one man’s ego (the manager) and he was stalking staff outside work, looking to ‘punish’ people who didn’t tolerate lies.

Even two weeks later the management was still desperate to arrange a ‘kangaroo court’ session:

Dear Roy,

Please see the attached letter regarding your attendance at an investigation meeting tomorrow.

Kind regards,

It was getting so pathetic that he even stalked out some personal YouTube account of mine to sniff out an E-mail address and add an appointment to something called “Google Calendar”. That’s sad… he was so desperate to ‘interrogate’ for his ego’s sake.

Then he kept sending reminders again… and again… and again. There were like 5 reminders sent in total, followed by these assertions:

Dear Roy,

Thank you for your reply.

Please see the attached letter regarding your attendance at a re-scheduled investigation meeting.

Kind regards,

It was a PDF made with proprietary software, asserting that for failing to face a kangaroo court after I had already been prematurely ‘judged’. It clearly wasn’t about fact-finding.

The same letter would later be sent by post, along with screenshots that are taken out of context and lack URLs.

Days later he once again sent a message via “Google Calendar”, clearly (and increasingly) desperate to get me to dance to his tune. It would be a sham “investigation”; it was meant to be this way.

He then sent yet more letters trying to get me to submit myself, despite having already received messaged explaining why it was not possible. All those .ics files (he uses Apple stuff, not “Open Source”) were piling up, maybe 12 of them in total, all in vain. It was getting rather embarrassing at this point. He was starting to frame this as “disciplinary hearing” (as was the case all along; they were engaged in posturing).

Either way, from my own end I sent a clear message, based on consultation from lawyers. Of course the company chose to ignore that.

The same day I spoke to lawyers I sent the following:

Dear all,

I believe I was unfairly treated on several grounds, including relevant protocols pertaining to several aspects. I will spare you the details but can elaborate if needed.

Here is the gist of the issues:

1. No due process
2. Verbal/oral distortion of claims
3. You misrepresented alleged evidence, but conveniently presented it as facts to my wife
4. No hard evidence presented (just a reference to a handbook we lack a copy of)
5. Rather gross accusation inflation against a person whom you did not even speak to

There are more point, but I shall keep this brief.

The company has a history doing this to couples, e.g. one blind colleague based in Germany; it was very serious and it went to court, based on a trusted source (it cost the company and/or its Directors — xxxxx and xxxxx — a lot of money, as went on for a long time; allegedly got settled at the end but injured the company).

We visited lawyers on Friday and on Monday. We spoke about the facts in length and have a good understanding of our rights.

We agreed that we don’t yet wish to escalate this matter and would rather settle amicably.

Regards,

Roy,

[Your longest-serving employee (aside from the founder)]

Of course the company more or less ignored this reality.

When they kept inviting me to things they knew would not qualify as a proper hearing (explanation of this point due tomorrow) I sent:

Hi,

Under the European Convention on Human Rights Article 6 (England is in the European Court of Human Rights) I am entitled to have a representative and access an objective tribunal. You will hear from my lawyer soon.

At this stage it was abundantly clear, also to lawyers, that there was merely a malicious witch-hunt.

On December first I sent the following:

Hi,

I’ve been receiving some relatively solid and professional legal advice for several weeks already. To put it quite bluntly, the impression legal professionals get is that the company cannot afford lawyers and thus makes wild guesses, based on a gut feeling at best.

In Rianne’s case, the allegations are shockingly weak. This, in turn, makes the trail of correspondence work very strongly in our favour. We’re not impulsive, we just follow the law. We’ve both followed the law all along. We know our rights and we have people to assess the law.

The latest invitation is legally problematic for several distinct reasons. It would not constitute a fair ‘trial’, on a number of different grounds. What you’re trying to apply here is the controversial Reid method, which isn’t just notorious but also unlawful in some jurisdictions. No proper protocols and procedures were followed until (probably due to a lack of legal advice) more recently. In fact, “Investigation Meeting” suddenly and disingenuously became “Disciplinary Hearing”. The process embarked upon did not respect the employee’s right to privacy (setting out the importance of confidentiality) and it seems to be more of a personal vendetta than a real, justifiable case.

Regarding any such hearing, where possible the employer should get somebody who’s not involved in the case to carry out the investigation, for example another manager or someone from HR. HR does not exist in Sirius per se, so the company needs to contract outwards, just like several years ago where HR sided with us, not with the harasser in chief. We never received an apology after that incident. And moreover, I wish to make it known that I am referring to a single example of many such incidents. I can elaborate later.

The sudden and very much unprovoked-for suspension is problematic on a number of legal grounds. There’s consensus among legal professionals (visited or spoke to several) that it was inappropriate and over the top. Perhaps the purpose of it was to obstruct the accused from accessing defensive/supportive evidence. There’s no reason for a suspension of someone who for 12 years never ever did something “dodgy” to company or client assets; quite the contrary. Unless the employer thinks there is a risk that the employee might tamper with evidence or influence witnesses, a suspension is entirely unnecessary. I have no history of tampering with evidence or influencing witnesses. In fact, the “evidence” presented (only a fortnight later!) is actually controlled by me rather than the company. The IRC logs are very informal and have nothing to do with Sirius.

There is also consensus that what’s proposed constitutes a kangaroo court and the reason you don’t want an independent HR agency to handle this (like before) is that the case will be thrown out with prejudice and the company may be held accountable for a lot more than just frivolous accusations and moral damages (twofold).

On deciding whether to suspend an employee, there are also clear legal guidelines. If there’s a serious issue or situation, an employer might consider suspending someone while they investigate. But in this case, the nature of the accusations makes it abundantly frivolous. An employer should consider each situation carefully. Suspension will only be needed in some rather rare situations. This is why, right from the very beginning, the letters and demands sent were legally invalid. If an employer feels they need to suspend someone, it’s important to consider alternative options to suspension and the wellbeing of the person they’re thinking of suspending (unless the intention is to shock and seek reprisal). The employer should think about who will handle matters if further action is needed, but in this case it seems like one or two person control the process from beginning to end. Where possible, a different person should handle each step of the disciplinary procedures: the investigation, the disciplinary hearing and outcome, and the appeal hearing (if an appeal is raised).

It might moreover be useful to document (e.g. write in great length) and to show a clear, systematic pattern; I can prove and neatly present a pattern of evidence which points to the actions by the CEO being vindictive. It would not be unprecedented either. Expect a 50-page report quite soon. A legal team is looking into it.

The process has in general been a travesty and a potential source of disgrace to the company. In this particular case, someone acting as a judge for oneself is not looking good. In principle, recusing oneself is one option, but the process is already tarnished by irregularities that hamper any perception of objectivity and fairness.

This is not a good way to end a relationship with the company. It didn’t have to end like this.

A good company values its workers, listens to workers, instead of treating them like enemies to be deceived and marginalised. Apropos, only minutes ago:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/30/lastpass-goto-breached-customer-information/

If only someone kept warning that LastPass was trouble…

Twelve hours later I sent the report:

The report is now ready.

See [Att].

I resigned the following day. It was abundantly clear, as noted in the report, that this was just part of the ongoing bullying, which had gone on for years.

In the next part there will be focus on what was done to my wife, who had worked in the same company since 2013. In her case, it’s even far worse. It’s far worse that they picked on her after she had done absolutely nothing.

After the weekend we’ll show that this whole witch-hunt was in fact initiated based on a Big Lie.