State Sen. John Sampson (D-Brooklyn) says he'll push for legislation to protect those reporting child porn under New York state whistleblower law, in the wake of two computer technicians who lost their jobs after they reported a mass of child porn on a New York Law School professor's computer.
The current New York whistleblower law only covers those exposing "a substantial and specific danger to public health," but Sampson told the New York Post he would write legislation giving that law "more teeth".
Sampson spoke after New York Law School professor Edward Samuels got six months behind bars, not to begin until October, for over 150,000 child porn images found on his work computer. They were found when two technicians working for Collegis, Inc., Dorothea Perry and Robert Gross, came across them while performing routine maintenance when Samuels brought them his computer for servicing.
Perry and Gross reported what they found to authorities who found the full volume of images, but the pair were fired shortly thereafter by Collegis – just before the company signed a contract with New York Law renewing their deal as the school's technical contractor, according to the Post.
Meanwhile, Adult Sites Against Child Pornography executive director Joan Irvine denounced the Samuels sentence as a slap on the wrist that's a slap in the face for anyone fighting child porn. And the Post said Perry and Gross have filed a $1.5 million wrongful termination lawsuit against both Collegis and New York Law.
