Stop ColeFusion!! Stop3Points!!
How a 23 year old brought down a telecom giant
In 2003, Richard Playfoot was recruited from university to work for telecom giant Perspective. A year later he was on the team that created their most successful product. After two years at Perspective Telecom, he rose to the highest echelons of the company. Less then nine months after that, Playfoot brought the entire company down from the inside. Born in the City, Richard Playfoot was a self-taught computer-wiz from an early age. “When I was 13, I cracked my schools security codes and gave my whole class straight A’s,” muses Playfoot. Throughout his time at Ferndale High, Richard was involved in numerous unique extra-curricular activities. He designed an AI program to read out all the student announcements, reprogrammed all vending machine within the school to dispense items for free and still managed to graduate at age 16 with the highest GPA in his year.
As a freshman at Orange Hill University, Richard met privacy activist Steve Pierce, who introduced him to a community of socially-minded individuals fighting against the privatization of mass media. As their friendship grew, Richard became increasingly more radicalized.
“I finally had a cause to channel my talents,” says Playfoot. He joined Pierce’s group, The Anti-Surveillance Alliance, to fight against the installation of CCTV cameras on the Orange Hill campus. After The Alliance succeeded in their goal of removing CCTV cameras, Richard moved on to larger causes. He joined the Orange Hill Universal Connection Collective, which claims to have been “campaigning for free, universal access to all facets of the web since 1999.”
His work for these organizations garnered attention from various media groups, including Perspective Telecom. He left university six months before graduation to become a member of Perspective’s research and development team.
Once hired, Playfoot’s deception began. “Basically, I toed the company line in order to climb the corporate ladder,” he says.
He helped Perspective develop their 4G phone network and was part of the team that designed their popular Swallow Smartphone. This led him to gain the promotion that would ultimately lead to the downfall of the company. Ever since he had begun working at Perspective, Playfoot had been a model employee, so none of his superiors expected the coming crisis. “I was doing everything I could to gain access to the important stuff,” Playfoot recalls of his early time at Perspective. “I knew that soon enough I’d have what I needed.”
His campaign of sabotage began as soon as Playfoot had access to the company’s highest security clearance. Playfoot is reluctant to discuss his actions during the following months, but it appears that he leaked all of Perspective’s product prototypes online and infected their mainframe with a virus that systematically deleted all data files from every single employee’s desktop computer. As their share
prices plummeted, Perspective lashed out against Playfoot.
The telecom giant took him to court for corporate fraud and trading sensitive information. However, Playfoot had managed to erase all evidence that linked him to his actions. After an eleven month court case, Playfoot was acquitted of all charges. Perspective tried unsuccessfully to sue Playfoot in civil court, to no avail.
With the recent dissolution of the company, Playfoot has gone public and admittedto everything. “I want people to know that even if you’re stuck at a dead-end company, even if you’re a lowly cog in the machine, you can make a difference,” says Playfoot. “Corporations hold and maintain their power because of their ability to control
information. If we remove that, if we make sure that corporate secrets are shared, then we will be one step closer to creating a democratic and egalitarian society where profit and power aren’t the sole motivators.”
Today, Richard Playfoot has taken up a new fight against ColeFusion’s 3Points project, due to be released this fall.
“Declan Cole […] stands in opposition to all the laws and freedoms of net neutrality,” a recently-released video has him saying. He has founded the activist organization Stop3Points!, which aims to stop ColeFusion’s latest venture into internet technologies.
“We need to stop them before their reign of totalitarian rule over the internet can begin,” he says.
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