For several months now, our mini-kitchen area at work has featured a poster next to the trash receptacle entitled “Data Security Starts With You” or something like that. It is a friendly reminder to the worker bees about how we need to protect all of the various valuable data and information assets that we deal with at Big Blue.
The picture features five clean-cut and professionally-dressed IBMers in increasing levels of depth and decreasing levels of sharpness. The first two folks, a black woman and white woman #1, are in sharp focus. Then there is white boy #1 who is a bit blurry, white women #2 who is even blurrier, and finally white boy #2, whose features are barely distinguishable. (What the hell happened to the brother?)
I have read the text of the poster closely and, for the life of me, I can’t figure out if there is some data security-related significance to the gradual blurriness of the five folks or if it is just some shitty photography.
The poster reminds me of a scene in the classic Cameron Crowe flick Almost Famous when boxes containing the promotional tee-shirts for the band Stillwater arrive in the dressing room of the band. In the photo on the shirt, all the band members except lead guitarist Russell Hammond are blurred out in the background which prompts a big back-stage fight between Russell and other band members.
Russell Hammond: Can we just skip the vibe, and go straight to us laughing about this?
Jeff Bebe: Yeah, okay.
Russell Hammond: Because I can see by your face you want to get into it.
Jeff Bebe: How can you tell? I'm just one of the out-of-focus guys.
