[1000units]

Three responses in turn,

1. The courts are profoundly unfair. Are you comfortable forcing harassment victims to go through the courts for what are literally criminal allegations?

2. This example seems too contrived and implausible, as is anything else I could think of. The whole story just seems too magical. Maybe I'm just being hard-headed and arguing with a hero.

3. I will concede that is a more unpleasant series of events without care for semantics.

[laughinghan]

1. I have no idea what you're talking about. You suggested the liability risk for employers is extremely one-sided such that the "safe option ... is always to discard people". I asked if you were aware of the enormous, court-tested liability risk employers face when they discard people. What leads you to believe the liability risk is nevertheless extremely one-sided?

2. Someone sexually harassing his coworker and saying something sexual about her in his password seems magical and unlikely to you? You don't believe the hundreds of corroborated stories about men saying stuff like that openly? Or you think people are less likely to do that in something semi-private like a password than openly?

[1000units]

1. It's difficult to safely discard people on the basis of their belonging to a certain set of protected classes, which does not include those accused of sexual misconduct. As soon as you have someone willing to issue a complaint you can't disprove, you're prepared to safely remove your enemies. There's a reason savvy managers never have private meetings with women.

2. It's magical that some guy exposed a "creep" Doing Very Bad Things by looking at his password he cracked. No witnesses complained, the victim had never complained, just from a distant computer we catch this faint whiff of something wrong in the strangest (invasive, aside) way and turn out to be a hero. Or maybe we just sent a weird password to HR, and they did the default thing and fired the guy for nuisance and liability, and years later we remember the justification that he must have deserved it because he's gone. (Details? Sorry, can't!) It's easier on the conscience, too.