Terry Childs Denied Motion For Retrial 223
snydeq writes "The former San Francisco network administrator who refused to hand over passwords for one of the city's networks has been denied a new trial and is expected to be sentenced Aug. 6. Terry Childs had been due for sentencing Friday but the court instead heard two defense motions, one requesting a new trial and the other for arrested judgment — essentially to have his original conviction overturned. The motions were both denied but the court then ran out of time before the sentencing phase could be conducted."
while ( 1 ) delay(); (Score:3, Funny)
Given the byzantine nature of the case, I have little doubt it will be appealed until his lawyers realize he's run out of money.
Oh, Christ, Not This Tedious Tale Yet Again...! (Score:5, Insightful)
snydeq, tell your puppetmasters at InfoWorld to just give this a rest, won't you? Childs was the kind of uber-dickhead SysAdmin that even normal, run-of-the-mill garden-variety dickhead SysAdmins are afraid to associate with lest they appear as parodies of the type.
He didn't have a higher calling. He's not Batman. This ain't no Ayn Rand novel. He was fired and refused to release property that belonged to his former employer. Period, end of story.
And it *would* be the end of the story if the friggin' Drama Club at InfoWorld would stop flogging it on slashdot..
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He was fired and refused to release property that belonged to his former employer. Period, end of story.
If you're saying that he refused to release a password for a database, then either hire a consultant to forcefully reset the password, or contact the vendor of the software for a solution.
The same is already done for OSs like Windows or Linux - there's special Boot CDs that bypass the issue. There's no reason why you can't do the same with more complex databases. If you need to take the system down for this, then do it at night time when the impact is minimized.
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Not having the passwords for the time it takes to arrest Childs and persuade him to give the passwords to the mayor is less damaging than taking the system down, even briefly, since it still runs without the passwords, provided you don't have a crisis.
Re:Oh, Christ, Not This Tedious Tale Yet Again...! (Score:4, Informative)
If you're saying that he refused to release a password for a database, then either hire a consultant to forcefully reset the password, or contact the vendor of the software for a solution.
Despite being a jackass with no bus-factor plan, he appears to have sufficient technical capacity to build a system that could not readily be broken into using the methods you suggest. Doing so would have wiped the router configurations (they were not committed to flash, no backups were kept)
The crux of his conviction was based on the fact that he did not grant access to the system when requested by his employer. There are many ways to do that beyond giving up the passwords he used. He could have created new administrative accounts with new passwords. He could have given them access to a console logged in with his credentials.
He thought he could stonewall them. He now has plenty of time to examine the stone walls he built around himself.
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Simple fact is that he never had a right to set himself up as the single point of failure...the often used example where I work is "What if you get hit by a car?"
The industry term is "bus factor" [wikipedia.org], in this case a bus factor of 1.
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He was fired and refused to release property that belonged to his former employer. Period, end of story.
The agreement he had with his (former) employer specifies who he was to release that information to, and under what circumstances. The request did not come from an authorized person, and the circumstances were suspect.
If you work helpdesk in a corporate environment, you might need to handle passwords. If the rules say you are only allowed to give out a an employees password to the employee, you don't giv
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tl,dr: He followed the rules, and got screwed for it.
Oh, so the rules were that he where only to give the passwords to the mayor?
And that he was to install backdoors into the system for his own use in the first place?
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If the rules say you are only allowed to give out a an employees password to the employee
(Rationale, of course, is that people reuse passwords and that's something much harder to fix than to stop storing passwords in clear text)
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You have a lovely theory.
Unfortunately, it's not so much true.
First of all, the people requesting the passwords were the same people that gave him the passwords when he started there. He changed the passwords, which was good practice. However, the "I didn't think they were authorized" argume
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August 6, 2010 will be exactly 65 years after the first Atom Bomb was used in war.
Are you trying to imply that Terry Childs kept the SF wifi network root password to prevent Gavin Newsom from nuking Japan again? And only on the day of his sentencing will Darth Gavin have the power to destroy the world?
It seems plausible enough. Gavin seems very unlikely to have plans for world domination, which of course means that they are no longer mere plans.
It's The Law! (Score:4, Insightful)
Withhold a password, go to jail.
Not really sure that justice was served here but the guy really was a first-rate dickhead.
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You gotta watch what you say on here. I agree, but I've had people go off on me saying it.
Myself, I kinda like the idea of job security, where I lock down the whole network so no one else can manage it. "Nope, you can't fire me, I'm the only one with the passwords."
I've had to do cleanups after those a few times though. No one knew the passwords to a bunch of networking equipment in the datacenters, as well as quite a few servers. Nothing makes me warmer and
Re:It's The Law! (Score:5, Informative)
Except if you had done that in this particular case you would of been rebuilding the entire network from the ground up. Terry Childs deleted the startup-config on most of the network equipment so that the only copy was in running-config. He kept the configuration of every device in an encrypted drive on his laptop. If a network device was restarted or power cycled, he would log into the device and copy over the running-config.
that is the high security mode that is used some t (Score:3, Interesting)
that is the high security mode that is used some times and they did not use this he just turned off the password recovery forcing you to do a full reset to get back in.
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If I remembered it right, he left the routers with the config just in memory (like running-config on a Cisco). I'd guess the startup config was enough to bring it online, but not enough for it to do it's job. Sounds like a pain in the ass though, if someone were to accidentally unplug a cable at the datacenter. Not only do they have to wait for it to boot back up, but they also have to wait for him to send up the working configuration.
Ya, it'd be a job of getting into machin
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Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, even if that includes getting a few good people to figure out what the design should be. I'm not saying it would be me, even though I have done more than my fair share of figuring out other people's mistakes. A half dozen CCIEs (assuming it's all Cisco equipment) could likely do it in a day, if they had enough information to work with. If there were no network maps, and they only knew the sites where the equipment resided, it could likely take
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Show me the network map and details, and I can give a slightly better estimate. But since this is all hypothetical it really doesn't matter.
It's not impossible to rebuild the map. I'm assuming we're talking about a bunch of LANs with WANs connecting them. Just follow the trails. I believe I said it would take longer without all the details. That would mean following every circuit and finding out where each end terminated. Some beancounter has the bills and knows every cir
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Bad move.
What if there was a blackout?
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Ever heard of redundant power? Many Cisco routers have two power supplies, you run one to a UPS, and the other to wall, or another UPS. Routers don't generally take massive amounts of power to run.
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UPSs don't last forever. Typically they only give you 15 minutes of power. A sufficiently long blackout will take down even the biggest UPSs.
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Well, it's not all that bad. If you're the admin for the company, you can likely buy new certs. It's not like they're all that expensive any more.
Most folks I've known fix their cert so they don't have to type the password every time they reboot the machine. A server should come up into a good running configuration when powered on. It shouldn't require any sort of manual intervention. One place I was at didn't, and it caused all kinds of problems. Just imagine the loving
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Can you actually get "extended validation" (the URL bar turns green etc.) without using such hardware?
ObTopic:Why bother? Childs was an idiot.
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Yeah, seems like this should have been a civil case, but I don't know if lives or people's welfare were on the line because of this jerk. If that's the case, then a-slammer he should go!
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'From his perspective' is the key phrase here.
Judging the competence of his superiors is outside the scope of his job responsibilities.
Denying the company access to their legal property, i.e. the passwords, is considered theft.
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But his /contract/ said that he was not allowed to turn over the passwords without the proper protocols. Which were not followed.
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Did said contract ever make it into evidence during his trial?
"His perspective" isn't a license for anything (Score:5, Insightful)
He was a front-lines IT grunt. His job was to do whatever his superiors told him to do, barring any requests to do something illegal. If his superiors order him to open the admin interface to the outside world, and change the password to "password"... other than requesting that the demand be put in e-mail to protect his name, he is supposed to do so.
Exactly what criminal law would not allow him to turn passwords over to his management on request, no matter how unqualified they are? None.
Holding your employer's equipment hostage pending an audience with the mayor? Yeah, that was, and is, criminal. It's called extortion.
SirWired
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No, his contract said clearly that his superiors could not demand the passwords like that. There were clear protocols for transferring the passwords that the state refused to follow.
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Why don't you repeat what he did at your job, see how it works out for you.
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Well we know how it works out - they lock you away for doing what your contract tells you to.
Doesn't make it right.
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contract definitely doesn't tell you to remove all configuration files to all pieces of equipment, keep all copies on your laptop so that you're the only one who can restart anything, then once you're already dismissed to keep the passwords and configurations away from your former boss while he is explicitly telling you to give it up on the phone, no matter how many people are listening.
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> then once you're already dismissed to keep the passwords and configurations away from your former boss while he is explicitly telling you to give it up on the phone
Actually, yes, the contract does say that. The boss was not an authorized official for the passwords. If he had given up the passwords then he would have been in breach of his contract and could have been sued for that.
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That's just a bunch of bullshit and technicalities. Have you actually SEEN his contract? Have you read it? Who signed the contract? What are the legalities around it?
Even if the contract absolutely states that there is only one person at all can get the passwords, if that person is on the phone with other people and telling you to say the password, that's it, it's that person's problem.
This guy is just an ass and I wouldn't want anybody like that 1000 miles anywhere close to my systems.
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If he had already been dismissed then how could he be sued for being in breach of a contract that neither party was bound by?
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So what, the council made up protocols that should just be ignored?
You're an ass for being so free in violating your contract just because someone said so.
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I am not an ass because I don't steal other people's systems. I don't prevent owners of the systems to use them. I don't make a huge scene out of stupid technicalities because I follow the spirit of the contract, not the letter. Only assholes and lawyers follow the letter and not the spirit.
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There is the letter and then there is the spirit of any paper. Anything can be turned and twisted. Would you want to take a contract with an unknown employer on a handshake on an off chance he is a very honest person and will pay you for your work?
The point is that it was very clear to Childs what was happening and he did what he did only because he chose to be and asshole about it, that's all, we all know it, he knows it.
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If being a dickhead is a crime, I'm in serious trouble. Can someone please provide a list of countries that won't extradite to the US? Soonish, please.
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Why not just not be a dickhead? Lots of people manage it every day.
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You do know where you're posting, right?
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Can someone please provide a list of countries that won't extradite to the US? Soonish, please.
Every country has ways of dealing with the dickhead. Some are more permanent and more painful than others, so make your choice wisely.
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Withhold a password, go to jail.
Not really sure that justice was served here but the guy really was a first-rate dickhead.
I like the prescedent.
Cops: "We confiscated your external HDD, only it's encrypted. Give us your password."
SuspecT: "No."
Cops: "Passwords are property and thus you have to, as it's part of the HDD."
Suspect: "I claim 5th amendment rights."
Cops: "We have a Warrant for the seizure and search of this HDD, and you're blocking us from doing it. Therefore, you can rot in jail until you give up and give us what we want."
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What if it's NOT encrypted, and that's just noise left over from stress testing the drive with random read-writes? How exactly would justice be served by holding that guy in jail? Apologies if you were being sarcastic.
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What if it's NOT encrypted, and that's just noise left over from stress testing the drive with random read-writes?
Then it's not going to look like it's encrypted. An encrypted hard disk will almost always have some clear identifying mark, like some cleartext code at the beginning which prints out "please enter passphrase:" when you try booting from it, and tries to decrypt the key using the passphrase.
Of course, you might not know the password. No way to be sure, but the jury doesn't need to be sure. It just needs to be beyond a reasonable doubt, and not even that in civil cases.
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I like the prescedent.
Cops: "We confiscated your external HDD, only it's encrypted. Give us your password."
SuspecT: "No."
Cops: "Passwords are property and thus you have to, as it's part of the HDD."
Suspect: "I claim 5th amendment rights."
Cops: "We have a Warrant for the seizure and search of this HDD, and you're blocking us from doing it. Therefore, you can rot in jail until you give up and give us what we want."
Um, yeah. IANAL, but this is called "obstruction of justice". If the police have a warrant that permits them to search your hard disk, and you try to prevent them, that's a crime. You can't be compelled to testify against yourself, but you have to permit the police to access your property if they have a legitimate warrant.
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You say that, but do you recall what happened when he did give the passwords to them? They were immediately included in a legal filing against him which was part of the PUBLIC record -- meaning any idiot could see them. They had to shut their network down for days while they changed all the passwords on everything after they realized what an idiotic thing they'd done.
It sort of made his reasoning of "I'm not giving you the passwords cause you'll do something stupid with them" seem really, really justified.
he overstepped his authority (Score:2)
the city of san francisco could have decided to hand out the passwords to homeless people and plaster them on freeway billboards. and? who cares. the point is, the passwords were the property of the city of san francisco's, not terry child's. the story begins and ends there
that san franciso would poorly manage network security is almost a fact. i would wager good money on their network being compromised. again, who cares: completely besides the point. terry childs had no right to assert himself as an author
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yes, the password was the property of sanfran (Score:2)
or more exactly, the security system for THEIR network, which the password was the key to
terry childs is like the auto mechanic in that seinfeld episode from the nineties, who doesn't think jerry is treating his car well enough, that he slaved so many hours repairing, so he steals his car. funny on tv, not funny in real life
yes, terry childs and the auto mechanic put a lot of hours and love into their technical efforts. but this in absolutely no way gives them any right to assert any authority
why the hell c
yes, the authorised person (Score:2)
accord to terry childs
self-appointed dictator, following his self-appointed duty, of policing san francisco's network policy
he was an egomaniac who overstepped his bounds, and for that, he was jailed, and rightly so
why do people continue defending this asshole?
Passive Aggressive DoS (Score:2)
A new kind of security threat? Needs a shrink to solve?
For those who haven't been watching... (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple summations:
Let's see:
Terry Childs:
City of San Fran
So I recommend that Terry Childs be put to death just for being a jerk and to make sure non of us ever have to work with him again/interact with him again. Then we fire the City of San Fran CIO and forbid him from ever working in IT again.
(bangs gavel)
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SysAdminDay (Score:3, Funny)
Was sentencing delayed because Friday was System Administrator Appreciation Day?
Not really news (Score:3, Informative)
These kinds of (defense) motions are pretty much rote - and for that reason rarely granted. Don't make too much of the fact that they weren't granted.
My integrity is worth breaking the rules, but... (Score:2)
My integrity is worth breaking the rules, but I know that if I rebel against the system in power, it's not likely that they'll publicly appreciate it.
Fight for civil rights or stand up against what you believe to be a corrupt and incompetent system that will only put public information in danger-- either way, you're going to get hurt.
A good person knows this, does it anyway, and just hopes that history can tell the difference between criminal and person with a good cause.
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When you've got more pressing legal matters to preside over other than some self-righteous dickhead with a God-complex locking a whole city out of their own network, you will quickly find that you're running out of time.
The legal system is overloaded enough as-is. Just because His Holiness the Network Administrator doesn't want to go to federal PMITA prison is no good reason to cram more stupid shit into our crowded legal system.
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What does the mayor have to do with Childs and his God complex? Your question makes no sense.
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A petty press event designed to make the Mayor look like a "peacemaker" was yet another nail in his coffin.
The only lesson we get from this case is that it's better to quietly resign like one of Terry Chil
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Re:The Court "then ran out of time"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Happens all the time. There are very fixed time allowances on appeals. For example, if you plead or are found guilty in federal court, you have ten days to file an appeal, or at least preserve your right to appeal. If you do not file within that ten days [2fedlaw.com] (even if you tell your lawyer to do so and he does not) you effectively waive your right to appeal. You may collaterally attack [alanellis.com] but collateral attacks are civil actions and you are no longer entitled to counsel.
Think that's unfair? There are cases that would blow your minds. How about a death row inmate [cornell.edu] who filed his pro se [wikipedia.org] appeal late, and was denied appeal of his death sentence. He finally got heard in the US Supreme Court but Scalia and Thomas dissented, saying "too late, too bad, so sad.."
Time limit injustice is way too common, (and tolling [wikipedia.org] is not often granted) but this injustice is not often discussed, because as I often say, citizens in the US know NOTHING about the system that can suck them in at a moment's notice.
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you effectively waive your right to appeal.
If you can't re-assert it at any time, it's not a right. (The conclusion, from the information that you give, is that you therefore don't really have a right to appeal.)
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you effectively waive your right to appeal.
If you can't re-assert it at any time, it's not a right. (The conclusion, from the information that you give, is that you therefore don't really have a right to appeal.)
You raise a very interesting point, with which I heartily agree. The US justice system is neither fair nor equitable. Here [cornell.edu] is Scalia's dissent in Holland where he quites statutes and time limits, and as the final arbiter of the law, gets to decide what "rights" we have or not.
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I don't usually reply to ACs, but...
I know Holland went for the defendant, and said as much, but two justices supported him being executed because he filed his paperwork late. Charming.
And I didn't suggest that statutory limits were the reason the justice system is broken...I KNOW it's broken because I just came through it. We have the largest prison population in the world and the highest per capita incarcerated population. So, what...we're a nation of criminals?
Lastly, there is no "massive opposition" to
Re:Miscarriage of Justice (Score:5, Insightful)
"He does his job AFTER he's fired?" HUH?!?!
When you're fired, your job is OVER. Your right to exercise control over the City's stuff is DONE.
Terry Childs is a stupid, neurotic fool. But there's no indication that he's a thief or a scumbag. He's been punished way more than enough by now. I hope the judge gives him credit for time served and ends this.
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"He does his job AFTER he's fired?" HUH?!?!
When you're fired, your job is OVER.
... then you are no longer under any obligation to provide passwords or anything else related to your previous job whatsoever.
You can't have it both ways. Was his job OVER or not?
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Said passwords were company property he was holding on to.
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When terminated, he has to rescind said property.
Biometric systems would simply need to be reconfigured on the last day of employment.
Refusal to do so is criminal.
It's no different than being told to "clean our your desk by Tuesday", and then locking the keys to your desk inside the desk.
He is criminally at fault and he is liable to pay to fix it. The fact that he was given the option to fix it himself (relinquish the passwords) has no legal bearing. He was actually given a break by his employees (as he w
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The company would then spend several hundreds of dollars on a locksmith to force open and re-key the desk, but in no case is that grounds for a trial.
He didn't take the devices with him, he simply left them in a state that was otherwise unuseable. If the city wasn't smart enough to hire someone who could force their way into the devices to re-image them with a configura
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I seriously suspect you are trolling, sexconker, but let's analyse your statement just for the fun of it.
Knowledge is not property. There is no no law in the world which claims that the knowledge of something belongs to someone. Even the most draconian "intellectual property" laws in the world do not claim that it is illegal to, for example, tell the ending of a novel to your friend. "Copyright" is just what it sounds like: the exclusive right to manufacture copies of something. That right is the only thing
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I agree that any person with some sense in their heads would try to cooperate with their employer. I'm not sure there is any legal obligation to turn over passwords, though. It depends on how the law is written in your country or state.
Re:Miscarriage of Justice (Score:5, Informative)
His job wasn't over at first. He was told that he was being reassigned and should hand over the password. After he refused to do that he was told to create new administrator accounts for the people taking over. It was only after refusing to do that and trying to leave the state that he was arrested and lost his job.
Re:Miscarriage of Justice (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but that's retarded. It's like saying you don't have to return a company laptop when you're fired if they forget to take it from your office before they throw you out of the building.
Just because your job is over doesn't mean you are allowed to hold on to things that do not belong to you. These aren't his passwords and it's not his network. It never was, despite what he obviously thinks in his little mind, but it certainly isn't anymore.
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The flaw in that thinking lies in equating knowledge with property. There is an obligation to return property which has been placed in your care, because property normally has a specific owner, but there is in general no legal obligation to "return" secrets which has been entrusted upon you.
Of course, any sensible person would take reasonable steps to aid his employer in regaining control of the network, regardless of any legal obligation.
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Nope. He was arrested for failing to return City property -- namely the password(s), but in searching his house, he still had other City property. (the facts are far more complicated than we'll ever know.) Had he simply turned over the password(s) (in person, in writing) upon termination, there'd be no story. Instead, he was an ass and refused to give the password(s) to any of his "idiot" (former) coworkers/bosses. To be fair, his boss(es) do share some of th
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I fancy though that if he DID turn the passwords over to an unauthorized person they'd have turned around and nailed him for that anyway.
What Terry Childs should have done was *mailed* the password to the mayor.
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Yep. He had the passwords to the network and his job duties said that in the event of termination he was only to turn it over to his boss (which was the City of San Francisco, and in a person the Mayor, even though he is completely illiterate too from what I heard). Since he refused to turn it over to people who were in fact not nearly as qualified as him (but apparently played politics very well), this is how the whole fiasco started. I read about it on some news site but don't have a link handy at the mom
Re:Miscarriage of Justice (Score:5, Insightful)
But both you and OP are being silly.
When your job is over that does not mean that legal obligations end.
I suppose my boss could invite me out for lunch, fire me, and then keep my car, which is parked on company property and accessible via a locked gate with a keycard. My keycard would no longer work, and he'd be under no obligation to do anything for me, a non-employee. Heck, my iPod in my desk drawer. Gone.
The law is rarely black and white and this case is no exception.
Child's went to lenghts to ensure that no one else had the passwords and to ensure that only HE could access the networks. Read some of the juror comments from the trial. This was not a black and white case.
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I suppose my boss could invite me out for lunch, fire me, and then keep my car, which is parked on company property and accessible via a locked gate with a keycard. My keycard would no longer work, and he'd be under no obligation to do anything for me, a non-employee. Heck, my iPod in my desk drawer. Gone.
No, your car and your iPod is physical property, and he would have to give you access to them in some way. However, if you stored personal information in your work computer with your employer's permission (like personal correspondence), I'm not sure the employer would be obligated to extract the information for you.
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*whoosh*
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... then you are no longer under any obligation to provide passwords or anything else related to your previous job whatsoever.
You can't have it both ways. Was his job OVER or not?
Your assessment is incorrect. You're implying a second option where none exists. Unless the terms of hiring Terry Childs consisted of a complete transfer of ownership of the entire network from the City of San Francisco to Terry Childs himself, he had zero right to withhold any account credentials, both during his employment tenure and after his job was terminated. He also had no right to go through their network and booby trap the systems so only he could gain administrative access to them, rendering the e
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He also had no right to go through their network and booby trap the systems so only he could gain administrative access to them, rendering the entire system useless to anyone who might be filling his position in the future.
Eh, it IS a sysadmin's job to make sure nobody can take over the network without the proper passwords. It is conceivable that he was overly paranoid when configuring the network, or that he was planning to blackmail the city of New York all along, but so far I've seen no evidence of this.
However, if the person who signs my paycheck comes to me and informs me of a shift in my responsibilities away from the network or is terminating my position and demands that I hand over security credentials so the person coming in after me can do the job, I'll hand it over.
You seem to have missed that Childs' had been instructed, in writing, to only hand over the passwords to authorised staff. If he had revealed the passwords to his closest superior (who was unauthorised), and the employer ha
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>Terry Childs is a stupid, neurotic fool. But there's no indication that he's a thief or a scumbag. He's been punished way more than enough by now. I hope the judge gives him credit for time served and ends this.
He probably could have cut a deal for time served, if he wanted to at any time. However, he has now seriously pissed off the judge, the prosecutors, and probably the folks writing the pre-sentencing probation report. Not a good percentage play.
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Keeping someone in prison is expensive, so giving someone a longer sentence just because they're a dickhead and offend the judge or jurors is irresponsible against the taxpayers.
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That, or something like it, was what I heard was the case with Childs. Whether it is accurate I don't know, and I don't care. I lost any real interest in this case long ago.
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He's been punished way more than enough by now. I hope the judge gives him credit for time served and ends this.
It's not that simple:
Jackson ruled Friday that under a new California law that went into effect this year, Childs would receive fewer jail credits because he has prior felony convictions for robbery and burglary. Judge Delays Sentencing For SF City Tech Worker [cbs5.com]
No matter how old it is, a felony conviction tends to stick like glue. It surprises me a little that Childs is being cut any slack at all
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It surprises me more that they even hired the guy in the first place if he had a felony rap sheet.
There was indication he was a thief! (Score:2)
But there's no indication that he's a thief or a scumbag.
This is actually not quite true. Check out Terry Childs juror explains why he voted to convict [infoworld.com]:
IDG News: Going back, what was the one step he could have done to avoid prison?
Chilton: If he would have simply said, "I will create you an account and you can go in and you can remove my access if you want." If he had created access for someone else, I think that would have resolved it. If he had not decided to leave and go to Nevada a few days later and withdraw US$10,000 in cash, [Childs did this the day befor
Re: (Score:2)
The city did have a plan. Childs violated policy, and made sure nobody could administer the city network except him. That includes his lawful replacement.
Re: (Score:2)
No he didn't. While he still had the passwords, the network never went down and was completely usable.
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>Guy does his job even AFTER he's fired and he goes to prison for it? Ugh.
If I fire my network administrator, and he tries to do anything to or with my network after that, he is a criminal, and hell yes he deserves to go to jail. I want his keys, his ID badge, his company laptop, cell phone, etc., and every password to everything; all of which will be changed immediately. If that isn't SOP where you work, you have problems.
Re:Miscarriage of Justice (Score:4, Interesting)
They also want workers that will give access to authorised personnel. Terry didn't do that. Withholding his password is fine, but he also refused to give admin access to people he _knew_ were authorised for it.
I once had a co-worker that disabled admin rights for me (and some others) to the network switches and routers at work. He wanted to lock it down just to people that maintained it (his justification), although I learnt that he had given access to his clique, which included people that were certainly not responsible for network maintenance. Anyway, this prevented me from debugging issues that were handed to me to solve. I tried dealing with him directly, but he was frustratingly obstinate, dismissing out of hand any argument that I gave for my access. I eventually had to ask management to talk with him. Access was grudgingly given back to me.
Thankfully, the guy has now left the company. He caused me enough grief. If he had been like Terry Childs though, it would have been worse.
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Withholding his password is fine, but he also refused to give admin access to people he _knew_ were authorised for it.
Cite? The way I heard it, he was asked on a phone call [strike 1: "Giving your password over the phone to ANYONE."] by his superior [strike two: "Telling your boss your password"] to hand over the passwords. Did I mention this was a conference call with god knows who else listening? [strike 3: "Talking about a password in front of others".]
Those 'strikes' are from here: http://www.sfgov.or [sfgov.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Are you really trying to argue that root passwords and typical user passwords are treated the same? When there's only 1 admin account?
Look, Childs could have easily said
Re:Miscarriage of Justice (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. Wasn't his job anymore. Before he was fired he was reassigned to a different job. He was still employed by his job responsibilities no longer included maintaining that equipment. He was introduced to the new person that had that job and asked to give over the passwords. He didn't. It turned out he had booby trapped all the equipment so that only he could make any changes or repair the equipment if it lost power. Still, they were working with him to turn over the passwords to the new guy which he refused to do. The city was setting up another meeting to discuss this even when he decided to withdraw lots of cash and make signals that he was fleeing the country. That's when fed agents decided to arrest him. That's when he was fired. Only then did he say he would turn over the passwords to the mayor when he previously refused to turn them over to anybody because he was playing the "You can't fire me because I have all the passwords." routine a little to hardball. This was not a case of a worried system admin, it was a case of extortion. Perhaps a case of extortion because he is a paranoid nutcase rather than money, but still extortion.
Still, all of that is IIRC. Go back and look at the replies by one of the jurors here on /. who answered everybody's questions about the case and their decision and decide for yourself.