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SF Admin Gives Up Keys To Hijacked City Network

snydeq writes "Jailed IT admin Terry Childs relinquished his hold over San Francisco's multimillion-dollar FiberWAN, handing his administrative passwords over to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who was 'the only person he felt he could trust.' Childs is still being held on $5 million bail for his lockout of the city's FiberWAN, a case that has been called into question since an insider came forward with details about both the network and Childs himself. The case hinges on No Service Password Recovery commands Childs allegedly configured onto several Cisco devices, as well as dial-up and DSL modems the SFPD has discovered that would allow unauthorized connections to the FiberWAN. Childs intends to 'expose the utter mismanagement, negligence, and corruption at DTIS, which if left unchecked, will in fact place the City of San Francisco in danger,' according to his motion. The Department of Telecom and IS has cut 200 of its 350 IT positions since 2000 — pressure that may have contributed to Childs' actions, according to interviews with current and former DTIS staffers. Newsom secured the passwords without first telling the DTIS that he was meeting with Childs."

3 of 581 comments (clear)

  1. Re:'the only person he felt he could trust.' by jfp51 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    You must be too young to rememember when Reagan fired all the striking ATC's in the late 80's. Too bad no one doesn't have the balls to stick it to the unions like he did these days...

  2. Re:Falling Down by DogDude · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    You're right. Snorting coke on your desk doesn't effect anybody else. That's an unconstitutional law.

    Keeping a network that you don't own hostage is serious, and impacts other people.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  3. Re:'the only person he felt he could trust.' by vimm · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Please go read Snowcrash