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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."
Childs in this case acted like most network admins act: just being paranoid and not allowing other people to replace them. It is completly fair that he goes to jail.
Oh c'mon. The mods have no sense of humor...
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
He'll still have problems taking his job back from jail. While they may have wrongfully terminated him, his actions post termination are criminal. So a civil court (or the HR department) might determine he needs to be given his job back, but he'll be too busy in a jail cell to be able to get it.
Regardless of anything else, you don't have a right to lock your employer out of their systems. Goes double when you work in the public sector and you are ultimately screwing over the whole public. You aren't obligated to help them in any way after you leave, but you can't lock the computers down and refuse to give them the password.
Same sort of deal with keys to the building, or the like. When you leave your employment you are under no obligation to tell your employer what keys go to what doors, where things are stored or the like (though it's a good idea if you want any kind of reference from them). However you are not welcome to refuse to hand over the keys, especially if they are the only set.
More or less you don't have to help your employer, but you can't do something to try and harm them and yes, locking down computers and not handing over the password is harming them. Remember the systems belong to them, not you.