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Accused Rogue Admin Terry Childs Makes His Case
angry tapir writes "He's been in jail for seven months now, but former San Francisco network administrator Terry Childs says he's going to keep fighting to prove he's innocent of computer crime charges. Childs was arrested on July 12, charged with disrupting the City of San Francisco's Wide Area Network during a tense standoff with management. Infoworld has also conducted an interview with Childs."
Is this another 'Won't somebody think of the Childs?' story?
Thanks for just blowing away presumption of innocence, Taco :-/
[FUCK BETA]
Kinda the point... "Bail" should be equally difficult for different people.
Giving out the passwords could also lead to jail time. My personal password ties my account to me personally. Apart from all the potential abuses of international trade laws that could happen from my personal email if someone else had access, what if any one of those people put child porn on a rival's computer because they now had the keys? What if it was my computer? These people were willing to not only charge him in court for doing his job but also threw him under the publicity bus too.
but even without those restrictions I'm not going to hand out my password to my
boss, my boss's boss, or even the CEO of the company.
I like my job, but preserving it comes pretty damned far behind "my freedom" in order of
my priorities. Jail vs giving out the keys to the kingdom? "Would you like the portcullis
up or down when you arrive, Mr. Barbarian?"
Anyone who chooses prison over a job doesn't count as "principled", they count as an idiot.
P and GP may be talking about the same thing. If I have assigned the keys to take care of the network, and more importantly am liable both morally and legally (morally is needed because of future employments, who knows), then it is plainly a good idea to keep them secret.
However, if my boss or my boss' boss or the CEO asks to have them and most importantly signs a paper that request them, by god, just give it to the man. By having the command in writing you are covered in case something wrong happens with those keys.
If no written order comes, how are they supposed to prove you denied them the request?
Nice try, but that analogy/rebuke doesn't really work. Bail is intended to make sure people show up for trial, so it has to be adjusted for the relative impact it will have on the accused.
As an employer, I'll let you in on something:
The reason that punishment has been laid so strongly and swiftly down on Childs is directly because of the power of the position he held. He's being made an example in order to make sure that no other network admins get any bright ideas about exposing their feelings of real ownership and territory that every good network engineer has about their responsibilities (and equipment for that matter).
As an employer, I hope the steps being taken against this man, no matter what his motivations were, are entirely unsuccessful. The world needs fearless and ballsy geeks a lot more than it needs spineless jellyfish who happily do whatever they're told *despite the ethics of it*. There's something deeply disturbing about so many giant brains have willfully given up control of (and responsibility for) their own actions and are all too ready to claim they were "just doing my job".
Pardon my revulsion, but there are those of us who remember where that sort of outlook takes the species.
While at the same time I've seen arguments that it's right that the rich and powerful tend to get more when they sue newspapers and radio stations for defamation because they're more valuable people... I mean their reputation is more valuable.
Lets go the whole hog!
one rule for the rich, one for the poor!
The lazy fuckers!
Probably all criminals anyway!
Hit someone while drunk driving? well since you're rich you're obviously more valuable to society, lets stack the odds in your favor so you don't go to jail!
Speeding? well sure if you make more money in the 20 minutes you save getting to work than it costs you to pay for your speeding ticket then that's perfectly fine!
It just makes economic sense for you to break the law then!
Crime isn't the same as milk or eggs. It's not a comodity. Fines are supposed to be punishment so if a fine is too small to be noticed by one person or so big as to not fit the crime for another then it's not justice. Fines relative to your wealth make perfect sense in that context.
If you get to avoid going to jail because of your daddies money then something is seriously messed up with your legal system.
"On Friday, June 20, there was an altercation between Childs and Jeana Pieralde, the new DTIS security manager at the 1 Market Street datacenter in San Francisco. Until her promotion, she had been a city network engineer who worked with Childs"
.45 caliber bullets, but apparently no weapons"
Why didn't anyone tell Childs of this promotion, and who got her the 'promotion'?
"Childs disputed this interpretation of events, claiming in court documents that Pieralde was conducting clandestine searches of DTIS employee workspaces and had removed a hard drive from an office when he confronted her. He also denied taking photos of Pieralde"
Were there or were there not photographs taken of Pieralde by Childs. Was Pieralde authorized to conduct such audits and where now is this 'SF Owned cell phone', and what exactly did Childs intend to do with these photographs.
"the city stated that Childs was placed under surveillance and was arrested on the evening of July 12 as he was parking his vehicle near his home in the suburb of Pittsburg. At the time of his arrest, he was found to have $10,000 cash on his person and receipts showing that he had traveled to Sparks, Nevada, where he had looked at renting storage units. Following his arrest, police searched his house and workspaces. Police turned up 9mm and
Like, if he was under surveillance (and his cell/pager conficated), wouldn't they have noticed that he wasn't actually near a computer whern the pager went off ?
"Considering that normal bail for a murder case is $1 million -- one fifth of what Childs' bail was set at -- this filing was unexpected"
-------
"it is a mystery what exactly Jeana Pieralde was doing performing an unannounced, after-hours "security audit" in a City office other than that in which she herself worked. It was during that secret "security audit" on the evening of Friday, June 20th, 2008, in which Jeana Pieralde took a hard drive from another City employee's office and was photographed by Terry Childs as she did so"
"The office from which Pieralde removed the hard drive belonged to DTIS Security Officer Nancy Hastings (who naturally was not present in the office because the "security audit" was being conducted after hours.)" "Terry Childs had returned late to the offices (which do include his office and do not include Jeana Pieralde's office) at about 5:15 P.M. to find Jeana Pieralde (who does not work in those offices) taking a hard drive from one of Terry's co-workers offices. Terry photographed this act with the camera in his cellphone"
Did Pieralde really remove a harddrive. What was the name of this co-worker, where is this harddrive now. What motovated Pieralde to remove the harddrive. What's really going on here. Was Pieralde caught with her-in-th-cookie-jar, and someone decide to frame Childs to distract from something?
Well, congratulations on making up laws, but, no, there's no law requiring you tell people passwords, even to their own systems. At all. Barring some sort of court order requiring that, which does not exist in this case.
And that's not what he's charged with. He's charged with, essentially, doing his job, with lots of evidence of doing his job introduced as evidence.
Like keeping detailed diagrams of the network at his house....the network he built by hand.
Or installing network sniffers...commericial network sniffers that monitor the network for viruses and hack attempts, like he was supposed to as part of his job.
Or having a modem installed...that paged him in case of network problems.
Or configuring routers to not let people do a 'password reset'...in unsecured locations, like thousands of network admin do to routers they can't lock up to keep people from screwing with them.
Or confronting someone who claims they're doing an 'audit' of his systems and, as he claims, walking out with a hard drive. (They were doing an audit, but he didn't know that.)
They have decided all this means he was planning to bring the network down for some unspecified reason. Of course he could bring the network, any network admin knows enough to bring the network down. If they don't, they don't know enough to do their job keeping it up.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I think an example that has been in the news a lot lately would be wholly appropriate and would help illustrate your point: Bernie "I stole 50 billon!" Madoff. Is there anyone who thinks that if that electronic lease was taken off him and he was given 10 million in bail instead that we would ever see old Bernie again? Nope, me neither.
The point of bail is NOT to tax or to punish but to CONTROL. We want you to go to trial. We give you an economic incentive to show up by taking some of your money. But if we let the rich pay what would essentially be the change in their pocket then there is NO economic incentive for them to bother showing up, now is there? And on the flip side by cranking up the bail way beyond the economic incentive barrier you have turned "innocent until proven guilty" into "guilty until somebody takes pity on your or your trial is over" since you are going to rot in jail. That is why many of us have a problem with the way bail is being treated today.
Of course it is just a symptom of the larger cancer that has eaten its way deep into our system, where those with money are allowed to freely bribe.....er lobby their way into and out of anything they want with impunity. But that is for another day. But I am sure they could find a bail number that would provide economic incentive while still letting this guy be with his family. Of course he pissed off city officials so they are most likely using bail as a punishment against the foolish serf.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Oh, and bail is refunded if you show up for court.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge." -- Anatole France
So very useful, to know that if you could only have borrowed a frightful sum of money many times your yearly income, they would let you have it back years later after the wheels of Justice have ground ever so slowly.
Here we have a classic example of how the law screws the less than wealthy. This guy is thrown in jail at taxpayer expense when an ankle bracelet would have been good enough to keep track of him. He also has no income and gets deeper and deeper into debt.
He is being punished for being charged with a crime, not for being guilty.
Is the government going to pay him for lost wages if he is found innocent? Will they keep up mortgage payments while he is in jail before the trial?
I kinda fucking doubt it. You show me the justice.
Infuriate left and right
Not only does the guy sound sane, it sounds as though he's got grounds to sue the folks who are trying to prosecute him. TFA suggests these incompetents were upset to find (1) a modem that had been in the admin's office since before he started working there, and (2) a modem set up to page him on any problems, and (3) a modem set up to handle emergencies.
Obviously, this was not handled well by either side, but I'm inclined to believe the guy in jail over the clearly incompetent managers.
Courts are. Seems many people on Slashdot misunderstand the whole "Guilty until proven innocent," thing. What that is, is a simple way of stating how burden of proof works in our court system. In US courts, the defense isn't required to prove anything. The defense can present no case at all and the defendant can still go free. The reason is they have no burden. The burden of proof is on the state, the prosecution. They have to prove that the defendant is guilty. So they can't just walk in and say "We accuse the defendant of doing X," and leave it at that. They have to present evidence to prove their case. Thus by design a defendant in court is presumed innocent. Proof of guilt must be offered because a not guilty verdict the the default in absence of proof.
That's all it means. It is just a simple way of summing up our court system. It is NOT a command to the population at large. Individuals are free to believe what they wish, and use whatever standard for evidence they wish. People aren't required to view everyone as innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. They are welcome o hold opinions as they see fit.
So please, but the crap with this. If you think the guy is innocent, or wish to reserve judgment until later, that's wonderful. If others don't, that's also fine.
It also stems from the fact that we don't lock up innocent people in the western world.
Thanks. I just sprayed coffee all over my keyboard. Let me try this in a dialect you might understand.
Son, not only do we lock up innocent people here in the US but, Hell, in Texas we've condemned men to die when their defense attorney didn't even show up in one case, or showed up too drunk to stand straight in another. Up there in Yankeeland, they just caught a judge getting commissions from the prison for sending kids to jail.
Pound for pound, we lock up more people than the Russkies and the Chicoms COMBINED ever did. What, you think they're all guilty? You think Americans are just that much more sinful than all them godless heathens combined?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Oh, and bail is refunded if you show up for court.
Not necessarily. I was arrested on a completely made-up charge a couple of years ago, and at the end of it all they kept 10% of my bail for no other reason than profit. It wasn't very much money compared to what I spent defending myself, or having to change jobs because of what the arrest did to my security clearance, but it still pissed me off.
On TV, the cops always interview the accused, to try to ascertain if they've got the right guy. Not necessarily so in real life. Never once did a police officer or prosecutor ever talk to me or look at the copious evidence I gathered in my defense. As far as their interaction with me, the process consisted of them showing up at my door at night with cuffs, then finally dropping the charges on the morning of the jury trial when the prosecutor realized they didn't have anything.
In the U.S., less than five percent of cases go to trial. That means that less than five percent of people ever test the presumption of innocence. Why? Maybe because they're guilty . . .
A little research will uncover the answer. Say the police break down your door one early morning, shoot your dog, and cuff you and your family. They have an informant that says you're involved in the meth trade. They take it to the DA, who can see it's bullshit, but DA's are measured in pleas and convictions, so he offers you a plea. You can cop to some minor class-D felony and three months in county. Or you can take it to court and put yourself at the mercy of 12 random citizens and/or a judge. Win or lose, you're out your job, your house, quite possibly your spouse, and your life savings. (Not to mention other details not suitable for this family publication.)
If you've got any sense at all, you take the plea. Why? Maybe "because you're guilty...".
That's how the presumption of innocence really works.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
...against plea-bargaining.
In the U.S., less than five percent of cases go to trial. That means that less than five percent of people ever test the presumption of innocence. Why? Maybe because they're guilty . . .
Amazing. You just asserted that presumption of innocence is a reality, and in the same breath insinuated all people who go to trial are guilty. If Einstein was right, and genius is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time, then your mental acuity is astonishing indeed.
The whole point of plea bargaining is to reduce the number of cases that go to trial. Plea bargaining works because you can't predict the jury's decision with certainty. If you look at the possible outcomes of plea-bargaining, it guarantees innocent men will end up in prison.
Suppose you're innocent. Suppose you're innocent, but unlucky, and the circumstances make you look guilty. Suppose you're an unpopular minority. Suppose you pray to the wrong god. Suppose you're just ugly. Suppose you just look like "that type." Suppose you don't come from around here. Suppose you've never caught a break in your life. Suppose there are any one of a million reasons why twelve random people off the street could drop you in a hole without any good reason and not lose any sleep over it.
Suppose you have children. Suppose you have family who depend on you. Suppose The Authorities come to you and tell you, "Boy, you don't push us on this, and we'll let you out in a couple of years. But if you make us go all the way, we'll make sure you don't ever see the light of day again, and when we put you in jail, we'll make sure Bubba is waiting for you with a dress."
Take a random sample of a thousand innocent men, and sure, some of those men will have the moral courage and fortitude to tell you to go to Hell and take me to trial. Some of those men will lack that courage, and take your bargain out of fear. Most of those men will run a quick and dirty risk/reward calculation in their head, and realize that the best option is to take the deal -- because that's how you arranged it.
Plea bargaining is a foul and filthy practice that guarantees a miscarriage of Justice in a certain percentage of cases. That's why not every Western nation allows it.
But your arguments have nothing to do with the facts -- they have to do with your fears. It's terrifying to live in a world where innocent men can routinely go to prison. It's terrifying to live in a world where going to prison means a good chance of rape and brutality. It's terrifying to live in a world where the authorities actually use that threat of rape against you without conscience. It's terrifying to live in a world where any random mouth-breathing high-school-droput with a badge can destroy your life with trumped-up evidence. It's terrifying to live in a world where you can hear cops threaten to club children, where you hear cops threaten to plant fake drug evidence against teenagers, where you see cops shoot prone and begging men in the back...
It's terrifying to live in a world where simply browsing YouTube can give you video evidence of all of this.
So, your cognitive dissonance blasts away at full force, and you tell yourself innocent people don't go to jail because anyone who goes to jail is not innocent. You pillow your head on that circular logic, and while you dream you live in a pretty and just world you make it that much harder for the rest of us to fix the problems...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."