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Fate of Terry Childs Now In Jury's Hands
snydeq writes "Closing arguments concluded Monday in the city of San Francisco's case against Terry Childs, the network administrator charged with violating California hacking laws by refusing to hand over network passwords for the city's FiberWAN during a 12-day period in 2008. Childs was charged in July 2008 and has been held on $5 million bail ever since. The highly technical trial, which featured testimony from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Cisco Chief Security Officer John Stewart, has dragged on for nearly six months. By Monday, five of the 18 jurors and alternates selected for the trial had dropped out, and the remaining jurors seemed relieved to see the arguments wrap up as they left the courtroom Monday afternoon. They will return Tuesday to start their deliberations. Childs faces five years in prison if he is convicted for disrupting service to the city's computer system by withholding administrative passwords — a verdict that, if rendered, puts all IT admins in danger."
I think, what most lay people don't understand is that the rule: 'Don't give out passwords indiscriminately' is equivalent to the Hippocratic oath for some IT admins, particularly those in charge of large networks. If he just handed out passwords insecurely, that would cause more damage than Childs locking down the network for a brief duration. I'm inclined to believe that he was acting in the good faith of his job, particularly because he was willing to be arrested over being fired/becoming redundant. I seriously hope he's cleared, because he performed his job to the letter.
You could always give those passwords to me and I'll be happy to hand them out to the proper people ;-)
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
You've obviously never served in the military. The rule there is, follow your last order. So in reality. Lt Foo wouldn't get in trouble for following Capt Bar's orders that went against Maj Baz's, though his captain might. But he would get in trouble for not following them in the first place.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.