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Rough Justice For Terry Childs
snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia sees significant negative ramifications for IT admins in the wake of yesterday's guilty verdict for Terry Childs on a count of 'denial of service.' Assuming the verdict is correct, Venezia writes, 'shouldn't the letter of the law be applied to other "denial of service" problems caused by the city while they pursued this case? In particular, to the person or persons who released hundreds of passwords in public court filings in 2008 for causing a denial of service for the city's widespread VPN services? After all, once the story broke that a large list of usernames and passwords had been released to the public, the city had to take down its VPN services for days while they reset every password and communicated those changes to the users.' Worse, if upheld on appeal, the verdict puts a vast number of IT admins at risk. 'There are suddenly thousands of IT workers all over the country that are now guilty of this crime in a vast number of ways. If the letter of the law is what convicted Terry Childs, then the law is simply wrong.'"
I think I would want to draft up a very clear - and legally binding - agreement that I would want my superiors in management to sign on behalf of the company. It would spell out in specific details, the security policies, security review process, enforcement etc. It would absolve me from prosecution unless I violated any of the very specific rules that were listed. If my superior changed, they would have to sign the document when they took up their position etc.
I wouldn't likely get the job, they'd hire someone who wasn't so paranoid, but I don't think I would want to take a job where if someone in management decided to break the rules, and I tried to apply those rules for the sake of ensuring I didn't violate the trust that had been placed in me, then I wasn't liable for prosecution either way, like Childs was.
Now, he could have handled things differently I am sure, but he might have been prosecuted either way from what I have read so far. I would like more details in an objective report on the situation.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
The juror has been interviewed some already, and is even on /.
I had many bad assumptions myself. But if the juror is being at all truthful...this guy did some bad things.
@see http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1633482&cid=32010078
You've got to be kidding. Do you honestly think you can go back to prior cases and use that to show how something is or isn't a crime?
What matters is how good your lawyer is and what sort of strings they can pull. Obviously, this guy's lawyer wasn't as good as the other guy's lawyer.
The rules that apply to us DO NOT apply to rich people. Stop believing for one second that they do. Look at some black dude that goes to jail for 3 years for stealing bread vs. the Wall Street banksters that steal billions and get multi-million dollar bonuses.
Marc Rich was convicted of tax evasion, and fled to Switzerland. It took $250,000 in donations to Bill Clinton for him to pardon him on his last day in office.
There is no justice, all there is is how much money you have to spend to grease the wheels of the system.
According to the network engineer who was a juror on the case (so I am guessing that he knows far more details about it than you or I)....
He didn't refuse to just give his "password" but to give any access at all to the core routers, removed any way of password retrieval without doing a full system reset, and would not provide the configurations to these routers.
On top of that, there were emails and witnesses that made it appear that Childs was doing this all to make it such that only HE had access.
You're breaking rule #3.
"but it was bought and paid for by the City of San Francisco"
Excuse me, it was bought and paid for by THE PEOPLE OF SAN FRANCISCO.
Paid through our tax money, which also means it was paid for through *HIS* tax money.
The government is supposed to serve the public trust and taxes are their main source of revenue - but I take exception to this attitude that, because someone pays taxes, government funds are somehow their money. It's not your money anymore, you gave it to the government. The fact that some of it once belonged to you (even if only on paper) does not entitle you to a stake in deciding how it is used.
So, for instance: yes, your taxes pay the wages of the police. This doesn't mean you get to boss them around.
Your taxes pay for the schools, but that doesn't entitle you to decide the curriculum.
Your taxes pay for government infrastructure, but that doesn't mean you can micro-manage the government.
That's not to say citizens in the US (or anywhere else, for that matter) have no stake in the government or its affairs - but the money paid in taxes has nothing to do with that. We have a stake in our government because the operation of the government affects our lives, in the short term and the long term. Would this stake not still exist even if the government could somehow operate without taxing its citizens? IMO bitching about "the taxpayers' money" is just a cheap way to get the attention of people who would otherwise not care.
Bow-ties are cool.
Don't worry, you probably won't be hiring anyone until you stop calling yourself shitdrummer.
Actually, this is the best thing I've read on the subject, by far.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
The way I read it, he was following the policy (law) to the letter.
He was required to store system passwords in a central repository. He violated the policy by failing to do this.
Pretty interesting interview with one of the jury members, who appears to understand the issues. Terry Childs juror explains why he voted to convict
The juror lays out the legal issues pretty effectively, and makes a compelling case for conviction on those issues, while also discussing the incompetence of the city's IT department. Apparently he does not believe in jury nullification.
Personaly I disagree with the outcome on the basis that I think the City of San Francisco illegitimately used its combined capabilities as employer, and owner of a court system and police force to escalate a civil employment matter into a criminal case, and then jailed a man for 2 years pre-trial on a laughable pretext. But I appreciate this juror's willingness to discuss the issues.
Remain calm! All is well!