Slashdot Mirror
Juror Explains Guilty Vote In Terry Childs Case
alphadogg writes "Terry Childs, the San Francisco network administrator who refused to hand over passwords to his boss, was found guilty of one felony count of denying computer services, a jury found Tuesday. Now, one of those jurors (Jason Chilton, juror #4) is speaking out in an interview with IDG News Service's Bob McMillan: 'The questions were, first, did the defendant know he caused a disruption or a denial of computer service. It was rather easy for us to answer, "Yes there was a denial of service." And that service was the ability to administer the routers and switches of the FiberWAN. That was the first aspect of it. The second aspect was the denial to an authorized user. And for us that's what we really had to spend the most time on, defining who an authorized user was. Because that wasn't one of the definitions given to us.'"
We may find that in his sentencing, he may be barred from doing that line of work in the future. I don't think anyone would hire him in an IT department after doing a simple background check on him (this being a felony would definitely show up). So the question I propose is, was it worth it? I know a lot of IT Admins that have this "Holier than thou" attitude and unfortunately for Mr. Childs, it bit him where it hurts.
If I were an prospective employer, the risk of being locked out of my own systems would worry me much more than a felony conviction.
Since what he did, if he did it to someone, would leave them in a very bad position. Being locked out of your own systems is very damaging to a business. Having to pay ransom to get back in would also be very bad. (*)
Insubordination, and locking one's superiors out of a system are much more involved with the bottom line of (interfering with) running a business than some public record in a court system database, which it itself is only useful in letting you know what he did - which could be considered the cyberspace equivalent of kidnapping.
One would have reason to always be worrying if they'd ever see their data or network "alive" again.
Look at the damage the bad McAfee virus update did (even if not malicious - it was still damaging).
(*) With some systems, if you lose the password, there IS NO way back in, even with physical access. Some routers could be essentially bricked.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!