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Terry Childs Denied Motion For Retrial
snydeq writes "The former San Francisco network administrator who refused to hand over passwords for one of the city's networks has been denied a new trial and is expected to be sentenced Aug. 6. Terry Childs had been due for sentencing Friday but the court instead heard two defense motions, one requesting a new trial and the other for arrested judgment — essentially to have his original conviction overturned. The motions were both denied but the court then ran out of time before the sentencing phase could be conducted."
Withhold a password, go to jail.
Not really sure that justice was served here but the guy really was a first-rate dickhead.
This ain't rocket surgery.
"He does his job AFTER he's fired?" HUH?!?!
When you're fired, your job is OVER. Your right to exercise control over the City's stuff is DONE.
Terry Childs is a stupid, neurotic fool. But there's no indication that he's a thief or a scumbag. He's been punished way more than enough by now. I hope the judge gives him credit for time served and ends this.
His job wasn't over at first. He was told that he was being reassigned and should hand over the password. After he refused to do that he was told to create new administrator accounts for the people taking over. It was only after refusing to do that and trying to leave the state that he was arrested and lost his job.
A couple summations:
Let's see:
Terry Childs:
City of San Fran
So I recommend that Terry Childs be put to death just for being a jerk and to make sure non of us ever have to work with him again/interact with him again. Then we fire the City of San Fran CIO and forbid him from ever working in IT again.
(bangs gavel)
Advice: on VPS providers
Sorry, but that's retarded. It's like saying you don't have to return a company laptop when you're fired if they forget to take it from your office before they throw you out of the building.
Just because your job is over doesn't mean you are allowed to hold on to things that do not belong to you. These aren't his passwords and it's not his network. It never was, despite what he obviously thinks in his little mind, but it certainly isn't anymore.
Was sentencing delayed because Friday was System Administrator Appreciation Day?
In a black and white world maybe.
But both you and OP are being silly.
When your job is over that does not mean that legal obligations end.
I suppose my boss could invite me out for lunch, fire me, and then keep my car, which is parked on company property and accessible via a locked gate with a keycard. My keycard would no longer work, and he'd be under no obligation to do anything for me, a non-employee. Heck, my iPod in my desk drawer. Gone.
The law is rarely black and white and this case is no exception.
Child's went to lenghts to ensure that no one else had the passwords and to ensure that only HE could access the networks. Read some of the juror comments from the trial. This was not a black and white case.
Happens all the time. There are very fixed time allowances on appeals. For example, if you plead or are found guilty in federal court, you have ten days to file an appeal, or at least preserve your right to appeal. If you do not file within that ten days (even if you tell your lawyer to do so and he does not) you effectively waive your right to appeal. You may collaterally attack but collateral attacks are civil actions and you are no longer entitled to counsel.
Think that's unfair? There are cases that would blow your minds. How about a death row inmate who filed his pro se appeal late, and was denied appeal of his death sentence. He finally got heard in the US Supreme Court but Scalia and Thomas dissented, saying "too late, too bad, so sad.."
Time limit injustice is way too common, (and tolling is not often granted) but this injustice is not often discussed, because as I often say, citizens in the US know NOTHING about the system that can suck them in at a moment's notice.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
They also want workers that will give access to authorised personnel. Terry didn't do that. Withholding his password is fine, but he also refused to give admin access to people he _knew_ were authorised for it.
I once had a co-worker that disabled admin rights for me (and some others) to the network switches and routers at work. He wanted to lock it down just to people that maintained it (his justification), although I learnt that he had given access to his clique, which included people that were certainly not responsible for network maintenance. Anyway, this prevented me from debugging issues that were handed to me to solve. I tried dealing with him directly, but he was frustratingly obstinate, dismissing out of hand any argument that I gave for my access. I eventually had to ask management to talk with him. Access was grudgingly given back to me.
Thankfully, the guy has now left the company. He caused me enough grief. If he had been like Terry Childs though, it would have been worse.
Nope. Wasn't his job anymore. Before he was fired he was reassigned to a different job. He was still employed by his job responsibilities no longer included maintaining that equipment. He was introduced to the new person that had that job and asked to give over the passwords. He didn't. It turned out he had booby trapped all the equipment so that only he could make any changes or repair the equipment if it lost power. Still, they were working with him to turn over the passwords to the new guy which he refused to do. The city was setting up another meeting to discuss this even when he decided to withdraw lots of cash and make signals that he was fleeing the country. That's when fed agents decided to arrest him. That's when he was fired. Only then did he say he would turn over the passwords to the mayor when he previously refused to turn them over to anybody because he was playing the "You can't fire me because I have all the passwords." routine a little to hardball. This was not a case of a worried system admin, it was a case of extortion. Perhaps a case of extortion because he is a paranoid nutcase rather than money, but still extortion.
Still, all of that is IIRC. Go back and look at the replies by one of the jurors here on /. who answered everybody's questions about the case and their decision and decide for yourself.
snydeq, tell your puppetmasters at InfoWorld to just give this a rest, won't you? Childs was the kind of uber-dickhead SysAdmin that even normal, run-of-the-mill garden-variety dickhead SysAdmins are afraid to associate with lest they appear as parodies of the type.
He didn't have a higher calling. He's not Batman. This ain't no Ayn Rand novel. He was fired and refused to release property that belonged to his former employer. Period, end of story.
And it *would* be the end of the story if the friggin' Drama Club at InfoWorld would stop flogging it on slashdot..
He was a front-lines IT grunt. His job was to do whatever his superiors told him to do, barring any requests to do something illegal. If his superiors order him to open the admin interface to the outside world, and change the password to "password"... other than requesting that the demand be put in e-mail to protect his name, he is supposed to do so.
Exactly what criminal law would not allow him to turn passwords over to his management on request, no matter how unqualified they are? None.
Holding your employer's equipment hostage pending an audience with the mayor? Yeah, that was, and is, criminal. It's called extortion.
SirWired