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San Francisco Just As Guilty In Terry Childs Case
snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia follows up on the Terry Childs sentencing, stating that the City of San Francisco is as much at fault in this case as Childs is. 'The way that the San Francisco IT department has been run is nothing short of abysmal, and that has been pointed out time and again by anyone paying attention to this case,' Venezia writes. 'Plenty of dirty laundry was aired out in court as well, yet through it all, the city has had a full-court press on Childs, and being both the plaintiff and the prosecution it spared no expense to drill Childs into the ground.' Worse, perhaps, is the disproportion of the sentence, when compared with recent convictions for intended malfeasance on the part of several notable rogue IT admins."
"Printable version". TFS's link is to a two page version with six paragraphs per page.
Free Martian Whores!
I would suggest it isn't so much an "American" trait as it is a convenient news tactic in America. People naturally want answers to questions. The neater and tighter the answer, the more readily it is accepted by the masses, which, of course, means that the news makes more money because they are more trusted. Simplicity is a hallmark of human (not just American) thinking - this takes different forms in different cultures. The main Western logical process is distinct from Eastern varieties but simplicity within the given culture is the tendency. Looking at modern history books covering the Renaissance and comparing them with 19th century history books of the same, we have a much broader viewpoint than those writing in the 1800s had. This is in part due to different access to resources, but in part due to the development of thought over time away from the natural reaction: Simplicity.
Now, with all that said, this is only... one facet of the change in thought patterns over the past century.
Well, guess what. No matter how much you may think it, generalized poor management is not actually a criminal offense. Whereas, denial of service is.
Justice is not about fairness. It's "did you break the law, and if so what's the stated punishment?"
Was the ordinance used to convict him fair and reasonably applied? The only opinion that matters is the jury's, and they thought it so.
IMHO, Childs may have started out with the best of intentions in his "stand", but it escalated into a pissing match. And you really can't out-piss senior municipal managers and politicians, so you can indict Childs for picking a losing fight.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The Economist ripped the US a new one last week for locking up too many people, many of them non violent offences. It wasn't so long ago that people were hanged for stealing a loaf of bread, but we backed off from excess punishment (probably a little too far in some cases). But the United States the trend seems to be regressing thanks to grandstanding politicians and bloodthirsty voters who won't countenance even the slightest hint of being "soft on crime". With the way things are going, I truly think that the US will soon bring back public executions before long and will be indistinguishable from countries like Iran in how they deal with crime.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I'm betting the Governors involved would treat him as any other convicted criminal and Childs would add a few more years onto his sentence for escape/flight.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The dude wouldn't turn over passwords when ordered by his Senior Associate. That's just insubordinate in any circumstance, regardless of the job, and will get your ass fired in most places. Terry could have handled things differently if he didn't trust his immediate supervisor, but he didn't. He chose to lie all the way up the food chain and took the for-the-good-of-the-network chip on his shoulder with him.
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Game's rigged. If you don't waive your right to a speedy trial, the prosecution will ensure you don't get the information you need to defend yourself until it's too late.
The prosecution has to disclose everything before trial. If they do it late enough, you probably have a good argument for appealing. Actually long delays tend to help defendants, because the older the evidence and witnesses get, the weaker the prosecution's case is.
Go put a chain and padlock on your neighbor's gate and see if you get in any trouble. You haven't stolen his property, so everything should be a-ok, right? (Heck, you haven't even trespassed, since he has to warn you once before it's a crime)
He denied access to the replacement administrators. They are authorized users of the system's configuration utilities.
Only because you're trying really, really hard to turn this into something it's not. Not turning over the passwords blocked the new adminsitrators from accessing the systems, just as if he DDoS'ed the management ports.
I've seen many people fight and lose in that situation. It was never pretty, and it didn't work.
However, after the 5-10-15th person leaves a department and tell HR that disagreements with management was their reason to leave, Someone might do something about it. I just saw it happen a few months ago. People were even refusing headhunter calls alleging that their network claimed that the work environment was unacceptable.
If the next level of management fails to realize the problem after most positions becomes revolving doors, they'll go under anyway.