A jury found a San Francisco network administrator guilty of denying the city computer services.
A San Francisco network administrator who refused to provide his boss the passwords to the city's FiberWAN was finally charged on Tuesday after a six month trial. The court charged 45-year-old Terry Childs with one felony count of denying computer services, and could face a maximum of five years in prison.
Childs refused to provide Richard Robinson--the chief operations officer for San Francisco's Department of Technology and Information Services--the required information, thus leaving the city without administrative control over the FiberWAN for a period of 12 days. The city was unable to retrieve emails, access the payroll, police records, search for information on jailed inmates, or perform other city network tasks.
During the trial, Childs' lawyers said "that he was a buttoned-down, security-obsessed administrator who believed he was simply doing his job." According to Computerworld, the jury didn't buy the argument, with one jurist saying after the trial that "being able to administer the FiberWAN services themselves is a service."
Wired reports that--when arrested back in July 2008--Childs' $5 million bail was set five times higher then most murder defendants' because the city was afraid he'd jump back onto the network, lock up the system, and erase the city's records. Assistant District Attorney Conrad del Rosario said that the city spent around $900,000 to "clean up the mess" caused by Child's alleged denial of service (which is against the law in California), however he didn't elaborate on the actual damages.
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