"Rogue" SF network engineer convicted

[feren]

Huh, so after almost two years they've finally managed to convict Terry Childs of felony computer tampering for his role in "locking out" staff and other IT workers from the San Francisco FiberWAN.

While Terry's contribution to the incident was certainly ill-advised, I'm not sure a 5 year prison term and felony rap is really in proportion to what happened.

Interesting mixed messages to us IT folks both in and out of the private sector, something that has already been picked up on by some press outlets.

Comments

[blueadept.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it have been easier to just fire him and recover passwords where necessary? SRSLY. It might take some downtime here and there to reclaim the network, but it can't be that difficult.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

You're forgetting that it's a government we're dealing with. They have some weird obligation to be bureaucratic, especially when the root cause of this mess is that the boss didn't make sure he had the passwords in case his network guy got hit by a bus. Governments don't admit... er, MAKE... mistakes!