

Do your job, land in jail and pay $1.5 million? - bougyman
http://itmanagerdaily.com/network-admin-fined-1-5-million-for-doing-his-job/

======
tzs
There are lot of details that don't make it into most press reports of the
Childs case, but that are very important. Many of these are covered in this:

[http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/042910-terry-childs-
ju...](http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/042910-terry-childs-juror-
explains-why.html)

which is an interview with juror #4, who in addition to having heard all of
those details, also happens to be a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE)
and is a senior network engineer at ADP (the giant payroll company).

------
TillE
_who locked San Francisco out of its main computer network for 12 days

Childs claimed he never intended any harm, but did not trust his superiors
with the passwords. He eventually gave the passwords to then-Mayor Gavin
Newsom in a jail cell visit_

This doesn't really pass the smell test as just some silly misunderstanding.
Twelve days to hand over the information?

~~~
wccrawford
He refused to hand it over to anyone except the mayor due to his
interpretation of the rules he was under. Had the mayor showed up in 5
minutes, he would only have held them for 5 minutes.

He claims his ethics prevented him from doing anything other than exactly what
he did. And if he really felt that only the Mayor could be trusted with the
password, he was honor-bound to hand them only to him.

The entire system not only allowed him to get into this situation, but it
practically forced it on him thanks to budget cuts and ridiculous decisions.
Not that he was complaining at the time.

It will serve as a good reminder as to why you should not only act ethically,
but demand that your bosses act ethically as well. It was unconscionable that
they let a single person have this much power over their network. Had he died,
they would have had a hard time getting that password back.

------
hvs
$1.5MM sounds overly vindictive, but _"He said he was first asked for the
passwords by people who weren’t authorized to have them."_? For twelve days?

Everything about this stinks.

------
mc32
Not knowing the details, it becomes difficult to analyze fully and fairly.

Still, if you get a request in writing, from a superior, which would exculpate
you from possible negligence for allegedly improperly divulging information,
if that's what he truly believed, that should have alleviated the issue.

Instead, from the outside, at least, it seemed as if he was unreasonably
steadfast in his stance, despite pleas from the mayor (pre-jailhouse visit).
It was as though he thought his interpretation of policy superseded the
authority of the people or office who/which set out the policy.

As I recall the events, it was almost as though he became a prisoner of his
own doing. Once he made a stance, it become very difficult for him to back
down. As if saving face was a very important aspect of the ordeal. Of course,
that's just my personal projection, perhaps.

Four years and 1.5 million is too harsh, in my view. Yet, he did deserve some
punishment for his actions.

~~~
metageek
There are more details in the interview tzs linked to [1].

> _It was as though he thought his interpretation of policy superseded the
> authority of the people or office who/which set out the policy._

It's worse than that. According to the juror in the interview, there _was_ no
policy on who could get the passwords. So it wasn't a matter of
interpretation; it was purely pulled out of his posterior data storage unit.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2588689>

------
bediger
"what would have happened if Childs had been hit by a bus?"

I call for the EFF, the ACLU and the FSF to create a "Programmer's Hit By A
Bus" fund. We would all contribute, according to the degree of bus-danger we
put ourselves in to. For instance, I actually ride Denver RTD buses, so I
would contribute the maximum amount. Some programmer living in a municipality
without buses would pay only a nominal amount.

We could build up a large fund to take care of the estates, widows and orphans
left behind by the heinous plague of Programmers getting Hit By A Bus.

