A computer-network hostage situation in San Francisco is over, thanks to negotiations with the city's mayor.
Terry Childs, a network administrator for the city of San Francisco, has been in custody since 13 July on four felony charges of taking control of the city's computer network and locking administrators out. Access to much of the city's information was blocked, including law enforcement, payroll and jail-booking records.
Childs had reportedly refused to surrender the access codes to his supervisors, but after a little more than a week as a guest of the city he had a change of heart and invited mayor Gavin Newsom to meet with him, according to a report on the San Francisco Chronicle website on Monday night. A secret meeting was arranged at the city jail on Monday afternoon, where Childs gave Newsom the codes to the network. The meeting reportedly was so secret that the police department and district attorney were not informed of the meeting ahead of time.
The codes given to Newsom didn't initially provide access to the system, but a call to Childs's attorney got the city back in the system.
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However, Childs still faces a court appearance on the felony charges. Erin Crane, Childs's defence attorney, is expected to cite his co-operation during a court hearing on Wednesday in a bid to have his $5m (£2.5m) bail reduced.
Crane has argued that Childs was merely protecting the network from incompetent city officials who were trying to force him out of his job.
"Mr Childs had good reason to be protective of the password," Crane told the newspaper. "His co-workers and supervisors had in the past maliciously damaged the system themselves, hindered his ability to maintain it... and shown complete indifference to maintaining it themselves."
"He was the only person in that department capable of running that system," Crane added.
Talkback
As a system administrator myself, I am in a similar situation to Terry Childs - surrounded by incompetent admins who just want to make something work and don't consider the security consequences of their actions. It's a shame so few people have a moral and ethical standard high enough to take such a step to secure identifying data, and bring such problems to light. I hope he will be released from prison soon, and be given the positive recognition he deserves.
I can understand the mans personal reasons for doing this, but I hope that the authorities will take heed of this warning, look how easy it is to paralyse the City's network, and this was a man who worked for them, how easy would it be for someone else, with maybe terrorist intentions, to take control of the system. The authorities nowadays do not seem to keep a tight reign on their systems, hardly ever updated with security program because of the spiraling costs and the need to save money, this should be top of the list, not swept aside with a "It can't happen to us" attitude.
I hope that other departments throughout not just the US, but all countries, that are using computer systems, to see how good your system is to keep things running smoothly, and the security is top of their priorities list, but I suppose this warning will go unheeded as usual, let's bury our heads in the sand.....