If it’s true, that ignorance and lack of knowledge and understanding can send people to jail that do have that knowledge, we have a serious problem here in San Francisco.
If it’s true that people without an education can send people to jail with an education, on a bail higher than any murderer in history, we have a problem…Nobody has heard from Childs yet in this case, and I’m guessing the defense likes ti that way, for good reason< Terry Childs built the San Francisco fiber line (fiberWan) network, almost with his own hands) I'm betting at this point, regardless of outcome, that the Terry Childs case will eventually become important IT school curriculum, and likely in the legal community as well (more school for lawyers, and judges and the jury) Did SF undermine it’s own case? and people are calling the Chronicles coverage flat out reciulous
best comment so far on this case
consider this an education that no school can teach you about..yet…about IT admin, because IT specialists are coming out of the woodwork worldwide to explain this
update from the court documents, but there’s still a lot of questions
Tech gurus at O’Reilly have a lengthy article on this and so does Wired
and yet another update, a truly ironic one, District Attorney reveals the passwords and user names to the public and now on Slashdot. First comment > Childs might have been right all along (keep the city away from the computers)
more comments “In my own humble opinion, the SF DA’s office is full of idiots.”…”I had my doubts at first, but this makes it abundantly clear that Childs was right . More right than any of us might have imagined when this spin-doctored story first came out.
In hindsight he took totally reasonable, prudent measures to protect incompetent city officials from themselves. Who knows how they got into that situation, but I won’t blame him for anything in light of this, and I sincerely hope a jury wouldn’t either.”
even more, hints of politcal cronyism and stone age tech at SF
from The Chronicle
In arguing against a defense request to lower his $5 million bail, prosecutors said Childs had set up more than 1,000 computer modems in locked cabinets and other hiding places, including at least one in a room at the Hall of Justice that even police didn’t know existed, to tinker with the system without his bosses knowing it.
from The Deep End
1,100 modems? One thousand, one hundred modems. One thousand, one hundred analog phone lines at roughly $40 a pop. $44,000 a month in phone lines. Assuming $30 per modem, that’s $33,000 in modems. What were they hooked up to? Computers? Assuming a very low $250 per computer (hey, maybe they were all eBay specials or something) that’s an additional $275,000. So all told, we’re at $308,000 in just the hardware, not to mention that monthly $44,000 bill.
All ordered, installed, and managed by Terry Childs.
Really.
Forgive me if I find this to be an absolutely ludicrous statement. I think I missed it yesterday because it’s so patently absurd. Unless Childs owned his own phone company, how could he possibly have done this? If the city is taking anything Anthony Maupin says seriously, it might explain their complete ignorance of this situation.
why does this look suspicious from a technical standpoint? Why does this make the management look even worse?
IT specialists from Germany weigh in
(25.07.08) – Cyber-Ark, the privileged identity management specialists, says that the ongoing FiberWAN network lockout situation in San Francisco – where a network administrator has changed system passwords and is refusing to hand them over to administrators – could have been avoided if managers had operated a high-security approach to master passwords. “Administration passwords are always being changed for security reasons, such as when IT staff leaves and also for general security reasons. The main problem with admin passwords is that a number of people need access to them at any given time,” said Adam Bosnian, VP Marketing with Cyber-Ark.
“If the operators of the FiberWAN network – which gives San Francisco city administrators access to payroll, law enforcement data and prison bookings, amongst other things – had a top-level master password, which was stored securely, then the current lock-out situation would have been side-stepped,” he added.
According to Bosnian, the San Francisco FiberWAN chief executive could have stored the top-level master password in a digital vault, meaning that no-one need actually know what the password was, but it could be accessed electronically by relevant senior staff, if the need ever arose.
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