14 DAY TRIAL // A few days back we were reporting that the actions of one network administrator had put the city of San Francisco's FiberWAN network under complete lockdown. Terry Childs, whose password was the only one that could access the network, has pleaded "not guilty" at the court hearing held yesterday. Another interesting development in the Childs case is the fact that Mark Jacobs, the court-appointed public defender for the network admin, has pulled himself off the case and was consequently replaced by Erin Crane.
According to attorney Mark Jacobs, his offering legal council to Terry Childs represented a conflict of interests. It seems that the San Francisco FiberWAN network contains the payroll records of several county employees, including those of Jacobs. Since the network access incident affects him directly, he is unable to offer the defendant the legal representation he deserves.
Ron Vinson, chief administrative officer for the Department of Technology with the city of San Francisco, comments: "Right now our system is up and running and we haven't had any problems so far."
Erin Crane, the newly appointed attorney for Terry Childs described her client as a "very well-respected computer engineer" who should not be looked up as a common criminal because "he worked out the bugs" from the San Francisco network. According to her, the network was never in any danger and Childs should be allowed to copyright his work. Yes, the attorney stated that because Childs is responsible for developing the network, then he should get copyright benefits for all his efforts.
Another thing that Erin Crane was quick to point out is the incredibly high bail that the court has ruled upon and which has been set at $5 million, five times higher than the usual bail for murderers. Since he obviously doesn't pose the same danger to society as a murderer, the bail should have been set at a lower amount.
Childs has been an employee for the city of San Francisco for a period of five years but over the past few months his job performance has been categorized as poor. His supervisors consequently resorted to disciplinary measures, and there was even talk of relieving the network admin from the position he occupied.