14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this month, a network admin working for the city of San Francisco, locked everybody out of the fiberWAN network which handled much of the city's private, confidential data. Terry Childs, the admin in question, who previously stated that he was not guilty, has now given up the password, but not to the law enforcement agencies or even his attorney, but to Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco. This does little to help his situation though, as he is still in prison, and his bail of $5 million has not been reduced.
The meeting between the admin and the mayor of San Francisco was set up by attorney Erin Crane, and during said meeting Gavin Newsom was handed over three user names and an access code. The interesting thing about this is the fact that the system could be accessed only through a machine located in a room at the Hall of Justice.
Earlier this week, the defendant's attorney, Erin Crane, and the prosecution represented by Conrad Del Rosario presented their arguments in front of Judge Lucy McCabe. The goal of Erin Crane was to reduce the bail set for Terry Childs, which has been set at a staggering $5 million, but the judge ruled against it.
Erin Crane commented during the court hearings: "Mr. Childs should not be in court today. ...None of us should be here in court today. This should have been a DTIS employee management problem. This man's performance at work was so competent and professional that he made his co-workers look bad. They tried to get rid of him."
The authorities consider Childs a flight risk because at the time of the arrest he had a total amount of $10,000 on him. Eric Derryck, spokesperson for the district attorney's office comments: "What I can say about the bail being set at the level it was set at is that there were questions about flight, as well as about the full extent to which the alleged behavior [Childs was charged with] might have caused continuing damage and whether there was an ongoing threat going forward."
The officials are also worried that Childs might be in possession of colleagues' security credentials and he might still be able to access the network.