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A city employee who hoarded the pass code of a major San Francisco computer network was found guilty Tuesday of blocking city officials from access. Terry Childs, 45, commandeered The City’s FiberWAN network in July 2008 after his managers began investigating his strange behavior at work. After five years of working with The City, Childs had gained a reputation for his technical knowledge.He would soon withhold that knowledge from his co-workers and superiors in an effort to protect the infrastructure from “something really bad.”In the five-month trial, Childs was found guilty of one felony count of computer network tampering with...

I haven't written much about the Terry Childs case recently, mainly because there's not much to tell. Childs is still in jail, his bail is still set at a ridiculous $5 million, and he still hasn't had his day in court. It's been nearly 18 months since his arrest for refusing to hand over administrative passwords to San Francisco's city network.In that time, three of the four charges against him were dismissed, yet numerous motions for bail reduction have been denied, presumably because the judges are terrified of what they don't understand, and the DA is playing that up. Regardless...

The mayor of San Francisco has obtained the password to the city's multimillion-dollar computer network password from a disgruntled employee during a secret jailhouse visit, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. On Monday night, Mayor Gavin Newsom met Terry Childs, a Department of Telecommunications and Information Services employee charged with computer tampering, in a secret meeting and walked away with the password to the city's new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network), the Chronicle said. The system stores such records as officials' e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail bookings. Childs has been held since July 13 and had reportedly...

SAN FRANCISCO -- "The first thing I want you to know, Mr. Mayor, is that when you walk out of this room, you will have the computer codes." Those words - delivered to Mayor Gavin Newsom by imprisoned city computer tech Terry Childs in a small, fourth-floor room at city jail Monday - signaled the beginning of the end of the weeklong standoff in which San Francisco officials found themselves in the embarrassing position of being locked out of their own computer system. Childs - whom some have described as a friendly, hard worker at the city Technology Department, and...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The San Francisco computer engineer accused of withholding access codes to the city's network surrendered the password during an unusual jailhouse visit by Mayor Gavin Newsom, authorities said Tuesday. Newsom came away with the access codes Monday night after talking with Terry Childs, 43, of Pittsburg, who has been held since July 13 on four felony counts stemming from what prosecutors describe as an effort to block administrative access to the network that handles 60 percent of the city's information, including sensitive law enforcement, payroll and jail booking records. Childs had given officials what turned out to...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A disgruntled city computer engineer has virtually commandeered San Francisco's new multimillion-dollar computer network, altering it to deny access to top administrators even as he sits in jail on $5 million bail, authorities said Monday. Terry Childs, a 43-year-old computer network administrator who lives in Pittsburg, has been charged with four counts of computer tampering and is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday. Prosecutors say Childs, who works in Department of Technology at a base salary of just over $126,000, tampered with the city's new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network), where records such as officials' e-mails, city payroll files,...

Dr. Sandra Pacheco believes that her daughter was punished at Elk Grove High School for doing what she thought was the right thing. She argues that a school district policy is making its campuses unsafe for girls. Before Elk Grove High’s homecoming football game on Oct. 21, she and her daughter’s stepfather, Jeff Franklin, handed out flyers to parents driving out of the school’s front parking lot and told them about their case, and asked if they shared the same problem. The couple displayed a sign that read: “Is Your Daughter Safe at EGHS? Not as Safe as You May...

Examining a tower model are the architect David Childs, Governor George Pataki, the developer Larry A. Silverstein, the architect David (sic) Libeskind and Speaker Sheldon Silver. "It has some really ingenious safety features. For example, the state offices will be in the silvery fortified base."