In particular the judge, who by his decisions is rewritting the definition between a “user” and an “administrator” in regards to computer networks. This has really huge consequences for network administrators, especially in California.
Here’s an article by Paul Venezia of Infoworld:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/insider-threat/how-terry-childs-case-could-harm-password-security-802?page=0,0
that puts into perspective the quandry the prosecution has with Terry Childs. The prosecution wants to convict him of something and the denial of service is about the only thing they can convict him of. If they do that, convict him of denial of service under a California statute, then by refusing to give out passwords to network infrastructure to basically anyone, a network administrator could be found guilty of criminal conduct. So this is going to be a really interesting case for computer networks and the administrators that manage them.
What the prosecution ought to do is drop the charges, he’s been in jail for 16 months,
and the City should come up with policies regarding critical network infrastructure access…. if they don’t and do convict Terry Childs on the denial of service, we are all in trouble.
