Re: Terry Childs conviction

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:47:02 CDT, William Pitcock said:
> On Thu, 2010-04-29 at 15:11 -0500, Olsen, Jason wrote:
> > I'm a bit surprised that after the furor here on NANOG when the story
> > first broke (in 2008) that there's been no discussion about the recent
> > outcome of his trial (convicted, one count of felony network tampering).
>
> Surely even at DeVry they teach that if you refuse to hand over
> passwords for property that is not legally yours, that you are
> committing a crime.  I mean, think about it, it's effectively theft, in
> the same sense that if you refuse to hand over the keys for a car that
> you don't own, you're committing theft of an automobile.

Unfortunately, Terry Childs was withholding the passwords because he thought
(with some justification) that they'd adger up the net if they had the passwords.

So if you want to make an analogy, it's more like taking the keys away from
a drunk so they can't drive.  Good luck finding a DA who will indict you for
grand theft auto for taking the keys to prevent a DWI.

Operational content: What design, procedure, and policy errors did the
network owners make that Childs was able to do that to them? (The cynic
in me says that if the net management was that screwed up that he *could*
do it, he was justified in doing it... :)

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