Political Prisoner Terry Childs

They shoot horses, don't they?

Get It Try It

Cover your ears. And eyes. This isn't going to be pretty.

Today's a sad day. Terry Childs was sentenced to four years in prison for protecting his network. The network of the city of San Francisco. He was protecting it from ego-tripping arse-licking people in management who are to this day totally lacking in IT skills. Terry Childs refused to turn over the network passwords to those jackasses and became IT's first high-profile political prisoner.

Terry Childs was put in jail 755 days ago. That's over two years already sitting in a tangerine coloured jumpsuit as a guest of the government. For doing the right thing - for doing specifically what his charter of employment demanded he do.

The mayor later got involved once he knew which way the wind was blowing. He got Childs to turn over the passwords to him personally. San Francisco's mayor lives the gilded life along with his glamourous spouse. They get to attend all the great grand openings and other cultural functions and they live and dress well. Not like poor Terry Childs.

IT professionals never get golden parachutes. That's been known for a long time. As it's been known that good IT pros actually contribute rather than suck. What hasn't been known - or at least realised - is that the case of Terry Childs proves once again that an IT professional can never get a fair trial. Those judging such a case have no competence whatsoever to understand the issues. And they're invariably helped along by politicians who are glib at lying and circumventing the truth and convincing the unwitting that theirs is the true assessment of the situation.

There's no way for a prosecutor, a judge, or a jury to understand the underlying technical ramifications. Trials revolving on the technical put Salem Massachusetts to shame.

Make no mistake: Terry Childs did the right thing. And he's being kept behind bars and is being chastised because he stuck to his guns, because he dared stand up to the faceless man who wanted to control the show.



Gavin Newsom could have stopped this travesty. Perhaps he was too busy getting hammered and ogling bosoms - bosoms that didn't belong to his fashionable wife.

Terry Childs hasn't been getting hammered. Not that he ever had much time for it with his job (where he didn't even get paid for overtime). He's not got hammered for at least the past 755 days. No parties for him. Terry Childs was on the inside of an organisation, expected to follow rules. And things worked well - and Childs did an extraordinary job - until those rules started conflicting with one another. And so whilst Terry Childs felt the squeeze of the Catch-22, Gavin and Jennifer and the others in the political elite of the city by the bay went on living their gilded lives.

It's San Francisco's upper IT management who are the big culprits here - the bulls in the china shop who demanded administrator access to the network without having any right to it or the competence to run it.

They're DILLWEEDS - they hardly know the difference between a bit and a byte, can't tell you how many bits or bytes there are in a doubleword, nothing of that. The war was between them on the one hand who wanted to step on Childs and preempt his job - and Childs on the other hand who knew how disastrous things would be if he shirked his duties and gave in.

And as soon as the airheads got their hands on the network, things started going down. Going down in a network that had run without incident as long as people could remember. Suddenly people's login credentials got printed in court documents. Smart guys alright.



No one knows the whole story. But Terry Childs' colleagues admire him and support him, whilst management made up more ridiculous stories all the time, and ultimately revealed how grossly incompetent and overpaid they were.

Several admins jumping into the story suggested upper management should be sacked for incompetence. Former CIO Dana Hom says they should - he quit after four years of their nonsense.

It's time to stop joking about these idiots. This section of this website was set up to point the finger at them - and to elicit a laugh or two along the way. As that was considered the only way to deal with them.

But this site has always been a 'white hat' site. There's never been any question where people stood. There's never been a thought of using knowledge and skills to hurt people, to do the wrong thing.

The verdict in the Terry Childs case turns everything upside-down. There's no point in being one of the 'good guys' anymore. These people have to be fought. And online editorials don't win the day. As to how one can escalate the war against the arrogant and stupid: no clue yet.

But one thing is certain: activist or not, it's time to go over to the Dark Side.

Such a sad day. Free Terry Childs and give him restitution for what he's been put through. And tar and feather San Francisco's pathetic DTIS management.