SF. tech stays jailed; prosecutors say he rigged network to implode

[n2doc]

Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 23, 2008

(07-23) 12:09 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A judge refused today to lower the $5 million bail for a San Francisco computer engineer accused of hijacking the city's network, after prosecutors said he had rigged the system to melt down during routine maintenance.

The ruling by Superior Court Judge Lucy Kelly McCabe came two days after the defendant, Terry Childs, 43, gave up passwords to the system he had been keeping secret. Childs handed over the access codes in a jailhouse meeting with Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Childs, a five-year employee of the city Technology Department, has been in custody since his arrest July 13 on four counts of tampering with the city's network. Authorities say he refused for more than a week to supply the passwords for other administrators to gain access to the system, which holds payroll documents, sensitive law enforcement records, officials' e-mail and other data.

Prosecutor Conrad del Rosario said Childs had arranged the system so that key programs were held in temporary memory files that would evaporate when the network was shut down during routine maintenance or any unexpected power failure.

The city had scheduled a shutdown for regular maintenance last Saturday, but experts caught the problem in time and transferred data to permanent files, del Rosario said.

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