The 45-year-old Childs cost the city of San Francisco over $200 000 after he gave himself sole access to the Fiber Wide Area Network (FiberWAN), prosecutors said in a San Francisco county Superior Court hearing that ended in his conviction on one felony count. Childs had worked at the Department of Telecommunications Information services for five years, and was reportedly angry that he might be laid off by his employer.
According to reports in the San Francisco Chronicle, he also resented supervisors for questioning his security clearance after learning of a previous criminal conviction.
Childs held the electronic keys to administrative functions for a network that managed a large proportion of the city's law enforcement and payroll records. Reports about the case made at the time suggested that he had essentially built the FiberWAN network single-handedly, and was solely responsible for its administration. However, he was not responsible for the records that it managed, and these were not considered to be at risk during the period when he refused to divulge passwords for the system, effectively locking his superiors out of the network's administrative functions.
Childs will be given credit for the time that he has already served while waiting for his four-month trial. He has been held in a county jail since 2008, after bail was set at $5m. Shortly after his incarceration, Childs, who was reportedly suspended for insubordination after refusing to hand the passwords over, was subsequently visited by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and persuaded to release the login credentials.