The case against Terry Childs, former San Francisco network admin, is hopefully coming to a close soon, and I’m anxious to hear what the jury decides.

I fall on the side of those people who don’t dismiss this case with a hand wave; I think it makes an important statement about management, policies, security, and IT operations.

I’ve been in similar, but far, far smaller, situations where I had to expand access or duties beyond myself to other people. And there are very real times where doing that leads to a degredation in the quality of the work, even up to someone being dumb and bringing down a network or device! I understand his position, even if I wouldn’t have defended it to quite such a degree!

I’ve also seen extremely protective admins whose strangle-hold on their operations starts introducing new avenues of risk, especially in terms of business continuity.

Of course, going too far in the other direction where things are spread out amongst so many other people adds in yet different risks in, well, too many people with God knowledge… Work long enough in IT, and everyone at some point experiences that non-technical manager doing idiotic things just because he has the access…which only conditions the behavior Childs exhibited!