Terry Childs conviction

Fri Apr 30 01:48:43 UTC 2010

On Thu, 2010-04-29 at 16:47 -0500, William Pitcock wrote:
> 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.

I've seen a dismissed employee withhold a password. The owner of the
company threatened legal action, considering it, like you, theft. My
father-in-law is an attorney, so I asked him about the situation. He
said that it wouldn't be called "theft," rather "illegal control." 

http://www.infoworld.com/t/insider-threat/terry-childs-still-faces-one-charge-one-he-shouldnt-face-746

The more-informed reporting on this says that the charge was actually
"illegal denial of service." I'm guessing this is what my father-in-law
was getting at, or that this is what "illegal control" means when
applied to computer equipment.

dk