Remember Terry Childs? He was the system administrator of San Francisco’s fiber-optic wide area network (WAN) arrested last year for [illegal tampering with the city’s network ](/security/article.php/3796346/Rogue+SF+Sysadmin+Contests+Charges.htm)and then locking it down so authorized administrators couldn’t access it.
He’s been held on four felony charges since July, 2008, related to the network tampering, but now the *San Francisco Chronicle* reports a judge has tossed three of the four charges against him.
San Francisco’s FiberWAN network carries 60 percent of city data, including police records, city payroll data and jail booking information. Childs eventually surrendered the password information, but only after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom [spoke to him in prison](/security/article.php/3760631/San+Francisco+Hack+Where+Was+the+Oversight.htm).
Childs was accused of holding the network hostage when he refused to provide the proper codes and passwords for several days after he was told he was being reassigned from his job in the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services.
The *Chronicle* reports Superior Court Judge Kevin McCarthy tossed out three tampering allegations. Childs’ lawyers had tried to get [the three charges dropped](/government/article.php/3801376/Legal+Wrangling+in+Rogue+SysAdmin+Case.htm) back in February, claiming they were too vague and that there was insufficient evidence behind them.
