Childs was arrested on July 12, charged with disrupting the City of San Francisco's Wide Area Network during a tense standoff with management.

In his since the arrest, given a week ago, Childs contended that he did nothing illegal while working for the city and argued that his actions, depicted as criminal by prosecutors, were in line with standard network security practices. The criminal court case before him prevented him from commenting in much detail on the case, but he outlined his defense in recently filed court documents, describing a tense July 9 stand-off with police and city officials.

That afternoon Childs "unwittingly" found himself in a surprise meeting in the city's Hall of Justice, where Childs maintained network facilities. At the meeting were his boss, DTIC Chief Operations Officer Richard Robinson, San Francisco Police Department Chief Information Officer Greg Yee and human resources representative Vitus Leung. On the phone were engineers, listening in to confirm whether the passwords he gave were correct.

They were not, and within days Childs was charged with disrupting computer services and faced further counts of unauthorized network access. He faces seven years in prison if convicted.

The July 9 meeting was the culmination of a long-simmering dispute between Childs and his managers, who had been seeking administrative passwords to the network since at least February. Childs had refused to provide the passwords, apparently because he feared that they would be shared with management or outside contractors, according to court filings.