We have a county computer technician that was recently fired by the county. He is refusing to provide some important passwords until he receives his wages. He is due to be paid at the middle of the month. The county would like the passwords now. He refuses to give them. Is he committing a crime/breaching a duty to the county?

I don't know if it's a crime, but that resume's not gonna look real keen on Monster.com.

If he set the passwords to access a county computer to carry on county business as part of his job duties, don't the passwords "belong" to the county? (I'm not sure that will make any difference to you recalitrant ex-employee, however.)

Janette

Before you do anything rash check the payday laws to be sure they don't owe him the wages on any sort of accelerated basis.

See LOCAL GOVERNMENT CODE (You'll want to read these in context, these are excerpts.)

� 202.005. RIGHT OF RECOVERY. (a) The governing body may demand and receive from any person any local government record in private possession created or received by the local government the removal of which was not authorized by law.
(b) If the person in possession of a local government record refuses to deliver the record on demand, the governing body may
petition the district court of the county in which the person resides for the return of the record. If the court finds that the
record is a local government record, the court shall order the return of the record.

� 202.009. PENALTY: POSSESSION OF RECORD BY PRIVATE ENTITY. (a) A private college or university, a private museum or library, a private organization of any other type, or an individual commits an offense if the entity knowingly or intentionally acquires or possesses a local government record. An offense under
this subsection is a Class A misdemeanor.

This is almost certainly a crime. If the passwords were used for county business he should provide them upon demand, irregardless of any other dispute he may have ongoing with the county.

Indeed, it may be federal. 18 U.S.C.A. 1030 "fraud and related activity in connection with computers" might well apply. Under its definitions "the term �damage� means any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information;" and I seem to recall caselaw explicitly stating that password hnky-panky can indeed impair the "availability" of computerized files.

Call the nearest FBI office with a 'cyber' division. If the inability to access the files is interfering with governmnent function they might well make it a high priority case, which means they can probably scare your tech into turning over the password in nothing flat.

Sec. 61.014. Payment After Termination of Employment.

(a) An employer shall pay in full an employee 
who is discharged from employment not later 
than the sixth day after the date the employee 
is discharged.  

However the county might be exempt since the state has a funny habbit of exempting itself from other employment laws.

Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought the problem here wasn't that the county was going to refuse payment at the mid-month payday, or whenever it is that the employee is due to be paid under the Payday Law. Instead, I understood the confrontation to be over when the Riddler was going to turn over the passwords.

From a criminal perspective, the key issue, in my mind, is just what the programmer is trying to accomplish. My feeble perception is that he's using the passwords as security for his last paycheck. If that's a "benefit," or if he's trying to harm the county, I suppose it might be misuse of official information (sec. 39.06(b)) or maybe abuse of official capacity (sec. 39.02(a)(2)). Maybe those apply, and maybe they don't, but neither statute has an exception or affirmative defense based on the county's compliance with the Payday Law. Nor does the payday law authorize extortion as a means of its enforcement.

I was just noting that perhaps the employer has a duty to pay the guy BEFORE the next scheduled payday in the middle of the month.

Also going right for criminal charges might be tempting a civil lawsuit; especially the employer is violating some payday law.

If they should really be paying him in the next few days anyway then this could all be a bunch of "we don't negotiate with terrorists" chest-thumping nonsense.

Also this guy's supervisor should be reprimanded for allowing this situation to develop. No critical password should be known by only one person. What if he died instead of being fired? That is incompetence plain and simple.

I don't know if it's incompetence, but I would certainly agree that a measure of negligence is involved. Your observation about the need to have those passwords where someone other than this programmer could get to them is well taken.

As far as a lawsuit goes, the probability trigger was tripped when the guy was fired. While it must be conceded that filing charges would make him much more unhappy, and perhaps represent the straw that broke the camel's back, we have to be careful about letting the potential for civil litigation (meritorious constitutional civil rights suits excepted) make charging decisions for us. But I would be the first to jump on the bandwagon of shunning a criminal case if it doesn't appear it can be proved BRD, regardless of whether a plaintiff's original petition might be in the offing. Whether that's true or not here, I couldn't say based on the facts described.

It just seems wrong to charge one guy with illegally withholding a password if the other guy is illegally withholding his paycheck.

Texas Labor Code

Sec. 61.003. GOVERNMENTAL ENTITIES EXCLUDED. This chapter does not apply to the United States, this state, or a political subdivision of this state.

That figures... our government has a track record of not granting its own employees the same benefites it mandates of the private sector.