Autistic UK Hacker faces being shipped out to the US.

[Doug]

Mentally underdeveloped or not, he has no right to hack into the US governments computers, no matter what he was looking for. He could have dangerous files and be a threat to us and even if he DOES have Asperger's syndrome he should know better. So I think the US is doing something that needs to be done, I mean, he could have done some major damage had he wanted to.

Yes, but he didn't - its like saying 'He broke into a shop and COULD have stolen all the stock, but left without taking anything'. Add to that, surely its just proving the US network needs to be better secured against attack, as they obviously screwed up.

 

[darthzew]

This is where more cyberspace laws need to made. By going on US sites, would that qualify as that being on US territory? If so, then yeah, he should be tried by American courts.

 

[Inarticulate_Underachiever]

The US is ridiculously butthurt over this. The guy is clearly not a terrorist and they are just embarrased that a common person was able to hack into their security system.

 

[Terramax]

So what are your opinions,...?

Tell him what he wants to know about UFOs. Simple.

You don't put someone that good into jail - you either hire him or convince him the Chinese are the ones hiding all the aliens

Yeah, that'll do.

 

[Madaxeman101]

Holy shit... 60 years? Do you know the sentence for the UK?

Probably a smack on the wrist our justice system is fucked

 

[BrightDeathFriend]

Tough one....It greatly depends on how autistic he is because there is only an autistic spectrum not degrees of autism. If he commited the crime in britain then his punishment should be here. But putting an autistic male in a prison would infact do more harm than good. ANYONE who is autistic and wants help for it should always get it and not be punished for it.

 

[menhir]

Thats not how America will see it. They're to embarrased to even consider getting this mans help.

Why do people keep saying this. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale] Are you people stupid?

 

[Kellerb]

sixty fucking years? just for a harmless ufo search?

my already low opinion of government just dropped to the floor.

 

[cainx10a]

Hopefully, they will give him a neat job and get him to do some counter-cyber terrorism stuff. China's hackers are pretty obnoxious, specially after continually hacking an Australian/Ugyur's film expose website.

 

[Dr Ampersand]

He probably won't get a job to stop hackers but he could probably reduce his sentence by helping them foolproof it.

 

[Amnestic]

Mentally underdeveloped or not, he has no right to hack into the US governments computers, no matter what he was looking for. He could have dangerous files and be a threat to us and even if he DOES have Asperger's syndrome he should know better. So I think the US is doing something that needs to be done, I mean, he could have done some major damage had he wanted to.

Yes, but he didn't - its like saying 'He broke into a shop and COULD have stolen all the stock, but left without taking anything'. Add to that, surely its just proving the US network needs to be better secured against attack, as they obviously screwed up.

In which case he'd be tried for breaking and entering, rather than breaking and entering as well as larceny.

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

I can see why the US want him especially how the UK treats hackers ....

1994 Two hackers identified as "Data Stream" and "Kuji" break into Griffith Air Force base and hundreds of other systems, including computers at NASA and the Korean Atomic Research Institute. After a cyber-manhunt, Scotland Yard detectives arrest "Data Stream," a 16-year-old British teen-ager who curls up in the fetal position and cries when seized. "Kuji" is never found.
From http://www.roadnews.com/html/Articles/historyofhacking.htm

Court frees man in military hacking case; Andrew Mitchell, for the Crown Prosecution Service, told Woolwich Crown Court that it was "no longer in the public interest" for an expensive and lengthy trial to take place.

From http://www.independent.co.uk/news/court-frees-man-in-military-hacking-case-1295386.html

 

[asinann]

"Hey, US Government? Here's my middle finger."

He committed a crime in Britain, as a British citizen, as such he should be tried in Britain, as a British citizen

Except that under international law, his crime took place in the US. Hacking takes place in the country that the servers are located in and are governed by that nation's laws. That means Britain has no business prosecuting him and Interpol could always be called to grab him and bring him to the US.
It's sad that an autistic man did this, but he sounds like someone who isn't that severely autistic and if completely capable of understanding what he did was wrong. He is also trying to use the autism to get out of punishment. Odds are also pretty low that he would actually get much more than the bare minimum sentence (probation.) Which would include being banned from using computers and touch tone telephones for the rest of his life.

 

[MelziGurl]

He may have committed the crime in the UK, but the crime was against the US. I think the US reserves more right to trial him and sentence him accordingly. Of course the sentence would be lighter in the UK, it doesn't effect them very much does it?

 

[Ghostkai]

Maybe this is the movies talking, but shouldn't they like.... recruit him? As part of a secret team with one aim - To save the world.

^_^

 

[SimuLord]

Its not a serious disability he has.

He was competant enough to manage to hack into US government computers, hence competant enough to understand the consequences.

However I do disagree with shipping him off. He did it in the UK, I personally dont care what hackers do here to the US =P

If he'd hacked UK computers then yeah throw the book at him but meh.

As I see it, when the issue is cybercrime the property under discussion has to be treated as if the criminal had traveled to wherever the physical crime was located. If someone in the US hacked into a British government server, the crime should be considered to have occurred as if the hacker was standing in the same room as the physical server computer. The Internet makes international law a bit more nebulous, but it's not an unreasonable standard for exposition.

As far as the Asperger's thing goes? If he's that messed up, maybe he ought to be parked in a mental institution. I've known my fair share of Aspies, even dated one for several years. She knew right from wrong and so did the others. If he were schizophrenic or delusional or some other honest-to-gods mental illness (I consider "Asperger's" to be more of a value judgment on the part of social expectations rather than a "disease" the way someone who's just ax crazy has a disease), that might be different (but even then, you do the crime, you do the time.)

 

[Mjolnir07]

Wow, this is fucking ridiculous; considering our US policy of insisting that all US citizens be tried under penalty of our laws here. What hypocrisy, damn I hate my government.

 

[Mjolnir07]

Maybe this is the movies talking, but shouldn't they like.... recruit him? As part of a secret team with one aim - To save the world.

^_^

He could be the impaired fellow who's other attributes are heroically amplified by his inherent misfortune; his lovable misdemeanor and wise-cracking attitude coupled with his incapability to prevent himself from being comically rude would set him up to be the perfect international spy. But only if he was paired with an indignant and culturally jet-lagged Jackie Chan in a remarkably mismatched but astonishingly cohesive crime-fighting duo. In the end, they'd each learn a little bit more about themselves, but only through the acceptance of the differences in others.

 

[KaiRai]

Holy shit... 60 years? Do you know the sentence for the UK?

2 days clearing out bins probably.

I can't believe the US government wants to extradite a guy with Aspergers for that. If anything they should hire him to hack into the mainframes for other countries. They should be extraditing terrorists from here though, they'd get a proper sentence over in the US as opposed to the shitty sentences they get here. The UK could learn something from the US.