Gordon Brown urges to keep Asperger's hacker in the UK

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7768394.stm

He should not have been trying to break into other people's computers. I am sure that people with AS have free will, so he choose to do something wrong.

But I think that the British should deal with him under a british computer misuse law becuase he is british and he commited the crime in britain.

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Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

I don't think him having aspergers would impair his reasoning regarding this particular crime- some crimes I think should take that diagnosis into account, but not this one.

I agree that he would have to take responsibility- I don't believe that he should extradited, but than again I would feel the same way about a neurotypical committing this kind of crime too.

America wouldn't extradite an American criminal to another country, so I don't see why Britain should bend over and take it from the states.

I think that the UK computer misuse act 1990 should be used to deal with this case.

The act does permit a court to impose a short jail term for each count of the computer crime, I would be interested to know how long the americans want to lock him up for.

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

I think that 15 let alone 70 years for computer hacking is too long if the hacking did not involve spying, major vandalism or fraud.

Bear in mind that Mike Tyson only got 6 years for rape which I think is a more serious crime than computer misuse, I think that tyson should have got a longer jail term, I had been the judeg I would have wanted him to serve at least a decade behind bars.

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

Opps double post, I pressed the button too many times

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

On a side note, the US SHOULD be embarressed.

Seriously...they lost 300 militairy computers that easily?

No one should ever be extradided to the United States for anything! This country is so obsessed with putting people in prison for ever-lengthening terms - legislators get elected by promising to "get tough on crime," which always means increasing sentences.

Last I saw, we have 2.2 million people in prison, which is obscene, especially for the country purported to be the beacon of freedom to the rest of the world.

I think that he should be punished for breaking the law even if he does have AS. They just want him to be put on trial in th UK because they that he'll probably get a shorter sentence. Although he's British I think that he should be punished in America because that's where he broke the law. He broke into their military computers not ours.

He was in the UK when he did this and as far as I am concerned you should be tried in the country you were in when you broke the law.

It would be terrible if he was extradited and would set a dangerous precident where any country could use this to call for anyone to be extradited to them if that person was to do anything on a computer based in another country whilst they were sat at home. This would eman that if you were using this website and said something that was illegal in the country the website is hosted in then that country could call for your extradition.

Not so bad if the countries invovled are like the US or the UK, but howcan you be sure where the website is hosted? How can you be sure what the laws are in that country? It's a dangerous and worrying idea.

Dogtanian is right, while gemstone123 is not right. The problem I see is that the scene of crime is not well defined in such a case.

I think that the criminal and civil cases should be treated differently

If a french man was to throw a bucket of mud over a german man in hyde park, then I would say the crime should be dealed with in an English court becuase it occured in england.

Let us consider a couple of other more complex cases.

If you were to set fire to old car tyres in your back garden and make black toxic choking smoke which drifted into next doors garden while they are having a garden party, then while the victims might be the party guests next door the crime of burning the nasty tyres is still occuring in your garden. Your garden is the scene of crime.

If you consider the Chernobyl accident, it is likely that someone could have been sent to jail for it under health and safety law if the event had occured in England or the USA. But for the criminal case you would need to use the penal code of the USSR to jail the person responsible even while some of the effects of the accident were felt in western europe.

But I would argue that for a civil case for damages brought by a welsh sheep farmer whose farm is now contaminated could be filed at a british court, the power plant operators did something which harmed the assets of the farmer and the assets are in wales. So I think that the welsh farmer should be free in theory to go to Swansea's court house and file papers there.

In this case while the computer which was broken into is in the US, the act of typing into a keyboard or pressing mouse keys was done in England. So the scene of crime is in England despite the facts the effects extended into the US. But the damages occured in the USA, so I think that the US military could sue him in a US court. I doubt if in either case the wronged party would get much money.

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

This is a new area in the law. The Internet has made it possible for the average citizen sitting there in his living room to inflict damage on another country. This is a very serious problem. We need to put some real thought into this.

I think it should be settled by International Treaty. We need to come up with something that all countries would have to agree to in respect to hackers, terrorism via the Internet, etc. All countries would have to agree to condemn such activity, and to make it a priority to capture and punish the perpetrators. And I would impose strict sanctions against nations that do not do so.

I'm even naive enough to believe that this should be done through the U.N.