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>According to the public prosecutor, it constituted “one of the most serious hacks in the Netherlands’ history”. Edwin’s work was “ingenious” and the “impact on

>According to the public prosecutor, it constituted “one of the most serious hacks in the Netherlands’ history”. Edwin’s work was “ingenious” and the “impact on KPN and thus on society at large, immense”. By KPN’s own reckoning, it cost them €3m. So much potential in this young man. It's a shame he had these difficulties to deal with. It sounds like he had absolutely no guidance, no encouragement toward a positive way to use his skills. I see it as the equivalent of the school prankster falling in with the wrong crowd, and ending up doing something seriously harmful to try to gain respect. > found guilty of hacking and given a suspended prison sentence of 240 days plus community service. He didn’t want to do community service, however, so did the time instead. I wish they had dug into that a little bit more. What did the service entail? How could it be worse than doing time? I don't imagine it would have been a highly social or physically demanding job. >Edwin asked Ruud if he could move back home, but his dad didn’t feel up to the task of taking in his now 22-year-old son. That's heartbreaking. Having to turn away your son who is desperate need of care because you can't provide it, and then having him commit suicide a while later. This story is depressing. I wish there was more about how people were trying to help him, because as it stands, it seems to me he was mostly abandoned.

Idesmi 5y ago
He was abandoned by his biological parents first, and then by the foster ones too. > As Edwin stood on his doorstep, Ruud turned him away with a heavy heart. > “Come on,” Edwin pleaded. But Ruud was at the end of his tether. “We can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry.” > Edwin left with a backpack. His parents had no idea where he’d go.
scotty79 5y ago
> What did the service entail? How could it be worse than doing time? I'm assuming it wasn't USA prison. So doing involuntary labor might be worse than just being locked away. Netherlands has very civilized prisons.
- SwanRonson 5y ago
  Community service usually isn’t that bad, people volunteer to do it all of the time. Just from what I read in the story, it seemed Edwin was more inclined to want to stay inside than interact with others in person. I also assume the exchange rate between community service and jail time is reasonable. I think in his eyes the extra time was a painless and quicker way to pay his debt.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    I almost wonder if it would've been more humane to force him to do the community service. Edwin was definitely clinically depressed even before his run-in with the law. When I go through bouts of depression, I also get introverted and have trouble forcing myself to interact with folks IRL. Volunteering at schools and in nature (trail work) forces social interaction and physical exercise, both of which help me break out of the depressive state. I sort of impose community service on myself when I feel my mental state slipping. Everyone is different, of course, but forcing Edwin to do something physical and social outdoors for a few months might well have saved his life.
    - Fnoord 5y ago
      He was offered a choice. Forcing someone to do community service, ugh. Its tough work, IMO, because you do what other people don't want to do, and you need to act socially or physical labor (I'm bad at both, and I'm clumsy). It is never intellectually challenging. People like him would've fared better with a community labor which is intellectually challenging, or just some administrative job at e.g. the tax dept. Which is boring, but at least not very socially demanding. This guy lacked two things: love, understanding, and genuine interest from his parents, and two: a 'guide towards the light side of technology'. I did not have the latter (though I did have a moral compass), but I am blessed I got the former, I believe it helped with the moral compass. If he was born 20 years earlier, I am pretty sure he wouldn't have been caught with petty DDoS crimes. But his troubled relationship with his parents? It would've remained.
      - throwawaygh 5y ago
Symbiote 5y ago
"According to a review of community service orders carried out in 2007, maintenance work, gardening, cleaning and kitchen work or a combination of activities were the most common" [1] It says the Dutch system is based on the British one, where typical jobs are things like graffiti cleaning, litter picking, cleaning other outdoor areas (e.g. derelict land), assisting in a care home or home for disabled people. Some of these could be more social than Edwin would have wanted, and could also have been (relatively) physicially demanding. [1] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.632.3616&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.63...
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > things like graffiti cleaning, litter picking, cleaning other outdoor areas (e.g. derelict land), assisting in a care home or home for disabled people. These are all things that normal people volunteer to do, even spend hundreds of dollars of their own money to do (graffiti removal is not just time consuming but also expensive, particularly cleaning up trees/rocks in nature). This is exactly the type of work that community service programs should target. We're not talking about for-profit chicken farms in the US or something. > Some of these could be more social than Edwin would have wanted, and could also have been (relatively) physicially demanding. Honestly? Good. He was clearly depressed and mentally unhealthy long before his run-in with the law. Forcing some socialization and physical exercise might've saved Edwin's life. And it's pretty clear to me that he was headed nowhere good even prior to his legal troubles.
  - dv_dt 5y ago
    Mental heath services should have been provided if Edwin was depressed or mentally unhealthy. Community hours are a punishment, albeit a socially useful one, but no substitute for actual health care.
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      > Mental heath services should have been provided if Edwin was depressed or mentally unhealthy. Sure, agreed, but again... the narrative of a cold and uncaring family/milieu is just false. His mentors at school were deeply concerns. He went to rehab and they kicked him out as a lost cause. Etc. Other people cared about him, but he didn't care about him. The idea that he just needed a bit more understanding and sympathy seems extremely misguided... if anything, he had too much "soft love". If I were the judge, in his case, I would've strongly insisted on community service. Would it have helped change his mindset or at least break his death spiral? Who knows. But it had a better chance than prison. > Community hours are a punishment, albeit a socially useful one It's also a personally useful one. Seeing other people pitching in and seeing the tangible positive effects of one's actions can help some people introspect and really come to terms with the tangible negative effects of their previous actions. Not always, but sometimes.
hitekker 5y ago
The people around him tried to help him and he scorned them, time and time again. > With his parents’ consent, in the summer of 2011 Edwin transferred to a computing course at Zadkine College in Rotterdam, where students were given more freedom and could work independently on projects. And later on in the paragraph you trimmed: > Edwin was delusional by this point, and took exception to everything. To his parents, the situation seemed hopeless. Even professionals at the rehabilitation clinic where he was admitted, De Bouman in Rotterdam, sent him packing after a week, saying his behaviour made him impossible. More to the point, the kid needed discipline, not "guidance" or "encouragement". His parents, the school systems, tried being supportive for years. They tried being nice and letting him use his computer; a substance he relentlessly abused and became hopelessly addicted to. Perhaps the easiest, earliest intervention for that digital addiction was to cut him off the "drug" and maybe put him through psychiatric care. Sadly, our modern society thinks "strict" means "abusive". To discourage an individual is seen as affront to common decency, an attack on the individual's sacred rights. So the kid never got the wake-up call he sorely needed; he just fell through the cracks of a modern, individualist ideology called hackerdom. Now we're here in the aftermath, in a forum dedicated to hackerdom, trying to ignore the same cracks in our own beliefs by pinning all the blame on his parents.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  It's easy to say that the path they didn't take would have lead to success, and if they had taken that path, then it still would be easy to say that the path they hadn't taken would have lead to success.
  - hitekker 5y ago
    It's hard to question your own identity. If this article had described a social media addiction, a gaming addiction, or any kind of digital addiction that did not involve the word "hacking", I think we would be a lot less ambivalent and much more certain about the roads not taken. Compare the discussions on the first two topics… https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536577&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1168473600&page=0&prefix=true&query=social%20media%20addiction&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536577&dateRange=custom&... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536625&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1200009600&page=0&prefix=true&query=gaming%20addiction&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536625&dateRange=custom&... … to the topics on "hacking addiction" or "hackers addiction" or "hackers addict": https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536625&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1200009600&page=0&prefix=true&query=hacking%20addiction&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536625&dateRange=custom&... As it turns out, only one article on HN is about hacking addiction and its description predicts the behavior of the young man described in the article: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Sv8IHkBtBEXjSW7WktEYg4EbAUHtVyXIZBrAGD3WR5Y/preview?slide=id.p https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Sv8IHkBtBEXjSW7WktEY... The claims of the ex-hacker corresponds well with this article too: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37752800 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37752800
exporectomy 5y ago
I'd say the biggest neglect was not being touched by his mother as a baby. That kind of invisible neglect of babies is perhaps the worst kind of child abuse. They have no memory of what happened or why they're screwed but they're emotionally damaged for life. They can't even get understanding from others by saying they were beaten or raped or whatever. It's seen by people as not "real" abuse or not even known at all by anyone except the parent.
- ur-whale 5y ago
  > I'd say the biggest neglect was not being touched by his mother as a baby. I have heard of this multiple times, mostly in social conversations. It's likely not great not being touched as a baby, but I wonder if there's is actual science around the topic? For example, there's bound to be some nurture vs nature aspect to this.
  - tdrdt 5y ago
    The only experiment is Frederick's experiment. This was a very long time ago but I can imagine nobody does want to repeat this experiment.
    - ur-whale 5y ago
      > The only experiment is Frederick's experiment. Wasn't thinking of experiments (obviously), but rather data collected in the population on unfortunate but existing cases to try and correlate lack of affection as a baby with specific behaviors as an adult. [EDIT]: btw, thanks for the pointer, I had never heard of Frederick's experiment [1] [1] https://signsofthetimes.org.au/2018/08/fredericks-experiment/ https://signsofthetimes.org.au/2018/08/fredericks-experiment...
      - FDSGSG 5y ago
        This might be obvious, but despite what the article claims those children didn't "literally die for want of touch". This is not a real thing that happens.
ur-whale 5y ago
> How could it be worse than doing time? 1. "Doing time" in the US system and in the NL system are two vastly different propositions. 2. For some people, being isolated is a reward in and of itself.
sandworm101 5y ago
>> How could it be worse than doing time? Ask his lawyer. It is likely not a matter of which is better or worse punishment. It is a matter of risk, risk that one punishment will spin off into others. Someone out on community service, effectively parole, can get in trouble for all sorts of minor things (ie not showing up for work). A kid like this on community service will likely break some rule, resulting in further punishments. Jail time is not only shorter but places less responsibility on the individual. His lawyer might therefor have suggested, given the high likelihood of him breaking rules on community work, that jail time was the safer option.

Idesmi 5y ago

He was abandoned by his biological parents first, and then by the foster ones too. > As Edwin stood on his doorstep, Ruud turned him away with a heavy heart. > “Come on,” Edwin pleaded. But Ruud was at the end of his tether. “We can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry.” > Edwin left with a backpack. His parents had no idea where he’d go.

scotty79 5y ago

> What did the service entail? How could it be worse than doing time? I'm assuming it wasn't USA prison. So doing involuntary labor might be worse than just being locked away. Netherlands has very civilized prisons.

SwanRonson 5y ago
Community service usually isn’t that bad, people volunteer to do it all of the time. Just from what I read in the story, it seemed Edwin was more inclined to want to stay inside than interact with others in person. I also assume the exchange rate between community service and jail time is reasonable. I think in his eyes the extra time was a painless and quicker way to pay his debt.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  I almost wonder if it would've been more humane to force him to do the community service. Edwin was definitely clinically depressed even before his run-in with the law. When I go through bouts of depression, I also get introverted and have trouble forcing myself to interact with folks IRL. Volunteering at schools and in nature (trail work) forces social interaction and physical exercise, both of which help me break out of the depressive state. I sort of impose community service on myself when I feel my mental state slipping. Everyone is different, of course, but forcing Edwin to do something physical and social outdoors for a few months might well have saved his life.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    He was offered a choice. Forcing someone to do community service, ugh. Its tough work, IMO, because you do what other people don't want to do, and you need to act socially or physical labor (I'm bad at both, and I'm clumsy). It is never intellectually challenging. People like him would've fared better with a community labor which is intellectually challenging, or just some administrative job at e.g. the tax dept. Which is boring, but at least not very socially demanding. This guy lacked two things: love, understanding, and genuine interest from his parents, and two: a 'guide towards the light side of technology'. I did not have the latter (though I did have a moral compass), but I am blessed I got the former, I believe it helped with the moral compass. If he was born 20 years earlier, I am pretty sure he wouldn't have been caught with petty DDoS crimes. But his troubled relationship with his parents? It would've remained.
    - throwawaygh 5y ago

Symbiote 5y ago

"According to a review of community service orders carried out in 2007, maintenance work, gardening, cleaning and kitchen work or a combination of activities were the most common" [1] It says the Dutch system is based on the British one, where typical jobs are things like graffiti cleaning, litter picking, cleaning other outdoor areas (e.g. derelict land), assisting in a care home or home for disabled people. Some of these could be more social than Edwin would have wanted, and could also have been (relatively) physicially demanding. [1] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.632.3616&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.63...

throwawaygh 5y ago
> things like graffiti cleaning, litter picking, cleaning other outdoor areas (e.g. derelict land), assisting in a care home or home for disabled people. These are all things that normal people volunteer to do, even spend hundreds of dollars of their own money to do (graffiti removal is not just time consuming but also expensive, particularly cleaning up trees/rocks in nature). This is exactly the type of work that community service programs should target. We're not talking about for-profit chicken farms in the US or something. > Some of these could be more social than Edwin would have wanted, and could also have been (relatively) physicially demanding. Honestly? Good. He was clearly depressed and mentally unhealthy long before his run-in with the law. Forcing some socialization and physical exercise might've saved Edwin's life. And it's pretty clear to me that he was headed nowhere good even prior to his legal troubles.
- dv_dt 5y ago
  Mental heath services should have been provided if Edwin was depressed or mentally unhealthy. Community hours are a punishment, albeit a socially useful one, but no substitute for actual health care.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    > Mental heath services should have been provided if Edwin was depressed or mentally unhealthy. Sure, agreed, but again... the narrative of a cold and uncaring family/milieu is just false. His mentors at school were deeply concerns. He went to rehab and they kicked him out as a lost cause. Etc. Other people cared about him, but he didn't care about him. The idea that he just needed a bit more understanding and sympathy seems extremely misguided... if anything, he had too much "soft love". If I were the judge, in his case, I would've strongly insisted on community service. Would it have helped change his mindset or at least break his death spiral? Who knows. But it had a better chance than prison. > Community hours are a punishment, albeit a socially useful one It's also a personally useful one. Seeing other people pitching in and seeing the tangible positive effects of one's actions can help some people introspect and really come to terms with the tangible negative effects of their previous actions. Not always, but sometimes.

hitekker 5y ago

The people around him tried to help him and he scorned them, time and time again. > With his parents’ consent, in the summer of 2011 Edwin transferred to a computing course at Zadkine College in Rotterdam, where students were given more freedom and could work independently on projects. And later on in the paragraph you trimmed: > Edwin was delusional by this point, and took exception to everything. To his parents, the situation seemed hopeless. Even professionals at the rehabilitation clinic where he was admitted, De Bouman in Rotterdam, sent him packing after a week, saying his behaviour made him impossible. More to the point, the kid needed discipline, not "guidance" or "encouragement". His parents, the school systems, tried being supportive for years. They tried being nice and letting him use his computer; a substance he relentlessly abused and became hopelessly addicted to. Perhaps the easiest, earliest intervention for that digital addiction was to cut him off the "drug" and maybe put him through psychiatric care. Sadly, our modern society thinks "strict" means "abusive". To discourage an individual is seen as affront to common decency, an attack on the individual's sacred rights. So the kid never got the wake-up call he sorely needed; he just fell through the cracks of a modern, individualist ideology called hackerdom. Now we're here in the aftermath, in a forum dedicated to hackerdom, trying to ignore the same cracks in our own beliefs by pinning all the blame on his parents.

whatshisface 5y ago
It's easy to say that the path they didn't take would have lead to success, and if they had taken that path, then it still would be easy to say that the path they hadn't taken would have lead to success.
- hitekker 5y ago
  It's hard to question your own identity. If this article had described a social media addiction, a gaming addiction, or any kind of digital addiction that did not involve the word "hacking", I think we would be a lot less ambivalent and much more certain about the roads not taken. Compare the discussions on the first two topics… https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536577&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1168473600&page=0&prefix=true&query=social%20media%20addiction&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536577&dateRange=custom&... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536625&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1200009600&page=0&prefix=true&query=gaming%20addiction&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536625&dateRange=custom&... … to the topics on "hacking addiction" or "hackers addiction" or "hackers addict": https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536625&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1200009600&page=0&prefix=true&query=hacking%20addiction&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536625&dateRange=custom&... As it turns out, only one article on HN is about hacking addiction and its description predicts the behavior of the young man described in the article: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Sv8IHkBtBEXjSW7WktEYg4EbAUHtVyXIZBrAGD3WR5Y/preview?slide=id.p https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Sv8IHkBtBEXjSW7WktEY... The claims of the ex-hacker corresponds well with this article too: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37752800 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37752800

exporectomy 5y ago

I'd say the biggest neglect was not being touched by his mother as a baby. That kind of invisible neglect of babies is perhaps the worst kind of child abuse. They have no memory of what happened or why they're screwed but they're emotionally damaged for life. They can't even get understanding from others by saying they were beaten or raped or whatever. It's seen by people as not "real" abuse or not even known at all by anyone except the parent.

ur-whale 5y ago
> I'd say the biggest neglect was not being touched by his mother as a baby. I have heard of this multiple times, mostly in social conversations. It's likely not great not being touched as a baby, but I wonder if there's is actual science around the topic? For example, there's bound to be some nurture vs nature aspect to this.
- tdrdt 5y ago
  The only experiment is Frederick's experiment. This was a very long time ago but I can imagine nobody does want to repeat this experiment.
  - ur-whale 5y ago
    > The only experiment is Frederick's experiment. Wasn't thinking of experiments (obviously), but rather data collected in the population on unfortunate but existing cases to try and correlate lack of affection as a baby with specific behaviors as an adult. [EDIT]: btw, thanks for the pointer, I had never heard of Frederick's experiment [1] [1] https://signsofthetimes.org.au/2018/08/fredericks-experiment/ https://signsofthetimes.org.au/2018/08/fredericks-experiment...
    - FDSGSG 5y ago
      This might be obvious, but despite what the article claims those children didn't "literally die for want of touch". This is not a real thing that happens.

ur-whale 5y ago

> How could it be worse than doing time? 1. "Doing time" in the US system and in the NL system are two vastly different propositions. 2. For some people, being isolated is a reward in and of itself.

sandworm101 5y ago

>> How could it be worse than doing time? Ask his lawyer. It is likely not a matter of which is better or worse punishment. It is a matter of risk, risk that one punishment will spin off into others. Someone out on community service, effectively parole, can get in trouble for all sorts of minor things (ie not showing up for work). A kid like this on community service will likely break some rule, resulting in further punishments. Jail time is not only shorter but places less responsibility on the individual. His lawyer might therefor have suggested, given the high likelihood of him breaking rules on community work, that jail time was the safer option.