3 ms·

The way this guy has been treated for the past six years is disgusting. Sure he committed a crime, but he is obviously a very capable guy with talents that the

The way this guy has been treated for the past six years is disgusting. Sure he committed a crime, but he is obviously a very capable guy with talents that the UK & US governments could benefit from. What Gary did was victimless, it's not like he stole files and tried selling them nor passing them to a third party who could have done damage. This is the backwards way the world works. If I were the US or UK Government I would be offering this guy a job in a cyber crimes division and give him the task of security testing Government infrastructure, there aren't many people who can say they've successful breached a secure US network and been able to access classified documents.

kahawe 14y ago
> The way this guy has been treated for the past six years is disgusting Even more so in light of what he actually did: poke around on systems with no password protection - yet they act as if he was an insanely skilled, extremely-dangerous super-hacker who is just a few mouse clicks away of blowing up nuclear reactors when actually all he did was catching them with all their pants down. Really, "biggest military computer hack of all time"? It is pathetic.
mjwalshe 14y ago
Not as disgusting as the US refusing to extradie IRA suspects with very striong eveidence!
Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
It's not entirely victimless. The US tax payer had to stump up cash for a whole bunch of investigation into what had happened, what had been compromised and so on. Now, you can make a good argument that it actually made them pull their collective finger out and sort some stuff out that really needed sorting out, and that's probably true, but it's also probably true that having to do it in the way that they did (in response to an attack) cost more and was more disruptive than it would otherwise have been, and came with a larger bill as a result. It's easy to think of attacks on the government as victimless but ultimately it all comes back to the citizens of that country (in the same way insurance fraud isn't victimless, the victims are those whose pensions are invested in the firms and those who have to pay the increased premiums that result). My reading of it is that from a legal point of view it's a fair cop (both in terms of the crime and the extradition). The issue is that the American's seem to have made it clear that they don't give a toss about his Aspergers and the complications that it presents and that's where the calls for leniency and not extraditing him become justified.
- meaty 14y ago
  Personally, I think the citizens should pay for the cock ups of their elected representatives and their public servants. Pointing fingers at this guy is all fine and that, but no-one dares mention the bus size hole they left in their security infrastructure as that would be bad for business...
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    Of course, who else is going to pick up the bill? I'm really just disputing the term victimless - it implies that no-one suffers which rather skews how it's seen and isn't the case. We can debate your suggestion that they should be victims but that doesn't change the fact that they are victims.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- DigitalSea 14y ago
  So what you're saying is that because this guy found a security hole and used it to access classified material looking for UFO's he should be thrown into jail for sixty years because he cost tax payers money cleaning up the mess and investigating what happened? I am not so sure I agree with that. He definitely committed a crime, but not a crime worthy of sixty years imprisonment, perhaps 2 or 3 years in minimum security maximum.

kahawe 14y ago

> The way this guy has been treated for the past six years is disgusting Even more so in light of what he actually did: poke around on systems with no password protection - yet they act as if he was an insanely skilled, extremely-dangerous super-hacker who is just a few mouse clicks away of blowing up nuclear reactors when actually all he did was catching them with all their pants down. Really, "biggest military computer hack of all time"? It is pathetic.

mjwalshe 14y ago

Not as disgusting as the US refusing to extradie IRA suspects with very striong eveidence!

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago

It's not entirely victimless. The US tax payer had to stump up cash for a whole bunch of investigation into what had happened, what had been compromised and so on. Now, you can make a good argument that it actually made them pull their collective finger out and sort some stuff out that really needed sorting out, and that's probably true, but it's also probably true that having to do it in the way that they did (in response to an attack) cost more and was more disruptive than it would otherwise have been, and came with a larger bill as a result. It's easy to think of attacks on the government as victimless but ultimately it all comes back to the citizens of that country (in the same way insurance fraud isn't victimless, the victims are those whose pensions are invested in the firms and those who have to pay the increased premiums that result). My reading of it is that from a legal point of view it's a fair cop (both in terms of the crime and the extradition). The issue is that the American's seem to have made it clear that they don't give a toss about his Aspergers and the complications that it presents and that's where the calls for leniency and not extraditing him become justified.

meaty 14y ago
Personally, I think the citizens should pay for the cock ups of their elected representatives and their public servants. Pointing fingers at this guy is all fine and that, but no-one dares mention the bus size hole they left in their security infrastructure as that would be bad for business...
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  Of course, who else is going to pick up the bill? I'm really just disputing the term victimless - it implies that no-one suffers which rather skews how it's seen and isn't the case. We can debate your suggestion that they should be victims but that doesn't change the fact that they are victims.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
DigitalSea 14y ago
So what you're saying is that because this guy found a security hole and used it to access classified material looking for UFO's he should be thrown into jail for sixty years because he cost tax payers money cleaning up the mess and investigating what happened? I am not so sure I agree with that. He definitely committed a crime, but not a crime worthy of sixty years imprisonment, perhaps 2 or 3 years in minimum security maximum.