British lad to be extradited to US for hacking, this is so wrong!

It's remarkable how disproportionate the punishments for these crimes tend to be. "Up to 99 years" they say - even if that's an exaggeration, the actual figure can't be anything but excessive. These policies are so wrong-headed they're unbelievable. The US shouldn't get to publicly whine about how it's been "embarrassed" and use that as justification for destroying a man's life - that's a far worse crime than anything this poor chap did.

A proportionate punishment might be to be to reveal what means were used, to assist in fixing the problem (if wanted), and to do some community service. Merely hacking something is barely a crime at all, and consequentially there have been only benefits: the US has been able to discover and fix a serious security hole before it was hacked by someone who didn't mean well, like the Chinese. They should thank this guy. Man, the US really likes to screw people over.

I agree very much so. It's so unfortunate to see pettiness destroy people's lives this way. They balloon their national ego showcasing themselves as all-powerful and invulnerable, but then at every opportunity reveal themselves as fragile enough to be seemingly imperiled by a single guy working alone without malice from his bedroom thousands of miles away. One would think they'd benefit from a new PR coordinator.

There's a proper way to do that involving not doing anything with access, and providing detailed tip to the organisation concerned either for reward or anonymously; stealing information and broadcasting it to the world isn't included.

The FBI permit submissions of security flaws (information that could only be obtained by illegal investigations) without threat of prosecution? If that's true then that's interesting and unexpected. I've so far been under the impression that if they find out you've so much as touched anything you weren't supposed to, they'll enthusiastically rip you away from your life and family with the full force of the US judicial system leveraged to destroy every hope and dream you ever had. Of course, I'd rather be wrong about that.

I didn't read any information about this man stealing information or broadcasting it to the world - my comments have been directed at the act of gaining access to systems rather than distributing sensitive information. If there's more information I should read about this case than the BBC provided then I'll read up further.

I'm not sure on FBI (couldn't find anything based on quick search) but DoD definitely rewards that responsible disclosure, NASA apparently does it too so it'd be quite strange if FBI went a different and rather idiotic way. If this was case of responsible disclosure getting attacked, I'd definitely be in favor of the guy - government should establish immunity for research based computer attacks so if you didn't change anything and responsibly disclose vulnerability, it shouldn't be cause for civil or criminal action but that's not really what happened in this case.

He did steal and distribute information like phone numbers, card numbers etc (or atleast is accused of doing so).

From your uninformed comments it seems nothing rattles around in yours.


Okay kid - I'm not only old enough to be your dad I probably have you by 10 inches in height and 10 stone in weight. Keep the fantasy going petal.

Lol, if this was the EU, you'd be slavering about it being undemocratic, against British traditions, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

Do you have an actual argument here?

There is a huge difference between an agreement to send criminals to a country to stand trial and a political union that dilutes the power a country has before destroying the country and taking over

I assume you are against the European Arrest Warrant?