Published on 12, July, 2020
I have noticed an increase in the media and defence lawyers using ASD as an excuse for those offenders that commit the most serious of crimes.
I feel the only mental health defence that is permittable is when you are deemed by law to be Criminally Insane.
It really pisses me off when the media say the preprtator is a LONER or has ASD.
I am a loner and have been all my life and recently diagnosed as Austistic, I still knew right from wrong.
I think its offensive to tag ASD to these criminals as us all get tarred with the same brush and people will worry if we are potential killers because of our ASD.
What are your thoughts? Could the NAS not contact the media and tell them to stop saying the preprtator is on the spectrum or ASD?.
I always thought about that Gary McKinnon case and whether it was a fair defence to use autism as the reason he didn't see any harm in what he did and therefore shouldn't be locked up. (Hacking to find out if there are aliens )
I'm really not sure, while theres obvious moral code and distinction between right and wrong, i certainly find some laws and rules arbitrary, ones that don't cause harm mainly or are very many made in their origin (like double yellow lines on roads!) but still follow them as although they may seem questionable, they are what keeps some form of order in society.
I think the Pentagon would of been better off employing him to conduct safety tests on their systems than prosecuting him. But then the US [in]justice system routinely goes for the most vulnerable and easiest targets possible, they seem to have no compassion or understanding for people like McKinnon and they try children as adults for serious crimes. It all seems very medieval and assumes that everybody knows absolute rights from wrongs with no grey areas.
Really no ... the guy was an idiot. The only really smart thing he did was use a hacked intermediate computer to try and hide his tracks and that's what got him caught. MI5 had already compromised the computer he was using because a load of (much better, more malicious) hackers were using it. Most of those hackers were hacking banks or big companies but the companies droped those charges. And US / MI5 wanted to make an example of someone.
Literally all he did was write a program to try the default password / admin acount name on a load of computers at the pentagon because he noticed they never changed them and they were all the same.
I expect some of the good hackers they caught did end up getting hired, by big companies maybe, but McKinnon was a noob not worth hiring. So they chose him to make an example out of.