Extradite them to another 5 Eyes country like the UK? They absolutely would.
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That is really hard to say. Just because he is speaking and reasoning well (to you) doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have significant challenges in other areas. For example, lack of emotional processing, social cognition, executive functioning, etc could all hurt him if he goes to trial. That being said, I think he is competent to stand trial.
He’s said he’ll kill himself if sentenced to time in a US prison.
I don’t doubt that time in an American prison would be traumatic for him, but if “I’ll kill myself if you have me stand trial in another country!” is a way to avoid extradition, well, no one’s going to be extradited for anything any time soon.
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Oops haha. Thats what I get for not rereading.
As an autistic person, this comment just makes me cringe. It’s not as if there’s one form of autism where one is totally incommunicado and rocking in the corner in a mental institution somewhere, and another for people who are computer geeks who are socially awkward but otherwise okay. There are a lot of points in between. Moreover, one person’s skill set can have really unusual peaks and valleys… not really any pattern to them, and oftentimes affecting areas that most people take for granted. Functioning levels also fluctuate wildly from day to day.
You can’t really say that he’s a computer geek but otherwise okay if you don’t have specific information about him to back it up. I suppose it’s possible, but likely not. Also, saying there’s no slowdown in mental development is just wrong. Of course there’s a slowdown in mental development. It just might not be in a way that will show up on an IQ test.
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I think the distinction is important, because while aspergers is an autism spectrum disorder and referred to as autistic, it is not autism. Autism is a separate disorder on the same spectrum, and it requires the presence of learning and/or mental disabilities that would certainly be brought into play when establishing whether or not he would be able to stand trial, which would take place before an extradition hearing.
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My first thought was, “I thought Gary McKinnon’s case was done with?”.
I guess it is? But there’s another autistic british hacker it seems.
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Sorry about that; I was just trying to condense the wikipedia page’s information as much as I could. I suppose I may have gotten a bit caught in swapping terms around though: the specific term for what I said as slowdown of mental development was only a one word change: DSM says cognitive development vs social development. I thought that my mention of the slowed social ability made the distinction clear.
Additionally, wrt the first sentence in your second paragraph, I was trying to provide a broad view, not talking about him specifically: you’re right in that there’s no way I can reasonably talk about his social and technical abilities without meeting him, much less do any sort of diagnosis, which would require me to be trained in such things.
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Go to prison, get diagnosed with Alzheimers disease, get released on compassionate grounds after a few months, get better. Simple.
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I don’t think his autism is relevant at all.
We grant asylum to people who are in danger of torture or death. Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits torture, and “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
The US prison system regularly uses torture as a compliance mechanism. There are many documented cases of confessions made under torture in the US legal system.
There is no reason to extradite anyone, autism or not, to the US. Try him in the UK.
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You hit the mark in your post. I’m the father of a son with Aspergers and I found their use of this condition as a reason for refusing extradition to be sadly damaging to the cause of helping these children. They are smart, capable, intelligent kids who DO know right from wrong and are capable of making those types of value judgements. Where they suffer is in picking up on the physical and emotional cues that the rest of us understand so much more easily, so that their reactions to situations are often off target and inappropriate. They are socially awkward, not mentally incapacitated. I always say my son’s sense of humor is underdeveloped, he doesn’t always understand irony/sarcasm and his idea of a funny joke is farting (but then, most 14 year old boys probably would agree with that). But he damn well knows if he commits a crime, he’d be guilty and could go to jail, and that’s the real key for me. So when I see “Autism” in the headline, then I read its Aspergers, I sigh and shake my head because it’s a gross misrepresentation of the condition.
That said, I think the judge’s comment that mental health facilities in American jails are adequate is GROSSLY uninformed. Its going to vary wildly and be based entirely on where he ends up. And jail may not be the most appropriate place for this person based on their crimes and who they are, but we are nothing if not a “one size fits all people” solution provider in most aspects of our society, which keeps costs lower but so often fails a large percentage of our citizens when it comes to education, criminal justice, and other important aspects of our lives.
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I hadn’t looked at that way. Good thing IANAL.
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He’s white, I doubt they will torture him.
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Oh, prison is hard? Then don’t do something that might put you there.
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solitary confinement is widely regarded as torture and afaik common(ish) in US prisons
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My point was that although it’s possible that he’s just a socially awkward computer geek, it’s probably far deeper than that. For all we know, he might be totally unable to care for himself due to deficits in executive functioning. He could have severe learning disabilities or God knows what other comorbid factors.
That being said, I do think he is competent to stand trial, although trial will affect him more adversely than someone who isn’t on the autism spectrum.
US prison won’t be a good place for him, because it isn’t a good place for anybody.
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“I accept Mr Love suffers from both physical and mental health issues but I have found the medical facilities in the United States prison estate … are such that I can be satisfied his needs will be comprehensively met by the U.S. authorities,” judge Nina Tempia said in her ruling.
I would mind being in the U.S. Nina’s referencing somewhat less than the U.S. I’m actually in.
The way we prosecute “hacking” crimes in the U.S. is absurdly disproportionate. If they said he caused “millions of dollars’ worth of damage,” it’s just as likely he caused zero dollars worth of damage and [pick a number between 1 and 10] people had to work some overtime to turn on security features they should have been using from day one.
Sending someone to prison for the rest of their life because they took advantage of someone else not patching or not turning on the recommended security functions …
It’s not clear to me exactly what they think he’s done but a quick glance at the reporting for the Anonymous group he was a part of doesn’t lead me to believe his group did much actual sabotage.
There’s a better case for his extradition being denied due to mental health issues than this article makes out. At least according to wikipedia:
After dropping out of sixth form college and working in a turkey plant,[1] Love applied for a Finnish passport (his mother is Finnish), and then served in the Finnish army for one year;[1] he has dual citizenship of the United Kingdom and Finland.[9] After that, he studied and dropped out of Nottingham University in his second term after a physical and mental collapse, and at the Glasgow University in Scotland, but dropped out in his second year, again for health reasons.[10][11] He was part of the 2011 Hetherington House Occupation, a student protest at Glasgow University.[12]
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will be comprehensively met by the U.S. authorities
I couldn’t continue reading the article for 2-3 minutes from laughing
have the judge not read the many cases of disabled beating at USA airports by TSA ?
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Definite agreement on this based on what we know about him. I may be wrong but the fact that he’s specifically said to have Asperger’s means that he’s not in the case of your first paragraph, so I’m not worried about that: part of the definition of Asperger’s is that you function highly enough to get by, or at least that’s part of how I interpret the definitions I see.
I’ve met many people who have Asperger’s, and almost all of them have executive functioning impairments. Several have learning disabilities such as dyscalculia. Some are computer geeks, but most aren’t.
Judging from what we know about Lauri Love’s background, he has more significant problems than being a shy geek.
Although I don’t have Asperger’s, I am on the autism spectrum. I was diagnosed with classic autism in the early 1980s. This is not my first trip to the autism rodeo. This is something I understand first hand because I’ve had to. I didn’t just read about it on the Internet, I don’t know so-and-so’s kid who has it, and I’m not just guesstimating. So please stop arguing with me about this. It’s like arguing with a Chinese person about China because you ate fried rice once.
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