An appalling discharge without conviction
Some may disagree with me, but I am appalled that Owen Thor Walker has been discharged without conviction for his involvement in bot nets.
There is an argument that giving the young offender a dressing down and “harnessing his powers for good” is the sensible thing to do. I agree, this is often the case.
But in this case I think his offending was very different to say the person who hacks a few institutions just for the challenge of it. He spent two years helping run bot nets, and made $40,000 doing it. And he wasn’t conned into doing this by someone else. He in fact recruited others to help him. This was not just a kid having some fun. It was serious criminal activity. Bot Nets are arguably the biggest problem on the Internet – they are used for phishing, spamming, DOS attacks etc.
I also am skeptical of the line that he has such superior skills to everyone else, he must be hired by the “good guys” or they will be at a disadvantage. The NZ technical community alone probably has hundreds (or more) of people who would be capable of setting up and running a sophisticated bot net operation. They just choose not to take part in criminal activities. I don’t think you reward someone for having no ethics.
Now I am not arguing Walker should have been sent to jail. That would be silly. And I am mindful he is autistic. But a discharge without conviction should (in my books) be used for extremely minor criminal cases like shoplifting or say $200 of taxi chit fraud. This was not a minor case of offending. It was two years of dedicated offending where he made lots of money, he recruited others to help, and he caused damage to over one million people.
We now have clean slate legislation. If he stayed clean for seven years his conviction would be wiped effectively.
My concern is not Walker per se, but the signal it sends out to the cyber-criminals that running Bot Nets and phishing etc are not real crimes, and if you do them you’ll just get told off. That is what appals me.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:05 am
I agree. He should have been charged. Crime is crime, irrespective of how much intelligence applied to it. As you point out, the precedent is a big concern.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Funnily enough, Michael Laws was also discharged without conviction this week for contempt. Two flagrant miscarriages of justice in one week….
July 16th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Good god David, you would want him to get the same punishment some
labourer would get ?
That is not on, a labourer would never have any need to travel would he ?
July 16th, 2008 at 8:24 am
There is no law enforcement in New Zealand. Unless you’re “speeding” or driving and talking on your cellphone. Real crime? Forget it. This cowardly thieving smug little scumbag just got the message that a failing justice system persistently sends to thousands of others like him- ‘commit the crime, you won’t do any time.’
Mr. Farrar is right, this dirtbag isn’t especially clever or skilled. He’s just immoral narcissistic lowlife who, because the judge failed to give him the lesson he should have, will probably be no good to anyone the whole of his life. Remember the guy who was caned in Singapore for vandalizing cars? Just what this little dirtbag needs.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:30 am
I am not big on second guessing court decisions as the media seldom, if ever, give all the story and I was not there. That said I must admit to a little surprise at this decision particularly, as DPF noted, due to the deterrence factor required. Indeed if you stole $40k you would likely end up in prison (or home D at best).
Personally I am still regard spamming/hacking as crimes worthy of an exception to my general opposition to the death penalty…
July 16th, 2008 at 8:32 am
disagree. he is both of these things, but he lacks the maturity and ethical foundation required to use those attributes for good.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Agree with you DPF..
It has annoyed me for a long time the utter BS out there that these ‘hackers’ are clever little geniuses. The REAL computer professionals could hack them sideways and piss all over them… but they don’t wreck things, they build things and not knowing the difference is not being able to tell the difference between shit and clay.
I would make an analog between street gangs vs professional soldiers.
I guess the public believe what they see in the movies.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Mr. Farrar is right, this dirtbag isn’t especially clever or skilled. He’s just immoral narcissistic lowlife
RB, in Klarke’s socialist economy, the ability to be an immoral scumbag is considered the most important skill, to be lavishly rewarded with other people’s money. Perhaps this fellow has been pipped for a job in the PM’s office, or the Labour Party’s election campaign?
July 16th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Televisions coverage of this last night was pathetic, there was no mention of the fact that this little shit had made $40,000 from his crime.
Walker seemed to treat the whole court appearance as a joke and was filmed smirking and grinning all the way thorough and he positively beamed when the judge said that he was a “very bright young man”.
Even the woman with him outside the court (who I can only assume to be his mother) seemed to treat the whole thing as a joke.
The little shit should have been convicted of his crime and fined at a level at least the equivalent of what he made from his activities.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Agree with all of the above. It seems to send the wrong message- that hacking and cyber vandalism is ok??
July 16th, 2008 at 8:51 am
What’s so hard about creating a bot net? The hacker forums spell it out to anyone with a scattering of computer knowledge and the ethics of a mud puddle.
Don’t glorify hackers. Like with any occupation, most are just drones following a pre-defined script.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:54 am
“Even the woman with him outside the court (who I can only assume to be his mother) seemed to treat the whole thing as a joke.”
There’s usually some kind of fawning maternal figure dominating the existence of all of these narcissistic psychopaths. Some sappy brainless immature woman with maybe one kid or two kids and no husband (or a downtrodden excuse for a husband) and completely devoid of the ability to impart any sense of self discipline and responsibility to her offspring. Then they go on about there being a shortage of real men. Its their own damn fault.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Congratulations to the police I say. They have evidently turned their vast resources and energies to breaking this particular butterfly on the wheel. The judge showed leniency, but the main thing is that the police were able to bring their technical knowledge and expertise to nip this rather significant crime in the bud.
But ask them to locate who sent some stolen emails from the Nats, and which asisted in bringing down the Leader of the Opposition, and suddenly they are Inspector Clouseau.
“It’s just too hard!” they whimper. “We can’t seem to twace the villain!” they cry “The cwime was just too sophisticated for poor wittle Us!” they moan.
And justice pwevails.
I mean, come on people! Is it Friday already?
July 16th, 2008 at 8:58 am
he only made 40 grand in 2 years????
July 16th, 2008 at 8:58 am
At the very least he should have been told by the judge to get an effing haircut!
July 16th, 2008 at 9:01 am
the country will run out of wet bus tickets soon.
July 16th, 2008 at 9:02 am
I guess my read is if someone did a pyramid scheme & cleared 40k and impacted large numbers of people as a society we’d expect a decent sentence & I don’t really see the difference here, to me he should have got jail time, not serious, but effective ( actually served ) of a month in a low security prison seems reasonable, the message now is go crazy on the net & we’ll let you off, which is not a great message.
July 16th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Amazing what a BotNet, some emails off a Parliamentary server and dirt on the entire Labour Party and Police can get you in the justice system these days……
July 16th, 2008 at 9:10 am
“Perhaps this fellow has been pipped for a job in the PM’s office,”
Queer too is he??
(Joke Mr. Farrar.)
July 16th, 2008 at 9:10 am
DPF said…
I also am skeptical of the line that he has such superior skills to everyone else, he must be hired by the “good guys” or they will be at a disadvantage.
I agree here DPF, Owen Thor Walker is just another script kiddie. I believe that the sites he hacked into aren’t high security places at all and the IT illiterate Herald reporter went along to praise him by stating that Owen walked free from the High Court in Hamilton with the prospect of a career with the NZ Police or an overseas computer company before him.
The use & adoption of Machine Learning for computer network intrusion detection is becoming the norm of today and any software system that doesn’t adopt machine would be vulnerable to attack. The beauty of machine learning is its adaptability in real-time (ie, incremental learning), whereby it learns data & patterns on the fly by updating itself in real-time. There is nothing 100% proof in life, however machine learning’s ability to block intrusion is very very high, and hackers who can beat & breach any network with machine learning algorithms detection capabilities are themselves experts in machine learnings, because to beat it, you have to understand what are the weaknesses of those machine learning algorithms. Machine learnings is not something easily taught or easily understood by hackers, because the subject is quite complex (mathematically) and I doubt that Owen Thor Walker’s understanding of adaptive algorithms is up to it.
The funny thing about the Herald article this morning on Owen Thor Walker, is the report that the National manager of the Police’s e-crime laboratory Maarten Kleinjtes said Walker had some unique ability and was at the top of his field and he has potential to do well on the right side of the law. This is a concern, because either Maarten Kleinjtes doesn’t know state-of-the-art technology as machine learning where he should be concentrating & recruiting from that field (perhaps from the Waikato University Machine Learning Group) rather than hiring script kiddies with skills that are largely irrelevant to law enforcement work. Maarten Kleinjtes should know his stuff if he is the National manager of the Police’s e-crime laboratory otherwise, I (as a taxpayer) won’t have faith in the work his lab is conducting on behalf of the NZ Police. To the best of my knowledge, that the Police’s e-crime laboratory has not adopted machine learning technology yet, unless I am wrong here that they have.
July 16th, 2008 at 9:13 am
That little shit could’ve at least gotten a haircut before his court appearance.
July 16th, 2008 at 9:23 am
It surprises me that overseas organised crime doesn’t target NZ in fast one off crimes. Maybe we have nothing to steal? The police here are just too dumb to catch them, and the justice system is too slow and weak. Crime truly does pay, that’s the message.
The kids out there doing it by the book, learning their skills without crime, learning from their mistakes, being pissed all over by a culture that hates them for things they can’t change and then being financially punished in every way possible by the government must be thinking…what the fuck am I doing here? Get into crime, kids! The government will pay for everything! Straight to the top of the class. Get noticed!
Maybe we’re all doing it wrong? If we all turn our business minds to how to rip off the country then I think we can give NZ what it wants. Drive by shootings with a .22 and a beat up old Ford? You must be kidding me. Imagine what a bit of planning could do against a police force wound up in treating everyone with cultural respect, pulling up parents for smacking and bending over the ninth floor boardroom table.
“This town deserves a better class of criminal.” Prophetic words?
July 16th, 2008 at 9:46 am
>I also am skeptical of the line that he has such superior skills to everyone else, he must be hired by the “good guys” or they will be at a disadvantage.
Which encapsulates both the myths about hacker skills:
1. They have superior technical skills.
2. They’d do well in the field of IT security.
I have some experience in this, having worked for a while as the IT security manager for an Aussie state government and having met a few of these script kiddies at conferences. I was never even slightly impressed. My best technical guys were orders of magnitude better than them. Any averagely competent programmer is likely to be better than them. Not only wouldn’t I hire one, if someone I knew hired one then they would have lost all credibility in my eyes and I’d be taking steps to ensure that our organisation wasn’t at risk through any link to or dependency on their organisation’s IT infrastructure.
July 16th, 2008 at 10:03 am
“That little shit could’ve at least gotten a haircut before his court appearance”
I think the long hair was a stroke of calculated genius by the boy. One look at his pretty locks and the Judge must of thought:
‘Omigod – he looks like a fourteen year old girl! There is no way I can send this little cutey to jail!”
He would have ended up ‘downloading’ some serious megabytes!
July 16th, 2008 at 10:14 am
running a bot net is nothing spectacular or require talent/skill. one would imagin he had no formal education on lots of fundamental subjects, operating system, data structures & algorithm, and he can’t really do anything creative. use existing tools or even modify parts of it can be done by just about any script kid.
this is a bad example for the kids, telling them you can just mess around once you get caught you become famous overnight and guilt free, and a dozen ppl will offer you 120k a year.
boo.
July 16th, 2008 at 10:21 am
I’m naturally suspicious when precedents are set like this.
Maybe they were close to cracking the hacked Don Brash emails and so I guess Hagar is about to become the new Police Commissioner?
July 16th, 2008 at 10:22 am
This guy’s name reminds me of a joke about the Greek god, Thor.
One day Thor decided he was bored with the Goddesses he was sleeping with in Heaven and came down from there to try the Earth chicks. But he had to keep his identity secret.
So the first night he was in a nightclub and was making bad attempts to pick up women without much luck. He wondered whether if he told them who he was they might be more attracted to him but chose against so.
Anyhow eventually he scored a pommy chick and took her back to his hotel where his extreme staying power and physical abilities were not lost on the lucky girl. They screwed all night and into the next day: this lady had never had anything like it and had never seen a body like Thor’s. They went for hours and hours and hours until she was physically exhausted.
Before she packed up her things to leave she went to the loo but was only there a short time before coming out of the door rather sheepishly. After that she told Thor how amazing a lover he was and how she never had anything like him before and would not likely have again, Thor decided he would tell her who he was.
He jumped up on the couch, did a muscleman double-bicep pose and shouted from the top of his voice “I am Thor!”.
The lady replied “you’re Thor? Man, I’m so fucken thore I can’t even go for a pith!”.
July 16th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Back in 1997-1999 I use to run a botnet myself. It was comprised of around 5000 machines. It was very easy to hack other computers to but the botnet program on. You don’t have to be clever now. It’s basically a package than scans IP ranges and runs dictionary attacks on the host computer. Once it gains admin access it installs its self.
We used this bot net to packet or dos other people. Back in those days it was more a experiment. I remember when I got packeted in 1998 but someone and it took out ihug for around 6 hours. It was not a crime back then by the way.
Anyway, what I am trying to say is this guy is a douche. It takes very little know how to run these things and there is no way in hell I’d give him a job.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:06 am
I blogged on the same topic this morning (and I suspect many others did as well).
What is really missing from the judges decision is a ruling that Walker not be allowed unsupervised access to computers.
Such restrictions are very common in hacking cases and, given that he allegedly can’t tell right from wrong as a symptom of his Asperger’s, one would think that the court might at least have considered the rights of the public to be protected against such people when passing down a sentence.
The court would do well that it has a dual role — to punish offenders *AND* to protect society.
The Asperger’s defense works both ways — if he can’t be held culpable because he has little ability to discern right from wrong then there’s also very little guarantee that if he’s allowed unrestricted access to computers and the Net, he won’t reoffend.
And what about the message this sends to all NZ’s other would-be hackers?
If you build a botnet that effectively steals US$20m and receive $40K for your efforts, the worst you can expect is a flood of job-offers and praise for your technical achievements.
That is wrong, just plain wrong!
July 16th, 2008 at 11:48 am
No one read the bit about
then?
July 16th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
As if… obviously Steffy, you’ve had no dealings with the reparations system, or haven’t been reading the news, or have had your head up your arse for the last ten years.
aichttp://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4198465a11.html
July 16th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
I would venture that the main reason Walker got the discharge is that the prosecution supported that course of action. You forgot to mention that, too, David.
The issue for a kid with Aspergers is less not being able to tell right from wrong than extreme naivete and a level of emotional maturity that fails to match his intellectual abilities.
I understand what you’re saying David, but I’d rather trust in a judge who has heard all the evidence and police officers who have been closely involved with Walker since the case came to light. I’ll go with that.
It’s just a shame you had to expose an 18 year-old to some of the pondlife who comment on your site.
[DPF: I was not aware that the prosecution said there should be a discharge. My disagreement is then focused at them. As I said I think this sets a bad precedent in terms of cyber crime being seen as not serious]
July 16th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
As someone else said above, it pays to apply a grain of salt whenever the media decides the courts are “wrong” because there often tend to be (shall we say) balance issues with the media. Nevertheless The tv1 breakfast show mentioned in passing that millions of dollars’ worth of damage was done and earnings lost due to the guy’s activities – cue grinning little nerd walking free from court without a care in the world.
I’m pretty left-wing normally, but somehow the idea of grinning little nerd carrying rocks, while a clique of prison guards address him as “Virgin” and order him to work faster definitely appeals!!
July 16th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Russell why follow up a valid and sensible comment with a swipe at the commentators on this site viz. DPF?
As I said before it is often not difficult to comment sensibly on Court decisions based on media commentary but it is possible to express some surprise, particularly when $40k is involved. That is a lot of money for the consequences of a conviction to outweight the cuplability of the offender. (Notwithstanding the health issues, youth and, at least, ambivalence (if not outright support) of the prosecution for a s106 discharge).
July 16th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Russell why follow up a valid and sensible comment with a swipe at the commentators on this site viz.
I think reading some of the comments answers that question quite adequately.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
That guy did get sentenced to 15 months’ jail Red (out in two?)
July 16th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
The commenter who talked about Owen Walker “smirking” on TV should have done five minutes research into autism — inappropriate emotional responses are common. I imagine that behind that smirk there was a lot of anxiety.
Redbaiter, are you auditioning for a Dirty Harry remake? “Dirtbag”. “Lowlife”. Hilarious!
July 16th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
“I think reading some of the comments answers that question quite adequately.”
It doesn’t actually. The question was “why follow up your comments with a swipe?” The question is not about the comments, or the commentors, its asking why you felt compelled to make such a remark. I reckon I know. Envy. Nasty bitter all consuming arrogant envy. Driven by a combination of the Labour Party’s rank unpoularity, the ever rising popularity of John Key and the continued popularity of Kiwiblog. Its all just got you tearing yourself to pieces.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I particularly liked the bit at 8:54am when ratbiter was saying single mothers are by definition incompetent, and this crime is all down to a lack of real male role-models like himself…
July 16th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
“That guy did get sentenced to 15 months’ jail Red (out in two?)”
Except he’s just the tip of the iceberg…
July 16th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
The question is not about the comments, or the commentors, its asking why you felt compelled to make such a remark.
And my answer was that it should be evident on reading comments from the likes of you.
Envy. Nasty bitter all consuming arrogant envy.
Yes, Red. Because what I desire more than anything is the excellent personal reputation that you enjoy.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
From the TVNZ website (http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411365/1908416):
“The hapless hacker left court lucky after the judge decided Walker’s computer hacking skills were born out of curiosity, rather than criminal intent.”
I have a real problem with this. How can he not have a “criminal intent” when he illegally compromised computers, used them to send spam as a service which earned him $40 000. He clearly had the intent to make money through means forbidden under NZ law.
If the police wanted to use him, they should have pushed for a community service sentence (hopefully a long one). This would sit far better with me than begging him to come work for them.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Anybody who doubts that the left care more for crims than victims only need read the comments of RRM and co.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Like standing infromm of the signage with the parliamentry crest on it to hide the fact that you are breaking the law Russel?
Good rep!
July 16th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
big bruv – can you read? See my 12:23pm if you really think I “care more for crims than victims”
July 16th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
“This guy’s name reminds me of a joke about the Greek god, Thor.”
Not that it matters, but Thor is a Norse god. You gotta do the right thing by thor, or risk a lightning bolt.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
More evidence to the international community that NZ is a safe haven for cyber crime.
I mean You dont even have to hack the Companies Office to get the key to a company Just send them an email and say you lost it and they will send you another.
Now you play to your hearts delight changing the company files and using the new details to set up any one of a number of cons and scams either on shore or off shore
Then you can change the details back on line. Of course the company will discover a problem when if goes to logon using the original key But Heh By then you will long gone with the loot.
Ohh And I havent covered incorporating using false identities or the recent case of the illegal immigrants from India and Pakistan who set up companies to defraud the IRD.
Its so wonderful to live in such a safe haven where identity crime is of no consquence
July 16th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Like standing infromm of the signage with the parliamentry crest on it to hide the fact that you are breaking the law Russel?
Jeebus, even McCully didn’t think of that one. Yes Murray, queer-lover that I am, I spoke at the Auckland Central Hero Debate and had my photo taken. It was good fun.
But you know what? The political editor of NBR was there too! He paid money! They’re all in on it, Murray. The Special Big Gay Slush Fund will be used to steal the election and end the family unit as we know it, and there’s not a damn thing you can do. Do you trust your friends? They might be in on it too. You can never be too paranoid, you know …
July 16th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Ahem, some of my best friends are homosexuals, but the Special Big Gay Slush Fund bought forth a mental image I’d rather not repeat. Why not call it the Big Gay Election Bank Account instead?
July 16th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
“The issue for a kid with Aspergers is less not being able to tell right from wrong than extreme naivete and a level of emotional maturity that fails to match his intellectual abilities.”
Here we go again; the eternal litany of finding excuses, ducking personal responsibility and blaming something or someone else. The trademark of the left!
We’ll never run out of do-gooders in NZ, won’t we?
July 16th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
“The issue for a kid with Aspergers is less not being able to tell right from wrong than extreme naivete and a level of emotional maturity that fails to match his intellectual abilities.”
Apart from the bit about intellectual abilities, that pretty much sums up your average socialist… maybe that’s NZ’s real problem- a mass outbreak of Aspergers.
July 16th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
“Yes, Red. Because what I desire more than anything is the excellent personal reputation that you enjoy.”
The more arrogant elitist soviet style socialists dislike me Russell, the happier I am.
July 16th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
“The issue for a kid with Aspergers is less not being able to tell right from wrong than extreme naivete and a level of emotional maturity that fails to match his intellectual abilities.”
Here we go again; the eternal litany of finding excuses, ducking personal responsibility and blaming something or someone else. The trademark of the left!
Okay, so I shouldn’t have bothered in the first place … but I know about this because both my sons are Aspergers. It’s something I deal with every day of my life. They face and overcome challenges you couldn’t conceive of, you fool.
But don’t let that bother you. Just carry on blathering the same lamebrain loser certainties to your chums. I’m sure they’re impressed.
July 16th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Aspergers is a serious condition. I don’t think its right for people who don’t understand ‘disabilities’ (for want of better word) to write them off when they have no idea of the day to day impact disabilities have on people.
I lived with an undiagnosed (until the age of 29) serious learning disability and I have a daily struggle to make people understand how it makes my life difficult, so I am with Russell on this one.
July 16th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Meanwhile back in the States………….
A Brooklyn man was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Tuesday for sending spam e-mails to more than 1.2 million subscribers of America Online in a scheme that foiled the Internet company’s spam-filtering system.
Adam Vitale, 27, was sentenced in federal court in Manhattan after pleading guilty more than a year ago to breaking anti-spam laws. He was also ordered to pay $180,000 to AOL in restitution.
Vitale was caught making a deal with a government informant to send junk e-mails — known as spam — that advertised a computer security program in return for 50 percent of the product’s profits, prosecutors said.
“Spamming is serious criminal conduct; this is not a teenager engaging in child’s play,” U.S. District Judge Denny Chin told Vitale as he sentenced him. Vitale earlier apologized and said he had learned a lesson.
July 16th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Odd, I was actually talking about something else entirely and I never mentioned your predelection for other mens arses.
Simply that you’re dishonest, as has been established by Davids photo of you hiding the logo.
Not EVERYTHING is about you being gay. We don’t care you funny funny little man.
July 16th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Well thank god Murray is here to bring the tone back up
July 16th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I spoke with a doctor today and he informed me that Asperger’s is not at all uncommon – in fact many “high achievers” have a degree of Asperger’s.
He also told me that it often manifests itself as an inability to empathise, which means that those who have it find it difficult to understand why what they’ve done is wrong.
So this may indeed be a possible reason for being lenient in the case of Walker — but nobody has addressed the more important issues that I raised earlier:
1. If Walker wasn’t able to comprehend that what he did was wrong (through a lack of empathy or whatever), why haven’t steps been taken (by way of the sentencing) to protect the rest of society from his future actions? How do we know he won’t just go out and do exactly the same thing again — similarly unable to comprehend why it might be wrong? A very large number of those who get convicted of similar offenses are automatically barred from using a computer again for quite some time. In Walker’s case, he was almost told to go out and become an even better computer geek. That is just reckless on the part of the court. One of their jobs is (surely?) to protect society from the actions of offenders, not just punish those who offend.
2. What steps have been taken to make sure that Walker’s case isn’t seen as a precedent for other would-be offenders? What’s to stop them thinking “it’s okay to hack because the worst that’ll happen is that you’ll get yourself on TV and be offered some really great jobs in IT”?
And, if one of the reasons for lot convicting Walker was the suggestion might compromise his possible future career and travel prospects — well doesn’t that apply to *any* conviction for *any* offense committed by *anyone*?
Or are we now saying that “bright people who might have a career rather than a job ahead of them” ought to be immune to conviction for crimes that could hurt that career — while “stupid people” should have the book thrown at them because it won’t matter? I thought that in the eyes of the law we were all supposed to be seen as equals… or is high-IQ now a mitigating factor in sentencing?
I’m sorry but I can understand why the defense would play strong on the Asperger’s side of thing — but I can’t understand why (if it was grounds for non-conviction) it wasn’t also grounds for a ban on all unsupervised computer access for Walker.
Can someone answer the above questions or suggest what the hell is going on with our courts?
July 17th, 2008 at 2:56 am
Owen Thor Walker should not have been discharged without conviction. He was involved in criminal activity and the full weight of the law should have been thrown at him. You just know that he’s going to be a recidivist criminal in the making thanks to this court ruling.
I know Labour have made a horse’s arse of the Justice system with overcrowding of prisons but Labour’s incompetence is no excuse for letting this guy flip the bird at society and walk free. It’s all about actions and consequences.
Once again Russell Brown likes to have a whine and a moan about why society isn’t soft on crime like himself. What’s the official line from Labour again Russell? It’s statistical aberrations, the sun & moon, Tau Henare provoked him. According to Russell some crimes are OK.
One of the many excellent results of the forthcoming election is that once National sweeps into power in November Russell Brown will be unceremoniously dumped from his state funded TVNZ7
jobbludger’s boondoggle. That outcome can’t occur soon enough.I do worry though that Russell isn’t going to be a very happy person once John Key becomes Prime Minister in three and a half months, not.
July 17th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
OECD 22 – And where is the role of the JUDGE and JURY in all of this?
You know, the ones who have been presented with both sides of the story, and are in possession of all the facts? Or at least, more of them than you?
July 17th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Owen Thor Walker is a criminal . In the eyes of the New Zealand justice system they probably saw him as a “special little boy” and he walked, discharged without conviction. He was involved in real criminal activity resulting in real losses of millions of dollars.
A better outcome would have been to extradite him to the US and see a real justice system pass judgment on this character. I’m guessing that US justice system wouldn’t find Owen Thor Walker to be that “special”.
July 18th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Talking of economic dead weights losses to New Zealand like Owen Thor Walker:
I see Russell “Chief Censor” Brown is having a rant about bloggers and the use of language. I guess the EFA wasn’t enough censorship for him. Not content with his own rapidly diminishing fantasy world of the left, he wishes to censor all those who do not hold his warped belief system. Hard to believe this guy draws a salary from the public purse. At least the new shareholding Minister of TVNZ this forthcoming November will hold different views on taxpayer value for money. He he he.
I get the feeling Russell is not going to be a very contented person for the next nine years at least come this November.