UK Hacker Ryan Cleary Has Asperger's Syndrome, Court Told 279
An anonymous reader writes "Ryan Cleary, the British teenager accused of launching DDoS attacks at the likes of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a court heard [Saturday]."
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
... people with Asperger around the world are trying HARD to demonstrate that they can behave as normal as anybody else...
It strikes me that this is a really strange thing to say. Surely it is exactly the nature of Asperger's syndrome that they NEED to try hard BECAUSE their natural ability to grasp what is "normal" is different to the other people they interact with!
If your challenge was "he shouldn't be able to avoid prosecution on the grounds of his ability to perceive social standards", then the question is raised as to what the relationship between responsible agency and the comprehension of social standards is. We learn to understand what is right and wrong through our interactions with the social world around us, because that's the feedback mechanism - we get praised as kids for good behaviour and scolded for bad. Although law is a separate mechanism, concepts of consequence and contract (on which theories of law are often grounded) are both learned through the same kinds of channels.
Obviously, Asperger's entails a difficulty with such cognitive mechanisms, rather than a complete failure of them, so people nonethless retain responsibility for their actions. The question is to what extent this responsibility can be diminished in proportion with that difficulty, and there is a positive liberty argument to be made to the effect that you can't be held as a fully reasonable agent under the law when there are blatantly obvious consequences for your actions that you have never learned to formulate. That's also the essence of arguments for public education and not giving kids voting rights.
You are entirely entitled to feel offended that the position hasn't simply been immediately ruled out. After all, it suggests that being on the autism spectrum might affect one's entitlement to equal treatment under the law. But that doesn't make the position wrong. Consider cases of people with severe low-functioning Autism (which, it should be pointed out, are woefully neglected in the general media beyond childhood) - these are people with serious needs that they are not in a position to fulfil for themselves, and it often falls to family members to provide the difficult and expensive care that they require. To state straight-off that the law should be blind to such situations is just callous; it at least deserves consideration.
Finally, it should be entirely anticipated that people with Asperger's syndrome might have trouble seeing why the position could be right. That's what the condition is. So I'm sorry, but I think your judgement of "irresponsibility" is premature. We can't just throw out the argument of diminished responsibility on the grounds of sentiment or intuition. It's a proper legal discussion that needs to be had, and perhaps an important question of moral philosophy too.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
people with Asperger around the world are trying HARD to demonstrate that they can behave as normal as anybody else
If they have to try that hard, then that says something in itself...
There's nothing in Asperger's that would "excuse" anyone from being tried regularly. Insanity is a defense used for those that couldn't, at the time, understand what they were doing was wrong. However, there is nothing in that which would dismiss a criminal case.
The previous application of Asperger's in the UK was to establish that it is a condition that would not be treated appropriately in the US were the person with it to be extradited. It wasn't used as a "he has this, he should be excused" argument, but that "he has a condition that would be ignored should he be extradited, and as such, it would be inhumane to extradite him because of that."
If you actually understood Asperger's, I'd assert that the most offensive thing about this article is the last sentence (specifically the snide comment in the last clause), "He said Cleary is highly intelligent but agoraphobic and has difficulty interacting with people, presumably unless they are on the end of an Internet connection." The last clause adds nothing to the article, but takes a shot at those with Asperger's using computers to shield themselves from others. It's actually a good thing. Those who do not use or understand social cues do much better where those cues are filtered so that everyone is on a level playing field. And for some, it's mentally not even talking to other people, or they would be more nervous. They type, responses show up. Whether those responses are people or bots or such is irrelevant. It's not personal contact and could be anyone anywhere or maybe nobody at all, so it doesn't trigger the same anxiety as being there in person.
Another aspect of Asperger's is that it is a spectrum disorder. That is, someone could have it and actually be indistinguishable from normal by others around them. And some will indistinguishable by those around them from someone with Autism. Those with the "light" version should be quite capable of passing themselves off as "normal" and those with the "heavy" version would have more trouble with it. That those with "light" Asperger's are trying hard to demonstrate normality is irrelevant to the ability of those with "heavy" Asperger's to do the same.
Re:Cleary also suffers from agoraphobia (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not at all like chastising wheelchair users.
Well, the proper purpose of locking someone up is to protect society or themselves. This means you choose a custodial sentence on those grounds, not on the grounds of punishment / blame / responsibility / etc. There is no benefit in chastising either the mad murderer or the wheelchair user, though obviously society needs to tackle the problems of each in a different way.
From the PoV of treatment of the individual, it is then absolutely important that you apply a scientifically sound understanding of the human brain rather assuming a political/philosophical simplification of a rational mind having made poor decisions of his own free will.
And, as you say, it might neither serve this guy nor his victims/potential victims to be locked up.