It's tough though, how do you know that they won't use those skills against you? The individual seems relatively unstable and violent, even saying during a sentencing hearing that they'll continue to do illegal breaches whenever they can.

Would be great to have them on the "good" side, but would probably take a lot of energy and resources as well.

Hopefully this story will have a somewhat happy ending, because it seems to not end yet.

He'd need a dedicated handler, and even then judging from the article's portrayal he seems like a hopelessly unmanageable type. He'd fit in with a modern-day A-team, come to think of it.

Could set him to work on hacking official state enemies, but you'd have to expect that he'd still engage in side-projects against whoever pissed him off or he had contempt for.

It’s not going to happen. He’s going to be closely supervised in a hospital indefinitely.

> The individual seems relatively unstable and violent, even saying during a sentencing hearing that they'll continue to do illegal breaches whenever they can.

Admitting you will continue to fight evil is not evil.

That would be interested, but is impossible as long as they refuse to avoid crime and state that they plan to commit more at the first opportunity

Having seen that play out in real life before, I don't think he'd be as much of an asset as a liability. The problem with white hats is they need to have an interest in following some set of rules. With this guy it sounds more like his rule set is defined by whatever he finds interesting with little concern for legality or what others might find acceptable.

It's similar to the problem with the asshole genius programmer. You can keep him around because he's a genius but being an asshole in a position of authority over others (by virtue of being a genius) will result in people not wanting to work for you and this can easily mean you're missing out in individuals or teams that would vastly outmatch the asshole genius.

I’ve seen the opposite, the worthless manager, way more than the asshole genius.

To be fair, there are very few actual geniuses and a lot more unremarkable assholes.

How about the British intelligence apparatus? Seems like a person they would be very interested in acquiring.

Also seems like the sort of person who would leak everything, and not just for some principled whistleblower reasons, but "for teh lulz" or whatever.

Trust is more important than ability.

That wouldn't work, you could never trust him at all, as he's expressed zero remorse and actually intent to continue to do crime, and is apparently very strongly autistic & doesn't understand the complex nuances of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable as a white hat hacker

> very strongly autistic & doesn't understand the complex nuances of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable

This is a popular framing of autistic people but this assumes the problem is complex nuances. Most of the time it's not very nuanced at all. The problem is that autistic people are less likely to follow rules they don't agree with or see as arbitrary - in the positive this is sometimes described as a "strong sense of justice" but that phrase ignores that the perception of what is or isn't just or unjust can vary.

Studies have actually shown what is dismissively described as "moral rigidity", i.e. autistic people are more likely to follow ethical rules they profess even when they believe they can get away with breaking them and when nobody would find out. The problem is that "normal" people are much more "morally flexible" and thus share an implicit understanding of what rules are important (i.e. actual rules) and which ones you're supposed to say you follow but aren't expected to.

>>> The problem is that "normal" people are much more "morally flexible" and thus share an implicit understanding of what rules are important (i.e. actual rules) and which ones you're supposed to say you follow but aren't expected to.

This is exactly what I was referring to. We agree.

> Studies have actually shown what is dismissively described as "moral rigidity", i.e. autistic people are more likely to follow ethical rules they profess even when they believe they can get away with breaking them and when nobody would find out. The problem is that "normal" people are much more "morally flexible" and thus share an implicit understanding of what rules are important (i.e. actual rules) and which ones you're supposed to say you follow but aren't expected to.

Very true.

Maybe the only thing more dangerous than holding someone in a "hospital" as a sentence is to allow an employer to decide if they should be allowed out or sent back to serve their life sentence. It's just as bad as H-1 visas, or allowing illegal aliens into the USA with babies who are not given US citizenship. (I am not taking sides on whether we should give US citizenship to those people, deport them, or what. I am pointing out that making someone the slave of their employer is bad for society.)

No company will do this because you can hire competent, non violent white hat hackers that don't need monitoring.