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Is this a common thing in the UK?
I have never heard of anything like this before. Seems wild. Reminds me of the way Mitnick was treated, thinking he was some sort of nuclear threat with his hacking skills.
In the US, they tried to give Aaron Swartz 35 years and he wasn’t extorting anyone for money.

The time these charges carry is excessive and cruel.

It’s a crime what they put Aaron through.
It goes way, way beyond just leaking GTA6. He hacked, got arrested and charged with hacking and had devices taken away, then promptly turned around and hacked committing the GTA6 crime, while his devices were confiscated. He's carried out numerous hacks of crypto currency wallets, and then to top it all off has repeatedly stalked and harassed women, using social engineering and hacking skills to get at the necessary details to carry out that.

He's demonstrated repeatedly that he is both dangerous and determined not to stop.

It's important to note: this is not a life sentence. It's a section 37/41. https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/legal-rights/cou...

> A section 37/41 lasts until you are discharged by the Mental Health Tribunal or by your responsible clinician. If your responsible clinician thinks you should be discharged, they will need to get permission from the Ministry of Justice.

An 18 year old boy with autism who got the scary label of "dangerous hacker"? It might as well be life.
You think someone who among a repeated pattern of hacking, also deliberately hacks to harass and stalk people doesn't count as dangerous, somehow?

Instead of throwing him behind bars, they've put him in a place where he can get the dedicated psychiatric help he needs, and will be released once he's had it.

Yet somehow that was the wrong thing to do?

He won't be released. He'll be tortured and restrained with pharmacy, with no end.

In fact, his autism should preclude him from a sentence in prison or a mental institution. As both of these settings will be much more stressful than they would be for anyone else.

Italicizing doesn't give more weight to your attempted point.

We need to know the details on the harassing and stalking before society would agree that an open ended sentence to a mental institution is fair. In spite of italicizing. Was he physically "stalking" people or sending snippy emails to people who he thinks bother him? Social judgement of this situation needs to transcend potential abuse of language.

This is borderline insanity. They should instead offer him a job and give him a target.

He hacked rockstar with a tv..

> breaking into the company’s internal Slack server and saying he would start releasing source code if Rockstar didn’t pay a multi-million dollar ransom.

I don't want someone like this anywhere near my company.

It’s not a company that puts him in the asylum, it’s the government. Give a guy like this an interesting target and he’ll do exactly what he’s been doing his entire life; breaking it
I know nothing about him. Neither do I.

> Let's put him a interesting target.

What will he do? You don't have a clue. He can get your target and meanwhile get you, or compromise your company/agency.

This is medieval and shameful, and needs to be overturned with the help of human rights groups and media exposure.

Neither autism nor cyber crime of this type are a life sentence to anywhere.

Autism is not a condition that is treatable by mental institutions. Its like sentencing someone to a mental institution for being left-handed.

While I wouldn't agree with this solution either, even lifetime home monitoring would be infintely more humane and rational. That is, depriving the guy of computer access. Why was that solution skipped in favor of an extremely brutal one?

If it was tried and failed, then that's a failure of monitoring. The bridging logic and justice isn't "okay, mental institution".

He’s a compulsive criminal, he was able to continue committing crime despite being restricted from accessing a computer. He wasn’t confined to an institution because he did a crime, it’s because he has admitted that no matter what he will continue this behaviour and so institutionalising him is the (regrettable) next step in trying to rehabilitate him. He will be released when he’s rehabilitated, whether that takes a month or a decade - he’s institutionalised indefinitely but not permanently, there is a path out.
Except he wasn't restricted really, he had a computer in his hand.
Absurd how people are defending this because of his autism. If the same crimes were committed by a neurotypical y’all would be screaming for blood. Being autistic doesn’t resolve you from responsibility and he had multiple opportunities to stop and change his ways.