[nick_g]

An unfortunate reason to see a former university classmate of mine in the news. It always feels strange to see this story come up every so often. I was never a friend of Jha's, nor was I every really close to him, but I remember him exactly as his attorney described him: "Paras Jha is a brilliant young man whose intellect and technical skills far exceeded his emotional maturity." Jha was not the only former classmate of mine whom I felt lacked emotional maturity, and it is harrowing to imagine how a command of technology can give anyone the power to do something like this if he chose.

Jha intentionally used his skills to inconvenience those around him and he was able to do a great deal of harm to the world at large. While technology makes us better suited to solve problems and help those less fortunate, it also amplifies an individual's ability to do harm.

Intentional malice aside, all of us have the ability to greatly effect the world around us. It is imperative that we consider the impact of our actions. While I was a student at Rutgers, there was no mandatory ethics class for computer science, nor do I remember a class on ethics for computer scientists being offered.

[pishpash]

If the department had been in the School of Engineering, pretty sure there would have been a mandatory ethics class.

[swiley]

I've been told the administration at my university plans to move the compsci department out of the engineering department and in to the business school. I really haven't heard any pro to that yet other than "it makes the business people happy and there are more of them."

[skate22]

I used philosphy classes to fill some gen ed requirements, including ethics, but it was by no means required

[burntrelish1273]

There's two predominant end-games:

0) Recruit to a three-letter agency, putting talent to positive use under extra scrutiny and a short-leash.

1) "Throw away the key," squander his potential and make him a better criminal.

Hmm, which is better: repay society, generate taxes and give someone a second chance... or be "tough" on crime and let the cycle repeat again?

[pm90]

I don't buy your insinuation that he was just a brilliant mind who was immature enough to inconvenience others. I'm reading through https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/who-is-anna-senpai-the-m... and Jha's actions sound like a real criminal. Yes criminal: he was using his technical prowess to bring down minecraft servers and steal customers, effectively running an online protection racket.

I know this sounds harsh but: I'm glad he has been charged with this law and I really really want this guy to be behind bars and think for a long time about what he did. Hopefully it will seriously discourage others from doing the same stuff he did.

On a slightly related note: I can't help but think how this dude could have had a highly successful career in computer security. But he chose to be a criminal. Why?

[ganoushoreilly]

I read op's commentary more along the lines of emotional immaturity being present, he wasn't really surprised at the nature of the crimes. A lot of these emotionally immature individuals often times are part of the "do things for lulz" mindset. The fact that this started as Minecraft DDOS attacks, re-iterates the immaturity of the individual based on initial targets. I'm not defending these criminals by any means, but I would agree with OP that people whom fit the mental profile of potential asshat hackers are way more common than we'd like to admit. If every crazed rick and morty fan had the technical prowess to pull this stuff off... just imagine the chaos.

[nick_g]

It wasn't my intention to detract from the fact that his actions were criminal