Arrest Made In Webcam Highjacking Extortion Case 311
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "CNN reports that Jared James Abrahams, a 19-year-old computer science student, has been arrested for allegedly hijacking the webcams of young women — among them reigning Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf — taking nude images, then blackmailing his victims to send him more explicit material or else be exposed. Abrahams admitted he had 30 to 40 'slave computers' — or other people's electronic devices he controlled — and has had as many as 150 total. His arrest came six months after a teenager identified in court documents as C.W. alerted authorities. She has since publicly identified herself as Cassidy Wolf, the recently crowned Miss Teen USA. Wolf received messages featuring pictures of her at her Riverside County address and others apparently taken months earlier when she lived in Orange County, says the criminal complaint (PDF). The message explained 'what's going to happen' if Wolf didn't send pictures or videos or 'do what I tell you to do' in a five-minute Skype videoconference, according to the criminal complaint. 'Either you do one of the things listed below or I upload these pics and a lot more (I have a LOT more and those are better quality) on all your accounts for everybody to see and your dream of being a model will be transformed into a pornstar (sic),' wrote Abrahams. FBI agents raided Abrahams' Temecula home in June and seized computers and hardware, cellphones and hacking software, court records show. Outside the court, Abrahams' lawyer, Alan Eisner, said that his client's family feels 'profound regret and remorse' over what happened. Eisner told CNN affiliate KTLA that Abrahams is autistic. 'The family wants to apologize for the consequences of his behavior to the families who were affected.'"
Pfffft (Score:2, Interesting)
Another criminal genius bites the dust!
Actually what I think is the court should take into account is the fact that this person's brain is not developed yet which might lead him to do... that.. and think 1) it's a fine thing to do and 2) he'd get away with it.
They do this in Europe- take the age and developmental stage of the defendant into account as it interacts with the defendants s crime.
We live in a world of humans. Some young humans spontaneously think up criminal acts to engage in. This is always a risk. We have no reliable way of making young humans be other than they are, no way to avoid developing brains doing bad , even outrageous things. Everyone involved really ought to consider that before they put him in the no-rehab hell-on-earth called American prisons for 20 years and turn him into a REAL criminal.
My liberal bleeding heart at work overtime.
Re:Autism (Score:5, Interesting)
His lawyer is already bringing it up, as a possible mitigating factor. So slam him and his lawyer for bringing it up, not for Slashdot for providing details you find unfavorable.
Re:Autistic huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
If he is officially diagnosed, what would you say then?
I'd say that there's a significant difference between autism and sociopathy. An autistic person frequently doesn't understand how to interact with someone else, but they have enough empathy to know some basics of how *not* to interact.
RAT Breeders (Score:4, Interesting)
The article is slightly sensationalist, but interesting
Perhaps law enforcement has opened a can of worms... or monkeys... autistic monkeys.
Re:Autistic huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Autistic huh? (Score:0, Interesting)
What we are witnessing is the spread of progressive ideology. For 200 yrs. progressives have been trying to create an impossibility: a society in which no one ever has to feel guilty or ashamed about anything that they do. That's why progressives attack the very idea of societal standards of behavior, try to destroy institutions such as marriage that impose personal responsibilities on individuals, promote policies that mitigate the negative consequences of a person's behaviors, e.g. taxpayer subsidized abortion, and create govt. handout programs that protect an individual from their own poor life choices and their own irresponsibility. It is only natural for progressives to blame criminal behavior on some condition supposedly beyond an individual's control or on "society".
Re:Autism (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Autistic huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
As a father of a child on the autism spectrum who also has ADHD, I can tell you that those kids are out there. I can also tell you that you have NO IDEA how much work my wife and I have put in over his lifetime to get him to the point where he can be in a mainstream classroom, and generally come off as just "mildly aloof and a bit forgetful, but friendly" as opposed to "way out there, completely disorganized, and won't make eye contact." He has to work much harder to make friends and get his schoolwork done, but because of all the training, therapy, and professional help that we have gone through (and it takes all of us to do this), you might not be able to tell in a short interaction with him. (It's still the case that in any lengthy interaction with him, if you know what to look for you'll pick some of it up.)
So don't assume that ASD + ADHD = lazy parent. We also have a typical child, and you can tell the difference in parenting effort between the two easily, but only because we have put that effort in on the atypical one. Parenting is hard for anyone, and even harder for parents of kids with either ASD or ADHD, let alone both. Many parents in one boat or the other get plenty of sideways glances from people with the attitude you wrote above, and I feel it is very disrespectful to the massive amount of time, effort, and money we have spent on our children.
That said, I agree, it is completely irrelevant whether the blackmailer in this story was autistic or not, because the behavior is not something related to the behaviors autistic people generally express as part of that diagnosis. If his family (IF) is using that as an excuse, shame on them.
Re:Feeling "profound regret"... (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow, just the other day, a woman mugged an elderly lady in a restaurant, and when caught insisted the mugging was justified because "the lady was rich. She was eating at a restaurant". It's amazing what mental gyrations people will go through to justify actions that the rest of us are pretty sure are wrong.
Re:Autistic huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Prison is not the best answer in this case. (Score:2, Interesting)
Unlike a lot of you who are so free with your sadistically joyous
comments about sending someone to prison, I HAVE BEEN to prison.
That means that unlike you I actually KNOW what prison is like from
having been there. It is very different from any portrayal on TV or in
a movie, though "The Shawshank Redemption" comes closest to
capturing the vibe of being an inmate.
Someone who is weird or mentally weak will not do well in the prison
environment and they may not even live through the experience unless
they are in protective custody.
It is obvious the guy who perpetrated the stuff described in the summary
needs help, and certainly he needs to be shown in a definitive manner that
what he did is not accepted by society. There are other ways to do this
which can be as effective as prison and more likely to produce a positive
outcome. I'd suggest denial of computer access for a period of time and
a GPS ankle bracelet for the defendant, along with some sort of work
program which forces him to perform some sort of labor which benefits
society.
Prison doesn't ever "fix" people or "teach them a lesson". Prison damages
people. When people are not going to be in prison for their entire lives it
really is in the best interest of society to use other solutions than prison
if the goal is punishment and reform of the offender. And until YOU have
been in prison yourself, you really have no business suggesting that prison is
the best answer for a criminal offense which has other possible solutions,
because you don't know what you are talking about, period.
'
Re:Autistic huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you have it slightly wrong - Do you not observe the dual nature of understanding we have of behavior? On one hand, we want to blame the individual for his behavior. "I wouldn't do it. I don't think it's right. He must be an asshole."
that's not the case, its "WE decided it shouldn't be done, we don't think its right. He must be not part of our society". Its a standard herd instinct to have a mostly-conforming community to protect ourselves from predatory factors. So this guy, if he's not behaving how we as a society think is acceptable, then he must be a danger to us. Which, when you consider what he's done, is entirely true.
So punishment is less about him and more about what kind of society we want (or need) to have. We don't accept when drugs etc influence people - the crazed killer still gets locked up for everyone's good, even if he was under the influence at the time. This also shows why drunk driving is treated less harshly - because its something 'ordinary' (ie normal members of our herd) people might do, and not the anti-societal external 'predators'.