OK, then prosecute him for those things. Theft and blackmail are already crimes.

Don't give him a life sentence for sharing secrets. Don't ask me to pretend that isn't what this is about.

Kurtaj has been charged with three counts of blackmail, two counts of fraud, and six breaches of the Computer Misuse Act.

You keep saying that he was given a life sentence. He has not. He has been ordered to live in a hospital until he is deemed by a professional to no longer be a danger to himself.

> This wasn’t some hacker poking around because he could. He was stealing assets and then trying to ransom them back.

If he managed to do that using nothing more than a TV and an Android device, I have absolutely zero sympathy with his victims. In the end, I'd even classify that as a public service, getting these companies to up their security game at least to some standard.

> He also just straight up stole crypto.

And here I have even less sympathy. I have grown to hate anything crypto-currency with a passion, simply because it's even more enticing to criminals than a locked safe room full of diamonds.

Don't get me wrong: It's still not correct what he did. Lock him up in prison like every other random criminal. But it's not "lock him up for life"-worthy, not by any means.

Saying that you have no sympathy for their assets being stolen just because they chose to use a form of store of value you disapprove of, shows a great lack of empathy.

What does it matter what form your wealth takes? Whether it's in a bank, in cash, in gold, or in cryptocurrency is an unimportant detail. What matters is that you have every right to keep possession of it.