Jeffrey Lee Parson

Jeffrey
Lee Parson was a high school senior in Minnesota when he modified the
Blaster Internet Worm script virus in 2003.  Today he was sentenced
to 18 months in prison.

Now, I am no bleeding heart, but you have got to be kidding me.  It is amazing
to me that this geek kid is going to jail to share space with genuine juvenile delinquents
who are in there for drugs, stealing, and other real-world offenses.

This kid typed some characters into a text file and emailed it to someone, causing
$1.2 million in damage to corporate networks and infecting 48,000 computers. 
Hey, you know what? I can do that too.  So can most of the people reading this
blog.  Now we know that we shouldn’t do that, but we are
not a 17 year old with a history of mental illness.

It is amazing to me that someone can draw this level of penalty from such an innocuous
act.