Durkheim had a social-historical approach to crime. From his perspective, crime was a normal occurrence in any social system and sometimes it served as a positive function for society in its entirety. In 1970, a 14-year-old boy decided to dial into a nationwide computer network and uploaded a virus that he had written in code and crashed the entire system. That boy was Bill Gates: founder of Microsoft. In 1972, two young men started a business selling the first digital blue boxes in the world that allowed users to get free phone service illegally. Fast-forward four years and the two young men, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, developed what would become the largest company in American history: Apple Inc. These examples are highlighted because it seems plausible that Wozniak may have been on to something, “misbehavior is very strongly correlated with and responsible for creative thought” (Kushner, 2012). Thinking of how these three men have impacted society through their creations and ambitions over the years makes me wonder how hackers who are heavily penalized may have had similar contributions in society. A normative crime is an action that deviates from the normal expectations of society and culture by some standard. The crime may be written in law or established by a norm specific to a society or culture in a temporal period. In any case, detection of a criminal violation and the treatment for such deviations from the normal expectations of society greatly vary from individual to individual. In the Information Age, policing and security agencies must be diligent and pragmatic as to how society responds to deviations from the norm when we focus our attention to cybercrime and digital forms of activism through hacking or computer virtuosity, such as Hacktivism.
Today, a story broke about a 20-year-old computer science student at Dawson College in Montreal, Quebec, who was expelled after discovering and reporting that a serious security flaw was present in Dawson’s computer system. His virtuosity and curiosity revealed that 250,000 students’ personal data were at risk and felt a “normal duty to bring it to the attention of the college” (Cox, 2013). Hamed Al-Khabaz was not paid for his help and devotion to protect his educational institution but was rather expelled and marked with serious professional misconduct on his academic record. My hopes are that academic, journalists and citizens investigate Al-Khabaz and Dawson College in order to determine whether a serious violation occurred or whether to reinstate him as a student and formally apologize. In absence of the full facts of the story presented, it is difficult to hold a fixed position. Likewise, it is uncertain whether the college expelled him without the full facts of the case. Either way, the student may have been punished too suddenly without full disclosure and proper processes taking place. It is evident that the student possesses a certain talent that was developed beyond the classroom and that his techniques and skills have been encouraged. Students like Al-Khabez are few and far between. It will be interesting to see how this story unfolds, and how the public and the educational institution respond.
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