British hacker loses extradition appeal...

[RevDisk]

It seems that hacking a (supposedly) secure military network ought to be regarded as an employment application . . . with the first assignment being to plug the holes in security.

As a former mil/gov IT drone, nope.  Very bad idea.  The overwhelming majority of "hackers" floating around are script kiddies.  The number of people who discover vulnerabilities are very small compared to the legions that exploit them.  Employing a script kiddie is a complete waste of time.  A lot of them I saw were only slightly above user level, and below the average sysadmin. 

The folks you want to hire are folks that post to BUGTRAQ (or equiv) problems after warning the vendor and getting no response.  Trolling Defcon, HOPE, etc would also be good.

If someone commits a crime and intentionally causes damage, you do not want to hand them root access to your network.  They have shown a lack of integrity already. 

[K Frame]

"If someone commits a crime and intentionally causes damage, you do not want to hand them root access to your network.  They have shown a lack of integrity already."

And, conversely, if someone commits a crime and causes damage unintentionally, they've shown a lack of finess and knowledge that makes them unemployable.

My project just left a programmer go a few days ago.

She had a lot of experience, but word is that every time she touched the one system she really screwed things up. Not just once, but multiple times; apparently a lack of finess and knowledge.

It finally became too much, and she was asked to leave.

I don't really feel bad for her losing her job, though. It's hard to feel bad when you see someone leaving the parking lot every evening in a $150,000 car. And that's just the family beater.