Mom – Computer Hacker Wanted to “End Capitalism”

Posted by Tina

By now you’ve probably heard of Jeremy Hammond, the guy with super computer skills that was recently arrested. His conservative mom says she hopes he’s innocent but also admitted that he “used his genius to get the goat” of America”:

“He does have a good heart, but, I don’t know, he just wants to make those who disagree with him suffer,” Rose Collins said in a telephone interview from her home outside Austin, Texas. “He thinks America is evil, has done everything wrong.”
That made for some tension in the family. Collins described herself as a staunch conservative who has attended Tea Party rallies. Hammond’s father, now jailed in a Chicago suburb awaiting trial on a charge of aggravated sexual abuse of a minor, was “very, very far left,” Collins said. “So far off the charts that one more step he’s going to fall off the planet.”

Hammond, she said, was raised by his father after the couple split up and then adopted his politics. “He wants to end capitalism,” she said.

Collins said her son could have done anything with his computer skills but had a penchant for using them to raise a ruckus. In high school, she said, he hacked into the school’s mainframe computer to demonstrate its security vulnerabilities. He did the same thing when he went to college at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which earned him an expulsion, she said.

What a waste of potential.