Intruders Selling Security Software

If you read my coverage of the UBS trial, you'll remember the controversy involving Karl Kasper's "hacker" background. I said in that post:

All the wanna-be hacker kiddies should remember that grown-ups don't trust the opinions of "hackers" in courts of law.

If you wouldn't trust what a "hacker" says in court, would you trust software sold by an intruder?

Yesterday I read this article: Ex-hacker helps companies get defensive. It contains this news:

A reformed computer hacker is winning big clients for open-source software and hardware products that protect a company's network from intruders...

The 27-year-old [name deleted] got his start at the U.S. Department of Defense in an auspicious way: He agreed to work in information warfare after he was arrested at age 17 for hacking into a government network. In return, he served no jail time.

I'm appalled by this story. First, it demonstrates the press' obsession with using the term "hacker" to describe an intruder Second, the intruder is posting word of this story on the front page of his company's Web site. Third, this intruder worked for a variety of companies in sensitive positions -- including, supposedly, our own government. I wonder which of those post-arrest companies knew about this intruder's arrest? I wonder if this is the first time his customers will learn of his past?