Gary McKinnon is a so called ‘hacker’ who got into numerous US government computers by the cunning strategy of using freely available security tools against undefended systems without firewalls or security patches. So all in all a fairly serious threat, not …
The US government is fairly seriously embarrassed particularly since this all happened around 9/11 when talk of an electronic Pearl Harbour was all the rage among electronic warfare departments looking for more funding, sorry concerned about national security. It happens that the US is claiming he did $700k’s worth of damage - Geeklawyer would like to see that figure audited. Like the mythical losses due to music downloading or the street value of seized drugs these figure usually relate more to the desire to catch headline or impress judges than they do to any real loss. McKinnon is clearly just some minor UFO nutter who’s no kind of menace to anyone: a slap on the wrists and pouring coffee into his motherboard would be punishment enough.
Geeklawyer is not standing up for McKinnon who clearly committed a criminal act and deserves to be punished. But while there is an argument for putting him on trial in the US there is also the same argument for doing so in the UK: he committed a criminal act in both jurisdictions and could be punished in either. So why is the US better? It seems more humanitarian, if you trust & respect the other country’s legal system, to let him rot in his own country’s jail where he is surrounded by his own people and can get visits. Not to mention letting that country pick up the tab for the jail term.
Whatever the answer to that is; what pisses Geeklawyer off mightily is that here, yet again, we have an Englishman who is told by his government that he must face a foreign court without them having make a prima facie case to ours first unless he an persuade the Home Secretary not to send him. Frankly, writing a polite letter to the Home Secretary asking him to say ‘no’ to the Americans is a waste of good ink. And since when is a politician an appropriate substitute for a judge?
I can’t come!!!...
Indeed, the Home Secretary should not have that power.