http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8177561.stm

It should never had needed to get as far as the Lords.

"the next time he, or the Home Office, try to reassure the British people that some heavy-handed, anti-terrorist, freedom-curtailing law will never be used against an innocent civilian, there will be a two-word reply: Gary McKinnon."

The fact I find absolutely astounding is that he hacked these sites in 2001/2! No doubt in my mind that he is being made a scapegoat by the US, and this case has also highlighted the imbalance in the extradition process between UK and US.

Do the crime do the time, if you f*ck with nasty people in the Pentagon then they are going to f*ck with you.

My opinion is that he should be given a medal! He managed to hack into probably the securest neworks in the world. He has done them a favour in that they need to upgrade the security!

I guess the real findings we will never know.

Kinda sounds liek the Americans have something to find about UFO's!!

America and Britain FAIL again.

He managed to hack into probably the securest neworks in the world

Incorrect, he actually only gained access because of very poor security. He has detailed the steps he took and it's equivalent to an IT junior reading people's data "cos he could". The accusations of damage are entirely false. Britain jails murderers for 5 years yet it's willing to send one of it's own citizens to the US to rot in jail for ther rest of their life, all becuase the US lost face at a time when they should have been highly secure (post 9/11). This totally totally stinks we should all be ashamed that the UK government are putting up with the US bully-boy tactics.

To put this in contect the US military refuse to allow their personel to take part whenever there's a Friendly Fire incident affecting UK troops so what reason is there to allow the US to make an example of this guy?

Been following this for a while. It's about as far from anti terrorist as you could get. Has "Relationship Damaging" Foreign Office Civil Service bleating all over it…

just been reading the news about this – and have followed it for a while as Gary is a 'local' to me and our local MP has been working on this.

completely feel totally disgusted by johnson and the judiciary at the moment, just absolutely speechless…

It's a totally crap set-up that this government has signed up to. And the potential punishment is far in excess of the crime.
Having said that, i've got no time for hackers. They always bleat some crap along the lines of it's not my fault that your security isn't good enough, which is laughable defence as a burglar saying it's not my fault that I was able to pick your front door lock.

Having said that, i've got no time for hackers. They always bleat some crap along the lines of it's not my fault that your security isn't good enough, which is laughable defence as a burglar saying it's not my fault that I was able to pick your front door lock.

I agree with you about those that go in and do damage. However is that actually the case here?

legal legitimacy stems from the approval and support of the subjects of the law. This case shows that the law is SO far from the acceptance of the people in whose name it has been invoked that it surely must have no legitimacy – the Home Secretary has a duty to review its use.

aracer – Would you be happy to find someone wandering around your house at any time, even if they weren't doing damage or taking things? The answer is no I'll bet. Irrespective of whether he was breaking systems, the fact he'd broken into something is the problem.

The bloke knew he was doing wrong and, given the ferocity of the US government against all computer crime, knew about the potential penalties.

Now, I don't think we should extradite him, particularly as the CPS could prosecute him here for it but frankly, that's not neccesarily tied to this problem.

Surely the States have every right to try him, his crime was against the States even if it was carried out in a chair in the UK.
Any way he said he wanted to be caught so wish granted.
Personally I hate the guy and his peers and what he/they do.
Do all hackers stick a finger up to authority and then cry to their mums when they get caught.
70 years though! that's totally out of balance, but time over there abso-effing-lutely.
70 years for the crime of being a Tw@ harsh and LOL at the same time.

his facing justice is not the problem oldgit.

Its the gross violation of his human rights that is extradition to a foreign country where he will be remanded in prison with little access to his family, on charges for which the penalty is both disproportionately high and substantially greater than for the same crime if charged in his own country, in which "the New Jersey authorities were determined to see McKinnon "fry" " and for a man with a social mental condition.

But again you're left with the question of what did he think was likely to happen? That said, given Mitnick only got 5 years (well, 4 and a bit was on remand), 70+ years seems a BIT harsh.

The appeal was against an extradition. Presumably he will be tried in an open court, and evidence will be produced to prove the scale of the damage caused. After the verdict, if the charges are proven, he will receive a sentence commensurate with the crime proved.

I really can't decide whether I've written this tongue in cheek or not.

I see your points Stoner- but think you're resorting to hyperbole in your last post!

Reading the BBC story made me think that a serious miscarriage of justice was about to be perpretrated against a harmless chap with learning difficulties, but on digging a bit deeper (well, Wikipedia if the truth be known) it turns out that his diagnosis of Aspergers is very recent indeed (post-dates him losing the previous appeal), he is alleged to have deleted a lot of files in the process of doing his harmless exploring, and he also left gloaty messages on the computers he hacked.

There's an image of hacking as a benign, non-destructive crime but as Mark pointed out earlier this year to the muppets on Evilzone, it does have a real cost in terms of money and impact on people's lives. The maximum sentence of 70 years is ridiculous and draconian but if I deliberately damaged or stole property that was worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, I would expect to go to prison for a few years.

I'm also a bit uneasy with the idea that the Home Secretary should be the knight in shining armour. If I was the Home Secretary I don't think I'd step in to overrule any judgment that was made with the full facts, in accordance with established law. It disturbs me when a refined legal process can potentially be overruled by some populist twonkery.

take out my word "gross" if you like vinney.

🙂

MrA – I'll repeat, my anger is not about whethe ror not he will face a court, its the application of the extradition treaty in this instance which is so abhorrent.

The Extradition treaty was designed to fast track terrorist trials across borders – not for the US legal system to assert a primacy over our own.

I don't know if he's facing any charges in the UK too. If it's just the US, the "primacy" of the US system depends on whether you think the offences were committed in the US or the UK. I'll admit that, like the copyright cases brought against people like The Pirate Bay, it's damn hard to feel any sympathy for the US military here, but I can easily envisage a situation where someone with fewer resources could be shafted by a person in a foreign jurisdiction, and not have any comeback.

What i don't get here is what the US is trying to prove.
he hacked into 97 (I think) allegedly secure computers belonging to people who should know how to keep them secure – NASA and Pentagon being two of them. Was he a terrorist? Doesn't look like it, but, by fighting this case in public, the US government is highlighting their own lack of security. Would you advertise the fact that you don't have an alarm in your home?
If this case then goes to open court, then there probably going to be descriptions of how he managed to do it, including I don't doubt some kiddie stuff like brute forcing and sql injecting. Now, when i did security, i always said that our systems were never and would never be secure, that way, we were constantly reviewing our procedures. Once you believe it's secure, you relax, and don't stay on top of things. I'll take a bet that the admins of the compromised systems fully patched them then ran around daft for 6-9 months reading the latest papers on security and blah blah blah, but around about now will be getting lax. Quite possibly to the extent that they could be vulnerable to the same or variants of the same hacks used here. They'll probably tighten up whilst it's in the media, but they'll just as probably slack off once it's all over. So, in an open court, they're going to tell us how to hack into key US governemt compuetrs. Very clever. And even if they don't they will tell us which ones have been run by dummies who don't know how to secure their systems, possibly the names of said dummies, so anyone who fancies some eTerrorism can find which systems they're running now and have a pop. Hurray for Uncle Sam.
Most computer theft never hits the press because the victims would rather that potential criminals don't know what the targets are.

Funny how you guys were getting all hung up about things when this site was hacked. Now that a similar cretin has been hung out to dry you get all moralistic on a person who by some is deemed to not have any.

Let him rot, what he was doing was wrong.

..also, once, a long long time I ago I <ahem> gained accessed to a computer network from which I was fairly confident I could have a crack at the local police system. It took about 10 minutes before I was facing a login to the Boys in Blue. It took less time for me to figure what the consequences might be.

I agree with IanMunro I think. I dislike the extradition treaty with the US a great deal. But McKinnon is no better a cause than the Natwest Howevermanytherewere, in that they did it, and it was wrong.

Let him rot,

He's our criminal. Let him rot in our jail.

please tell me my taxes are not being used for any of this . . .

Oh yes they are. They are indeed.

BillyWhizz – yes, your taxes, and yours alone, are specifically used to fund draconian extradition arrangements.

If it's any consolation, Dennis the Menace's national insurance contributions pay for rendition flights to Guantanamo Bay.

ooo, if we're hypothecating our taxes can mine be used for the former Home Secretary's husband's man-grot collection?

Id like to feel that I was "making a difference" you know…

Chapeau, Mr_A 🙂

If he's hacked into the US security systems, surely he should be tried by the US. I know there's all this talk of mental health and whatever, but he must have realised he may get caught – no different to a drugs mule getting caught in Thailand getting onto the plane IMO.