Barack Obama is to receive a personal plea from peers, MPs and mental health experts to halt the extradition of a British computer hacker who suffers from a form of autism.
Campaigners will call on the US president to let Gary McKinnon face trial in his home country for breaking into Nasa and Pentagon networks, rather than sending him to America where he could be jailed for up to 60 years in a high-security prison. They will say that the 43 year-old has Asperger syndrome – a type of autism that makes him shy and prone to obsessive behaviour – and warn that his condition would likely deteriorate were he to be taken away from his home and family then jailed abroad.
The letter is being written by the National Autistic Society, a leading charity, and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Autism, a cross-party alliance of MPs and peers that lobbies for better support for sufferers. A spokesman for the society said: “The group are intending to write to Barack Obama. ”The letter hasn’t been drafted yet but it will be finalised in the next couple of days. It may involve asking MPs for signatures.”
David Burrowes, Mr McKinnon’s local MP in Enfield Southgate, said: “We need to take it further and call upon Barack Obama himself to take action as the pleas have fallen on deaf ears so far.” Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, added: “I think it would be a good idea. I hope that even if the UK authorities feel unable to look again at the case, if it was legally possible for the US to do so, that would be a sensible position to take.”
Mr McKinnon admits that he hacked into 97 US computers from a bedroom in north London between 2001 and 2002 and left a message on one machine saying: “I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.” He says he was looking for evidence to show that the authorities have covered up the existence of UFOs.
one thing i remember hearing about extradition is that if america wants someone from the uk they can pretty much have them, whereas if we were to want someone from the US the process is long difficult and more often then not impossible
Oh, too bad … he should have gotten himself hired and then hack while being paid … I myself can see the challenge of hacking quite well … i’d love to have that type of qualities, but would direct it a bit different and then hack the hell out of myself all over the world .. Testing security systems … although most hackers then probably lack the drive all of a sudden … it’s probably the thrill of doing something that you are not allowed to do. Too bad. They should have seen it more playing again other brains … testing eachother’s skills … although that is still the case whatever way people hack … Sadly enough there are too many hackers who are not good enough … and will therefor choose another path ..
I wonder whether this guy is really autistic or just another bloke who couldn’t get it inside anymore ..
“Hacked 97 computers”. Yeah well if you read in detail what he did he simply wrote a perl script that found PC’s on the network with no password. He got nothing of value but still the US Military willl want to bury him for it like they did with Mitnick. They wont want to look incompetent so they will shift the focus onto him, even though its mostly the fault of the tech security, a child couldve run that script. If I were him id get my ass to Brazil or something pronto because he wont be staying here.
Redpill: Good idea, except… autist. I have Asperger’s myself, and I can barely cope with sudden change (as fleeing the country would be). This guy sounds like a far more severe/low-functioning case than me, so going anywhere unfamiliar would probably be out of the question.
I’m sort of torn on this one. On the one hand, the law is the law, and breaking it should be punished. He may have thought he needed to find out about this UFO thing (if his Asperger’s is severe enough, he may not be able to give himself a ‘reality check’ when getting obsessed with stuff like this), but I can guarantee you he DID know he was breaking the law.
On the other hand, he sounds rather harmless, and it would be extremely cruel to put him in an unfamiliar environment with strangers who’ll treat him badly (hello, American prison system). I know if you took me away from my family and friends, and put me in an environment like that without their support for any length of time, I’d spend my every effort on finding a way to kill myself. I’m not kidding. It sounds like a fate worse than death to me.
I hope they’ll find some sort of solution — maybe keep him from owning a computer, and put him on house arrest or something?
It sounds a bad situation all around, really. Also, I agree with Redpill — anyone could run a script like that. 97 computers without a password, containing sensitive info? Talk about leaving the door wide open…
What happened is the the equivalent of someone sitting naked in their living room and not expecting any passers-by to have a look in through the open window. If the occupant of the living room was really that concerned, they would surely install some blinds to avoid the glare of naturally curious eyes!
This case is actually about people covering their arses following their own mistakes and making an example of someone to discourage others from showing them up for the incompetent individuals they are yet again.
The outcome of this and other related current cases in America at the moment will be a very good indicator of whether or not the justice system is in fact merely an illusion that is concealing something altogether very corrupt. This would be an excellent opportunity for Obama to demonstrate if he is part of the cosy club that was in power previously as the conspiracy theorists tend to believe, or if he actually does genuinely want change.
I sorry but he does need some appropriate punishment. I am in no way suggest 20 years hard labour but something. Maybe community service helping other learn computer skills, something so a lesson of some description is learnt.
L Ron Hubbard: so you dont see it as breaking into someone’s private property? I do. I don’t want them in my house either, snooping around, checking my personal things, even when they don’t take things. These things happened to me and I know why I dont want that. I find it rediculous that people need to put more and more locks on everything and secure their houses to the max just because some upstock morrons could not keep their filthy paws out of someoné else’s property. Sometimes they only do it for fun, whereas the spread fear among people. Ofcourse you will have to secure it nowadays, but it is, initially pathetic that so many people have to make costs and have to put so much effort into ti just because of a few.
Whether such a enormous response is proper in this case (the trial against this hacker and others ..). It’s fair that they have to pay for their deeds ofcourse, knowing that they were not legal. They all know that it was not legal. That they will never respond like this in the case of private people … that can make you angry. Just as when a royal couple achieves to have pictures of their childeren been taken of a kiddy porn site whereas this will not happen for so many others …. That’s not right. It’s the same rule for all, no matter who it concerns. NASA etc can afford good security ….. but as usual …
Depending on the damage someone did etc …… Justice will take its course. Hopefully in a proper way.
The big ones always scream the loudest, they find theirselves the most important or want to see other to them like that. Maybe there was really nothing to see there, where the hacker went. They probably set an example with this. Lots of media attention. The message: this is what is going to happen to you if you fool with us …. Just because they can and do have the authority to see to it. And the money. Wouldn’t we all go to court way more often if we had lots of money.
Sitting naked in your room … ehehehe … nice way of putting it. But it is not the passing … but the entering, at least that’s how I see to it. But also, if someone would stand for my window all the time staring inside .. I’d go to the police as well, if that person would not want to go away. Even if I had not been naked. Or if that person had been naked …
Sorry, but this isn’t sitting well…laws should exist, but only for some people? If McKinnon isn’t competent to understand what he did, who was letting him run around loose? Is he supposed to get a Get-out-of-jail-free card because he’s a twit? I can’t help thinking that taking every hacker one found and shooting them would sooner or later have us running out of hackers, especially now that I’m out of the Social Engineering business.
Thom_K: He is competent to understand what he did, but he wasn’t doing it with malicious purposes. He was acting on a fascination with conspiracy theory, and obsession/deep fascination with certain subjects is fairly symptomatic of Asperger’s syndrome. That’s not the main reason why he shouldn’t be extradited, though. The main reason is that autistic people will go through excruciating suffering if suddenly placed in unfamiliar situations, and that he would probably not be able to survive in the American prison system. He should be punished all right, but alternative forms of punishment may be the more humane option.
Also, please do not call someone a twit because they suffer from autism. That’s sort of insulting to those of us who happen to share his affliction, but have never done anything wrong.
@Nopke. Look at it from a slightly different angle. If your telly got nicked, would you expect your insurance company to pay up if their assessor discovered that you’d left your front door wide open? It’s not that Gary wasn’t a bit of a naughty boy for having a snoop, and a bit of a chump. It is a complete outrage that a government failed miserably to properly guard their tasty secrets. Presumably whatever those secrets are, they are secret in order to protect us? Maybe Gary truly believed he was working in the public interest. Maybe he had been studying up on Article 61 of the Magna Carta. Who knows?
Look into the case and find out the “damage” that Gary did with his two line script. It’s laughable. What damage is he alleged to have caused? Apparently whatever it is, it is estimated at around $900,000, although no evidence of that damage has yet been released as far as I’ve seen. Even if Gary deleted or corrupted thousands of files, which he didn’t, are we to assume that the US military doesn’t keep backups?
(You’d be amazed at some of the high profile organisations that fail big time at this simple task) I’ll use the example of the window again. It is the same as someone looking in through an open window and reading something you have written in big letters on the living room wall and expecting them not to read it when you’ve taken absolutely no precautions to prevent them reading it. You can guarantee that whatever Gary discovered, the same information had already been gobbled up by America’s real enemies, who they are also absolutely powerless to prosecute. Gary is just being made a scapegoat. Sure, throw the book at him for misuse of computers or whatever other minor offence he may have committed, but ALSO put whoever was responsible for security at the installations he accessed on trial for the much more serious failure to carry out their duty of care.
Berber Anna: I didn’t call him a twit because he’s autistic, I called him a twit because his actions are those of a fool. I don’t know what his motivations truly were and I doubt you do but the statement attributed to him in the article above…“I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.” …does not suggest to me that his intent was particularly benign.
There’s a large number of autistic folks around and it seems that most of them get through life without doing what McKinnon admits to having done. That suggests that autism, of itself, may not be the issue here. I rather doubt he’ll be tossed in jail forever if he’s even found competent to stand trial and there are clemency options to pursue at the appropriate time but for now I think that the legal process needs to follow its course. It’s unfortunate that his condition may deteriorate in jail-few people regard jail as a vacation-but that’s part of the general idea; the threat of jail is all that prevents some people from doing things they know they shouldn’t. One way or another, I suspect that McKinnon is rapidly developing a deeper appreciation of the concept that actions have consequences.
What did he do exactly is my question. Broke/hacked into a military network that was so lax on security he used to run into other hackers when he was bumbling his way about in it. Him, confessing that he was looking for UFO secrets he never found. I wonder what the other hackers he ran into were looking for? And most likely found from the sounds of things, they were never caught. The US is merely trying to make an example of this man. They themselves are too inept to catch the other hackers that were probably doing the real damage, if any damage occurred at all. Sounds to me like the military used it as a good excuse to replace all their hardware and blame it on him.
Don’t be led astray by talk of wrong and right here. This is merely a propaganda machine at work, warning other hackers that we will come after you “if” we catch you. This guy did nothing to jeopardize US national security that wasn’t already breached or he would never had gotten into their networks in the first place, he’s inept.
I hope they have new and better network people running their systems now. Wise up folks.