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Hacking For UFO Secrets

Computer crime: He may be a nerd, but he's ours
Hacker who hunted for UFOs is a wanted alien in his own right
By David Randall
Sunday, 3 August 2008


For two years Gary McKinnon, an unemployed Scotsman armed with only some spliffs, a few beers, and a dial-up internet connection, went looking for beings of superior intelligence. He couldn't find them. Instead, he found the US Military-Industrial Complex, an altogether different grade of brain.

And, after he'd found them, and fooled around inside their computer systems for a few years, he got sloppy. And so, in turn, he was found in Crouch End, north London, by the US Justice Department, or rather its surrogates in the UK, the Home Office's then National Hi-Tech Crime Unit. In a scene reminiscent of so many extra-terrestrial fantasies of people like Mr McKinnon, one morning in November 2002, they appeared at the foot of his bed – and abducted him. Using their high-speed craft with its mysterious, revolving light on top, they carried him off to Holloway Road police station and probed him for his innermost secrets. McKinnon ("I'm only a little nerd") was powerless to resist.

And when they returned him to his own world, he was a changed man. No longer free to come and go without reporting every evening at a police station; no longer allowed near a computer with an internet connection; and no longer the anonymous obsessive, whiling away the days burrowing deep into the networks of the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Defense Department. He was now that most alien of creatures: the cause célèbre. And, after the law lords' decision on Wednesday to extradite him to the US to face trial, and possibly a lengthy jail sentence, he is that even rarer phenomenon: the transatlantic cause célèbre.

To civil liberty groups, McKinnon is a UFO believer whose enthusiasm got the better of his admittedly limited judgement, and whose chief crime was mere electronic trespass. He is just a nut, to whom a superpower's sledgehammer is now being unnecessarily – and vindictively – applied.

The Americans see things rather differently. His actions were, said one US prosecutor, "the biggest military computer hack of all time". According to the Justice Department indictment, he, among other things, "broke into the computer network at the Earle Naval Weapons Station, stealing computer passwords, and shutting down the network in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks"; and he caused "approximately $900,000 [£450,000] in damages to computers".

This month, McKinnon will head to the European Court of Human Rights for his last hope of avoiding the plane ride west. The Americans will fight him all the way. They want his ass. And, after they've finished with it, McKinnon might then be taking it into the US prison system. You can see why he's worried.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cr ... 83642.html
 
Yes, particularly as they greys charge a lot of money for their services these days...
 
Well, the Greys return their abductees. The Americans however... :shock:
 
Kondoru said:
http://robert-barrow.blogspot.com/2008/10/taking-gary-mckinnon-for-little-swim.html

I fear he misunderstands the case
Click to expand...
I think he understands it perfectly well!
 
Being an aspie doesnt mean you dont know the difference between right and wrong.
 
PM quizzed over McKinnon extradition

PM quizzed over McKinnon extradition

Brown supports repatriation, in principle

By John Leyden

Posted in Law, 21st November 2008 10:55 GMT

Prime minister Gordon Brown has spoken about the Gary McKinnon extradition case for the first time, supporting the principle of repatriation of sentenced prisoners while declining to get into the specifics of the case, which remains under judicial review.

During prime minister's questions on Wednesday, Gordon Brown supported the general principle of repatriation of prisoners in extradition cases, without referring to the McKinnon case specifically. David Burrowes, Tory MP for Enfield, Southgate and McKinnon's constituency MP, asked: "Will the prime minister ensure that extradition arrangements are changed so that UK citizens such as ... Gary McKinnon, are not routinely extradited, despite having Asperger's syndrome?"

In response, Brown said he could not comment on the specifics of the case, which is due back in court on 5 December, while making a general comment in support of the principle of repatriation.

"The Honourable Gentleman refers to the case of his constituent, which he has taken up with Lord West. The UK has important obligations in that area, and we take those obligations seriously. I am sure that he will be aware that the case is before the courts again on 5 December, and I cannot comment on any specifics. As I understand it, however, the UK and the US are signatories to the Council of Europe convention on the transfer of sentenced persons, which enables a person found guilty in the United States of America to serve their sentence in the UK," the prime minister said.

The full exchange can be seen in an extract from Hansard here.

An early day motion calling for the government to obtain assurances that McKinnon would be permitted serve any sentence imposed by a US court in a UK jail gained the support of 74 MPs but requests for a debate on the issue have reportedly been rejected.

McKinnon has run a long campaign against extradition the the US, where he faces faces seven charges of hacking into US government and military systems during 2001 and 2002. He admits the actions but denies causing damage. Following a string of legal setbacks, including the rejection of his appeal by the House of Lords back in July, McKinnon's legal options have narrowed down to a judicial review of the Home Secretary's decision not to suspend extradition proceedings following his recent diagnosis with Asperger's syndrome. A hearing before a judge on this question has been scheduled for 5 December. ®

© Copyright 1998–2008
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Gary McKinnon signs confession to avoid hacking extradition
Gary McKinnon denies that he damaged any computers while searching for evidence of alien encounters
Nico Hines

A UFO enthusiast who hacked into US military computers looking for evidence that aliens have visited Earth today signed a written confession in a last-ditch bid to avoid extradition.

Gary McKinnon, 42, from north London, faces a sentence of up to 80 years in prison if he is found guilty in an American court of hacking into and damaging 97 US Navy, Army, Nasa and Pentagon computers.

Mr McKinnon, who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, has failed in numerous appeals against the extradition. His lawyer hopes that by handing a signed confession to the Crown Prosecution Service he could be tried in the UK.

Karen Todner, his lawyer, said he still denies causing damage to the computer equipment, which cost $800,000 (£532,500) according to the US authorities. He signed a statement offering to plead guilty under UK law to hacking into the computers in breach of the Misuse of Computers Act.

Ms Todner said she was awaiting a response from the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, but added she was hopeful prosecutors would accept the deal.

“They are different offences to what he was being extradited for, but it reflects his culpability for what he did,” she said.

A Crown Prosecution Service spokeswoman confirmed they had received the letter and were considering it.

The US military claims Mr McKinnon, from Wood Green, left 300 computers at a US Navy weapons station unusable immediately after the September 11 terror attacks in 2001.

He is accused of hacking into 53 US Army computers and 26 US Navy computers, including those at US Naval Weapons Station Earle in New Jersey, which is responsible for replenishing munitions and supplies for the Atlantic fleet.

He is also accused of hacking into 16 Nasa computers, one US Department of Defence computer and one machine belonging to the US Air Force.

He was caught in 2002 as he tried to download a grainy black and white photograph which he believed was an alien spacecraft from a Nasa computer housed in the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas.

He was easily traced by the authorities because he used a personal e-mail address.

If the case is heard in the US it is thought that he would receive a relatively light sentence and that, under a plea bargain offer, he would spend six to 12 months in a US jail before being returned to Britain to serve the rest of his time.

McKinnon says he was looking for UFO files and his supporters have said this was an obsession that went too far.

He has previously said: “What I did was illegal and wrong and I accept I should be punished. But I am not a member of al-Qaeda. I believe my case is being treated so seriously because they’re scared of what I’ve seen. I’m living in a surreal, nutter’s film.”

An application for permission for a judicial review of the proposed extradition is expected to be heard at the High Court in London on January 20.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 503814.ece
 
Hmm, I'll remember that, in the unlikely event that I get in trub with the law - I'll just arrange to get myself diagnosed with Asperger's...

Cynical? Me? :lol:
 
Mythopoeika said:
I'll remember that, in the unlikely event that I get in trub with the law - I'll just arrange to get myself diagnosed with Asperger's...
Click to expand...
That's a rather cheap shot at the handicapped, I feel.

Anyhow, latest news:

Hacker wins court review decision

British hacker Gary McKinnon has won permission from the High Court to apply for a judicial review against his extradition to the United States.

The 42-year-old from north London, who was diagnosed last August as having Asperger's Syndrome, has admitted hacking into US military computers.

His lawyers had said Mr McKinnon was at risk of suicide if he were extradited.

Lawyers for the home secretary had argued against the review, saying the risk to Mr McKinnon's health was low.

Lord Justice Maurice Kay and Mr Justice Simon ruled that Mr McKinnon's case "merits substantive consideration" and granted him leave to launch a fresh challenge at the court in London.

His lawyers had previously told the High Court that if he were removed from his family and sent to the US, his condition was likely to give rise to psychosis or suicide.

The condition was not taken into consideration by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith last October when she permitted the extradition.

However, her lawyers said she acted within her powers.

Mr McKinnon, who is from Wood Green, has always admitted hacking into the computer systems in 2001-2 - which the US government says caused damage costing $800,000 (£550,000).

He hacked into 97 government computers belonging to organisations including the US Navy and Nasa.

He was caught as he tried to download a grainy black and white photograph which he believed was an alien spacecraft from a Nasa computer housed in the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas.

Mr McKinnon was easily traced by the authorities because he used his own email address.

He has always said that he had no malicious intent but was looking for classified documents on UFOs which he believed the US authorities had suppressed.

He has signed a statement accepting that his hacking constituted an offence under the UK's Computer Misuse Act 1990.

Mr McKinnon's mother Janis Sharp relayed the news to her son after the hearing.

She said: "We are overjoyed that the British courts have shown sense and compassion by allowing our son Gary, a young man with Asperger's syndrome, this judicial review.

"We have always been outraged by the Home Office's decision to have him extradited to stand trial in a foreign land where he would face an out-of-proportion sentence for what is essentially a crime of eccentricity."

Mr McKinnon has said he believes he will get a fairer trial in the UK and that he found the situation stressful.

"I am very controlled, which is probably not a good thing, but inside the fires of hell are burning. It's not a good place to be," he said.

Those with Asperger's Syndrome commonly become obsessed with certain activities and interests and have a level of "social naivety" when it comes to evaluating the consequences of their actions.

Prof Simon Baron-Cohen, who diagnosed Mr McKinnon with the condition, has said of the hacker's actions: "We should be thinking about this as the activity of somebody with a disability rather than a criminal activity."

Mr McKinnon's legal team have sent a request to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer, asking for him to face trial in the UK rather than the US.

The home secretary has agreed to postpone Mr McKinnon's extradition until the DPP gives his response to the case in four weeks.

However Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne called on the home secretary to "end this fiasco" and try Mr McKinnon in the UK.

He said: "Gary McKinnon's condition should mean he is treated more leniently than otherwise. Being detained at a high-security prison, even while only on remand, is hardly necessary for a hacker who had no malicious intent or previous conviction."

If the DPP is persuaded to try Mr McKinnon in the UK, the hacker would face a three to four year sentence, rather than a potential 70 years in US courts.

Mr McKinnon's full application for judicial review is likely to be heard after 16 March, by which time the DPP is expected to have made his decision.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7846442.stm
 
rynner2 said:
Mythopoeika said:
I'll remember that, in the unlikely event that I get in trub with the law - I'll just arrange to get myself diagnosed with Asperger's...
Click to expand...
That's a rather cheap shot at the handicapped, I feel.
Click to expand...

No, I wasn't having a shot at people who are genuinely handicapped.
I just think McKinnon is trying everything he can. Who wouldn't, if they were in the same position?
If anything, it was a cheap shot at McKinnon himself, and for that I apologise.
 
He-e-e-res Boris!

Gary McKinnon believes in little green men – but it doesn't make him a terrorist
Americans who want a harmless hacker extradited from Britain must be from a different planet, says Boris Johnson.

By Boris Johnson
Last Updated: 7:31PM GMT 26 Jan 2009

....
..before we all get too misty-eyed about the new era, and before Barack devotes himself entirely to the meltdown of the banks, there is one more thing in his diplomatic in-tray. There is one last piece of neocon lunacy that needs to be addressed, and Mr Obama could sort it out at the stroke of a pen.

In a legal nightmare that has lasted seven years, and cost untold millions to taxpayers both here and in America, the US Justice Department is persisting in its demented quest to extradite 43-year-old Londoner, Gary McKinnon.

To listen to the ravings of the US military, you would think that Mr McKinnon is a threat to national security on a par with Osama bin Laden. According to the Americans, this mild-mannered computer programmer has done more damage to their war-fighting capabilities than all the orange-pyjama-clad suspects of Guantanamo combined.

And how? He is a hacker. He hacked into the Pentagon, he hacked into the army, the navy, and the air force, and the Americans say he temporarily paralysed US Naval Weapons station Earle, by deleting some files.

In their continuing rage at this electronic lèse-majesté, the Americans want us to send him over there to face trial, and the possibility of a 70-year jail sentence. It is a comment on American bullying and British spinelessness that this farce is continuing, because Gary McKinnon is not and never has been any kind of threat to American security. He had only one reason for fossicking around in the databanks of Pentagon computers, and it had nothing to do with the war on terror or indeed the military capabilities of any country on earth.

Mr McKinnon believes in UFOs, and he is one of the large number of people who think that there is a gigantic conspiracy to conceal their existence from the rest of us, and that this conspiracy is organised by the US government.

I am not so brave as to claim that UFOs do not exist. The Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, has said he believes in life forms on other planets, and no decent empiricist could rule out the possibility.

It may be that the former footballer and BBC presenter David Icke is right, and that the world is run by giant lizards in disguise. Perhaps Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling are themselves supersized saurians who have been sent on a 10-year mission to wreck the UK economy, in preparation for the great lizard takeover. 8) Maybe the whole plot will climax in Davos this week, when all 2,500 leading economic and political lizards will meet in the Swiss alps – having done untold damage to global finances – and hail the arrival of the lizard mother ship as it perches on the mountain top. :D

All this is certainly theoretically possible, just as it is possible that there really was an accident involving an alien spacecraft at Roswell, and that there really is an extra large teapot in orbit around Mars. It is just that I happen to think it vanishingly unlikely, and we have a word for people who persist in believing in alien abduction. They are cranks, and they do not deserve to be persecuted. They do not deserve to be arrested, and have their lives ruined by the agonising delays of the law, unable to work, a drain on the resources of the state and of their families.

Gary McKinnon wasn't even a proper hacker. He did something called "blank password scanning", and because these military computers were so dumb as to lack proper passwords, he was able to roam around their intestines in search of evidence of little green men. He was so innocent and un-furtive in his investigations that he left his own email address, and messages such as "Your security is crap". And yes, since you ask, he does think that he found evidence that the US military is infiltrated by beings from the planet Tharg. He even knows the names and ranks of various non-terrestrial officers, though unfortunately they have been deleted from his hard drive.

It is brutal, mad and wrong even to consider sending this man to America for trial. He has been diagnosed as having Asperger's syndrome, for heaven's sake. How can the British government be so protoplasmic, so pathetic, so heedless of the well-being of its own people, as to sign the warrant for his extradition? What kind of priorities do we have these days? We treat a harmless UFO-believer as an international terrorist, and are willing to send him to prison in America, and as for real terrorists – people who bombed and maimed innocent civilians in this country – we seem willing to give their families £12,000 each, on the grounds that they are all "victims" of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

The British government is obviously too feeble to help Mr McKinnon, and even though the courts last week granted him another review, it is plain that the matter will simply drag preposterously and expensively on.

It is time for Barack Obama to show the new leadership the world has been crying out for. It is time for the Commander-in-Chief to tell the US military to stop being so utterly wet, dry their eyes, and invest in some passwords that are slightly more difficult to crack. :twisted:

In the words of the spiritual with which he began his inauguration ceremony, it is time for the new President to let our people go. To persist with this extradition is so cruel and so irrational that the only plausible explanation is that beneath their suits the US Justice Department and the UK Home Office are occupied by a conspiracy of great green gibbering geckos from outer space.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/colu ... orist.html
 
Boris is so right!
The man is a comic genius. :D
 
Planet Tharg? Do I detect the influence of 2000AD here? I wonder if Boris was a Judge Dredd fan, or ABC Warriors perhaps?
 
Pentagon hacker in last bid to avoid extradition
Asperger's sufferer calls on court to halt extradition over army computer breach
By Jerome Taylor
Wednesday, 10 June 2009

A British "UFO eccentric" described by the United States as the man behind the "biggest military hack of all time" launched his final bid to avoid being extradited yesterday.

Gary McKinnon, a 41-year-old computer expert from Wood Green, north London, faces up to 70 years in an American high-security prison if he is extradited and convicted of hacking into nearly 100 US military computers shortly after the September 11 attacks.

Such a prosecution in the UK, however, would almost certainly warrant little more than a six-month community service order and a large fine.

American prosecutors have accused Mr McKinnon of causing $700,000 (£430,0000) worth of damage and shutting down the US Army's entire computer network for more than 24 hours. They have vowed to see him prosecuted in the US.

Mr McKinnon has not denied being behind the attacks but he and his growing list of celebrity supporters say he was "naïvely" motivated by a desire to look for extra-terrestrial life – something with which he had become obsessed because he suffers from Asperger's syndrome.

All his attempts in British courts to halt his extradition have failed and last year the Home Office announced it was willing to hand over Mr McKinnon under a controversial treaty which allows for British suspects to be sent to the US, but does not force the US to hand its citizens to Britain.

But lawyers representing Mr McKinnon managed to secure a judicial review by arguing that the then home secretary, Jackie Smith, failed to take into account that Mr McKinnon suffered from Asperger's and that he would be at risk of psychosis or suicide if removed to the US.

Before the High Court yesterday, Edward Fitzgerald QC argued that extraditing Mr McKinnon would be "unnecessary, avoidable and disproportionate" and suggested that his client should be tried in the UK instead.

Lawyers for the Home Office will argue that the "degree of suffering" Mr McKinnon may suffer from extradition would fall short of the levels that justified a High Court intervention.

Since his arrest more than eight years ago, Mr McKinnon, a shy and retiring type who lives with his girlfriend, Lucy, has lived with the prospect of spending the rest of his life in an American jail.

During his previous legal battles, he and his mother, Janet, have struggled to garner support but in recent months a number of celebrities and politicians have joined his cause. They include the musicians Sting, Peter Gabriel and the Proclaimers; the actresses Julie Christie and Jane Asher; the former Hizbollah hostage Terry Waite; and the politicians Boris Johnson, Tony Benn and David Blunkett. Mr Johnson, the Mayor of London, said extraditing him would be "brutal and wrong".

Jane Asher, the president of the National Autistic Society, said: "Routine and familiarity is of paramount importance to someone with Asperger's. A US prison would be awful for Gary. It would be deeply unfair and disproportionate if he was extradited."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 01101.html
 
well..

What's happend here is that organisations such as the military often run seperate networks, one is easy to hack into and contains systems with junk files containing things that might attract hackers, its called a 'honey trap' and it means that hackers leave the real network alone and go away feeling pleased with themselves. Its a very common tactic and it works very well.
If this guy had really managed to hack real military networks then he would have found himself having a visit from several large men with a desire to drill holes in his kneecaps and attach his testicles to the mains supply while they asked him a lot of searching questions, before they desided wether or not to simply kill him and bury him in the desert or to hand him over the the authorities.If you do fuck with the military and you find yourself chatting to these types of men its more than likely that you are in very very deep shit and they are going to kill you when they have finished asking you questions, it saves them having to fill in loads of forms.
the fact that they didnt do that simply means he never got into the real networks but they desided to make an example of him anyway.
 
Re: well..

KarlD said:
If you do fuck with the military and you find yourself chatting to these types of men its more than likely that you are in very very deep shit and they are going to kill you when they have finished asking you questions, it saves them having to fill in loads of forms.
Click to expand...
And you got this information from where exactly? A seance with the recently departed? People who know about these murders but are too frightened to say anything in public...? Oh, wait! YOU know about them so someone must have blabbed. Are your informants now interred in the desert too? Will you be joining them for informing us?
 
Re: well..

danny_cogdon said:
KarlD said:
If you do fuck with the military and you find yourself chatting to these types of men its more than likely that you are in very very deep shit and they are going to kill you when they have finished asking you questions, it saves them having to fill in loads of forms.
Click to expand...
And you got this information from where exactly? A seance with the recently departed? People who know about these murders but are too frightened to say anything in public...? Oh, wait! YOU know about them so someone must have blabbed. Are your informants now interred in the desert too? Will you be joining them for informing us?
Click to expand...

Tell you what, you try it and then you tell us all about their visit to your house O.K?
 
Re: well..

KarlD said:
Tell you what, you try it and then you tell us all about their visit to your house O.K?
Click to expand...

Thats my point Karl. You said they kill people who know about them killing people.

You're still alive.

Go figure!
 
Betrayal of a naive hacker: Why are our MPs doing nothing to help Asperger's victim Gary?
By Michael Seamark and James Slack
Last updated at 7:56 AM on 03rd July 2009

With absurd ease, Asperger's victim Gary hacked into Pentagon computers in a bid to prove the existence of little green men. So why is the U.S. using all its might to extradite him to face 60 years in jail? And more pertinently, why are our craven politicians doing nothing to help him?To all who know him, Gary McKinnon is a harmless computer nerd obsessed with proving the existence of 'little green men'.

Yet the U.S. authorities insist the British UFO fanatic is a 'cyber-terrorist' who hacked into top-secret Pentagon and NASA computers.
They say that Gary, who has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, must be extradited and tried in their courts.
They have vowed to put the vulnerable 43-year-old behind bars for up to 60 years - which means he would almost certainly die in a notorious high-security Supermax jail.

Medical experts say the stress of extradition alone could kill him, or he might well take his own life.

Yet, incredibly, the Government is doing nothing to protect Gary from extradition - despite the fact that he freely admits computer hacking and could easily be punished here for his crimes.

That is why the Daily Mail today launches a campaign asking new Home Secretary Alan Johnson to halt the extradition. Gary could then be properly - but fairly - dealt with in the country in which his crimes were committed, close to his loving and supportive family.

LOPSIDED EXTRADITION
The controversial 2003 Extradition Act was pushed through in the aftermath of 9/11, ostensibly to fight the war on terror.
But the treaty between London and Washington is considered dangerously lopsided in favour of the U.S. - which has extradited twice as many suspects as have travelled in the opposite direction.

Campaigners and politicians are urging the Government to review an Act they say is a 'grotesque injustice' for Britons facing removal to the U.S.
The central problem is that the arrangements give British citizens inferior rights to Americans. The U.S. can demand a Briton's extradition without having to provide any evidence - but Britain has to prove its case in a U.S. court.

Under the Act, if the U.S. government wants to extradite a UK citizen it needs only to outline the alleged offence, the punishment specified by statute and provide an accurate description of the suspect sought.
But to extradite an American from the States, Britain must prove 'probable cause' - which the U.S. constitution's fourth amendment defines as 'information sufficient to warrant a prudent person's belief that the wanted individual has committed a crime'.

Since January 1, 2004, when the Act was implemented, only 25 suspects have been returned to the UK while 56 have been extradited to the U.S. during the same period.
This is despite the fact that the U.S. has a population of 304million, compared with 61million in the UK.

Already there is a groundswell of support, with senior MPs urging Mr Johnson to intervene - on the grounds of Gary's recently-diagnosed mental condition - before it's too late.
His legal appeals are virtually exhausted and he could be on a plane to the U.S. within weeks under the terms of a highly-controversial treaty which allows British citizens to be extradited on little or no evidence.
For American citizens to be sent in the opposite direction, a detailed case must first be presented against them.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: 'This is a case which raises some very serious questions. Not just about the U.S.-UK extradition treaty, but also about how we deal with someone who clearly has mental health problems.

etc...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -Gary.html

Sorry, no UFOs to be seen here, please move along...
 
He should just get it over with. There is no way he will get sentenced to 60 years. 10 to 15 at the most and then he will be let out in 3 to 4 years on good behavior. After that a nice signing bonus for his story in book form will be waiting. :twisted:
 
tonyblair11 said:
There is no way he will get sentenced to 60 years. 10 to 15 at the most and then he will be let out in 3 to 4 years on good behavior.
Click to expand...
Admittedly that is a little more likely under an Obama administration than it would have been under Shrub's evil empire, but the US prison system does have 'previous' for locking people up and throwing away the key.

And the imbalance between US and UK extradition rights still needs to be addressed.
 
Compassion that crosses the party divide
By Daily Mail Comment
Last updated at 11:56 PM on 03rd July 2009

In these times of political turmoil, cross-party consensus is hard to find.
So it is all the more significant that three of Britain's senior politicians, from all the main parties, are calling for the deportation of Gary McKinnon to be reconsidered.

David Cameron, Nick Clegg and former Home Secretary David Blunkett have all spoken in support of the Mail's campaign.
And, in an unprecedented intervention, they were joined yesterday by the Prime Minister's wife, Sarah Brown. Although unable to express a public opinion, she took the extraordinary step of meeting Gary's mother.

Meanwhile other eminent people voiced their support for the Mail's campaign, including Mayor of London Boris Johnson, former LibDem leader Ming Campbell and ex-hostage Terry Waite.

This alliance of compassion across political divides should make it clear to obdurate and craven Home Office ministers that they must think again.

Gary McKinnon, who is facing extradition after hacking into computer networks operated by Nasa, has received support from across the political spectrum

...

The Mail accepts that what he did was wrong, and that arguably he should be jailed.

But ministers' refusal to charge him here and bring this sad and shaming charade to an end is an affront to British justice and common humanity.
Surely they can see that any cause that can bring together Cameron, Clegg, Blunkett and even Sarah Brown deserves the most careful consideration?
 
Re: well..

KarlD said:
What's happend here is that organisations such as the military often run seperate networks, one is easy to hack into and contains systems with junk files containing things that might attract hackers, its called a 'honey trap' and it means that hackers leave the real network alone and go away feeling pleased with themselves. Its a very common tactic and it works very well.
If this guy had really managed to hack real military networks then he would have found himself having a visit from several large men with a desire to drill holes in his kneecaps and attach his testicles to the mains supply while they asked him a lot of searching questions, before they desided wether or not to simply kill him and bury him in the desert or to hand him over the the authorities.If you do fuck with the military and you find yourself chatting to these types of men its more than likely that you are in very very deep shit and they are going to kill you when they have finished asking you questions, it saves them having to fill in loads of forms.
the fact that they didnt do that simply means he never got into the real networks but they desided to make an example of him anyway.
Click to expand...

First of all, it's more commonly referred to as a Honeypot.

As far as whether or not actual military computers can be vulnerable, ask any security expert and you're sure to get the same response; Can it be accessed remotely? Then it can be hacked.

I've known various individuals who have worked in computer security for U.S. Government agencies and they have watched people with Chinese ip addresses successfully gain entry. They seemed to think it was sanctioned by the Chinese Government due to the fact that he intrusions were only taking place during business hours, Chinese time. I had to point out to the paranoids that perhaps it was individuals using an internet cafe. ;)
 
Gary was just a guy looking for ET. This witch hunt must end (and that's the man from NASA's view)
By Julie Moult
Last updated at 8:57 AM on 07th July 2009

Gary McKinnon won backing yesterday from an unexpected source - an American whose job it was to protect the very computers that he breached.

Joseph Gutheinz spent ten years at the space exploration agency Nasa as a front-line criminal investigator with expertise in hacking.

He believes 43-year-old Gary 'did America a favour' by exposing the gaping holes in its security systems and called for a halt to the 'witch hunt' against him.

As news of the Daily Mail's campaign to halt Gary's extradition spread across the Atlantic, Mr Gutheinz added his voice in support.
He argued that the U.S. authorities were wrong to class Gary, who has Asperger's Syndrome, as a cyber terrorist.
And he said he feared the Briton would be treated 'like an animal' if he were sent to a U.S. jail, where he could face a 60-year sentence for hacking into Nasa and Pentagon computers seven years ago.

'I am known as a conservative on law-and-order issues,' said the 53-year-old Texan, who now works as a college lecturer in criminal justice and has been closely following Gary's case.

'I believe that laws exist to be followed and when they are ignored anarchy follows. But here we have a guy who was looking for ET.

'His timing could not have been worse in the wake of 9/11 but you only need to take one look at his actions to realise he was not seeking the kind of information that, say, a Saudi spy was looking for. I can say in all honesty that I believe Gary McKinnon probably did as much good as he did harm by hacking in to these systems.

'He was able to infiltrate both military and Nasa systems and if he could do it with relatively little expertise then so could the Russians. What he has done has allowed us to come back and identify where the holes are.

'Experts are on the payroll to do exactly what Gary did - and we are proposing to lock this man up.

'I truly believe he did America and Americans a favour.'

Mr Gutheinz fears Gary will not receive justice if he is extradited to the U.S. to face trial.

And he has grave concerns for the Briton's mental health if exposed to America's prison system-which he described as 'medieval'. He said he had spent two years working with a young man suffering from Asperger's who was facing jail and has firsthand experience of the incompatibility of the illness and the judicial system.

'The people who run the system, who herd prisoners from one place to the next, are not the most enlightened people.

'Gary would be treated like an animal rather than a person in need of help. Children and adults with this illness are often attacked physically and verbally by people insensitive to the private hell they can live in, day after day. I believe we have to be compassionate - not everybody is made from the same cookie cutter.

'There are people that should not be punished like those who are in full possession of their faculties.'

Mr Gutheinz said he feared Gary was being offered up as a 'sacrificial lamb' by the British government to maintain the 'special relationship' between the two countries.

He added: 'I hope a deal can be reached with American prosecutors that will offer Gary treatment rather than jail or prison, and permit him to remain in Britain in surroundings and with people who will nurture him.

'To this end, I ask the authorities in the United States to halt efforts to extradite Gary and instead work out a compromise to protect my country's national security while also enhancing Gary's well-being.

'I would hold a different opinion if Gary were a physical threat to others or a continuing threat to American national security. Neither appears to be the case.

'If America is unwilling to strike a compassionate plea bargain with Gary's defence team I believe Britain must take steps to protect its citizen who is accused of breaking American law yet who suffers from a mental illness.

'In the case of Gary McKinnon, I have come to the conclusion that Britain should not extradite this man to the United States to face the prospect of injustice masked as justice.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -view.html
 
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