Brit Hacker Fights Extradition To America

[Gemeos]

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Pentagon-And-NASA-Computer-Hacker-Gary-McKinnon-In-High-Court-Fight-Against-Extradition-To-America/Article/200906215298944?lpos=UK_News_News_Your_Way_Region_ 6&lid=NewsYourWay_ARTICLE_15298944_Pentagon_And_NASA _Computer_Hacker_Gary_McKinnon_In_High_Court_Fight _Against_Extradition_To_America

10:04am UK, Tuesday June 09, 2009
Mark White, Home Affairs correspondent

A British computer hacker at the centre of the biggest data breach in US government history will take his fight against extradition to the High Court in London.

Gary McKinnon illegally hacked into almost a hundred secure Pentagon and Nasa databases in the same year that terrorists carried out the 9/11 attacks.

The US authorities claim he is a cyber-terrorist and, if convicted, faces a possible 70-year prison sentence.
(to read the full article, go to the link)

[no caste]

UPDATE:

Hacker loses extradition appeal
British hacker Gary McKinnon has lost his latest High Court bid to avoid extradition to the United States.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8177561.stm

"It is open to Mr McKinnon to seek to appeal to the House of Lords."

Then, that's all. :sad:

[no caste]

House of Lords AND/or Euro Ct of Human rights :thumb_yello:

Different (older) source -

What they are saying about Gary McKinnon
FIRST POSTED JULY 27, 2009
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/51271,news,what-they-are-saying-about-gary-mckinnon-high-court-computer-hacker-united-states

If the appeal is rejected, his lawyer, Karen Todner, plans to take the case to the House of Lords and/or the European Court of Human Rights...

Gary McKinnon, defending himself on BBC Radio 5's Victoria Derbyshire show: "I'm not blind to criminality but I was on a moral crusade at the time. There was good evidence to show that certain secretive parts of the American government intelligence agencies did have access to crashed extra terrestrial technology which could... save us as a form of free, clean, pollution-free energy. I thought if someone was holding on to that, that was actually unconstitutional under American law."

Andrew MacKinlay, Labour MP for Thurrock, who has vowed to quit the Commons at the next election in protest at the recent Commons vote supporting McKinnon's extradition: "I believe it's the role of backbenchers to probe and criticise. In instances like the McKinnon case, which relate to people's rights and liberties as well as commonsense, you should just spurn the diktats and the Whips. I was really frustrated by the vote. Many of my colleagues had expressed their sympathy for Gary McKinnon. But when the crunch came, they just went tribal and followed the diktats of the party."

Mayor of London Boris Johnson: "There are a number of serious flaws in the Extradition Act in its current form. In the case of Gary McKinnon it is brutal, mad and wrong to consider sending him to the US. Gary's case is just one high-profile case we are aware of, but a number of other UK citizens are also in similar positions and are currently awaiting their fate."

An anonymous military officer at the US Pentagon, interviewed by the Sunday Telegraph: "US policy is to fight these attacks as strongly as possible. As a result of Mr McKinnon's actions, we suffered serious damage and lost a lot of time and money. This was not some harmless incident. He did very serious and deliberate damage to military and Nasa computers and left silly and anti-American messages. All the evidence was that someone was staging a very serious attack on US systems."

Anita Coles of Liberty, in the Guardian: "Gary McKinnon's fight to be prosecuted in the UK casts a stark light on our extradition arrangements with America. US prosecutors are threatening him with up to 70 years in a "supermax" prison * and this a man with Asperger's syndrome who could hardly be less suited to such punishment."

[no caste]

There are quite a few interesting details from another forum that I haven't seen -

Old 21st Jun 2008, 20:06 - Great story - x2

If he hadn't used his then girlfriend Tamsin's own e-mail address to make the purchase, he might well have been hacking freely to this day.

Tamsin, a librarian, is the other tragic figure in this story. For several years, McKinnon was living with her in a flat in her aunt's house in Hillfield Avenue, Hornsey, North London.

One can only imagine Tamsin's frustration (she has not responded to my requests for an interview) as his hacking obsession took over.

In late 2000, McKinnon even gave up his paid job as a computer administrator to devote himself to cyberspace infiltration. Soon, he stopped washing, became noctural, ate rarely, smoked marijuana and spent all day in a dressing-gown.

Understandably, Tamsin dropped him - although, out of fondness or insanity, she continued to share the flat with him. She really should have got out then, because his night-time activities were now alerting some very serious people.

Between early 2000 and autumn 2001, McKinnon hacked into 97 computer systems, belonging to the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Department of Defense and NASA.

He could do this because their security was unbelievably lax. 'It was so easy,' he says today. 'I found out that the U.S. military use the Windows computer software system. And having realised this, I assumed it would probably be an easy hack if they hadn't secured it properly.'

McKinnon's cyber crowbar consisted of several readily available programmes 'glued' together by one of his own.

The package searched for 'blank passwords' - computers whose passwords hadn't been changed from their default setting. It was no harder than climbing a neighbour's fence. Online, he could scan '65,000 machines in little more than eight minutes'.

Once he had found a loophole, he was into the host network.

'It wasn't very clever,' he has said. 'There were no lines of defence. And I wasn't alone in doing it. Often, I could see that there were a number of other foreign hackers present at any one time.' So what did he see there?

One example he gives was an account by a 'NASA photographic expert'. They alleged that in 'Building 8' of the Johnson Space Center, images of UFOs were 'regularly airbrushed out' from the high-resolution satellite imaging. McKinnon claims this encouraged him to investigate further. 'I logged on to NASA. They had huge, high-resolution images stored in their picture files. They had filtered and unfiltered, or processed and unprocessed, files.

MORE:
http://www.cyclechat.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=14409

[Initiate]

They should be paying him for finding the holes in their system!

[mntruthseeker]

I agree they should be paying him

He should be hailed as a hero from around the globe

Gary has mighty fine help in high places.............I have high hopes that he will be just fine.

[Jacqui D]

I really hope Gary gets off they fear for his sanity or possible suicide if he gets sent out to the US.
I feel sorry for his mother, she has worked long and hard for this they should be offering him a job not locking him up! sorry if that has been said already i have not read all the posts.:mad3: