Hacker Gary McKinnon Interviewed

G0rAk writes "The BBC World Service has a half hour audio interview with British hacker Gary McKinnon. As recently reported on/. and BBC News, Gary was arrested and freed on bail pending extradition proceedings to the U.S. There, he faces charges of gaining unauthorised access and causing criminal damage to military computers in his search for evidence of UFO coverups and anti-gravity technology of extra-terrestrial origin. In a very candid interview, Gary re-affirms that he had no malicious intent, was amazed at the ease with which he penetrated the networks, explains in detail what evidence of UFO coverups he saw, describes a personal journey through hell as he became obsessed with the project and how very scared he is that he could be facing up to seventy years in a Virginian jail. A bit of a nut, perhaps. But a fascinating listen that helps a lot in making that judgment. The Interview can be listened to with RealPlayer from 11:32 GMT (06:32 EST) on Saturday until the same time next week."

Comments

Thank you Gary

[bigwavejas]

This has scapegoat written all over it and has a striking resemblance to the Kevin Mitnick detention. I find it questionable the government claims he caused 900k USD in damages. How can that be? System cleaning, turning on security (which should have been on already)? Their ineptness lead to this breach of "security", if anything they should thank Gary for pointing out their shortcomings... Better him than a terrorist.

Re:Thank you Gary

[DigiShaman]

We are talking about government property. They will not judge him based on his "intent". They will judge him based on what he DID. The military will treat every civilian like a possible spy. Even if the door is wide open, you do no walk into a military base. Same goes for their network.

Re:Thank you Gary

[thelost]

I found a recent interview with him interesting as in it he mentioned that he was far from the only one nightly sneaking into US Gov computer networks, saying that he saw many others from all over the world doing exactly the same as him. How well protected are these systems really then?

Re:Thank you Gary

[Seumas]

The BBC World Service has a half hour audio interview with British hacker Gary McKinnon. As recently reported on/. and BBC News, Gary was arrested and freed on bail pending extradition proceedings to the U.S.. There, he faces charges of gaining unauthorised access and causing criminal damage to military computers in his search for evidence of UFO coverups and anti-gravity technology of extra-terrestrial origin.

Doesn't this make him:

+ A cracker - not a hacker.
+ Insane.

Re:Thank you Gary

[A beautiful mind]

Let's just point it out: he's a script kiddie. He basically didn't do anything that 6 month experience using the internet and an interest in UFOs wouldn't teach him.

He got into a bloody cemetary ffs! He only got in because the military personnel there were too stupid to change the default password. He used his own email address for god's sake!

a 70 year penalty for something a script kiddie can do is more than harsh: it's outrageous.

Re:Thank you Gary

[yotto]

Please don't take offense at me if I voice my inability to believe the word of someone who breaks into military computers to look for evidence of UFOs. "I see people breaking into these comptuers all the time." Was that before or after you were pulled into the mothership and shown the proof that we never landed on the moon?

Re:Thank you Gary

[itistoday]

The problem with that argument is that what he "did" was browse file systems, change a desktop picture, and attempt to persuade system admins to secure their systems by leaving notes on the desktop. How is 70 years in prison a justifiable sentence for these actions?

Re:Thank you Gary

[Tim C]

+ A cracker - not a hacker.

You've lost that fight; time to move on to one you have a chance of winning. Language use changes, and hacker has changed to mean cracker, as well as programmer or other similar geeky type. For that matter, the former is *all* it means to the public. Carry on calling people hackers if you wish, but most people will get entirely the impression.

Re:Thank you Gary

[James McGuigan]

His crime was to show up the US Military, somebodies head has to roll.

Re:Thank you Gary

[warkda rrior]

The problem with that argument is that what he "did" was browse file systems [...]

I think this qualifies as unauthorized access to classified information. Similar to how I would not like anyone to read my credit card numbers off my system, even if they find a way in.

Re:Thank you Gary

[munpfazy]

>Please don't take offense at me if I voice my inability
>to believe the word of someone who breaks into military
>computers to look for evidence of UFOs.

Breaking into a government computer to look for evidence for UFO's is a perfectly rational decision. If you believe that there's a conspiracy to hide information and that there's no legitimate way to obtain that information, going after it in this way makes perfect sense. (Allowing yourself to be caught doing it is pretty dumb, but he readily admits to having been dumb on that count.)

While he may be wrong, that doesn't make him insane or unreliable.

The fact that he claims not to have found the evidence he wanted - outside of a photograph of a weird looking aircraft and the phrase "non-terrestrial personnel" in a document - makes him seem all the more reliable. He's not a crackpot falling over himself to misenterpret or invent data.

He's just a guy who went too far following a reasonable (if wrong) idea, and the care with which he described what he did observe is admirable. If all the UFO nutters were as precise as him, there'd be a lot fewer UFO nutters out there.

>"I see people breaking into these comptuers all the time."
>Was that before or after you were pulled into the mothership
>and shown the proof that we never landed on the moon?

LTFI.

That's exactly the sort of thing he didn't say.
(I was expecting to hear something similar myself.)

Re:Thank you Gary

[twohorse]

Please don't take offense at me if I voice my inability to believe the word of someone who breaks into military computers to look for evidence of UFOs. "I see people breaking into these comptuers all the time." Was that before or after you were pulled into the mothership and shown the proof that we never landed on the moon?

Indeed. Next we'll be expected to believe that some hippie, pot-smoking crackpot can actually hack U.S. Military networks.

Re:Thank you Gary

[asscroft]

Karl Rove reveals the identity of a US SPY during a time of war and he'll likely get a promotion. This guy hacks in to look at some pictures of weather balloons and they're ready to brand him a cyber terrorist. FTS.

Re:Thank you Gary

[Anonymous Coward]

I've no problems with letting you see my credit card numbers. As long as you do not actually _use_ them.

I generally do not show them around (since I do not know how trustworthy most people are). However, if somebody informs me he saw me numbers because i left the card lying around, but he didn't use them to buy something, it is very unlikely I find it ethically correct to beat up this person.

Even not to deter other people not to go looking at credit cards.

Re:Thank you Gary

[niittyniemi]

> How well protected are these systems really then?

Badly.

I heard the interview on the World Service and he said in the interview that he broke into Windows machines using user admin where the password hadn't been set. Remember that MS-SQL used to ship like that by default? But I bet he used others too eg. IIS.

So his uber 133t hacking skills involved the use of Google and setting a password!

He said that netstat and traceroute on IP addresses showed that the boxes already had active tcp/ip connections to Korea, Russia etc. and I'm presuming his skills helped him determine that these were not legitimate (ie. not port 80)

He sounded like a nice enough guy. A bit young and clueless but far from an extradition to a foreign power and a possible 70 year sentence in a pound-me-in-the-ass prison. He was expecting a few months suspended under British law.

Re:Thank you Gary

[the_womble]

To be fair to him lots of words have different meanings within and outside particular groups of people.

However I do think hacker is a lost cause, because the two meanings are too similar. However while those of you who want the word used correctly, could you help improve precision which we can use the English language by also being careful to use the following words strictly according to their original definitions:

gay: happy, jolly
rude: rustic, crude
gentleman: person with enough property not to need to work
lady: the wife of a knight or lord
charity: love of people per se (and of God)

You will notice that in each case the current meaning of the word is redundant (there are synonyms) and less precise than the original, therefore the change of meaning has shrunk the range of the language. Much like the case with hacker. So, please be consistent, use all these words (and many more) accurately. The only problem is that most people will not understand you: but then again why not allow the ignorant to misunderstand you.

(note to moderators: this is meant to ironic. If you have not heard the word before please look it up).

Once again...

[rel4x]

...Reminding us that you don't necessarily have to be stupid to be more than a little crazy...

Anti-Grav?

[yotto]

If he found the plans for anti-gravity, why doesn't he just make some boots or perhaps a belt and leap over the wall? That's what Lex Luthor would do.

Re:Anti-Grav?

[itistoday]

I understand you're joking, but listening to the interview reveals that he did not find any information in regards to anti-gravity. However, he claims to have found plenty of evidence for UFOs, mainly in the form of very high-resolution images. Whether or not the owner of that particular system he was on intentionally left those images there for conspiracy theorists like him to find remains unknown...

He's in for it

[confusion]

The US government is going to make an example out of him, assuming he actually gets convicted.

I have to say, though, that even if the government computers were wide open, finding documents about UFO's seems like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/

Re:He's in for it

[Mahou]

not really, any UFO documents could just be a bunch of fake stuff to distract hackers so they don't actually find anything important. seriously why would you have UFO files connected to a network (assuming you would have any digital data in the first place rather than just paper and ink) unless as misinformation?

Hack this format

[Free_Trial_Thinking]

How about someone hack this real player (tm) interview and put it into MP3 for us?

I'll do it if someone sends me instructions. I think this BBC encourages remixing, and format changing stuff, right?

Sincerly,

A concerned /. community member in MD, US

Re:Hack this format

[JasonFriedman]

if you wget the .ram it contains:

rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/worldservice/interview.ra

use mplayer to download it:

mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile interview.rm rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/worldservice/interview.ra

then convert to wav:

mplayer interview.rm -ao pcm -aofile interview.wav

use lame to convert to mp3:

lame -h interview.wav interview.mp3

Re:Hack this format

[caluml]

oggenc, oggenc you vile MP3 fiends. :)

Interview Transcript and Article.

[nevek]

http://www.spy.org.uk/freegary/archives/2005/07/ga eymckinnon_in.html

Poor Goofball

[Kr3m3Puff]

The guy thought that 9/11 was a hoax and thought he found evidence of UFO's and "Non-Terrestrial Officers" being transfered, thinking that there is some fleet of Anti-Gravity Spacecraft. Now he is facing 70 years in an American federal prison. That is a lot of work for nothing really show for it.

Silly American military for setting up Windows with blank administrator passwords too. Whole thing is kinda silly.

How funny...

[A beautiful mind]

So, where is the unfunny/insensitive/tasteless mod when you need it?

70 years is too much but....

[ShatteredDream]

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. If you know you're not supposed to sneak around a company or agency's property, then why do you think it's ok to break into their computers? In most parts of the world, just walking into someone's house and looking around without the owner's permission would get you beaten or killed by the owner. It's common courtesy and most of these "hackers" seem to lack any of it.

As for the "horror" of his extradition, don't blame uncle sam. The British government is big enough to tell our government to piss off if it felt such a thing weren't warranted. The main reason that we don't do such a thing to our citizens is that most countries that would want our people sent over to them wouldn't give them a fair trial, and that's not inherently because they're American. A Chinese is probably no more like to get a fair trial in Mugabe's Zimbabwe than an American. Foreign governments know that if our people attack them, that our law enforcement will arrest them and prosecute them, even if the country is hostile. The feds threatened to arrest the Americans who defaced Chinese websites after the PLA-Air Force brough our AWAC down early in Bush's first term. Few governments, China's especially, would do that to their own people.

Every so often I get some dumbass at my university trying to get me to teach them those "mad skillz" of h@x0ring that apparently all CS majors have. My interest was always in programming, not in things like that. They even have the gall to look at me like I'm the asshole, when I tell them that I've never bothered to learn such things, that I feel that what they want to do is morally wrong and that they should learn to actually respect others' privacy and property. The same people would probably wonder what the hell is wrong with someone who asked them to teach them how to use a jimmy to open up some frat boy's car so they could screw around in his mustang. IMO, there's really no difference.

Re:70 years is too much but....

[The Ape With No Name]

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.

You have just disqualified yourself from any position in the current US Administration.

Re:70 years is too much but....

[Lothsahn]

Actually, you really need to listen to the interview.

He doesn't consider what he did okay, and he even says feels bad for it. Maybe you call bullshit on this one, but I don't honestly think so... I don't think he's lying, he's just insane--not like (most) of the people at your school.

The man is a complete nut (really, listen to the interview)... he talks about the proof of UFO's he's seen, and most importantly, he isn't defending himself like a sane person would. Instead of making up a story, or letting a lawyer handling his defense, he's being completely open about what he's done. He's interacting with the world in a way that indicates that he doesn't think his message will be at all rejected or ridiculed.

What's really disturbing is the fact that he was so easily able to break into the computer networks of US military organizations. That is what REALLY scares me.

Re:70 years is too much but....

[HellYeahAutomaton]

The joy of hacking is in discovery, whether or not you are an asshole is neither here nor there. I think you really just don't "get it". There is a complete rush in obtaining "forbidden knowledge" that has been a core value in human history. There are multibillion dollar industries in place that are profiteering for just that reason. Check your inbox if you need proof: Need to be a better lover? How bout hidden transdimensional communication device secrets?

You may have smoked a bit of the ivory in the tower at your university, but you lack the
understanding of discovery of science and explanation. This guy wanted answers; Dumb dumbs left weak passwords, which is essentially a weak form of security which is approximate to:
Open door == open invitation

You are putting on elitist airs by saying that
you've never bothered to learn "such things", as if they were beneath you, but if you would pick up an issue of Midnight Engineering, or 2600 now and again and stop waving around your Golden Rule morals you could still potentially save yourself from a really dull life. CS should have
taught you to learn how to learn and how to learn by experimentation. Every industry has a Wild West type period, until some dullards wave around their morals, and start imposing silly rules and regulations.

The fact of the matter is that you are equivocating to his act as if it were like breaking into someone's car is way off (although it is mildly amusing to liken the military to a frat boy). This guy wasn't trying to damage, nor harm the information that he was trying to view. A lot of people have become completely paranoid about security since 9/11, and the fact of the matter is that people like you need to get your heads out of your asses to know the difference between what an exploratory prank is, as opposed to a crime of malicious intent.

Now, if you believe that covering up UFOs are a matter of national security (and this would in fact be a treasonous crime) that any knowledge he may have come across would be true or dangerous if leaked (and worthy of even 2 years jailtime), he has in fact proven that UFOs exist, and I for one, welcome our new grey skinned overlords (as soon as our outsourcing Indian overlords are done with us unless they are pointing those vaporizing ray beams at us).

Re:70 years is too much but....

[canadian_right]

"In most parts of the world, just walking into someone's house and looking around without the owner's permission would get you beaten or killed by the owner. It's common courtesy and most of these "hackers" seem to lack any of it."

I'm not sure that it true that simple trespass is met with automatic violence in most parts of the world. In many places there are strong social customs that treat trespassers as a guest unless there is evidence that the trespasser has bad intent.

In english commonlaw there is a clear distiction between criminial and civil trespass. Basicly, you have to break in for trespass to be a crime. If you walk in the front door and then leave, it is rude, but not a crime. Also, under English common law the property owner can ask the trespasser to leave, but they are not allowed to force them off the property. The police must be called if the trespasser refuses to leave. Of course, if the trespasser threatens the owner the minimal amount of force to defend yourself is allowed.

As far as I can tell, while most people don't want strangers bounding into their living room, only the USA has the "old west" shoot 'em first and ask questions later mentality.

Re:70 years is too much but....

[G0rAk]

The British government is big enough to tell our government to piss off if it felt such a thing weren't warranted.

Actually it's only since 9/11 that we (ie the British) have relaxed our extradition proceedings for the US with a new fast track system designed (in theory) to assist in terrorist-related prosecution.

We used to be pretty stringent because we don't like extraditing anyone to countries where the person in question could face the death penalty, torture or some other inhuman form of punishment.

I don't blame Uncle Sam for our change in policy - it was our own parliament's stupid fault. But there it is.

Re:70 years is too much but....

[KillShill]

yeah, in sensible britain, they shoot people to death in the back with 5 shots after they were found not to be carrying a gun, weapon or explosives and guilty of running away when several heavily-armed men came towards him in a hurry.

Re:70 years is too much but....

[arkanes]

For comparison: This guy caused 900k of damage (figure inflated, because you always inflate damages). He's looking at 70 years of maximum security. Nasty.

Ebbers caused *11 billion* in damages. Over 1000 times as much. He got 20 years of soft time. Yes, Ebbers could have gotten more, but anyone want to place bets that this guy will get 20 years in a low security prison near his home so his family can visit?

Patrick Quinlan, the CEO of MCA financial, led a fraud scheme worth $256 million. He got the maximum sentence - 10 years.

Nutters are Criminals too..

[Nikkos]

I don't care if he found a picture of ET doing shots with Paris Hilton. He hacked into a computer system and started fucking around. I don't care if he's a scapegoat - he still broke the law.

Re:Nutters are Criminals too..

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet the Watergate reporters were hailed as American heros. How many 'laws' do you think they would have to break today to get a story?

If you assert that the ends never justify the means when the law must be broken then consider the shooting last week of an unarmed and innocent man in London who was 'resonably suspected' of being a suicide bomber. The cop that pulled the trigger (5 times at contact range) made a bad one and will live with it for life, its a mess. However his reasonable suspicion led him to break the law as British police are not authorised to shoot to kill by policy. He may get left with the can.

It's easy to lable anybody a 'nutter' when deconstructing their reasoning following a chain of evidence. Especially post factum with the luxury of hindsight and time. What the kid discovered was probably bollocks. Military culture is renouned for grandious fantastical terminology.
What he probably saw the most of were payroll and accounts. However, if he had turned up a plot by the saucer men (under the guidence of the Illuminati and the Black Pope) to take over the planet you would be calling him a hero right now.
Not that that is going to happen, but the point is that the law is not a fixed obstacle to reasonable man whos intent is the greater good. It is his intent that excuses him, as for hacker kiddy here and as for the poor fool who shot an innocent man trying to make the world a better place. The law is not a piece of stone, which is why judges exist, and why you are not one.

Extradition

[panurge]

Is it true that inmates of US jails are regularly subjected to homosexual attack without protection from the authorities, as the accused seems to believe? It seems to be a common theme here on /.

If so, I would hope that an English judge would block extradition on the basis of the failure of the US to subscribe to the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

Of course, in the UK prison system you have the right to inhabit overcrowded cells, be locked up with racist murderers to see if you get killed, and eventually commit suicide. But that's OK because it is protecting our rights and we are the good guys.

Yes, I am getting a bit tedious about this. But I am really annoyed that the UK courts so far have failed to perceive that this case is bovine excrement of the CMA variety. You exposed the weakness of our security! Shoot the messenger!

I call B.S. on some of what he says

[fakeid]

At one point in the interview, this guy talks about some of the things he saw, in regards to UFO activity. He claims he was able to view a "large image" over "graphical remote control", but he didn't have any proof because it was "too large to download". Uhm, if it's being displayed on your screen, that's taking the same amount of time to download I would guess; even if he was seeing a scaled image, he could still do a screenshot, right? I think he's both a bit crazy and/or a liar...

I will agree that $900,000 of damage seems a bit of out line, however.

Re:I call B.S. on some of what he says

[techsoldaten]

Well, remember though, that 900,000 U.S. dollars is really only about 32 GBP.

M

Re:Something Legal in Nature

[soma_0806]

You know, some of us on /. are actual attorneys. I'm finishing up law school now and at least three of my teachers are avid readers. So maybe some of those opinions are worth paying a little attention to....

This smells a little like flame-bait to me.

Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, the British take their fashion very seriously

The crime: Wearing a Puffa jacket out of season

The punishment: Death penalty without trial

Non-terrestrial Officers

[mnemonic_]

A Guardian article interviewing McKinnon with much of the same information in the audio interview. The most interesting part of his XYZ conspiracy "evidence" that McKinnon describes is the "non-terrestrial officers" mentioning he found in US military documents. He seems to believe that a complete U.S. space army already exists, with those involved based in military orbiting stations.

Re:Non-terrestrial Officers

[ettlz]

...McKinnon describes ... the "non-terrestrial officers" ... he found in US military documents. He seems to believe that a complete U.S. space army already exists, with those involved based in military orbiting stations.

And earlier today, General Richard Dean Anderson said that bastard cracker who stole the script for the next season of Stargate SG-1 would be tracked down and punished to the full extent of the law.

Re:Transcript?

[mrtroy]

Transcript:
He says he is just a geek
He says he didnt damage systems, but the US gov considers it damage if you even have to make changes once you know the system is comprimised
He was a hairdresser, then got an "Access certification"
Then he started doing research in UFO research
He believes there is anti-gravity propulsion that was recovered by alien spacecraft
He continues sounding like a nut about UFO technology that the USA now uses
Claims he wants to provide the free energy that the US army uses to the rest of the world
He "hacked" by accessing computers with blank admin passes (windoze)
Allegedly there was mulitple people on the same networks
Haha...he knows this from netstat, there was connections all over
Apparently he found proof because people were airbrushing out UFO's from satellite images
Also an excel spreadsheet with "non terrestrial officers" on the list
Hahahahahaha she asked if he was doing a lot of drugs during this time, and he said he was smoking a bit of weed
He stopped washing himself at one point he said
He left his job and lost his girlfriend
But he lived with that girlfriend even afterwords (what a pimp!)
Somehow they bring Iraq and 9/11 into this
He got busted after playing videogames all night
Americans started talking about extradition, so thats when he was getting concerned, it somehow jumped from 2 years to 4 years to 18 years to 70 years.
He thinks he is a scapegoat for all the hacking going on

Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him

[Mr.Progressive]

...but they shot him.

they shot him for jumping a ticket barrier and evading police. you can't seriously be suggesting he deserved to die for what he did.

Re:Long sentence

[tsm_sf]

Don't really know the US law, but I thought that in modern world there would be no sentences over 20 years.

1) It's common to stack sentences over here. A murderer might end up facing several consecutive life sentances.
2) Prison guards have a very, very strong lobbying presence in California (not sure about the rest of the US). They frequently agitate for longer prison time, no matter what the crime.
(a repulsive and immoral practice, imho)

Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him

[mrgreenfur]

The officers were in plainclothes. If you were being chased by a gang of plainclothesed guys you'd jump the barriers too.

He did nothing wrong, but run when a gang of guys ran after him. Thank god that danger is gone.

Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him

[MyLongNickName]

These are not normal times.

Beware, or this may become the "normal times".

Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him

[sholden]

No he didn't deserve to die. Given the situation though it's not surprising or unexpected that he did.

guys waving guns

[truckaxle]

Yes, but the people chasing him were in plain clothes and he was coming from a bad part of town. I do not know all the details, but if a couple of guys in plain clothes came running after me waving a gun I just might just choose the flight decision path of the the flight or fight if statement - especially if I had a bar bill outstanding.

With that said tho the mulsim's are focusing on this event eventhough it was a mistake and complete ignore the 80 some civilians that islamic extremist kill with intent this weekend in Eygpt.

Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him

[Kjella]

they shot him for jumping a ticket barrier and evading police. you can't seriously be suggesting he deserved to die for what he did.

No, but the people on the train station didn't deserve being blown to bits either, had he been a terrorist. There was more than enough reason to believe he was one, and even if he couldn't be aware of his house being under surveilance, making a mad dash into the train station after being halted by the police (civilian, but I assumed they showed ID when they did) was incredibly stupid, giving the recent events. The only thing surprising to me is that he was allowed to run, and didn't get gunned down before entering the station. Presumably they lacked a clear shot and feared hitting civilians. That's the only reason he got as far as he got.

Kjella

Sad

[roman_mir]

I just read the transcript, it is a very sad story. The guy got hooked on doing things he shouldn't have been doing, fucked up his personal life - stopped working, broke up with his GF. I think this thing really became a game to him. Like the online multi-player games, this consumed him. He got so bad though, got really sloppy, needed more and more excitement. Used a remote tool to manipulate desktops to leave messages. It is almost as if he wanted to be found. The guy is into self-destructing behaviour. I think this is a very sad story because he got what he wanted.

Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him

[Ichimusai]

I can certainly understand why it happened. I can think myself into the policemens situation. Someone is running, he is wearing a coat that may conceal explosives, you yell at him to stop, he runs away, he jumps the gate to the metro station, down the stairs and you are following. He then makes the fatal mistake of boarding the train just after the terror attacks that have happened. There is pretty much only one thing to do and that is to take him out before he explodes the train. I can also understand the person running. Imagine that you are walking in London, you grew up in the harsh streets of a larger Brazilian town, you know everything about surviving in the streets. Suddenly three people dressed as ordinary men yell something and starts coming towards you looking very threatening. One pulls a fire arm, big and black in his hand. Instinct and panic takes over and you turn around, the only thing in your mind is to get away from these guys, whoever they are. They are yelling something but you can't make it out clearly. There are no uniforms, just three guys coming at you - one with a gun in his hand. You runs towards the nearby metro station, jumps the gates, down the escalators and as you try to get on a train which is just about to leave you half stumble, falls you feel the pain and hear the bang when the first bullet is unloaded into your body, it then goes black. I don't really blame the policemen, they were trying to do their job and I think they were doing it. I find the whole thing to be a tragedy of gigantig proportions and I feel for the poor guys family. I hope things like this will never have to happen to any one again. But I know that people are only people, mistakes will happen and in certain situations there is nothing you could do. Had I been the guy I would probably been startled but I would not have done what he did. Had I been the police I would have been hesitant to fire, and therefore perhaps it is a good thing I am not a police officer because I don't think I would have the guts to do his job. A tragic accident.

Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him

[Tim C]

The is no smoke without fire.

Oh bullshit. The Met has issued a statement confirming that the man had absolutely no connection to the bombings.

Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him

[Tim C]

He wasn't gunned down while running into the Tube station, he was pinned to the ground then shot in the head while immobilised.

And yes, 50-odd innocent people lost their lives on the 7th of July; well, another one just lost his. The former does not make the latter any less serious.

Rich!

[PingXao]

From TFA:
"The Americans have a secret spaceship?" I ask.
"That's what this trickle of evidence has led me to believe."
"Some kind of other Mir that nobody knows about?"
"I guess so," says Gary.
"What were the ship names?"
"I can't remember," says Gary. "I was smoking a lot of dope at the time. Not good for the intellect."

This is too funny! They can make an example out of him in both the War on Terrah and the War on Drugs!

Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him

[future assassin]

> The guy jumped the ticket barriers, ran from the police, and then tried to board the train.

He had a full day or monthly pass. The guy was confronted by 3 plain clothes guys weilding automitic guns! AKA not looking like police.

Why wasnt he stopped when he left the house but only when he tried to board the bus? Seems like the cops wanted to have an excuse to shoot him just incase he fled.

>didn't stop any suspicious looking people?

You mean not white wearing backpacks?

Re:Long sentence

[mattyrobinson69]

but he's much worse than a serial rapist/murderer, obviously.....

Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him

[MrBandersnatch]

Stockwell (where the guy was executed) is the kind of place that if 3 dodgy looking blokes with guns try to stop you, you WOULD run!! The combination of fear and not having English as ones mother tongue is far enough to explain this mans actions.

THe IRA bombings didnt scare me. The Al-Qaeda bombings didnt scare me. The Metropolitan Police with a shoot-to-kill policy...THAT scares me shitless!

LOD tried something like this at Hohocon '91

[merc]

At hohocon (this was Defcon before there was such a thing as Defcon), in 1991, in Austin TX, Erik Bloodaxe and Doc Holiday from LOD announced "project green cheese", designed to entice hackers to to break into military systems to uncover evidence of extra-terrestrial activity. I don't think anyone took it seriously, but this is the first time since that in where I've heard of someone actually attempting something similiar to this (or at least with this type of motive).

This was the same con where John Draper gave his speech about phreaking in eastern Europe, and the old days of blue boxing.

Does anyone else remember Hohocon?

-merc

When does it become hacking?

[ancientt]

Okay, I can't argue that this wasn't hacking, but having recently been accused of it myself, I'm curious where other people stand.

intentionally vague but true

In my case, I was given a username and password and address of a server for ftp. I wondered what else was out there so I logged in via ssh. No special trick needed, the firewall was open, I had a server account, had a shell and all I did was gather a little basic info on what the server was and what it was running. Apparently nobody realized they had set all that up for me. Some admin panicked, somebody in authority (over me) panicked and next thing I know I'm sitting in an office explaining my actions to somebody that has a LOT more authority.

I certainly wouldn't argue that uploading root kits/security cracking tools, downloading encrypted files to attempt to crack encryption isn't wrong but what exactly is?

My questions (is it legal/is it hacking):

• Pings and traceroutes aren't hacking are they?
• What about port scans?
• Is it hacking and illegal to attempt a connection? Does it matter what port?
• When it it okay to try a generic username/password? anonymous:youremai@whatever.com: is generally okay, why not administrator::?
• How about viewing what is viewable? Is directory structure okay? What kinds of files?
• How far do you have to go before you've committed an actual punishable crime?
• How far is it ethical to let your curiousity take you?

Re:They Were Justified

[mdielmann]

It's nice to see that you would raise the penalty for resisting arrest to death, and that the need for a trial should be waived in those circumstances. Hopefully one day the police don't decide you're 'resisting arrest' and take action.

Just about every tyranny in history began with the words "for the good of the people and the security of our nation".

My Experience

[techsoldaten]

I have experience working with the U.S. Federal Government as an IT contractor in various capacities. While I find it completely possible Mr. McKinnon penetrated a system using a default password and was able to access various documents, I strongly doubt people's interpretations of what he saw.

This is based on several factors in his story, including the ease with which he was able to penetrate this system as well as the total lack of understanding of the English language common to people in positions of authority in the U.S. Federal government.

First off, I have had the displeasure of being party to audits by the Office of the Inspector General and am familiar with their standards for assessing IT policy based on the security level of content being housed on the server. They are fairly standard, highly regimented, and include every possible protection someone could have imagined 3 years ago.

While these requirements do not automatically extend to military networks, they are regarded as being less stringent than military networks (for instance, you will commonly see references to 'military grade standards' when receiving proposals from other contractors).

One specific requirement of an OIG assessment is evidence of the enforcement of a password security. They check to see whether users are required to have passwords, how often passwords expire, how many characters should be in each password, the minimum number of characters that must be non-alphanumeric, etc.

The type of content Mr. McKinnon accessed surely would have been classified secret if it referred to a non-public military capability, and would probably be top secret if it referred to something of extraterrestial origin. 100% of servers containing secret documents are hardened against attack in public agencies, and I would assume the same is true with the military.

All this leads me to believe it is extremely unlikely Mr. McKinnon saw what he thinks he saw, or else he is probably not being truthful in his description of how he cracked the system. I prefer to think of this in the former, but cannot really render judgement without seeing the source materials.

The other reason I am extremely skeptical of the idea Mr. McKinnon understood what he was seeing is that people in positions of authority in the U.S. Government and in the military tend to be unable to understand English to the point they are bordering on illiterate. This is not an exaggeration, I know of several agencies that require all of their SES officers to attend remedial English classes as a requirement for employment. These people commonly use words with total disregard for their meaning, their memos often communicate instructions which are exactly the opposite of their intended message, and most importantly, they give names to things which are wholly inappropriate.

If Mr. McKinnon saw a memo referring to non-terrestrial officers, we can only guess at what that term may mean. My guess is that it refers to aerial or naval forces, but it really could be anything.

M

Re:My Experience

[Dunkirk]

If Mr. McKinnon saw a memo referring to non-terrestrial officers, we can only guess at what that term may mean. My guess is that it refers to aerial or naval forces, but it really could be anything.

And you're just part of The Man's coverup!!!

Battle was lost 16 years ago, no less

[robla]

I agree: "hacker" and "cracker" are synonymous, despite what ye olde hackers believe. It seems that this happened so long ago, that it's way beyond quixotic to keep up the fight now:

Check out this thread, dated March 7, 1989:
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/8.36.html#subj3

Brad Templeton wrote: It is with regret that I have to say that this fight has been lost. "Hacker" and "computer criminal" are now equated in the public mind, to the extent that this use of "hacker" now appears in newspaper headlines. The German Spy breakins confirm this in papers all over the world.

Rob

Air Gap?

[sharopolis]

This May be redundant, but surely even the most cynical appraisal of US Military security would admit that if they were going to have ultra secret UFO documents stored anywhere, it wouldn't be on the sodding internet.

Article sounds flimsy/fake

[StephanTual]

Am I the only one to actually read the article before posting? 3 bullet points you should consult before drawing conclusions:

- it states that the got caught because he downloaded a 'hacking program called Remotely Anywhere'. Uh? since when?
- Quoted from the article: "Q: What were the [UFO] ship names? A: I can't remember, I was smoking a lot of dope at the time."
- finally, the secret, l33t command he's using to hack in the pentagon is called 'netstat'

That article sounds flimsy and unresearched at best - in fact it has been doing the round of the free newspapers in england... you see it popping back from time to time. If the editor had taken the time to read it, it would have saved 30 minutes of everyone's life.

yeah, but

[Anonymous Coward]

does the UFO run linux?

Deterrent?

[einhverfr]

I agree that this is meant to be a deterrent against people acting against the perceived national security interests, however I have to wonder what its general effect would be.

This sort of sentence is not going to deterr the Chinese or N. Korean governments. It won't deterr Al Qaeda operatives. And these guys could theoretically leapfrog off systems in the US. And if he could enter this easily, then what of the North Koreans or the Chinese? What of militants/terrorists with hostile intentions (Islamic or not)?

I am a firm believer that there should be a two-tier punishment for these sort of incidents. I reasonably lenient punnishment for the actual tresspass and then a very severe punishment if the tresspassor can be linked to a terrorist group or foreign government.

The fact is that if national security were the priority, these systems would not have been so easily compromised.

The alarm is set. Please wake up.

[Spyral999]

I fully support Gary McKinnon for looking around piss-poorly secured military machines. I WORK for a military subcontractor, and they NEED a kick in the ass to get things right and get them secure.

If it takes someone to split their world in half and taunt their clueless admins, then so be it.

70 years in jail? Just give him a subcontractor job and get over your pride.

Not entirely convinced by his anti-gravity claims, but I'm fully convinced he can pwn the mil. It's not as hard as it sounds, believe me.

yes

[subtropolis]

No escape: Male Rape in US PRisons

Most guys raped are guys for there first time locked up, between the ages 18-30 that looks young, not strong, looks lonely, scared. Guys watch these things.
-- M.F., Ohio, 9/6/96

I was "rented out" for sexual favors, and a lot of the guys who rented me are not rapists, or assaulted as children, or any other stereotypical model. They just wanted some sexual satisfaction, even though they knew I was not deriving pleasure from it, and was there only because I was forced to. . . . I was with the Valluco (Valley) crowd, so I was only passed around to them for free. D. Town Hispanics had to pay. They were charged $3 for a blow-job, $5 for anal sex.
-- S.H., Texas, 9/10/96

I didn't know how the prison system work, so this inmate come up to the A & O unit and gives me three packs of cigarettes, I didn't know where they came from, or why they was given to me, I took the cigarettes, two weeks later I was placed in population, and here come this big old guy name [M], telling me that I belong to him because he had bought me, and had the same guy there who had brought me the cigarettes to verify it.
--C.D., Indiana, 10/8/96

Often the victim will be tied up on a bed, face down and sold until the debt is finished or until the novelty is gone.
-- C.M., Illinois, 10/8/96

Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him

[syousef]

Are you completely indifferent that more than 50 people died because the police didn't stop any suspicious looking people?

I'm not. I think it's awful.

Now I have to ask you...

1) Are you completely indifferent that our own goverments are using these terrorists against us to implement draconian surveillance such random bag searches, and gunning down our own people?

2) Are you completely indifferent to the fact that you're averaging between 20-50 civilian deaths in Iraq EACH MONTH since the US went in? So all of a sudden we have an incident in Britain and it's okay to gun people down because they're behaving suspiciously.

Get some perspective, and stop using violence to justify more violence before we decend into hell. Do you really want where you live to become a police state, a war zone, or worse?

Extradition

[shrewtamer]

That interview was a good listen. Thanks for the link.

I am concerned that the alleged crime did not take place on American soil. So far as I know this bloke hasn't even been to the States. Certainly the "hacking" seems to have been done from a London flat.

If it happened on British soil the Americans should have the decency to respect the British courts to deal with it under British law. However decency is not something that we've come to expect from America in it its dealings with the rest of the world.

I suppose this does raise a serious question about where it actually did happen. Personally I'd say that while the effects were in the states, the direction and motivation happened in the UK and so this is where the crime took place. This seems to be by far the simplest and most pragmatic legal interpretation.

The ammount of damage he is being charged with doing seems to be ludicrous. Ok I can see how the compromised systems needed to be rebuilt....but their state of security was patently so shocking that this was required in any case - he saved them money by pointing this out sooner rather than later.

It also seems clear that this guys motivations were not malicious to the United States. I think the British courts should tell the US to stop whinging and concentrate on securing their systems. Even if their systems were unlawfully penetrated they lacked dillegence in insuring that data, particularly confidential data was not in the plain on any machine ever connected to a network.

The revelation that there exists a fleet of American spaceships is rather worrying. Is the American military under alien control? I don't believe these people could've sorted out a space fleet by themeselves - not without a blue room. Was the bombing of Iraq carried out under alien orders? If Bush and his supporters think they can get away with planting a load of goof on some computers and saying "I didn't do it", they've got another thing coming. I don't believe a word of it.

Seriously though this guy is obviously harmless. If he did any harm then its not his fault. If someone nipped into an army base and made off with some missiles and tanks then blew a few small towns up then it would be right to be more concerned with military security than the actions of the passing nutter. In fact I'd hold the military wholly responsible. I demand my right to be a passing nutter! Whether u grant it or not there will always be passing nutters.

Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him

[syousef]

I don't have it all wrong.

The moment you make a life worth nothing, all life is worth nothing.

The moment you make violating a person's rights acceptable, it will be abused.

Occassionally stopping a handful of suicide bombers isn't worth throwing away your freedom. Just as it's not worth banning all cars isn't an acceptable way to bring down the number killed on the road each year.

It's not the terrorists fault if we change how we live due to their dirty tactics. They absolutely do win, and the problem is that too few people understand or care about that.