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

[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

[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

[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.)

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.

Interview Transcript and Article.

[nevek]

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

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: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

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

[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.