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Alleged British Hacker Fears Guantanamo
Magnifico writes "The BBC is reporting that Gary McKinnon, a British man accused of breaking into the U.S. government computer networks, could end up at Guantanamo Bay. His lawyer is fighting his extradition to the United States arguing, 'The US Government wants to extract some kind of species of administrative revenge because he exposed their security systems as weak and helpless as they were.'"
He can offer free hacking classes to the other inmates as a way to pass time and help educate the poor underprivileged islamic terrorists currently residing there so they can go on to live a more 'productive' life after their release.. unless the aliens get him first.. ;)
Police and Secret Service never found the culprit. However, to most, it is obvious that they are not really trying.
20 years after (i.e. now), one TV and radio station is doing a retrospective of the events back then. And, lo and behold, "new" witnesses crawl out of the woodwork, testifying on air how they saw the suspect the day before one of the bombings, near the place of attack, in a car full of appropriate equipment. And testifying also how they were pressured by police and secret service into silence.
Government and police act scandalized and feign to be interested in the testimony. They even set up an e-mail address to which the public may submit other testimonies, if there are.
Predictably, the email address gets hax0red.
And now suddenly, police and secret service are all up in arms, and want to find the culprit. Non, not the bomber. The hax0r who had the gall to humiliate the police and secret service by typing in the obvious password for that account, and succeed! Major ISPs were raided. They took that new investigation much more seriously than the investigation into the bombings 20 years ago.
A couple of weeks later, some boy-scouts and ex-boyscouts took it upon themselves to moon their boyscout chieftain (... who also happens to be an investigator of the Luxembourgish spying agency ...). You can't imagine the flurry of activity that followed that heinous threat against national security!
Conclusion: terrorize the country during an entire year with your bombs => walk free!
moon an spy-service agent => go to jail!
Rules protecting POWs don't protect illegal combatants. This is a fact, regardless of how many faults Bush may have.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
You don't need to know much, only that the current administration has zero respect for the law or the inalienable rights accorded to all Men. As said in this one document that GW seems to be using as toilet paper.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Um, right. Let's look at this from the "typical paranoid and/or evil US government" view. First, we have a foreign citizen monkeying with US GOVERNMENT (OMG!) property. Then, add in the fact that this property was military/defense systems (HOW DARE HE!). Then, add the fact that it was a COMPUTER NETWORK (HE'LL SET OFF THE NUKES!). If nothing else, they'd send him to Gitmo simply as an example (DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS BLARRGHGFDHG).
But while we are still at war with Al Qaeda we do not need to determine for sure if they are guilty. We cannot just fly our soldiers back from the front lines every time the need to testify. Any trials do not need to occur until Al Qaeda officially says "We give up" and turn themselves in (and follows through with it).
Until then I am sure that innocent people are suffering along side the guilty. But it is no different than any other form of collateral damage in warfare. We did not start the hostilities, and we will continue to fight until our enemies give up.
If they want to keep fighting for generations, their "soldiers" will remain incarcerated for generations. Innocents get killed in war, and they also get jailed unfairly. As soon as the insurgents stop fighting then everyone will get the fair treatment that they deserve.
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-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Dude, what the fuck are you talking about man!? Can't you recognize it when you see it? It's called S-T-U-P-I-D-I-T-Y.
Those that equate flushing down a Koran with torture have no freakin' idea what the hell torture is all about.
These are folks who would have killed our soldiers and we're treating them so well - like someone once said, a PoW is someone who tries to kill you and fails, and asks you to treat him fairly in turn.
I think we're being stupid - screw Gitmo, just shoot each of these bastards on sight. Shoot on sight and be done with it. There, no prison, no complaints. Just a lot of dead bastards.
Hear, hear! Wish I had mod points.
Carthago delenda est!
There's more. One detainee had his head and mouth duct-taped. Another was "short-shackled" to the eye-bolt in the floor of the interrogation room. Detainees were subject to 16-20 hour interrogations plus sleep deprivation and isolation for up to 54 consecutive days. Strip searches were used as an interrogation technique. Detainees would be locked in a refrigerated room known as the "freezer" for extended periods of time. In the course of interrogation, a detainee was told that his family had been captured by the United States and that they were "in danger". Barking, growling, teeth-baring military dogs were used in interrogations.
You mean they were isolated, locked up and had dogs barked at them?!!? My wife does that to me before 9:00am! Did the US Military run out of finger-nail splints? Was there no one to give them the ol' Texas Titty Twister?
I'm sorry, but psychological "torture" does not qualify as torture in my book. Until someone is physically abused, I don't call it torture. I don't care what AM-Nasty Intl says. Unless it's Club Med, it's not torture. If you want to see torture, take a look at Abu Ghraib before we got there. Pay a visit to a N. Korean work camp. See how Jewish prisoners (or suspected sympathizers) are treated in Palestine. AM-Nasty has not uttered a peep about these places but they are quick to call for Guantanimo's shut down because a female guard wasn't wearing a burka around the prisoners.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Guantanamo is a fucking embarassment to the USA, and you should be ashamed of yourself for trying to defend it.
Maybe among liberal societies, yes. But, to the contrary, I believe that Guantanamo is used as a symbol to Islamists that the United States is ready and willing to do everything that is necessary to win, even if that means bending (or reinterpreting) some of our more cherished values. In short, we're showing that, we'll take the gloves off and get nasty if it comes to that.
As extreme as that may sound to the modern reader, note that it's really not that much of a departure from wartimes of the past. Lincoln suspended both the right to free press and habeas corpus during the Civil War. During WWII, many suspected sympathizers of both Nazi Germany and Japan were put under surveillance (without warrant) and summarily deported (without trial).
Now the real question is (and this is one where I feel that reasonable people can disagree): Does the threat of terrorism constitute a danger to our survival as a nation to the point where such sacrifices in personal liberties are necessary?
If it is, (and back to the article) I think that Guantanamo should be reserved for terrorists and terrorist supporters only. Sending other criminals there diffuses the message to Islamists. Read the article though, the basis of this guy's claim that he's subject to Guantanamo is on an "unsigned and anonymous" note... Yeah, right... I think that it's likely that this is all just legal shenanigans on the part of the defense to capitalize off of outrage over Guantanomo bay, nothing more.
-Grym