'UK Hackers' Condemn McKinnon?

An anonymous reader writes "Whitedust has some interesting commentary on this BBC article which claims that 'UK hackers' have condemned Gary Mckinnon's trial. From the article: 'Another example of some truly awful and misinformed mainstream tech reporting here. The article claims that UK hackers are almost all in support of Mr Mckinnon when in truth as we all know the entire tech community has agreed that Mr Mckinnon is not only an idiot but a deluded attention seeker.'"

Comments

Much Ado About Nothing

[TripMaster Monkey]

Agreed, Gary is an idiot. His moonbat UFO-tech stories notwithstanding, anyone who breaks into systems by exploiting blank administrator passwords really isn't much of a 'hacker', and anyone who says they managed to get a UFO picture, but didn't save a screen dump is either a moron or a liar.

All that said, 70 years? Incarcerating Gary for what amounts to a life sentence for his harmless sightseeing is more than too harsh...it makes him a martyr to hackerdom...a martyr that actual hackers would much rather not be associated with.

Instead, how about some action against the clueless sysadmins who left vital Army, Navy, Air Force, and DoD systems vulnerable to such a sophomoric and elementary 'attack' by not passwording administrator-level accounts? If I ever failed to protect my network against such an intrusion, I'd be cleaning out my desk at the end of the day.

Mark deserves to be punished, but extradition to the U.S., 70 years in prison, and millions of dollars in fines is just plain overboard. The U.S. would much better serve its interests by studiously ignoring Gary and letting the UK authorities deal with him.

Of course, if the U.S. is just looking for another 'terrorist' to keep the public's fear level at fever pitch, I suppose the uber-hacker Gary McKinnon will do nicely.

Re:Much Ado About Nothing

[Unski]

Mark deserves to be punished, but extradition to the U.S., 70 years in prison, and millions of dollars in fines is just plain overboard. The U.S. would much better serve its interests by studiously ignoring Gary and letting the UK authorities deal with him.
Why do you stop there? This what is fishy to me - that he is looking at a horrendously disproportionate sentence in relation to his crimes. It only remains to be effectively discussed as to why he is looking at such a stupid sentence.

It's so easy to rattle off some dismissive diatribe on /., saying he is a nutjob etc., but why the hell are they looking at giving him such a fisting? And as for his credibility amongst the UK hacker community, who the hell are Whitedust to be able to speak for them? There has been so much momentum in the direction of explaining away his allegations, and so little critical analysis of what he says. Most of the analyses I have read basically start from the point of view that he is mad and deluded, no-one is supposing 'what if he is right..?'. There were easily about 20 naysayers who jumped on his explanation for not being able to grab a screenshot - a narrowly technical aspect to his allegations - but I believe him as I believe he would not have had time to grab one. I also believe he has got out of his depth, and has seen too much. I say it again: 70 years? Something is not right.

What?!

[Cheapy]

Whoa there. They aren't condemning him. They are condemning the trial. Last time I checked, those were entirely different things. He got lazy towards the end, but how lazy was the US Military to not notice it for two years?

That really makes you think about how long someone who really has hostile intents could stay undetected.

Jurisdiction troubles again.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

The article claims that UK hackers are almost all in support of Mr Mckinnon when in truth as we all know the entire tech community has agreed that Mr Mckinnon is not only an idiot but a deluded attention seeker.

Perhaps whitedust should consider that the hacking community can think Mr Mckinnon is "not only an idiot but a deluded attention seeker," but at the same time also support Mr Mckinnon as he is being extradited to the US for committing a crime in Britain.

Would US hackers support the extradition of another hacker being extradited to France for hacking a french military network? I suspect not - no matter how stupid & obnoxious the hacker's behaviour was.

Re:Jurisdiction troubles again.

[Tweekster]

Um actually extradition exists for a reason. And he didnt commit his crime in britian, he commited it in Britian AND the United States. That is the downfall of technology. All this talk of no borders and you can't limit it etc, well guess what, it works both ways.

Re:Jurisdiction troubles again.

[LWATCDR]

"Mr Mckinnon as he is being extradited to the US for committing a crime in Britain"
He broke into a computer in the US. So what the crime committed in the US or Britain? Having "Hackers" come to your defence is a little like the mob coming to your defence. I really hate that use of the term Hacker. I still think of Hackers as being good programmers and not script kiddies.
That being said I see no real reason for him to serve 70+years. I do think that he should go on trial here in the US but he should get a suspended sentence and possibly some medical help. I really doubt they will throw the book at this poor soul.

Re:Jurisdiction troubles again.

[TubeSteak]

extradited to the US for committing a crime in Britain.

International law is funny that way. The U.S. does not have a reciprocal agreement to extradite people to the UK.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/60523-print.sh tml

Apparently the Scots don't like the terms of the 'new' treaty. Kudos to them.
Here's the meat of the article

Britain's controversial extradition treaty with the US faces a challenge from Holyrood over whether it can be applied in Scottish courts.

MSPs are understood to have agreed in private to lobby Whitehall over the deal with Washington under which British people can be incarcerated while awaiting trial in America, despite no evidence being presented against them.

[2 paragraphs]

The treaty was agreed by Britain three years ago to avoid long delays in bringing terrorism suspects to trial. All that is required to remove a suspect from Britain is a warrant from a US court, without any evidence being required. However Congress has stalled its reciprocal part of the treaty because legislators there fear it does not give adequate protection to US citizens extradited to the UK.

Liberty, the [UK human rights &] civil liberties campaigning group, complains that the law is being used for non-terrorist charges, that those involved face jail on remand because they have no residence when they arrive in the US, and that the preparation of cases can take months

Emphasis mine.
What were the Brits thinking to agree to such a treaty? Their Gov't failed in its fundamental duty to protect its citizens & provide due process.

Well

[gowen]

if anyone's going to know about talent attention seekers, its Whitedust Security, the people who published the array of conjecture, guesswork, faux outrage and outright wrongitude that was : "Walmarts Wikipedia War"

Idiot

[gowen]

The article claims that UK hackers are almost all in support of Mr Mckinnon

No it doesn't. It says that some of them who knew him personally are in support of him. It quotes them, too.

The only stupid generalisations are in Whitedust's articles.

Re:Rebuttal to whining

[AceCaseOR]

I've thought about this some, and actually, perhaps it's a better idea to bring him to the US for trial, even if he doesn't get a 70 year sentence, because it establishes a precident, which could possibly be extended to, say, Russian Spam Kings, Nigerian E-Mail scammers, or any other person or group which is engaging in more serious computer crime against the US and lives in a country we have an extradition treaty with (or could get with) and has weak computer crime laws.

Re:Harmless Nutter != Terrorist

[Mark Hood]

If I was walking down a street in London and saw a door marked "Ministry of Defence. Top Secret. UFO archive." I'd probably keep on walking - unless the door was wide open.

Actually a better analogy would be trying the closed door and discovering it was unlocked - then walking inside instead of raising the alarm.

It's still trespassing, and still a crime. How easy they make it for you doesn't really matter for the purposes of the trial.

I'm sure you'd ask the court to release someone who wandered into your house, read your personal information but didn't take any of it, right?

Mark

I can imagine why it's happening

[mustafap]

Security Advisor: "Hackers got into our computers again sir"

Bush: "Damm it! Where did they get the technology to break our secret codes?"

Security Advisor: "Actually, we left the systems wide open. Our IT specialists are too lazy to set passwords"

Bush: "So how do we stop these sly foreign devils?"

Security Advisor: "Lets just grab one and stick him in jail for life. No one at home will care. It might put the rest off"

Bush: "Or we could train our guys to use password?"

Security Advisor: "You'r talking nonsense again, sir"

Like Dmitry Sklyarov?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

So that people the world over are subject to US law? So that people excercising their civil rights in their home countries can be dragged off to the US, be given a fair trial and hanged, because they offended the moral sensiblities of the mighty nation of manifest-destians? Like Dmitry Sklyarov, who was held accountable for simply excercising his rights in his own home country?

I for one would rather not be dragged off to the US to be judged and condenmed for excercising my rights in my home nation. Over here, people can drink after they're 18. Should they be dragged off for infringements of the oh so higher and purer US statutes on alcohol consumption?

You might consider that trollish, but it just amazes me how arrogant some americans can be in their attitudes towards other countries and their judicial systems, paticularly in these days of Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay. Your country is not exactly a shining example of enlighted jurisprudence.

Sense

[agentcdog]

It is apparent that someone needs to add some sense to this conversation. You can argue all you want about "where" this crime took place... the fact is, the "victims" were on US soil when the crime occurred. So to say that the US shouldn't conduct the trial is a bit one-sided. Also, this (as much as it's a joke to you) is a matter of national security.
Now if the US does treat him fairly eveyone is gonna yell that they are just trying to save face. You have condemned the US not on its actions, but on your own supposition. Judge the US by what it does (meaning, wait till he's sentenced to bitch about his horrible sentence). In all of my history as a US citizen, I have seen enough to beleive that the courts here are legit and fair. They are not perfect, but surely no one assumes that GB has perfect courts.
One more thing: I assure you that I (along with almost all of the rest of the country) would support the reverse case. If someone hacked GB's computers, I would expect them to be sent there for trial.

Re:Sense

[Wizard Drongo]

Well, you see there would be the problem. The reason why I wrote to my MP, MSP and MEP's, demanding all of them to have this man denied extradition was very simple. He's a moron, probably slightly deranged, and uses 'hacking tools' that even 12 year-old script kiddies would reject. But here's the point:
We have an extradite treaty with the United States of America. We've signed it, ratified, enshrined it in law and everything.

You didn't.

Tomorrow morning, a hacker in Florida, or New York or anywhere in the US could hack into the MoD's system, launch some nukes maybe, or send some troops to invade China or something (well, the hacker couldn't really, since our SysAdmins have a deep and arcane knowledge of something called a "password"), or maybe bomb London, and legally speaking, there ain't a damn thing we could do to have him extradited, cause you didn't sign the treaty, Why should we honour a treaty you can't even be bothered to sign? Then of course there's the issue that we have a law that says we're not supposed to extradite people to countries where you aren't guaranteed a fair trial (Guantanamo!), or where we aren't assured the suspect won't face the death penalty (normally not a problem when we deal with the USA, even for murderers, yet interestingly, the State Dept haven't given us that assurance in this case.)

Basically, this is more about the US having dubious fair-trial practices, dodgy military trials, the possiblility of a media show-trial for a foreign 'terrorist' and all that sorta thing than it is about a sad loner in a London bedsit wanking off to the idea of finding "alien" shit inside a US defence network. Maybe he did. I'd assume it was filed in the same archive as other 'secret' hidden or forgotten data, like the US Constitution and the right to a fair trial......