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'UK Hackers' Condemn McKinnon?

Posted by Zonk on from the got-what-he-deserved dept.

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.'"

3 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Much Ado About Nothing by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful


    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.

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  2. What?! by Cheapy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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  3. Idiot by gowen · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.
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