Slashdot Mirror
UK Hacker Loses Extradition Appeal
the4thdimension writes "A UK man, accused of breaking into US Pentagon and NASA computers in March 2001, lost an extradition appeal that would have freed him, or at least had him tried in the UK. While the US accuses him of causing over $900,000 in computer damage, his attorney asserts that, if extradited to the US, he faces harsh penalties that are "intolerable" and '...the British government declined to prosecute him to enable the U.S. government to make an example of him.' He intends to appeal to the European courts."
Didn't he just use Microsoft's Remote Desktop to "hack into" those systems?
Palm trees and 8
The UK, acting like the US' fucking lapdog, again. If I were PM I'd be telling the US government where they can shove their 'special relationship' and their entirely one-sided extradition treaty. Then I'd tell them to put ACTA in the same place.
So, whaddya reckon chaps? Think Anonymous Coward could succeed Gordon Brown?
I wonder what the going rate of a military-certified security expert is, these days...
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
For me the big story is the one-sided nature of this treaty. We regularly extradite suspects to the USA, yet the USA refuses to do the same for people living in the USA wanted for crimes in the UK.
That's just insane, and our government are spineless scum for agreeing to it.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Hopefully the EU court will have something else to say about this. But anyway, thanks, Blair + new labour for completely fucking up a country.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The "intolerable" argument seems like a stretch to me (to say the least). The guy isn't facing the death penalty and U.S. prisons (especially the minimum security ones, where this guy will probably end up) are at least as good as UK ones.
The guy's lawyers are acting like we're going to flog him and throw him in a dungeon or something.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
From TFA: "Prosecutors allege that McKinnon hacked into than 90 computer systems belonging to the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Department of Defense and NASA between February 2001 and March 2002, causing $900,000 worth of damage.
McKinnon has acknowledged accessing the computers, but he disputes the reported damage and said he did it because he wanted to find evidence that America was concealing the existence of aliens."
Duh. The only reason this topic may recieve negative attention is because its the United States. Truth be told, that if this was ANY country, the same thing would have happened. What did he expect? We are talking about highly classified stuff. He may have not caused as much as the claimed damage, but he DID access them. In some countries, he would be executed...
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
Aliens as a defense? Why didn't I think of that?
"...he British government declined to prosecute him to enable the U.S. government to make an example of him." He intends to appeal to the European courts..."
My hope is that this gentleman wins. If he loses, he might be looking at several years of being treated like those folks at GITMO! And that's not something to look forward to.
If he loses in the courts, he should use the "free" education resources in the penitentiary to get more [useful] knowledge in both the computer world and matters of freedom and the law. That way, he will come out of the prison a very changed and useful man to the community.
He did the crime, so he should pay the time.
I don't care if he goes to prison in the US or in the UK, but he shouldn't be free. The fact is though, that he committed the crime against US property.
Gone!
Did anyone else see the humping dog usb ad on the home page? I wish I could've modded the product +5 funny.
sig: pv qid
This guy admits to deleting files and leaving cryptic threatening messages. His arguement that he was just curious and looking for UFO information is bullshit. I am a US citizen and not a big fan of the current administration, and I won't even address the extradition policy imbalance, but if he - or ANYONE - pulls a tigers tail, they had better be ready to deal with it's fangs. He deserves whatever he gets just for the sheer stupidity of it all.
There's a rather good interview with Gary McKinnon on the Guardian's web site from earlier this month.
Provides quite an insight into what he did, why he says he did it and his mental state.
Wonder if he was a /. poster. Wouldn't surprise me.
simon
This may bit just a bit offtopic, but what gets me is how he is being threatened with 60 years in prison. Yes what he did was illegal. Yes the charges are trumped up, as are the recovery "costs". But 60 years?!? Fsk, I personally know some lawyers that have gotten rapists down to 3 years in a minimum security facility. I dont even know where to start about how idiotic our justice system is, and the sad thing is that everyone knows it but doesnt want to do anything about it. /end rant
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
What choice does the US have if the UK will not prosecute? We can't simply say that breaking into classified systems is "no big deal." For all the whining that goes on about the bad public image that legitimate hackers have to deal with, you really don't have a leg to stand on if you're also going to argue that this guy shouldn't have to face any accountability at all or hasn't even done anything wrong. That's not acceptable to everybody else.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
IIRC, most of the 'secure' systems he accessed were FTP servers set to allow anonymous access & default access w/ 'password'. The damage he did was to the ego of the military - it's OK to point out the Emperor has no clothes, but be darned sure that the general can't hear you when you comment on his missing pants. After all, he's the one with the guns.
In general, he's willing to be tried as a hacker, but the US govt is waving the terrorist flag around & that's a charge he's not willing to face. Also, the damage claim is fairly ridiculous, these were unsecured servers - anything on them was long ago compromised. Charging him for the price of cleanup that would have had to be done if a new admin had pointed out that someone had set the FTP server to anonymous is stupid.
Yes the guy should be punished, he committed a crime, now if he is going to prison in the US or UK that's another problem ( for him ).
But now a different perspective, some guy just hacked in to the "All mighty" nation's defense computers, after 9/11, so all that bigggg bucks spent on defense are doing what ? I for start would be very concerned how that is possible, and if that "guy" was indeed a terrorist someone would had a full day!
The US being first to ask for extradition, the Chinese government found it was too late to have him extradited to China for getting security measures in place on a weakly secured US DoD computer system, causing a stop of the stream of intelligence that is considered vital to the chinese government. Too bad for the guy I don't have any evidence of this on paper, as the US government would have easily awarded him $900,000 for bringing the hack to their attention by operating clumsily.
Bert
Doesn't the US realise that putting him in prison for 60 years does cost a multiple of $900,000?
I don't share your hostility and aggression, or even dislike the "special relationship", but you raise an extremely interesting point without realizing it.
Did you know that there is something curious at the heart of the "special relationship" which makes it much more interesting than it might seem at first? Bear with me.
What lies at the root of any nation? The government, i.e. the politics? Or the economy? Or both? Both of these depend on the existence of a system of money. That requires a central bank to manage the money supply for the benefit of the nation.
But who would own the central bank? Who would control it? It is usually said that in any corporation, ownership brings control. So it is with a central bank. Who owns it, controls it. But control of a nation's money supply, brings the power to create inflation, deflation, credit bubbles, credit crunches, booms, recessions. This brings indirect but absolute control of the political system through patronage and corruption. So who owns a central bank is a very big issue. Indeed, a person who owned the shares in a central bank would be the richest person in the country, richer than any businessman, because he owns the right to earn interest on the nation's money supply.
Surprisingly, nobody really knows who owns the largest part of the banks in the Federal Reserve System! The answer lies buried in some curious American history at the turn of the 19th century. The Federal Reserve System was created by an Act of Congress in 1913, pushed thru with minimal Congressional oversight by Woodrow Wilson in an extreme hurry just before Christmas. The FRS contains 12 banks. They are neither Federally nor State owned. So who owns them? They are corporations with private shareholders. Who are the largest shareholders in the 12 banks? Surely citizens of the USA are entitled to know the answer? Where is it published?
Pound studied the ownership question in the 1940s, but none of the Senators or Congressmen he asked knew who owned the Fed banks. When he asked the Fed Reserve directly for details of the shareholders he was met with obfuscation. He was even locked up in the St Elizabeth's Hospital mental asylum in Washington DC despite being fully sane according to his family and friends. He then commissioned a Mr Mullins who worked for over 10 years studying ownership records buried in libraries and archives. He met with obfuscation, and was locked up in a mental asylum despite being fully sane according to his family and friends.
But he managed to uncover many, though not all, of the shareholders' names. One of his fascinating findings is that the bulk of the shareholdings of the Federal Reserve banks is of British origin! He published a book, which at the time was suppressed in post-war Germany and several other countries. You can read it online Secrets of the Federal Reserve.
"And, really, if he couldn't do the time, he should not have done the crime."
I see your retarded old cliché and raise you a human right: punishment should be proportional to the crime. Did he kill anyone? Did he maim anyone? Did he steal anything? No, no and no, so why should he be punished more than someone who did?
Anyway, this nonsensical BS should be rejected by the European Court of Justice. Unlike the US Supreme court, it's not stacked with crypto-fascists like Antonin Scalia.
So he was violating US laws, but he wasn't there.
Guess what, I'm routinely violating Saudi laws -- I tend to enjoy a glass of red wine with my pork chops. Should I be deported?
The problem here is that the Tony Blair government sold out their countrymen, AKA "subjects", to the Bush gang.
Did McKinnon kill someone? Maim someone?
The only "damage" he caused was the cost of fixing the systems that were already broken in the first place.
Your argument would have been only acceptable if he had, for example, broken into a air traffic control system and caused a plane to crash. That's not what he did.
Furthermore, his lack of truly criminal intent is evident by the fact that he did not try to hide his tracks. If someone wanted to cause real harm, it would be as simple as doing it through tor relays.
Anyway, the real shame in this whole case is on Tony Blair's murderous sellout. Not only did this asshole assist Bush in his war crimes, but he basically gave away the rights of britons, esp. considering that US citizens don't risk being deported to the UK.
In some foreign countries, using the Internet to say something less than flattering about their religious figures or their government is considered to be an Internet crime.
If the practice of extradition for Internet crimes is allowed to continue, what safeguards will there be in place stop citizens of free countries who practice free expression on their side of the ocean from being extradited to places where they'll get their heads cut off or be sent to gulags?
$900k was IMO the cost of securing systems that were not secure in the first place.
You won't find a society anywhere on earth which doesn't have such laws.
Well my country doesn't extradite its own citizens.
Killing people is illegal.
Going 1km/h over the speed limit is illegal.
Any analogies here? How good are they going to be?
Anyway, I have to point out that, in Europe, it's extremely rare to see penalties of over 20 years awarded for something short of premeditated murder involving rape and torture. So 40+ years for something with /NO/ victim, and merely, at worst, some non-physical damages, is completely insane by European standards.
He is liable to trial under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 in the UK, with a sentence of up to 5 years if found guilty.
Schedule 1 of the Extradition Act 1989 appears to me to essentially list the offences that could be tried in the UK or overseas, for which extradition is preferred. To paraphrase, they are attacking a diplomat of the foreign country in question, taking hostages, smuggling radioactive material or torture. Now obviously this 1989 act predates the 1990 one, but does hacking seem to fit in this group?
Anyone with a high school diploma should know the history of the FRS... Anyone with half a brain knows that money=power. Thanks for the economics review though...I guess.
On second thought, let's not go to the internet. 'Tis a silly place.
Rachid Ramda was responsible for the series of terrorist attacks in France around 1995. Yet it took 10 fscking years to get him extradited over the channel. This guy is responsible for the death of dozens of people! And he wasn't even a subject of Her Majesty.
But when the Bush admin snaps its fingers, lapdog Brown's government is ready to comply.
So yeah, the UK is the US's bitch.
I can only hope that our government is secretly operating the largest network of honeypots known to man. Otherwise they might as well sell our national secrets in an attractive DVD box set and at least make a little profit from it.
You kinda totally missed the point: America will never be a "free" country while the owners of the Federal Reserve Banks are mainly foreign. Do the citizens of the USA have a right to know who are the owners of the Federal Reserve Banks? If not, why not?
This was a the #3 link on this story on google news. /. itself?
I wonder if it's possible to slashdot effect
.
Explain to me what is one-sided about the treaty:
Article 2(1) defines an offense as an extraditable offense if the conduct on which the offense is based is punishable under the laws in both States by deprivation of liberty for a period of one year or more or by a more severe penalty...
As the old Treaty does...the new Treaty further defines an extraditable offense as including an attempt or a conspiracy to commit, participation in the commission of, aiding or abetting, counseling or procuring the commission of, or being an accessory before or after the fact to any offense...
Regarding offenses committed outside the territory of the Requesting State, Article 2(4) provides that extradition shall be granted in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty if the laws in the Requested State provide for the punishment of such conduct committed outside its territory in similar circumstances. If the laws in the Requested State do not provide for the punishment of such conduct committed outside of its territory in similar circumstances, the executive authority of the Requested State, in its discretion, may grant extradition provided that all other requirements of the Treaty are met.
As is customary in extradition treaties, paragraph 1 provides that extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested constitutes a political offense.
Article 4(2) specifies seven categories of offenses that shall not be considered to be political offenses: (a) an offense for which both Parties have the obligation pursuant to a multilateral international agreement to extradite the person sought or to submit the case to their competent authorities for decision as to prosecution; (b) a murder or other violent crime against the person of a Head of State of one of the Parties, or of a member of the Head of State's family; (c) murder, manslaughter, malicious wounding, or inflicting grievous bodily harm; (d) an offense involving kidnapping, abduction, or any form of unlawful detention, including the taking of a hostage; (e) placing or using, or threatening the placement or use of, an explosive, incendiary, or destructive device or firearm capable of endangering life, of causing grievous bodily harm, or of causing substantial property damage; (f) possession of an explosive, incendiary, or destructive device capable of endangering life, of causing grievous bodily harm, or of causing substantial property damage; and (g) an attempt or a conspiracy to commit, participation in the commission of, aiding or abetting, counseling or procuring the commission of, or being an accessory before or after the fact to any of the foregoing offenses...
Article 4(3) requires that, notwithstanding the terms of paragraph 2, extradition shall not be granted if the competent authority of the Requested State determines that the request is politically motivated. In the United States, the executive branch is the competent authority for the purposes of the Article. Like all other modern extradition treaties, the new Treaty grants the executive branch rather than the judiciary the authority to determine whether a request is politically motivated.
Critics have claimed the new Treaty threatens the due process rights of Americans by eliminating the role of the courts in reviewing whether extradition should be denied because the offense for which the fugitive is sought is a political offense. This criticism confuses the "political offense" and "political motivation" provisions in that Treaty. Under the new Treaty, as under the existing treaty, U.S. courts will continue to assess whether an offense for which extradition has been requested is a political offense. This inquiry is undertaken when determining whether the offense for which a Requesting State has sought a fugitive's extradition is an extraditable offense. In contrast, under the new Treaty, the Executive Branch would determine whether an extradition reques
of bashing kiddie fiddlers who make snuff movies about it.
FFS, America DESERVES to be bashed!
Just because you're a big twat doesn't mean you don't get to be called a twat.
mark parent as funny or troll please.
For the love of FSM, don't mark it insightful.
They will have him eating the Cockmeat sandwich in no time flat!
The greatest right given is the right to be wrong...
Sazkozy is just as eager to suck up to Bush as Blair and Brown; the only difference is that we usually take it to the streets when our leaders do that kind of crap.
P.S ...but keep sending us aid dollars and materials, especially disaster relief. And if someone attacks us, come bail us out. But be sure to GTFO right away, we don't want you here. Unless we need help.
-- also "everyone else"
Assuming he is convicted (hung jury, plea bargain, or maybe even get off if lucky), he won't get 60 years. Why do people (apparently, mostly outside of the US) think that he'll get the full sentence, or even serve the full sentence? He can appeal, get time off for good behavior, concurrent sentences - there's probably a few other things I can't think of offhand.
When do the criminal negligence trials of the military network administrators start?
Absent any political agreements, it depends on the country of citizenship.
If you are a Mexican citizen in Mexico and shoot an American citizen in the US, you have only committed a crime if it is illegal to possess or fire a gun in Mexico, or if it is illegal to kill someone. The US may consider the Mexican to have committed a crime also, but it is irrelevant because the Mexican is in no way under the jurisdiction of the US government.
While in this case the morality of the situation clouds judgement a little, on a broader note, why as a citizen of a country, acting in that country, is it your responsibility to be aware of and obide by laws of a different country?
Lots of people have been angry over the amazingly one-sided special relationship for many years. This resulted in something called the "British American Project for the successor generation" which was aimed at countering criticism of the "Special Relationship". The organisation tends to recruit top media people. For example, Jeremy Paxman is a member (he's even on the frontpage http://www.baponline.org./
Here's an article about them.
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=466
Read the story on CNN.com and was floored by the last sentence.
"He was caught in 2002 after some of the software used in the attacks was traced back to his girlfriend's e-mail account." (emphasis added)
A "hacker" with a girlfriend?! Damn, if he only used the argument that he had a girlfriend and therefore couldn't be a hacker, he might be done with this whole mess already.
Near as I can tell, there was no "damage."
Actually, he did them a favor. He got in and didn't nuke any systems, which a savvier hacker could easily have done (log in, snoop around, leave a nice timebomb to erase the evidence...)
When they claim it was "$900,000 damages", that's the money they should have spent fucking securing the systems in the first place - after all, he got into machines with the username 'administrator' and a blank fucking password.
I mean, seriously. They're just trying to make an example because he got dangerously close to something they don't want released - like, say, the amount of $$$ the Mexican mafia is paying Bush to have his buddy Sutton railroad border patrol agents who actually do their job and arrest drug traffickers.
He took away the ability of other people to do their work
Did he? From what I remember he "broke" in, looked at some files (didn't even take copies) and left.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
And neither will he be killed, mamed, or stolen from
...
Yes, because everyone knows that getting your asshole ripped apart by a 250kg 6ft black guy from Georgia is JUST the punishment appropriate for typing admin, admin in 2 boxes
For a counterweight, look at Mr. Justice Eady (currently my Judge of the Year favourite) who has dared to find against a tabloid newspaper in a libel case, but now seems determined to stop a British supermarket chain - Tescos - from using the law to silence one of the few remaining independent British newspapers, the Guardian. Eady had better not expect any honors soon - he doesn't mind pissing off the people who think they own politicians.
Finally, as an English person, I'd just like to point out that for some reason our political classes love Scottish Prime Ministers, and they are to a man useless. Balfour,Macmillan, Home,Blair, Brown - ambitious, devoid of ethics, infatuated with the worst aspects of the US and unwilling to implement the best ones, like your robust local democracy. We English need the EU to protect us from the worst excesses of the Scots.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Do you know what the word means? Why am I a hypocrite?
As for having no right, well, no one's arguing he had, not even McKinnon himself. So I don't know what you're arguing against. In fact I'd wager you don't, either.
this is nothing, google Marc Emery and the bc3, read about how some good people may be thrown from Canada to the US for selling cannabis SEEDS.
War on nature never ends. This one hacker's story is nothing compared to the BC3 story.
By the way, hello twitter.
You can be twitter too!
Let me refresh your memory.
You can be twitter too!
but Linus did say that security-obsessed devs were masturbating monkeys. What does that have to do with twitter?
Unless... Linus Torvalds is a twitter sockpuppet! I knew it!
Ironic how a counrty that is afraid of joining the International criminal court because of its many illegal acts (What other reason could therer be?), expects to apply their law to the citizens of other countries for offences commited outside their borders.
While the US accuses him of causing over $900,000 in computer damage
Our President has caused over 2.5 trillion dollars in damage. Why isn't he up on charges?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Good to see the British government standing up so vigorously to the US on this, and er, allowing one of its citizens to be dragged off to Guantanamo Bay for life.
The "offence" didn't take place in the US therefore he should not be tried in the US. I know this is contrary to recent international legal trends e.g. sex tourism, but it offends my sense of justice and goes contrary to centuries of legal tradition.
that you can leave out the "crtypto-" part.
What is your culture worth when you are in Guantanamo or other concentration camp? Did not understand why Great Britain belonged to Oceania considering its proximity (and maybe some cultural relations) to Europe.
Oh, and you know this for a certainty that this will happen in exactly this way. That it happens to everybody. 550 pound (you did say 250kg) black guy (a bit racist aren't we being here). Everyone in prison meets this guy. And who does it to this guy, if it happens to everyone?
You clearly don't know what you're talking about, what you describe says more about you than it does about the US prison system, and how you managed to find the 2 critical brain cells in your mind sufficient to post to Slashdot will forever remain a mystery to the rest of us.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"where that has ever" and "where that has always" are not equivalent. Now go look up which of the above phrases you used."
I did, you're still wrong and that changed nothing.
"You're still wrong on the actual topic though"
I don't think your inability to read English correctly makes me wrong.
I guess if that's what they taught you "wrong" meant in your country, then you also need to ask for your parent's tax money back.