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UK Judge Grants Extradition Review To Cracker Gary McKinnon
JobsEnding writes with this quote from IBTimes:
"A British court ruled on Friday that a man who hacked into US military computers will be given permission for a judicial review against his extradition to the United States. Hacker Gary McKinnon, 42, who had been diagnosed recently with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism, has admitted hacking into the military computers. His lawyers had said McKinnon was at risk of suicide if he were extradited."
We discussed the granting of McKinnon's extradition in 2006 when it was first granted, as well as a profile of the man more recently.
I suppose we're all at risk of "suicide", if we piss off the wrong people ....
-kgj
"UK Judge Grants Extradition Review To Caucasian Gary McKinnon" would be a less offensive headline.
Fnord.
Also known as the Geek Defense. Hope it works as well for you as it did for Hans ;)
How we know is more important than what we know.
ja, iz guhd
Is the fact that he is caucasian really worth putting in the title?
I think the guy got kind of lucky stringing his trial out until Bush was out of office. I'm not saying the Obama administration is going to be lenient, but they are certainly softening the tones of all this terrorism crap.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
Looks like MI6 doesn't want to lose one of their best guys.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Considering he has Asperger's syndrome I doubt much social engineering was involved here. The problem is the code.
You can't blame a child for playing with a gun. You can blame the parent for leaving it around. Autism don't necessarily know whats right and wrong.
So....Quit hiring cheap programmers and actually pay for someone who can write something secure. People with
Why would they even consider not extraditing him? If I knew that I would get extended prison time for a felony, I too would be considering suicide.
Specially asymmetrical.
Has anyone else noticed that the offbeat story tags have started disappearing after a while, at least on some stories? Makes me think one of the editors is tampering.
Shouldn't be long until "whitey" and "cracka" disappear from the tags list, then.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
"The problem here IMHO is they are looking to drop the hammer on this guy NOT for what he did, but for the fact that he made all their security look like the POS that it is."
And that's the crux of the matter, put very succinctly.
"Where the hell did they get their security guys from, Remington College?"
Redmond College (MS), maybe?...look for evidence of ballistic chairs?
(I thoroughly despise the 'fixed that for ya' meme-not my place to spin-doctor any but my own words.)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
1. Well, as an aspie myself, I seriously don't understand his defense. Asperger's Syndrome is basically like being colour blind, except in this case we aren't wired to even notice (much less decode) body language. I can tell if somebody screams or laughs, but everything else doesn't even exist for me. And far as I can tell mom can't even tell if you screamed at her or not, and is constantly taking wrong guesses there.
So offending people face to face or commiting social faux pas is a lot easier, because where someone else would take a hint, you don't even have a hint. E.g., I've had stuff like being told "dude, why didn't you stop it with that terminally bored face in the meeting? Didn't you see the way the boss was looking at you?" And I was thinking he looks at me because he likes me or something.
It's also very easy to conclude stuff like "everyone else is stupid" when you lack the hints that she's just making conversation and trying to sound interesting (or so I'm told,) or he's lying to you and hoping _you_ are stupid enough to believe him. (I find that if you dig deep enough in why someone insists on something illogical, you'll actually find a hidden motive rather than complete idiocy.)
On the other hand, being an aspie is all about logic, so anyone who blames it for not understanding "break law => get punished" is talking out the arse.
And you _can_ learn to function pretty normally in society by using logic, an I mean in a lot more detail than "break law => get punished". I've read a lot about psychology and anthropology, for example, just to know what I'm supposed to do or not to do, in the absence of ad-hoc hints to change the course.
2. _However_, Asperger's Syndrome has a very high probability of co-morbidity with something else, like OCD, OCPD, ADHD and going all the way to sociopathy.
And it seems to me like the _real_ problem of both this guy and Hans (the other with the aspie defense) is actually sociopathy. Both seem to be self-centered arseholes, and both seem to think that the law is some kind of game, among other symptoms.
I don't think we let people free just because they're sociopaths. In fact, most of the population in prisons scores over 20, a normal person scores 2-3, and 30 is the limit for outright psychopathy. That lack of empathy for their fellow man and society is usually what gets half of them into prison. (And the other half into upper management.)
But at any rate, that's a completely different mental disorder. And blaming it on Asperger's Syndrome does a disservice to everyone.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
How can you use that as a defense for extradition or anything for that matter?
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
"where was the crime committed"
That is a very interesting question, as it opens up one hell of a can of worms when applied to any work done virtually. If someone is in one country and commits a crime in another country, then where should they be tried and which laws applied?.
If its decided that the country the crime is committed in, is the place they should be tried, then that means national boarders are meaningless from a legal perspective, as the virtual world then extends people from one country into other country. So what next, does that mean then that people can be tried for saying things considered illegal in another country, like for example, criticizing a foreign government online?
If however a person committing a crime should be tried in their own country, using their own laws, then it prevents the need to open such a big can of worms. As crimes committed are then still within national boarders. It then means each country needs new laws that protect other countries from virtual harm. That seems a much more sane idea, as it protects against the most extreme regimes in some countries, dictating laws to all other countries, by extending their laws virtually into each country.
The problem here is the law has not caught up fast enough with the way technology has changed and so a lack of law prevents the person being tried in their own country, as that country has no law that has been broken. If it did have such a law, then damages would simply pass on to parties in another country, who the crime was against, but most importantly the crime and punishment stays within national boarders, which is very important, given how extreme some countries and their regimes are.
"Why would they even consider not extraditing him?"
Because the UK doesn't trust the US legal system?
The USA is a country that locks up people indefinitely in a third country when it's not sure that its own citizens would accept this kind of regime on their own soil, sometimes taking prisoners to other countries with poor human rights records for interrogation using methods that many of its partners refer to as "torture" (why don't these prisoners get interrogated in the USA? I am sure there is a good reason but it makes people suspicious).
Hoping that things will change under the new management but I think there's a lot of caution in the UK over whether Gary McKinnon would receive justice rather than a kangaroo court if he was tried in the USA.
Why extradite him?
If what he did was illegal in the UK, then you could just try him there - in fact, given that he's a UK citizen, you should.
And if what he did was not illegal in the UK, then what basis is there for even so much as arresting him - much less extradition?
Seriously, does anyone believe that this is about anything other than the USA wanting to exact revenge on a guy that humiliated them, rather than giving someone a fair and unbiased trial?
I trust that the USA would let its citizens exhaust the legal system before handing them over to another country for trial. That is what he is doing in the UK. J
US government spys on US citizens..... and the digital leakage problems....
Isn't this the guy looking for UFO knowledge evidence?
Hmmm, maybe he found weapons of mass destruction?
He's Scottish and it's the English courts deciding this
The English Courts have let English Police shoot a Scots man with no repurcussions in the past. The guy had comitted no crime, he was walking home and the anti-terrorist boys shot him with no challenge and got it whitewashed.
So don't come it.
The establishment works for the establishment.
You don't only have to blame one person when things go wrong.
The DOD administrators were at fault for not securing their networks.
The cracker was wrong for breaking in.
The one doesn't absolve the other.
Maybe you fancy cracking the DOD computers too. Could be fun. Don't blame you for wanting to, but don't be surprised if, when you do, you get caught and sent to prison too.
Oh and another thing: he doesn't have Asperger's, it's just a ruse to escape punishment. He won't commit suicide either if jailed; like the rest of us he doesn't want to go to jail and is trying everything to avoid it. Don't blame him. I would too.
Finally, he may have been looking for evidence of UFOs or maybe no. He still broke into the DOD network. Maybe we could have sympathy for him, if he had immediately contacted them to explain how he had done it to give them a wake up call - but he didn't; he thought he had got away with it, petty as it appears to have been.
Send him to jail.
Isn't there a bounty on Scotsmen?
"Hacker Gary McKinnon, 42, who had been diagnosed recently with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism..." So everyone with even the slightest form of unusual brain chemistry, far above average intelligence, and stunted or impaired social development is no longer responsible for their actions? I can understand why the wallaby jury here in Southern California let the CalTech graduate student who moonlighted as a serial vandal take a walk, but aren't Britons supposed to be at least slightly more insightful than twelve smog-breathing cretins who couldn't talk their way out of jury duty? Depressing stuff, folks. N. a J.
I have too many Billy Jack flashbacks.
Billy Jack: I'm gonna take this right foot, and I'm gonna whop you on that side of your face...
Or would "subject" be a more appropriate term?
This kind of thing would not happen in other European countries. Extraditing your own people to another country when they've not been convicted of any crime? That's ludicrous.
This is also an example of Bliar's disgusting submission to Bush's corrupt administration. The extradition agreement is entirely lopsided, the US doesn't have to extradite its own citizens based on a UK judge's whim. If it was at all possible, war criminals such as Kissinger would be at risk.
In conclusion, it's rather amusing to listen to the anti-Europe bullshit spewed by the Murdoch press, as if the EU was a threat to briton's freedom. The reality is the complete opposite.
It's overcrowded. Prisoners routinely experience rape and violence. They do not get proper medical treatment.
FWIW the prison system in France is pretty fucked up; but we don't jail people for 40 years for non-violent offenses. In fact we don't even jail people for 40 years for violent offenses.
Has he caused any harm to any one?
Has he stolen property?
No and no. He just took a peek at something he was not authorized to look at. Big fucking deal.
The real issue is that McKinnon is being extradited without the US being required to provide prima facie evidence, a situation that isn't reciprocated. I guess it's because we're not a real country anaways :)
davecb5620@gmail.com
"Has he caused any harm to any one? Has he stolen property? No and no. He just took a peek at something he was not authorized to look at. Big fucking deal"
..
No, but it's easier for some prosecutor to go after McKinnon than have to hunt down some real cyber criminals. They don't give a fuck if he is innocent or not, it's the guilty verdict that count.
One among many, what he actually did, was access some password-less WinNT machines and installed a remote desktop application. All in the pursuit of info on the US govs involvement in a UFO coverup. He once saw a pic of a flying saucer with US military markings but can't remember where exactly as a) he was on dialup and b) smoking a lot of dope at the time, not good for the intellect.
They 'caught' him (depending on who you believe) after c) system intrusions were detected or d) he would message them using WordPad and he used his own email to register the remote control app. Calling Gary a 'hacker' is equivalent to referring to a McDonald's burger flipper as a Chef de Cuisine
Payment Processor Breach May Be Largest Ever
TJX Confirms Largest Credit-Card Breach Ever
davecb5620@gmail.com
User rts008: the automatic Slashdot meme enforcement AI bot indicates that your post should have looked like
There, fixed that for you.
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It would be a violation of anyone's rights, no just a man with Asperger's syndrome. Hey, all government is a violation of human rights.
One of the hallmarks of many Aspies is a sense of justice. Whether true or not, he sought to bring information that was potentially important to the world out in the open--- legal or not. Once upon a time, it was illegal to allow blacks in "white" washrooms. But people broke the law (despite protests from whites and uncle toms) in order to win equal rights. Some of yesterday's wackos are today's heroes.
Similar battles for justice continue to this day. McKinnon felt he was doing the right thing. But at the same time, was not treated for a condition that is best diagnosed at an early age.
I think he's been punished enough. At this point, he needs help, not punishment in the hands of a foreign, hostile government.
I have little sympathy for Gary McKinnon. That doesn't make the actions of the courts right ot just, mind you.
He's "into computers" and intelligent enough to exploit vulnerabilities in others' systems to gain unauthorised access. He should therefore have been paying attention to the US (and UK's) "war on terror" and the absurd, heavy-handed measures that they've brought in in the name of security.
What on earth did he think he was doing? Why did he think that he wouldn't get caught and made an example of?
He's got Asbergers, not dementia. He's not retarded. What an idiot.
Stick Men
As the sensitivity of tests increases, I fear we will end up in a situation where everyone is diagnosed with some disorder or other. There is no longer "average"...
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I'm with you there buddy. But I don't think voting Tory would make much difference. Maggie wasn't exactly cool in her relationship with the USA. And she didn't have a problem with human rights abuses, she determinedly supported General Pinochet even after the rest of the world turned their back on a man who thought state torture and throwing people out of aircraft was perfectly acceptable behaviour.
David "heir to Blair" Cameron will probably be more of the same. Rather depressing really. Or maybe it's just realpolitik, keeping in with the superpower that thinks we're cute.
Since hackers should be shot anyway, then there's no real problem then.
I hate to point this out, but you forgot to misspell "intelligence".
BTW, the most impressive contribution the Internet made to spelling was that everyone all of a sudden could spell "anonymous" (mainly because most admins didn't tell people that "ftp" would have worked as well). Sadly we stopped using direct FTP logins before more interesting words could be introduced like "miscellaneous".
Did I win the record for most offtopic post? :-)
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