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.

Comments

Asperger's syndrome

[QuantumG]

Also known as the Geek Defense. Hope it works as well for you as it did for Hans ;)

Re:Asperger's syndrome

[hairyfeet]

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. I mean, lets be serious here folks, if a guy looking for ALIENS on DIALUP can blow through your security like crap through a goose, then you don't really HAVE any security, now do you? I mean damn! The guy used the old freaking default passwords to gain entry! Hell that is one of the first big NO NOs in security is to leave all that default password crap on the machines. Where the hell did they get their security guys from, Remington College? Maybe they should have taken the truck driving course instead, huh?.

How about instead of wasting all this money on courts and trials for the nutball we talk the UK into banning his ass from the net for a couple of years(I bet they'd be happy to do it just to make this go away and quit wasting the courts time) and instead we use that money for something more important, namely finding out WTF are default passwords doing on a government network in the first place? If their security is THAT damned piss poor then they got a HELL of a lot worse than some nutball looking for little green men to worry about. What if he would have been a REAL bad guy, intent on stealing as much information or causing as much damage as possible? It sounds to me like the US gov needs to have a serious security audit and make sure there isn't a SINGLE machine on their networks that are using that default password bullshit. IMHO that would do a lot more to secure our computers from the enemy than dropping the hammer on some UFO guy.

where was the crime committed

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.