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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.
Looks like MI6 doesn't want to lose one of their best guys.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
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.
"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.