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Hacker McKinnon To Be Extradited To US
Vainglorious Coward writes "When UK hacker and Asperger's sufferer Gray McKinnon lost the judicial review of his case it seemed likely that he would be extradited to the US to face charges of hacking almost a hundred systems causing $700,000 worth of damage. Today the UK home secretary rejected his last-ditch attempt to avoid extradition adding that 'his extradition to the United States must proceed forthwith.' McKinnon's relatives are expressing concerns for his health, with his lawyer going so far as to claim that extradition would make the 43-year-old's death 'virtually certain.'"
Consent of the governed is considered to apply to tourists/other non-citizen visitors since it is assumed that by traveling to another country they voluntarily place themselves under the jurisdiction of those laws (if a Dutch citizen doesn't want to risk the high drug penalties in Singapore, for example, he can just stay and smoke up in Holland). Citizens are then (theoretically) granted the right to vote on their laws since they have no "home country" to go back to. Where it gets sticky in this case is determining if "traveling" virtually to the US servers is equivalent to getting on a plane and flying to the US. WRT UK citizens being charged for posting hate speech on US servers, nations also claim extraterritorial jurisdiction over their citizens - for example, US citizens who travel to Thailand for example to have sex with small children can be prosecuted in the US just as if they committed the crime here.
--- You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad- Neal (not Cowboy) Boortz
The funny thing about jurisdiction is that traditionally it is based on where the crime took place. Nowadays it seems to be a matter of convenience.
But where did the crime take place? Consider someone who stood inside France and shot an arrow into Germany. That arrow strikes a Kraut and kills them. Did the murder occur in France or in Germany?
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He stands little or no chance of a fair trial. Where does a foreigner get money for a lawyer while getting a new job, while paying his previous mortgage, loans and somehow finding health insurance all at the same time? And while he is clinically depressed and feeling suicidal.
And then he stands to get 70 years in prison (the feds are really gunning fro him - they have said as much) for hacking into the pentagon system and in a maximum security prison - he might as well be summarily executed. It would be more merciful.
I do, to a large extent. Not so much dire cases of schizophrenia, for instance, but depression? Anxiety? Anger control? Asperger's? They are real conditions, but they are claimed to exist FAR more than they really do in a significant way.
All of those disorders exist in a smooth gradiation from severe psychological problem to simple personality trait, and in the majority of cases they're probably closer to the latter. When a geek is introverted, it may be a mild case of Asperger's, but that truly gives you no better or more useful diagnoses than 'smart and introverted' once did. It may indeed be more harmful, because such a diagnoses tends to remove one's personal accountability for correcting the condition... and mild cases of all those behaviors can often be corrected by simple personal growth and mindful behavior.
Obviously, those conditions exist, and in severe cases really do call for specialized treatment. However, the vast majority of self-proclaimed Asperger's sufferers have it in no significant degree, and I suspect they are using it as a sneaky egoboost ("Asperger's may be asocial, but they're really smart") or as an excuse ("you don't want me to talk at the meeting, I'm asperger's"). Both are harmful.