Slashdot Mirror
Obama Won't Intervene Over British Hacker McKinnon
CWmike writes "President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that he can't intervene in the long-running case of a British hacker charged with breaking into US military computers. Gary McKinnon's case came up during discussions with British Prime Minister David Cameron in Washington. The UK Home Office is reviewing whether McKinnon's medical condition is grounds to block his extradition to the US, which was approved in 2006. McKinnon has yet to stand trial in the US, where he was indicted by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in 2002 for hacking into 97 military and NASA computers between February 2001 and March 2002. Obama said during a press conference with Cameron that by tradition US presidents do not get involved in extraditions or prosecutions. 'I trust that this will get resolved in a way that underscores the seriousness of the issue, but also underscores the fact that we work together and we can find an appropriate solution,' Obama said."
It doesn't bloody matter whether he got into a system where the password was "password" or one where the password was "HD84^$#jdu7^$nhdge". It's a crime and if convicted he's a criminal.
I don't think there's much argument over whether the guy should be punished. The argument is over how severely he should be punished, given that he 1) didn't cause any damage, 2) wasn't acting out of malice, and 3) was at least accomplish what he did in large part due to the incompetence of those who are, in theory, supposed to be competent in protecting themselves from such attacks.
Speak for yourself.
I find it funny that everybody seems to have forgotten that he was searching for UFO related material, and that he found some.
The government, as should be obvious to everybody with a brain, is corrupt from top to bottom. To say that he should serve time is like saying that the mob should be paid protection money. Bullshit. The governments on both sides of the ocean are monsters. I have no doubt that Gary will be punished, but it's a dark and dirty thing and I really feel for the guy.
What's most scary is that the retarded pod people who make up the public actually support his incarceration, quoting the same feeble arguments they were taught as they grew up; who believe in the good hearts of their elected officials and the noble intentions of the military. People who think psychopaths are all violent killers who make up a tiny percentage of the population when really they proliferate in the halls of banking, government and military power.
-FL