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10-Year Gary McKinnon Case To End This Year
judgecorp writes "The ten-year legal quagmire surrounding Gary McKinnon, who hacked into U.S. military and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002, must end this year, a British High Court Judge has ordered. McKinnon has been appealing against extradition to the U.S., and two medical experts must report in 28 days on his mental state, ruling whether he would be a suicide risk if deported. This ruling could short-circuit an extradition appeal hearing in July."
Maximum sentence 70 years, so no, not necessarily.
Lots of people 'give a shit', myself included. Go back to Reddit or 4chan with the rest of your kind (trolls)
and just what is "justice"?
Can a country like the US even claim the moral high ground on "justice" anymore?
America has over the past 10+ years detailed persons without trials, executed it's citizens, subjected it's population to invasive searches, and worked to curtail free speech, free expression, and peaceful lawful assembly.
No sir, I submit to you that this man cannot get "justice" in America, and I think it would be better if more counties stood up to the United States and blocked extraditions. As a mater of principle, countries should not seek to enforce their laws on persons who are not their citizens or in their physical territory.
Maximum sentence 70 years, so no, not necessarily.
The UK has a reciprocal agreement with the USA. He could be convicted in the US but then be deported to serve time in a UK prison.
The fact that the NSA, CIA, FBI and DoD had open modems connected to the PSTN doesn't seem to bear any significance in this. Why aren't there some US folks being proscecuted for leaving the door wide open? Why aren't there any courts martial for the DoD folks who didn't stop this security breach?
Some poor kid with a computer and a modem and a random dialer gets the blame for all the ills of this US national security breach is a travesty. That's before we consider the desperately bad unilateral extradition agreement that my lovely Labour Gov't (Bliar and that clown Brown) signed up to (for "anti-terrorist reasons).
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
Exactly right sir, the arrogance of the US is incredible. He should not be extradited to a country with such an applaing prison system and downright uncicivilsed legal system that has the death penalty, and has repeatedly been found to have executed innocent people.
It's not just the justice system that's deeply flawed if he is extradited, it's the whole political system. In the run up to the last election, all three leaders of the big parties said they would resolve this, and none of them have lifted a finger when in power (Labour were in power for most of the last 10 years, now the other two, Liberal and Conservative, govern in coalition).
In our whole political system, I've yet to hear one single person who says that Gary should be extradited. They all, without exception as far as I know, back his right to a UK trial... and I've yet to hear one single person lift a finger to make it happen.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
No, he allegedly hacked into unsecured military systems, using default passwords. He didn't tamper with secure files, he allegedly tampered with unsecured files.
Nobody is saying he doesn't need to face justice, but when the knee jerk reaction of Americans is exactly what you posted, then it's unlikely he would actually get a fair trial on your side of the Atlantic.
He's a UK citizen, accused of misusing a computer in the UK. There is no justification for not allowing him a UK trial, and no justification for leaving this hanging over him (and his family) for a whole decade.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
A) Because they didn't "leave the door wide open."
B) You may as well argue that people who don't lock their front door should be charged with a crime because someone steals from them. Because, that is exactly what you are doing.
C) Walking in and taking things is still a CRIME.
D) 35 is not "Some poor kid with a computer and a modem and a random dialer.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
It very much does. The fact that the US considers the *consequences* of his UK computations a crime on US soil is not relevant, as he was under UK jurisdiction during the entire period when it occurred.
I don't believe that it is a good idea to think along the lines you suggest. It means plain and simply that a person sitting in one country becomes subject to the laws of all countries.
For example, the US has a fairly strong tradition of free speech laws, but Iran doesn't. If a person in Ohio posts some negative comments about the prophet Mohammed, this person is (by your reasoning) committing a crime in Iran as soon as the comment passes through one of their local servers. So according to this reasoning, he/she should be handed over to be tried there on suspicion, forthwith.
There is a correct way out, and it involves trial in the UK. The US prosecutor should simply travel to the UK, and drag McKinnon through the British court system. If there is any relevant evidence, it should be brought along, and handed over as evidence to the Crown. If McKinnon is found guilty, he can be sentenced in the UK under UK law, and serve his time.
That is the only way to prevent the pathological (and in fact, highly contradictory) situation where an internet user is subject to the laws of every single country in the world simultaneously.