No Charges In UK For Gary McKinnon

clickclickdrone sends this news from the BBC: "Computer hacker Gary McKinnon, who is wanted in the U.S., will not face charges in the U.K., the Crown Prosecution Service has said. Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC said the chances of a successful conviction were 'not high.' He announced the decision some three months after Home Secretary Theresa May stopped the extradition. Mr. McKinnon, 46, admits accessing U.S. government computers but says he was looking for evidence of UFOs. The U.S. authorities tried to extradite him to face charges of causing $800,000 (£487,000) to military computer systems and he would have faced up to 60 years in prison if convicted."

Comments

Re:proofread a few lines only?

[halfEvilTech]

Damages they are claiming though come from having to fix the vulnerabilites that let him in in the first place. That and the money spent on the legal bills for embarassing them.

Reverse the charges

[FrostedWheat]

Right, so the real people responsible will be charged now? The ones who left seriously insecure military computers connected to the internet?

Re:proofread a few lines only?

[serviscope_minor]

They wouldn't have had to fix all of that without his interference.

Please NEVER EVER get a job in security.

Ever

Ever

Ever.

Once such important systems had even been found potentially compromised, they become entirely untrustworthy and cannot be used.

They noticed McKinnon by sheer blind luck.

If it had been a competent agent of Mossad or something they would never have noticed. Or by someone as competent as the guys that made Flame.

But the fact that they were wildly insecure meant that they would have had to shut down the entire system basically instantly and repair it.

They were bloody lucky it was McKinnon and not someone else.