"Let the punishment fit the crime". This isn't about whether Gary McKinnon is innocent or guilty. I don't think anyone doubts the fact he committed a crime.
The simple fact is that he (allegedly) hacked some computer systems causing some minor outages and copied some data. The total cost of fixing the problem was apparently $700,000. I don't know about you, but I personally think that a couple of years of prison is enough for that. There were no victims and $700,000 is a drop in the pond relatively speaking. The bankers have wiped billions off the global economy and I haven't heard of one of them facing a single day of jail.
You could even argue that he did the US military a favour. The hack he used was trivial; if an enemy country (e.g. Iran) had done the same thing the consequences might not have been so benign. The security was a joke and it needed to be fixed.
We need to stand up for our citizens and their rights. We shouldn't bend over and let foreign countries stick it to us just because we have to be whiter than white and abide by the rules to the letter. We have been doing a lot of that recently.
If Gary McKinnon were extradited to the US he would face jail time more than an order of magnitude higher than our justice system had decided is reasonable. Furthermore, I frankly doubt he would get a fair trial. The US military would be pushing for revenge. The US has a long standing history of xenophobia and isolationism (usually masked as patriotism). It would be a question of burning the dirty foreigner at the stake.
We shouldn't even have an extradition treaty with a country that has admitted they torture people.
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"Let the punishment fit the crime". This isn't about whether Gary McKinnon is innocent or guilty. I don't think anyone doubts the fact he committed a crime. The simple fact is that he (allegedly) hacked some computer systems causing some minor outages and copied some data. The total cost of fixing the problem was apparently $700,000. I don't know about you, but I personally think that a couple of years of prison is enough for that. There were no victims and $700,000 is a drop in the pond relatively speaking. The bankers have wiped billions off the global economy and I haven't heard of one of them facing a single day of jail. You could even argue that he did the US military a favour. The hack he used was trivial; if an enemy country (e.g. Iran) had done the same thing the consequences might not have been so benign. The security was a joke and it needed to be fixed. We need to stand up for our citizens and their rights. We shouldn't bend over and let foreign countries stick it to us just because we have to be whiter than white and abide by the rules to the letter. We have been doing a lot of that recently. If Gary McKinnon were extradited to the US he would face jail time more than an order of magnitude higher than our justice system had decided is reasonable. Furthermore, I frankly doubt he would get a fair trial. The US military would be pushing for revenge. The US has a long standing history of xenophobia and isolationism (usually masked as patriotism). It would be a question of burning the dirty foreigner at the stake. We shouldn't even have an extradition treaty with a country that has admitted they torture people.