Autistic man in Scotland who hacked into American defence computers. Admittedly, they’ll give him unjustifiably harsh treatment in the US, but he has done something extremely serious indeed, and it needs to be dealt with.
Funny how the Mail will go ballistic over benefit fraud, theft, anti-social behaviour etc., but is quite happy to turn a blind eye to supposedly “nicer” crimes.
it’s hard to find a more vindictive newspaper than the daily mail when it comes to justice, yet here they’ve taken this angle because it’s ‘an affront to british justice’.
“Funny how the Mail will go ballistic over benefit fraud, theft, anti-social behaviour etc., but is quite happy to turn a blind eye to supposedly “nicer” crimes.”
Think it’s more the fact that it’s a populist excuse to campaign against a Labour Home Office. There’s no way they’d be doing this if it was a tory government.
You know, that 16 year old rapist, who recently got given life in the UK, has aspergers. They didn’t even comment about it in their news coverage.
With McKinnon, it’s unfair to lock him up as he has it, and it’s blame for his entire criminal history, it seems.
This is how the story has happened.
McKinnon was charged by the UK government, but they were unable to convict him, as the crimes were comitted in the USA, and the US constitution does not allow them to provide criminal evidence to a foreign country.
So he basically got away with it. And he basically can’t be charged here on the crimes, no matter what.
The US weren’t happy about this, so asked that he be extradited to the US to be tried on cyber charges. Which the UK agreed with.
McKinnon went from “getting away with it”, to probably having to do 3 years hard time, and was understandabely upset.
So he’s spent the last 5 years fighting extradition under the premise that he wants to be tried here. Even though he’s already faced trial here, and can’t actually be convicted of anything under UK law.
He just doesn’t want to face any prison time. And he can only be imprisoned in the US.
So he’s come up with various PR moves. As in, he’s this alien hunter. And all the evidence of the damage is some US plot. Something of course the Mail believes……..They love a conspiracy theory after all.
In truth, McKinnon was a pretty senior system analyst, with a big firm, and a well known hacker in UK circles ( you can still find hacking forums and blogs, with his name popping up with comments and plots).
He very much targeted servers, on political grounds. As an anti war statement. The alien stuff is rubbish.
What did he do? He hacked into the US military servers, and basically just deleted sections of it’s code, meaning that when a single user shut down their system, the whole network was unable to reboot, as the reboot code had been sabotaged.
He then went on to naval installations, and processed to delete naval logs. These are files the navy use, so they know where their ships, and other nations ships are in the oceans. Like transcripts of radar tracking data.
He did this on November 12th, 2001, while making mocking comments about terrorism, and the US government.
He was basically insinuating that he would continue to disrupt the US military computers,until they stopped bombing people around the world – which he considered terrorism.
In the last 2 years, his campaign have been trying to say he did nothing, and was only looking for UFOs and all of the above is “US lies to try and trick the UK government into handing him over”.
Of course, the mail loves this, and joins in. Conspiracy, Labour, lies, Yanks guffaw guffaw!
This didn’t work, so they found a psychologist to say that he “may” (he hasn’t been diagnosed as of yet) suffer from aspergers. Which is a mild autism, sort of like “Attention deficit disorder”.
And are now arguing that no person with aspergers should go to prison for crimes, on the basis that it may make them upset.
Not really explaining that 50% of the prison population around the world probably have mental issues like this.
After leaving a few “Pro BBC” messages on their message board, explaining to people how the tories, and the mail are trying to bash the BBC, to try and open the market up to pay tv, and also ease the way for “pay newspapers” online, I was frankly banned by dailymail.co.uk
It seems, explaining that the mail, sky news, the sun, are planning to start charging people for news, sometime in the next 24 months – and are trying to weaken the power of the BBC to make it possible – is a bannable offence.
Save Gary from what?
Reminds me of when I lived in Uganda 10 years ago: the Mayor of Kampala was arrested in the USA for trying to pass off dud travelers cheques and one of the main local daily newspapers printed an editorial about how the mayor shouldn’t have to do time in the USA because of what they percieved as the harsh conditions in US prisons, under the headline SAVE [Mayor’s Name] FROM ANAL RAPE
The Daily Mail have not campaigned to stop the extradition of prisoners jailed for their beliefs, who have not committed a single crime in this country,some are disabled and have been badly treated in prison.
The fact is Mr. McKinnon did the Pentagon a favour by highlighting their pathetic security. The pity is that he couldn’t somehow completely scramble their systems and turn the war machine off for a day or two. Better luck next time!
Obviously there’s the ink saving, but isn’t referring to people by just their first name usually reserved for nubile, young and usually dead blonde women?
The McKinnon thing has a lot of echoes of the notorious Save The Nat West Three campaign, in which three obviously guilty rich bankers strung out their extradition for years thanks to a massive PR campaign. Personally I’m wondering if Paul Dacre’s done something dodgy in the USA and is worried about going the same way as Conrad Black. That would be tragic.
John Seal, the Pentagon is the holy grail of hacking. It is by no stretch of the imagination weak or pathetic, which is precisely why the US is so desperate to lock him up.
I notice that the Hate Mail isn’t campaigning for the release of Linda Carty, on death rown since 2002. The NatWest Three, Gary McKinnon, looks like the mail only campaigns for whiteys, regardless of their guilt.
But anyhow I’m sure they passed a law back around 2003 that allowed the US to extradite on the grounds of anything remotely related to terrorism hence this.
Personally I think this Gary ought go and face the court in the USA.
Nice to see the Mail supporting lawbreakers on this occasion.
Whos Gary??
Autistic man in Scotland who hacked into American defence computers. Admittedly, they’ll give him unjustifiably harsh treatment in the US, but he has done something extremely serious indeed, and it needs to be dealt with.
Funny how the Mail will go ballistic over benefit fraud, theft, anti-social behaviour etc., but is quite happy to turn a blind eye to supposedly “nicer” crimes.
it’s hard to find a more vindictive newspaper than the daily mail when it comes to justice, yet here they’ve taken this angle because it’s ‘an affront to british justice’.
“Funny how the Mail will go ballistic over benefit fraud, theft, anti-social behaviour etc., but is quite happy to turn a blind eye to supposedly “nicer” crimes.”
Think it’s more the fact that it’s a populist excuse to campaign against a Labour Home Office. There’s no way they’d be doing this if it was a tory government.
You know, that 16 year old rapist, who recently got given life in the UK, has aspergers. They didn’t even comment about it in their news coverage.
With McKinnon, it’s unfair to lock him up as he has it, and it’s blame for his entire criminal history, it seems.
This is how the story has happened.
McKinnon was charged by the UK government, but they were unable to convict him, as the crimes were comitted in the USA, and the US constitution does not allow them to provide criminal evidence to a foreign country.
So he basically got away with it. And he basically can’t be charged here on the crimes, no matter what.
The US weren’t happy about this, so asked that he be extradited to the US to be tried on cyber charges. Which the UK agreed with.
McKinnon went from “getting away with it”, to probably having to do 3 years hard time, and was understandabely upset.
So he’s spent the last 5 years fighting extradition under the premise that he wants to be tried here. Even though he’s already faced trial here, and can’t actually be convicted of anything under UK law.
He just doesn’t want to face any prison time. And he can only be imprisoned in the US.
So he’s come up with various PR moves. As in, he’s this alien hunter. And all the evidence of the damage is some US plot. Something of course the Mail believes……..They love a conspiracy theory after all.
In truth, McKinnon was a pretty senior system analyst, with a big firm, and a well known hacker in UK circles ( you can still find hacking forums and blogs, with his name popping up with comments and plots).
He very much targeted servers, on political grounds. As an anti war statement. The alien stuff is rubbish.
What did he do? He hacked into the US military servers, and basically just deleted sections of it’s code, meaning that when a single user shut down their system, the whole network was unable to reboot, as the reboot code had been sabotaged.
He then went on to naval installations, and processed to delete naval logs. These are files the navy use, so they know where their ships, and other nations ships are in the oceans. Like transcripts of radar tracking data.
He did this on November 12th, 2001, while making mocking comments about terrorism, and the US government.
He was basically insinuating that he would continue to disrupt the US military computers,until they stopped bombing people around the world – which he considered terrorism.
In the last 2 years, his campaign have been trying to say he did nothing, and was only looking for UFOs and all of the above is “US lies to try and trick the UK government into handing him over”.
Of course, the mail loves this, and joins in. Conspiracy, Labour, lies, Yanks guffaw guffaw!
This didn’t work, so they found a psychologist to say that he “may” (he hasn’t been diagnosed as of yet) suffer from aspergers. Which is a mild autism, sort of like “Attention deficit disorder”.
And are now arguing that no person with aspergers should go to prison for crimes, on the basis that it may make them upset.
Not really explaining that 50% of the prison population around the world probably have mental issues like this.
PS.
After leaving a few “Pro BBC” messages on their message board, explaining to people how the tories, and the mail are trying to bash the BBC, to try and open the market up to pay tv, and also ease the way for “pay newspapers” online, I was frankly banned by dailymail.co.uk
It seems, explaining that the mail, sky news, the sun, are planning to start charging people for news, sometime in the next 24 months – and are trying to weaken the power of the BBC to make it possible – is a bannable offence.
Christo, talk to Private Eye about it.
I see the Mail is starting on Coleen Rooney for having a night out. Because a womans place is at home, isn’t it Mr Dacre?
Save Gary from what?
Reminds me of when I lived in Uganda 10 years ago: the Mayor of Kampala was arrested in the USA for trying to pass off dud travelers cheques and one of the main local daily newspapers printed an editorial about how the mayor shouldn’t have to do time in the USA because of what they percieved as the harsh conditions in US prisons, under the headline SAVE [Mayor’s Name] FROM ANAL RAPE
Gary is lucky his name suggests it belongs to a nerdy white guy. YOU CAN SAVE IMRAN, HOME SECRETARY, for example, just wouldn’t get printed.
The Daily Mail have not campaigned to stop the extradition of prisoners jailed for their beliefs, who have not committed a single crime in this country,some are disabled and have been badly treated in prison.
The campaign is odd.
As I said, I think they just saw it as a way to try and have a go against a Labour home office. Start a campaign to try and make them back down.
I doubt they really believe he is that innocent. And I doubt they’d be doing it, if it was a tory home office doing the extraditing?
As in, when Thatcher and Major gave Pinochet a visa in the 1990s. You know, when he’d arguably killed and tortured thousands.
Even when Spain tried to extradite him, they were totally against it.
They had no isse with visas, or extraditions, or asylum, or war crimes then.
And yet they happily label Blair and Brown evil sort of war criminals.
The world of the Mail is an odd mix of bigtory, ignorance, politiking, and outright looniness
You know, they used to call Pinochet the “friendly dictator”.
Oxymoron or what!
Ah, the old adage about the broken clock…
The fact is Mr. McKinnon did the Pentagon a favour by highlighting their pathetic security. The pity is that he couldn’t somehow completely scramble their systems and turn the war machine off for a day or two. Better luck next time!
Obviously there’s the ink saving, but isn’t referring to people by just their first name usually reserved for nubile, young and usually dead blonde women?
The McKinnon thing has a lot of echoes of the notorious Save The Nat West Three campaign, in which three obviously guilty rich bankers strung out their extradition for years thanks to a massive PR campaign. Personally I’m wondering if Paul Dacre’s done something dodgy in the USA and is worried about going the same way as Conrad Black. That would be tragic.
John Seal, the Pentagon is the holy grail of hacking. It is by no stretch of the imagination weak or pathetic, which is precisely why the US is so desperate to lock him up.
I notice that the Hate Mail isn’t campaigning for the release of Linda Carty, on death rown since 2002. The NatWest Three, Gary McKinnon, looks like the mail only campaigns for whiteys, regardless of their guilt.
But anyhow I’m sure they passed a law back around 2003 that allowed the US to extradite on the grounds of anything remotely related to terrorism hence this.
Well I’m sure the Mail mentioned it