GARY McKINNON OCTOBER APPEAL 1
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GARY McKINNON OCTOBER APPEAL 1
Gary McKinnon,also known as "solo", (born February 10, 1966), is a British hacker facing extradition to the United States to face charges of perpetrating what has been described by the Military of the United States as the "biggest military computer hack of all time." Following legal hearings in the UK it was decided in July 2006 that he should be to extradited to the US. In February 2007 his lawyers argued against the ruling in an appeal to the High Court in London, which was turned down on April 3. On July 30, 2007 the House of Lords agreed to hear the appeal and on June 17, 2008 the Law Lords began hearing the case.This Judgement was delivered on July 30, 2008 with the Law Lords judging that Gary McKinnon could be extradited to the United States. He was given two weeks to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights before extradition, but the Court halted the extradition for an additional two weeks to allow time to hear his appeal on August 28, which was subsequently rejected. His legal team subsequently decided to lodge another appeal based on the fact that McKinnon has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.The Glasgow-born systems administrator who attended Highgate Wood Secondary School in north London, is accused of hacking into 97 United States military and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002. The computer networks he is accused of hacking include networks owned by NASA, the US Army, US Navy, Department of Defense, and the US Air Force. The US estimates claim the costs of tracking and correcting the problems he allegedly caused were around $700,000[citation needed] but he has always denied causing any damage and disputes the financial loss claimed by the US. He did admit leaving a note on one computer: "US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days... It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand-down on September 11 last year... I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels." McKinnon was originally tracked down and arrested under the Computer Misuse Act by the UK National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) in 2002 who informed him that he would face community service. The Crown Prosecution Service refused to charge him. Later that year he was indicted by the United States government. McKinnon remained at liberty without restriction for three years until June 2005 (after the UK had implemented a new extradition treaty with the US) when he became subject to bail conditions including a requirement to sign in at his local police station every evening, and to remain at his home address at night. In addition, he was banned from using a computer with access to the Internet. There have been no more developments in respect of the charges relating to United Kingdom legislation but in late 2005 the United States began extradition proceedings. If he is extradited to the US and charged, McKinnon faces up to 70 years in jail and has expressed fears that he could be sent to Guantanamo Bay.He has said that he will contest the extradition proceedings and believes that he should face trial in the UK, principally as he argues that any alleged crimes were committed there and not in the United States. In an interview with "Wired News" Gary said this = "McKinnon: A NASA photographic expert said that there was a Building 8 at Johnson Space Center where they regularly airbrushed out images of UFOs from the high-resolution satellite imaging. I logged on to NASA and was able to access this department. They had huge, high-resolution images stored in their picture files. They had filtered and unfiltered, or processed and unprocessed, files. My dialup 56K connection was very slow trying to download one of these picture files. As this was happening, I had remote control of their desktop, and by adjusting it to 4-bit color and low screen resolution, I was able to briefly see one of these pictures. It was a silvery, cigar-shaped object with geodesic spheres on either side. There were no visible seams or riveting. There was no reference to the size of the object and the picture was taken presumably by a satellite looking down on it. The object didn't look manmade or anything like what we have created. Because I was using a Java application, I could only get a screenshot of the picture -- it did not go into my temporary internet files. At my crowning moment, someone at NASA discovered what I was doing and I was disconnected. I also got access to Excel spreadsheets. One was titled "Non-Terrestrial Officers." It contained names and ranks of U.S. Air Force personnel who are not registered anywhere else. It also contained information about ship-to-ship transfers, but I've never seen the names of these ships noted anywhere else. WN: Could this have been some sort of military strategy game or outline of hypothetical situations? McKinnon: The military want to have military dominance of space. What I found could be a game -- it's hard to know for certain"
YouTube | December 21, 2008
