Pentagon hacker in the hands of the Lord(s)
THE FATE OF HAPLESS HACKER Gary McKinnon hangs on whether the US government used dirty tricks to shut him up because he was embarrassing its military on the eve of its invasion of Iraq.
The House of Lords yesterday heard McKinnon's appeal against a US order to have him extradited to face charges that he damaged numerous military computer systems after hacking into them during 2001 and 2002.
The Lords heard McKinnon's claim that the US had attempted to pervert the course of justice by threatening him with severe penalties if he didn't plead guilty to the charge of damaging the military computers after he hacked into them. The US position, however, was that they had made an offer not a threat, which was made during a legitimate stretch of plea bargaining, and promised inducements if McKinnon pleaded guilty to the charges that he damaged their systems.
It had been in the interests of the US to get McKinnon out of the headlines quickly, the Lords heard, and that is why they made the offer, or threat.
Representing the US, Clare Montgomery QC said: "It was a subject of embarrassment that American security could be so easily penetrated by the hacker from London, in the context of there being, as they described it, 'a war summit between the Prime Minister and the President at the end of this month', in February 2003."
The facts are indeed embarrassing to the US. Over a period of seven months, six of which coincided with US President George Bush Jnr's invasion of Afghanistan, McKinnon used a pathetic 56k modem to hack into computers at the Pentagon, the US military headquarters, and those of the Air Force, Army, Navy and NASA.
He left a digital visiting card that taunted the Americans: "US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days... I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels".
Solo, the surname of the heroic rogue from Star Wars who stood up to an empire governed by a bloodthirsty tyrant, was the nom de plume, or tag, by which McKinnon went when he was hacking. McKinnon, however, had disregarded Han Solo's contempt for radical, or crackpot theories and gone on his hacking spree, he has said, in search of evidence that the US was suppressing details of UFO landings and technology that would provide the world with free energy.
Some crackpot theories are more harmless than others, though. While McKinnon was performing his hacks, Bush's war preparations were being assembled on the trumped-up charge that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ready to wreak havoc on the world.
Now what by McKinnon's defence appears nothing more than as a non-conformist's impertinence has landed the hapless hacker into the middle of an international episode that has dragged on for five long years because he refused to confess to what he says are the trumped-up charges being foisted on him by US prosecutors who want to make an example of someone.
He is now a test case in the House of Lords where Clare Montgomery QC yesterday gave a compelling case for the Lords to rule that the Americans were within their rights to tell McKinnon that he would face stiffer penalties if he didn't agree to their terms of the plea bargain.
Yet the Lord's also learned that the US prosecutors had offered / threatened something they couldn't give / impose: that was, to quicken / deny McKinnon's repatriation back to the UK should he be sentenced in an American court after pleading guilty to the damage charges.
McKinnon has admitted to the hacking, not the damage. Standing in the Lord's Committee Room 1 before Frederick Richard Pickersgill's 1847 painting The Burial of Harold, which depicts a point in history that has long symbolised the suppression of indigenous British rights by those of a colonial oppressor, David Pannick QC invoked something of the romantic notions conjured in the British imagination by the name of King Harold II in defence of McKinnon.
McKinnon's legal team had discussed a plea with the Americans, he said: "But that does not effect the need to ensure that those who are given statutory rights under English legislation are not threatened with penalties if they refuse to give up those statutory rights."
It is no small irony then that if the Lord's rule against McKinnon when they report back next month, his team will take their defence of British sovereignty to the European Court of Human Rights.
He risks being treated as an "enemy combatant" like those locked up without charge by the US for the last six years in Guantanamo Bay.
L'Inq
Free Gary McKinnon
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It's simply repackged embedded sempron 2100+
What if the tables were turned and I (an American) hacked into British computers with military secrets.
I guess I would expect no reprisals from the British government. Right!?!?!?!
Oh, wait, I would not have to, I would just ride the rail and look for secrets laying about.
I have concerns as to whether the British can keep a secret. Now maybe they have to look somewhere else for more secrets so they can loose them too.
lucky the guy wasn't muslim otherwise Guatanamo bay for him it would be.

We all know american lords kiss ass of the government - in other words - the guys gunna get it.......
@@ David - Theres no need for us to deal with secrets when we've got the agreements to outsource our data to america where you guys can lose it for us ;)
@ David:

This is not about avoiding punishment, this is about being tried fair.
Why would somebody want to be tried in a fascist state like america where nobody remembers what human rights are?
Yeah, you Tell Stewie This: What if Hacker had SATA Drive in 2001? Wouldn't it be Some Skull Drugery if didn't want my IP Adress & its ruse to get that critical OLD info? Yeah, I Know Spies like....ButtBums.
STEWIE drashek
british government officials leave discs full of confidential data lying around all the time!! on the rare occasion that someone finds it AND knows what it is, it gets a story in the papers :)

too bad we dont have CIA and FBI over here, all doing things really sneaky-like, so stories like this dont make it over the ocean til like 6 years later.

lol
I would take the gentleman quietly aside ask how he did it then tell the yanks to go away and mind their own business. He should win his case if we have anything left about our system.
"But that does not effect the need to ensure that those who are given statutory rights....."

Looks like our man has employed some dubious legal help. Presumably you can fail GCE grammer these days and it doesn't effect (sic) your ability to become a QC. 

[er, grammar? Mod]
It's not really about that they and many others besides have been harbouring the likes of free-energy generators; of course they have, since before the current wasteful polluting forms of energy ever became popularly utilised.

It's about what they would, or already have been, doing with such tech: and that's what they are doing out in the open: taking over land, putting up borders, ruining the environment, making you pay to use the internet, spying on everything, censoring everything, putting resources into building fear-based war machines, instead of forward-thinking towards what kind of reality/future they are laying the foundations for, & instead of having sane clever people in charge of what resources are used for what purposes.

Now, the world should be - aiming for a civilisation deserving to port to other inhabitable planets, or elsewhere in space (or even time); you do not get to indefinitely use resources to do the complete opposite of exploring inner and outer space. You shouldn't ever have gotten to use anything towards that at all, and because of that it'd be an idea to use something like the fictional BST to erase that you ever had.

Note to corrupt government & supporters thereof: anybody who actually has a clue about computers will never work for you. Any that do, are surely shafting you - because they know you have no way of finding that out.
Grammar.
"But that does not effect..."; "effect" is usually a noun.

But this also goes to agreement between pronouns and verbs/adverbs.
One phrase: "
*See the original quote (where punctuation is guessed by the journalist, I'm assuming) and my version follows to show agreement inconsistency. Below:
[original]
"But that does not effect the need to ensure that those who are given statutory rights under English legislation are not threatened with penalties if they refuse to give up those statutory rights"
[re-arrangement]
If they *that* refuse to give up statutory rights given under English legislation, the need to ensure that *they* are not threatened with penalties *is* not *affected*
[even better]
Those who give up statutory rights granted under English legislation shall not be threatened with penalties, but this does not affect the necessity to ensure so.
Great leapin Lloyds of London, which Inns of Court? Oh. Gray's motto is a mess too, IMHO: The motto is "Integra Lex Aequi Custos Rectique Magistra Non Habet Affectus Sed Causas Gubernat" (Impartial justice, guardian of equity, mistress of the law, without fear or favour rules men's causes aright)... But then what do I know.
Since this is a quotation, the following spelling and punctuation would have helped:
affect the need to ensure that:
IMHO - I'm no expert, and red ink destroyed my future.
About the sticky wicket, I do sympathize with the chap, thinking perhaps he should be hired; however [see?], his timing, threats and accusations are most unfortunate. I forgive him, and I hope that others will forgive me, my trespasses and grammar. But it is not up to me. The past eight years have been the worst in my life, so far... but here's Gary McKinnon. At least, the Pentagon should have locked their door. Graffiti, however political, is a nuisance. But for a lessor gain, there is no greater good.
If the British government sent someone who could potentially be labeled an "enemy combatant" into a country that has been committing a number of human rights violations recently. These laws are silly anyway-- locking this fellow up will not fix the larger security issues that his hacking revealed. What happens when someone in China, Russia, or someone the US is at "war" with starts hacking? You can't depend on the long arm of political and legal pressure to prevent that.
We all know that the defence department's computers are being outsourced to Indian call centers.

What damage did he actually do, apart from to the credibility of those who are "securing our secrets".