US courts give McKinnon some worries
BLIGHTY HACKER Gary McKinnon might be interested to know that the US takes a dim view of people trying to use Asperger Syndrome as a defence.
A Los Angeles hacker, Viachelav Berkovich, 34, received a slightly reduced sentence of 55 months in prison for participating in a multi-million dollar computer fraud scheme.
The federal judge took into account the man's diagnosis with Asperger's by lopping a grand total of five months off Berkovich's sentence because of his mental illness.
Berkovich and a mate by the name of Lakes pleaded guilty in February to executing a man-in-the-middle attack that let them run a profitable trucking company without having to drive trucks.
For three years the pair hacked into a California Department of Transportation website called Safersys.org, which maintains a list of licensed interstate trucking companies and freight brokers.
They would temporarily change the contact information for a legitimate trucking company to an address and phone number under their control.
They would then outsource the load to another trucking company posing as the legitimate company whose identity they'd hijacked.
When the company that actually drove the truck tried to get paid, they'd eventually discover that the firm that supposedly had hired them didn't know anything about it.
Kiana Sloan-Hillier, Berkovich's defence lawyer, said that, while the court accepted that her client had the illness, it felt the crime was serious and that a substantial prison sentence was called for to deter others.
Berkovich's crime was less significant than McKinnon's. He's accused of cracking into nearly 100 Pentagon and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002, and allegedly causing $700,000 in damages. µ
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Is this article seriously saying that causing less damage and not committing fraud is actually more serious than actual fraud? Get a brain will you?
Yes, McKinnon is an idiot who should never have used the Aspergers defence, but can a sense of perspective please be applied?
Agree, doesn't make any sense to me and also how could he cause $700k damage by stealing what?
Aspergers is not a mental illness. You can't recover from it.
Does not mean he fried 700k worth of computer parts or stole intelligence worth 700k. Rather, that's probably a sum that includes redoing security (probably involving contractors) and cleaning up from the hacks. One might argue that that needed to be done anyway, but to the courts that doesn't really mean anything...
I don't think it's a viable defense that the fraudster's condition led to his committing the crime. The significance of this guy's aspergers is therefor rightly downplayed.
With McKinnon on the other hand, there's possibly a direct causation - that the obsessive quality of aspergers led to it.
Whether it'll be successful or not is another matter.
im fed up with hearing about mcKinnon, any sympathy i had for the man has gone now ..i want him to go stateside just to see what happens to him ...maybe he'll write a book after all this
If the law is broken it needs to be addressed.
However, this is obviously going to be farce of a showtrial and justice will not be served as it should be.
...who have apergers.
The certainly are persistant when they need or want to know something.
They lock onto something and they wont let it go.
My sentiments exactly. This guy really screwed himself by prolonging it for so long. If he had come clean in the beginning, he would have done a little time in federal prison, and been done with the whole thing by now. Heck, the courts probably would have been sympathetic to his condition (it is NOT an illness...he did what he did with full knowledge of its consequences). But not anymore.
What an idiot!
Gary did not do damage. He stopped when he got busted. That was then sorted, but Ed Gibson decided he ought to fry. This is not justice, it is grandstanding.
I have been diagnosed with Aspergers so I decided to study the condition. Structurally, Aspergers is similar to colorblindness, but its symptoms are more subtle. It is a neurological condition often genetic in origin. Those with Aspergers are socially clumsy but often have significant intellectual capabilities. For example, a significant case can be made that Albert Einstein was an Aspie.
Gary should be worried. He hacked big time and got caught. Nows he's going to prison. Claiming that he has arse-wipe syndrome isn't going to save his arse nor will bleeding hearts. Time for Gary to man up and take it in the arse like a good hacker.
"He stopped when he got busted."
I think I'll try to use that defense next time I'm in court.
Outraged that he got any time off his sentence at all! The court should've known better than to fall prey to this Asperger excuse.
Gary is obviously a patsy. An outer "wannabe" member of a gang and now taking the rap, unwilling to give them up out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, a feeling of grandiosity and a Joan of Arc complex. This is obvious from the fact he was not even clued in enough to use a simple anonymous proxy and avoid detection. This also explains why the Americans are SO eager to get their hands on him - precisely because they know this and want to sweat him for the connection to the real hackers. If you doubt - check yourself. Anyone with IT knowledge can see that Gary McKinnon is lying in his BBC "Click" interview about how he "hacked" into military and government installations. PC's don't have public IP's in a network. Only the router-server do.
From the sounds of things most of you brits let rapists off the hook if the victim was wearing a low cut shirt, too. It doesn't matter how loose the security was on the US side, you can't hack a computer.
And making an example? I don't think that's what's happening here, but if you don't want to be an example, don't do the flipping crime. Fact: Gary has a 100% chance of not being an example if he doesn't decide to screw around with computers he does not have access to.
The U.S. should add on ten years to Gary's sentence for his extradition fighting charade. After Gary is released from the U.S. prison, the U.K. should prosecute him for the same crimes.
We know that the Americans like to punish people for exercising their rights but let's not make it that obvious.
It's my opinion that this decision is unfair. This is because the Russian who was convicted got a small cut from the actual scheme and also because he went along when he was on the edge of homelessness - it's clear that Lakes took advantage of him and exploited him.
I think that the sentences should reflect the cuts that people get. That is, if two people help steal $200, one gets $180 and the other $20, it's wrong to take the person who got $20 and make him equally guilty of stealing. From what I see, they are not doing that in assessing the fines and sentences. The differences in those is negligible.
I think there's this mania in the U.S. to throw the book at desperate people with more vigor than at those who are more comfortable. It's almost as if they fear a slave revolt if they put their boots off their necks.
Let's not forget the words that they live by. "To make the rich work harder, pay them more. To make the poor work harder, pay them less."
Fat American Capitalist BASTARDS!
Dirty Fat American Capitalist Imperialist BASTARDS!
Go brush your teeth!
Take a bath, and and Na na na poo poo!
waaa waaaaa waaaaaaaaaa!
Now I am intelectully, Itelektual.. Im smarter than you too..!
McKinnon did "come clean" from the moment the UK High Tech Crime people showed up to arrest him... He confessed to them without the presence of a lawyer!
It's the American prosecutors waiting two years to demand extradition because of the new law, then telling outright lies about the damages in order to justify the extradition, along with the threats that they made, that's the dodgy behaviour there.
Berkovich's situation had a lot to do with his condition. He was in terrible trouble and only this Lakes character provided him with a way out. Only this Lakes character showed any belief in him, believed that he could do anything and so he became loyal to him... I don't blame him at all for that. Lakes, according to the information, used this to grab a much larger share of the proceeds than did Berkovich receive.
Lakes was the one who ran the scheme, he was the one who was in control of the scheme, Berkovich was a mere employee. Now I know the U.S. with idiot laws like felony murder have this notion that "if not for the presence of Berkovich, the crime would not have taken place so therefore he is equally to blame"... There was the infamous use of Felony Murder in Florida where someone who lent his car out to his friends went to sleep, got Life Without Possibility of Parole because the prosecutor said, "No car, no murder".
This Berkovich decision is yet more proof that the American justice system is a bad joke and that sending him there is as just a decision as sending someone to Myanmar.
These events are just ploys to get rid of embarrassments! When the United States have been caught with their pants down.
Stay away from their sensitive open port computers [it's like sex, they want to do it to others but not the other way around], with all the economical backlash because of this maybe they will back off as a result. A nice Online boycott could do it?
It was the little green men that forced McKinnon to hack. How could anyone punish Gary for hacking into hundreds of computers? What an unjust world we live in where criminals get punished for their crimes. Who knew?
"They lock onto something and they wont let it go."
I have a pit bull terrier that does exactly that! Maybe he has Aspergers.
Its all soo funny. if ya root hack or ddos goverment servers and get caught u get the book thrown at you. goverment Servers over in USA are being hacked daily by Korea/china/Russia.
If a hacker from uk can hack the servers after a few yrs of reading books and pdf versions of books. Imagine what other hackers can do.
So what if he hacked into it?? tighten your security instead of moaning like a 5 yr old whos lost his ice-cream. maybe gary will show you how he got into the goverment servers so u can patch it? Just hire gary as head computer security for all goverment servers,... why not?
W2S (R007)
Its interesting how one can read an article yet not no the motive behind it being written.I would hope this article is a warning and steps up support for Gary (rather than the contrary).Those who say they are "fed up" with the whole affair and want him to suffer will know when they die (and see the full consequences of their actions in the post-life state)how off the mark they are. Have some compassion!