Since the last update almost a year ago when Gary won the right to appeal against extradition, the latest news in the Gary Mckinnon saga is that his extradition to the US for trial will be going ahead.
Even with his apparent medical condition of Ass Burgers Asperger’s it seems he will be extradited anyway according to the UK Home Secretary Alan Johnson.
Let’s hope the US government don’t throw the whole terrorism book at him and he gets charged under computer misuse laws.
Computer hacker Gary McKinnon looks set to face trial in the US after Home Secretary Alan Johnson said there were no grounds to prevent his extradition.
He appeared to have been thrown a lifeline last month when new medical evidence was submitted to Johnson regarded McKinnon’s Asperger’s Syndrome. However, after considering the evidence, Johnson said yesterday that sending McKinnon to the US would not breach his human rights.
“Due to legitimate concerns over Mr McKinnon’s health, we have sought and received assurances from the United States authorities that his needs will be met,” Johnson said.
In an interview with the BBC, McKinnon’s lawyer said his legal team would not give up the fight to prevent McKinnon’s extradition.
It’s fair enough really, I don’t see how the whole Asperger’s thing has anything to do with it. The guy did do something wrong, and he knew it was wrong so it’s not like you can claim insanity.
I just think the whole thing has been totally blown out of proportion, he got into some pretty heavy networks using easily guess passwords.
It’s not like he did some Einstein relative cryptography on US army weapon algorithms.
“We are certainly coming to the end of the road,” said Karen Todner. “We’re just hoping at some point someone sees sense and steps in. All the legal team do know is we cannot give up because in some ways it’s like dealing with a death row case, and we genuinely believe that Gary’s life is at stake here.”
McKinnon’s legal battle dates back to 2001, after he broke into US military computers, including those belonging to NASA, in a bid to prove the US government had knowledge of UFOs.
While he says his actions caused no damage, the US claims he stole 950 passwords, deleted files at a naval base in New Jersey and rendered the military computer networks used following September 11 useless. The US estimates the damage caused by McKinnon at $700,000 (£433,000).
His legal battle has been going for 8 years now, I wonder how much longer it has left to run. I’d say another 1-2 years at minimum.
We’ve been covering it for 3 years already and it’s still nowhere near conclusion.
Either way I wish my fellow brit Gary Mckinnon the best of luck in fighting the behemoth US legal system.
Source: Network World
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