The ten year ordeal for hacker Gary McKinnon is coming to an end after a High Court judge ruled that the case for extraditing him to the US must come to an end before summer.
McKinnon is under threat of extradition for seven counts of hacking into NASA and Pentagon computers between 1 February, 2001, and 19 March, 2002. The litigants claim he caused $700,000 (£445,000) of damage – a claim the self-confessed hacker disputes, saying he was only looking for evidence of contact between extra-terrestrial beings and the US authorities.
Lord Justice Richards (pictured) and Mr Justice Cranston, sitting in the Royal Courts of Justice last Friday, said that a medical report must be forthcoming within the next 28 days. McKinnon’s legal team will then have a similar time to comment on its findings.
If, however, the report concurs with the defence councel’s assertion that McKinnon is at risk, Home Secretary Theresa May will have grounds to halt the extradition under the Convention on Human Rights Act. This would save the country the expense of the planned extradition appeal hearing in July.
McKinnon has been under stress since he was first accused of hacking and damages. In 2002, the US courts indicted him for the crimes but it was not until 2004 that extradition proceedings began for what they described as “the biggest military hack of all time”.
The delay between indictment and extradition meant that McKinnon was to be judged under the controversial 2003 Extradition Act. Despite a ruling last October that the Act was “fair and balanced”, this is already being reassessed because some Members of Parliament still see it as one-sided. They argue that a US citizen hacking British military systems may not be so easily extradited.
The case has been rattling around the British courts since then. McKinnon appealed an extradition order in 2006 and a complication was added in 2008 when he was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. The Home Secretary suspended proceedings in 2010 pending medical reports.
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So 3/4 of the population of Silicon Valley and 1/5 the population of Redmond need psychological evaluations?
When will the UK tell the USA where to go in regards to the extradition of Gary McKinnon.
The extradition law is a one way street that only favours the USA, also 445,000 Pounds worth of damage, How? What was damaged?
I think the only thing that was damaged was their pride.
The biggest question for me is Why are the USA hellbent on extraditing thin Gary McKinnon????
i would like to see the accounts and audits from how the US Government arrived at the costs of the damage caused my mr mckinnon.
i find it hard to believe that the kind of hack that gary performed caused $700,000 worth of damage? he didn't physically damage any equipment, neither did he cause any harm whatsoever.
what he did do is prove that the extremely high paid security services that design & maintain the government systems were not very good at their jobs & failed to secure the systems in a way that would have prevented this happening in the 1st place. he is being used as a scapegoat for incompetent security specialists. it is those who need to be made accountable for the fees incurred not Gary McKinnon. they failed to do their job correctly!!
Mckinnon caught the yanks with thier pants down and dont like that,he saw alien ships and saucers,the uk government will go out of thier way to keep bombers and thugs,but when it comes to thier own people they are easy meat and the uk will jump to the u.s
Maybe Gary got too close to the posible truth and the only way to plug that "security hole" is to lock him away for the rest of his life in an North-American prison.
He took a look behind the curtain, that's a danger to the system. External knowledge is power if you lack inner wisdom.
Governments can be as stubborn and as stupid as the worse of people.
I bet that, after a DECADE of chasing this man, for no harm done...the blank passwords are still there..:)
It's like that book by feynman, [real story] when he entered the super secret nuclear base, through a hole in the fence, cause it was closer to his parking space..
then the militray police got super stressed out, and questioned him for hours and penalized him...yet the hole was still there weeks later .:)
his motives are so pure, that I wish the official doctor finds him inflicted with "condition x" that prevents extradition ..or the political situation to hold uk extradition rights..or the aliens to interfere somehow..:)
Once again we see an out of control military industrial complex trying to bully a nation state into surrendering one of its citizens to their unconstitutional summary injustice. It is time that the free world put these shady characters under the spotlight of public scrutiny. It is this military industrial complex that should be brought before the courts.They answer to no one but themselves. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy tried to warn the people. Now is the time to listen to what they had to say, and take action. Let's put the military industrial complex on trial.