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NASA Hacker Wins Right to Extradition Hearing

Posted by samzenpus on Wed Aug 01, 2007 10:25 PM
from the just-send-him-over dept.
Security Government The Courts News
E5Rebel writes "Gary McKinnon, the UK-based ex-systems administrator accused of conducting the biggest military hack of all time, has won the right to have his case against extradition to the U.S. heard by the House of Lords."
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  • Big hair b-rock bands (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2007, @10:30PM (#20081145)
    I'm not even sure if the House of Lords [wikipedia.org] will even be interested in hearing the case.

  • Plea bargain (Score:5, Informative)

    by l33t.g33k (903780) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @10:31PM (#20081153) Homepage
    From TFA:

    They accused US investigators of trying to coerce McKinnon into accepting a secret plea bargain by threatening him with a long prison sentence if he did not collaborate.
    Hmmm... that's a strange thing to criticize... this is a pretty standard practice in US criminal law - cooperate, forfeit your right to a trial, and you get off easy.

    • Re:Plea bargain (Score:5, Insightful)

      by _KiTA_ (241027) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @11:02PM (#20081343) Homepage
      Hmmm... that's a strange thing to criticize... this is a pretty standard practice in US criminal law - cooperate, forfeit your right to a trial, and you get off easy.

      Except, is that legal in the UK?

      I mean, yea, yeah, he's being tried in the US. But don't his rights as a UK citizen apply as well?

      • Rights? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Bill, Shooter of Bul (629286) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @11:38PM (#20081553) Journal
        Here is where we get into some thorny issues. What are rights? Can someone has more rights in one country than another? Is whats fair here fair in in a different country. If we agree that there are differences in rights between people living in one country versus another, than how can we even talk about human rights abuses? I maintain that your rights are as the US constitution would state: God given, meaning in this context they are the same everywhere independent of any countries laws. To believe in universal rights, is to believe in universal wrongs. In this case, he should be tried for his alleged crimes as his potential treatment in the US would not violate his rights ( as they are unlikely to sentence him to the death penalty or Gitmo his ass).

        or can anybody defend moral relativism and still support Universal Human Rights? I'd be interested to hear the argument, to say the least.

        • I'm European and while visiting the US, I made a joke that went way over someones head. That person said that I couldn't say that, and I replied that the US had free speech... That person then replied that as a foreigner I had no rights in the US.

          Now, that person may have been joking, but it most certainly didn't look that way when she said that.... The scary thing is that right now, I'm pretty sure that is entirely true.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by stiggle (649614)
          In England and Wales (Scotland has a separate legal system) the Courts "take into consideration" such things as pleading guilty and admitting to additional offenses they have committed.

          Its definately not illegal.

    • Re:Plea bargain (Score:5, Informative)

      by QuantumG (50515) <qg@biodome.org> on Wednesday August 01 2007, @11:09PM (#20081385) Homepage Journal
      I once had a police offer tell me that, in the UK and Australia, such things are illegal. This is actually just holding the police to the same standard as the rest of society. In the US there's laws against "making deals" but they don't apply to the police (or the government's prosecutors). For example:

      519.030 Compounding a crime.
      (1) A person is guilty of compounding a crime when:
      (a) He solicits, accepts or agrees to accept any benefit upon an agreement or
      understanding that he will refrain from initiating a prosecution for a crime; or
      (b) He confers, offers, or agrees to confer any benefit upon another person upon
      agreement or understanding that such other person will refrain from initiating
      a prosecution for a crime.
      (2) In any prosecution under this section, it is a defense that the benefit did not exceed
      an amount which the defendant reasonably believed to be due as restitution or
      indemnification for harm caused by the offense.
      (3) Compounding a crime is a Class A misdemeanor.
      So yeah, if I shoot you and say "I'll give you $10k to keep quiet" then I'm compounding a crime. If you accept then we're both compounding a crime.

      Most the time the deals made in the US are of the "plead guilty" variety, not the "talk and we won't prosecute" variety, so this particular law wouldn't apply, but you get the idea.
      • I'd mod you up if I had mod points. Thanks for the info, oh man with a Slashdot ID somewhat higher than mine!

      • Re:Plea bargain (Score:5, Interesting)

        by techno-vampire (666512) on Thursday August 02 2007, @12:04AM (#20081705) Homepage
        Compounding a crime has nothing to do with plea bargaining. In almost all cases, the defendant could be considered to have committed several different crimes, with different penalties. A plea bargain is just a negotiation between the two sides as to which crime the defendant will plead guilty to and how great a penalty will be imposed.

        Immunity from prosecution in return for testimony comes closer, of course, but in that case, the benefit is to the public, not to the prosecutor personally.

        • Re:Plea bargain (Score:5, Insightful)

          by TapeCutter (624760) on Thursday August 02 2007, @06:07AM (#20083655) Journal
          I belive you have misread the GP, I think you missed the "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" parabole[sic?]. From an Aussie/UK point of view US prosecuters seem more interested in plea bargains than they say, a sound case against the person who is on trial. I understand deals are made to save money and court time in all three countries but that should not be the first concern of the DPP. Once "justice" has been seen to be done then the DPP can start haggling about the price tag.

          It should be difficult to put a citizen in jail and impossible to seek state sponsored revenge through executions, but to an outsider (like me) it sometimes appears to be a dutch auction where they start at "life or death" and work down until the guy in the orange suit cracks. Not trying to be offensive here but do prosecuters in the US get a "job rating" based on some measure of "success"?
        • In the dark ages, it was decided that too many people were wrongly convicted, so the only want to punish people was if they confessed. This seems like a good idea, but the implementation was such that people were tortured to extract confessions... However, everyone punished had confessed.

          Now, we make the series of laws increasing complex, so anyone can be convicted of 5-10 things, each carrying 1+ year as a sentence. Net effect, if the cops think that they have evidence that you committed a petty crime

      • if I shoot you and say "I'll give you $10k to keep quiet" then I'm compounding a crime.
        Couldn't you just save $10k and possible prosecution by shooting me again?

    • Re:Plea bargain (Score:5, Interesting)

      by the_womble (580291) on Thursday August 02 2007, @12:23AM (#20081813) Homepage Journal

      Hmmm... that's a strange thing to criticize... this is a pretty standard practice in US criminal law - cooperate, forfeit your right to a trial, and you get off easy.

      Except that the rest of the world regards it as a loathsome practice designed to get someone in jail for something, even when there is a lack of conclusive evidence against them. It is getting criminal convictions through coercion rather than evidence.
      • Just so I'm clear, in "the rest of the world" there appear to be the choices of go to trial or not. Here there appears to be an additional choice of "take a lesser plea, for the guarantee of a lesser sentence".

        Explain to me why that is "loathsome" as it's an additional choice, that is in no way mandatory, and deviates from "the rest of the world" by giving more options for a satisfactory resolution, not less.

        Explain to me what is "loathsome" about having the totally voluntary option of avoiding a serious s

  • question.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lordvalrole (886029) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @10:44PM (#20081251)
    How do they figure £475,000 worth of damage? I don't know much about the case (or really anything of it) but did he actually do harmful damage to the crap he hacked into...or is it potential damage? I can never trust half the money numbers people throw around these days.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Eravnrekaree (467752)
      If all he did was look, I think 475,000 is a really excessive. I beleive i did read that is pretty much he did, he wasnt interested in creating havoc but just having a look. It doesn't make it right and its not something i condone, but some of these penalties go beyond what seems reasonable. If he actually didnt cause any actual damage to the systems, perhaps community service might be more porportional to the crime it would seem to me.

      • Re:question.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ScentCone (795499) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @11:38PM (#20081555)
        But - if those systems were your responsibility - what would it take you to satisfy the people you report to that there was no damage? How many hours of review, extra archiving, and other admin chores would you face in the wake of known break in? Do you just take the cracker's word for it that he didn't alter anything, or do you have to spend lots of time checking that out, and probably get some third parties involved in auditing that look-see, just to be sure? None of that is free, and most of it's very expensive.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by _Sprocket_ (42527)
          Also tack on the cost of equipment seized as evidence. There's been some changes in how things are handled recently. But back around the time period of this case, it wasn't uncommon for the FBI to lay claim to entire systems. If the budget-strapped lab was lucky, they got back everything but the hard drives. In at least one case I know of, a couple Unix workstations went away with the promise that they'd be back at the lab within the year. Anything that goes in to this prosecution-driven black hole nee
        • Oh how I wish you were right in your estimate. £475,000 is about US$964,867. (Yes, it's now worse than 2:1).

    • Figured out RIAA-style (Score:4, Funny)

      by EmbeddedJanitor (597831) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @11:03PM (#20081355)
      He allegendly downloaded at 1266 files * $750 per file * approx 0.5 GBP per $ = approx GBP 475k
    • Telling them "I *might* have hacked your servers", even if you're computer illiterate, causes them to launch an investigation and tear apart their entire network looking for evidence which probably costs $200K in wages, vendor fees, consultants, etc. The remainder comes into play if they actually find something and have to take action.
       
    • How do they figure £475,000 worth of damage?

      a loon who was still employable as a system administrator hacks into a military network. inevitably triggering a very expensive audit and perhaps a rebuild of the net.

        • Re:question.... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Sobrique (543255) on Thursday August 02 2007, @04:27AM (#20083175) Homepage
          Ahh, but if you're J Random Sysadmin, then you'll find it _far_ easier to blame the hacker, than it would be to get someone to listen to your professional opinion that you security 'needs work'.

          And less prone to actually losing your budget. I have direct experience of a previous employer, where we were requesting a network kit upgrade for 5 years, and each year, it got dropped from the budget, because 'well, it seems OK'. We spent that long rebooting switches, and almost daily 'firefighting' to keep the rising tide away from our sandcastle.

          And then one day, it all fell over, in a critical fashion. The usual recriminations vanished very quickly when we pulled out the 5 years of budget paperwork.

          So, lets just imagine, that the SA there _knows_ security needs work. But as with all such things, it takes time and a serious effort to get a 'proper' secure system setup. I mean, you can't just turn off telnet on a few servers, and hope that's ok :).

          And they get hacked. And it goes public. As said sysadmin, wouldn't you then take the opportuntity to implement that idea you've had for ages, to tighten up security, and make everything a little bit better, only this time you have managers practically forcing you to do what you wanted to do all along. Better yet, you can spend loads of moolah with impuginty, and pull it out of the 'emergency response' budget, and proceed to wave the 'ooh hacker' flag when anyone questions you over it.

  • Tit for tat (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2007, @11:01PM (#20081337)
    Well, it needs saying so someone better had. Firstly the guy is an unhinged twunt who got high on too much weed and went looking for "UFO evidence".
    Ergo, he represents absolutely ZERO threat to the security of any group (unless of course you guys actually DO have those UFOs hidden :)

    So basically he's being punished because he embarrased a US institution that should know better about computer security.

    Secondly, we here in the UK are in a bit of pickle and wish this would go away. See, some crazy Russian murdered another Russian spy in London with some nasty radioactive poison. Pretty serious right? But if we want him to stand trial and be extradited from Russia then we'd have to give them an equally unpleasant mafia boss who is hiding in London that Putin wants. Stalemate. Both countries are hiding behind the skirt of "We don't extradite people to countries where they would face danger or unfair trial"

    Problem: The USA is a country that tortures prisoners and disappears people to secret prisons and we know this because the UN has condemned it as a human rights abuser. We have a serious crediblity problem if this guy goes to the USA.

    I see a deal.

    Let's say, we give this dangerous hacker to the USA and they promise he'll get a fair trial In return and we'll take George W Bush for the multiple war crimes he's indited with to the International Crimial Court at the Haugue (and promise he will get a fair trial) and let's call it quits huh?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by _Sprocket_ (42527)

      So basically he's being punished because he embarrased a US institution that should know better about computer security.

      You're wrong on this point. He's facing legal action because that's how the law works. He was caught during a time when NASA's practical concept of information security had more to do with handing over evidence to the FBI so they can go after the person than taking the technical steps required to make yourself a difficult target. Now he's facing down the slow grind of the law and trying every possible thing he can to avoid the crunch.

      And while you or I might be embarrassed if we were a NASA official, I

    • Are you saying NASA's security is so bad a drug addled lunatic can break it?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by kegon (766647)

      So basically he's being punished because he embarrased a US institution that should know better about computer security.

      You have got to be joking! He has only embarrassed himself, and now the joke is on him. Read this interview [bbc.co.uk]:

      • He scanned 65,000 machines in about "8 minutes" by "tying together other people's machines" using a 56k dial up connection
      • During a hacking escapade he chatted to an engineer who "saw" him, via WordPad
      • His connection was so slow he wrote a clever program that "turned the colour down to 4bit colour and the screen resolution really, really low, and even then the picture was still juddering". Judd

      • Re:Tit for tat (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Short Circuit (52384) <mikemol@gmail.com> on Thursday August 02 2007, @01:00AM (#20081977) Homepage Journal

        * He scanned 65,000 machines in about "8 minutes" by "tying together other people's machines" using a 56k dial up connection
                * During a hacking escapade he chatted to an engineer who "saw" him, via WordPad
                * His connection was so slow he wrote a clever program that "turned the colour down to 4bit colour and the screen resolution really, really low, and even then the picture was still juddering". Juddering ?! What kind of display was he using, a slide projector ?
                * He couldn't save any of the pictures he downloaded but despite the "juddering" low resolution "It was a picture of something
        that definitely wasn't man-made" and what with the slow connection, when he got cut off "I saw the guy's hand move across."
        C'mon, this guy is an utter joke, none of the above is plausible. If any of these claims were anywhere near true then he is a script kiddy at best. Mentally unstable more like.
        The first item sounds like a botnet. I've (legally) done the second item, over VNC. The third item sounds plausible if he turns the VNC bit depth way, way down. And, yes, the outcome would behave very much like a slide projector on a dial-up connection.

        As for the fourth item, I don't know why he didn't think to take a screenshot of his VNC window; That would have given him something to save. And I don't know what he was referring to by some guy's hand moving.

        All in all, it sounds like he used a botnet to find a PC running unprotected VNC, and connected to it with compression turned way up, and color depth turned way down. At some point, some poor guy noticed his computer acting up on his own, and chatted with the cracker by opening up a text editor and taking turns typing. All of this is very plausible.

    • Re:Tit for tat (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cycoj (1010923) on Thursday August 02 2007, @01:27AM (#20082145)

      Secondly, we here in the UK are in a bit of pickle and wish this would go away. See, some crazy Russian murdered another Russian spy in London with some nasty radioactive poison. Pretty serious right? But if we want him to stand trial and be extradited from Russia then we'd have to give them an equally unpleasant mafia boss who is hiding in London that Putin wants. Stalemate. Both countries are hiding behind the skirt of "We don't extradite people to countries where they would face danger or unfair trial"
      Actually it is explicitly forbidden by the Russian constitution. I just read up on this, because I thought that almost all states don't extradite their own citizens (Germany has a similar "Artikel" in their constitution). Apparently it is a lot less common in common law countries. So the US, the UK ... do extradite their own citizens. So bottom line the UK are demanding that the Russians break their constitution.
  • I read "Nasa Hacker" as a talented programmer employed by NASA. Isn't this place nerdy enough not to fall into calling crackers hackers?

    • We're apparently not even nerdy enough to properly capitalize NASA in the story headline.

      Be that as it may, I think I should be able to mod you down as "Bitching About Use of 'Hacker'". Give it up already.

    • Isn't this place nerdy enough not to fall into calling crackers hackers?

      I just call the guy an "Asshole". Makes everything so much easier.
    • Yeah, but since he's British it would have been calling him a "biscuit" which would have just gotten everybody confused.

      The original usage of "hacker" (circa late 1970s) was someone who was *unskilled* at programming. Hacking at a program meant making random changes with little understanding of the problem until something approaching the correct answer appeared (usually a futile approach).

      Cheers,
      Dave

    • Lol. (Score:3, Informative)

      by msimm (580077)
      I can see from your member number how you would have missed that discussion. I think everyone finally got tired of pointing it out. The editors and much of the newer members fit, lets say, a wider interpretation of the profile you might expect. Slashdot has gotten big. It's still fun, but don't expect it to be too rootsy. More like techsploitation. Like The Register, only without the witty write-ups but much funnier comments (trolls, idiots as well as the good ones).

      Still, usually a good laugh to be found

  • Wins Right? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For some reason, I thought rights were something you have, not something you earn.

  • Don't worry. (Score:5, Funny)

    by LaminatorX (410794) <sabotageNO@SPAMpraecantator.com> on Wednesday August 01 2007, @11:47PM (#20081603) Homepage
    Since the rest of the world has nothing but respect for the integrity of our justice system and rule of law, the Lords should honor our extradition request and send him on presently.

    (...and if not, we'll just grab him and stash him someplace, forever.)

  • The Law Lords (Score:5, Informative)

    by flyingfsck (986395) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @11:48PM (#20081609)
    is not the same thing as the House of Lords. The Law Lords is the highest court in the British Commonwealth.

  • Plea Bargain (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BrookHarty (9119) on Thursday August 02 2007, @12:26AM (#20081829) Homepage Journal
    I thought it was because the UK doesn't have a Plea bargain agreement system, it would break UK law.
    So the US basically said accept our plea or end up in prison for life. I think thats where the human rights issue also comes in.

    One of the biggest problems with US law is the plea bargain system, thats why the laws are so horrible, it makes people want to bargain instead of going to court. Its not to punish people, its to keep everyone out of jury trials.

    Hell, if everyone went to a trial for everything, could you imagine the crippling effect it would have on the courts? Everyone citizen would have to pull multiple jury trails to keep up with it.

  • Poodle (Score:4, Insightful)

    by giorgosts (920092) on Thursday August 02 2007, @02:07AM (#20082429)
    Britain is America's poodle. This guy, for all intends and purposes, has to be tried in the UK, by the British system. Does the USA extradite American nationals to the UK? Do they extradite them e.g. to Italy, where several CIA agents have been sentenced (in absentia) for conspiracy?
    • Your comment just reminded me of a comic strip. [elgoonishshive.com]

      Secretary (undercover alien working for the CIA): Would either of you care for more coffee?
      Agent Wolf: You didn't fertilize it with alien mind control spores, did you?
      Secretary: For the last time, agent Wolf, I AM NOT AN ALIEN.
      Agent Wolf: YOU HAVE A TAIL!!!
      Their boss: Agent Wolf, that's enough! Or do you want to be sent to sensitivity training again?
      Agent Wolf: No, sir.
        • The non-fiction story is written in the book The Cuckoo's Egg

          Which is indeed an interesting (if, these days, rather quaint) read. But: his honeypot was plausible(-ish) stuff. The twit from the UK, in this case, already had himself convinced - having watched too many episodes of The X-Files - that all sorts of mysterious alien technology was being hidden by NASA, and so every context-less snippet of anything he saw just propped up his delusion. That, or instead of being delusional, he's just a particularl

        • Re:aliens are for real (Score:5, Insightful)

          by omeomi (675045) on Wednesday August 01 2007, @11:57PM (#20081649) Homepage
          You know why people starve in Africa? It's cause they have like 30 children.

          I think, generally speaking, when you have a vast impoverished region, it has more to do with horribly corrupt governments, and not so much to do with having "like 30 children". From what I understand, families in highly impoverished areas with high mortality rates do tend to have a lot of children, with the hope that some of them will actually survive, and maybe even prosper, but I would suggest that's more an effect of poverty rather than a cause of it. The reason that average American doesn't have tons of children isn't because we're smarter than the rest of the world, it's because all of our children have a reasonably good chance at survival, and a good chance at a comfortable life. Their chances at success are made better if we only have a few children, so we can afford to pay for their education, but in a region like Darfur, having just 2 children and hoping for the best probably means none of your children will make it to adulthood...

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by vidarh (309115)
              In poor countries, having children grow to adulthood is an insurance for your old age.

              Industrialized countries all used to have similarly have high birthrates until life expectancy started increasing as better hygiene and medicine made an impact together with improved food availability, and particularly as infant mortality dropped.

              However, birth rates in most sub-Saharan countries have now finally started falling, coinciding with growing urbanization, and steadily dropping infant mortality. In fact, in

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