UK Hacker Loses Extradition Appeal

the4thdimension writes "A UK man, accused of breaking into US Pentagon and NASA computers in March 2001, lost an extradition appeal that would have freed him, or at least had him tried in the UK. While the US accuses him of causing over $900,000 in computer damage, his attorney asserts that, if extradited to the US, he faces harsh penalties that are "intolerable" and '...the British government declined to prosecute him to enable the U.S. government to make an example of him.' He intends to appeal to the European courts."

I remember this guy

Didn't he just use Microsoft's Remote Desktop to "hack into" those systems?

Re:I remember this guy

Didn't he just use Microsoft's Remote Desktop to "hack into" those systems?

Yes. He in fact exploited weak passwords - most commonly "administrator" and a blank password or a password of "password".

More curiously he ran a netstat on the boxes he compromised and viewed connections from other crackers whose IPs addresses put them all over the middle east and China.

This according to the BBC interview we previously discussed [slashdot.org].

Re:I remember this guy

IIRC the $900,000 wasnt due to actual damage he caused, it was the cost of "securing" these systems after they realised anyone with half a clue and an internet connection could compromise their machines. How they figure that is his fault rather than actually part of the cost of their network I'm not sure.

Re:I remember this guy

$900,000 makes it sound like he may have downloaded a song or two off one or more of the servers he 'hacked'. I'm being facetious, of course. ^_^

Re:Crappy retarded cliché

This story has been in the British press for a few days, and I find the whole thing disgusting. As mentioned elsewhere, the $900k was the cost of securing these systems after this guys just walked in with default windows passwords... The stupid thing is that the whole case is based around this guys being a fucking terrorist... OH NOES SOMEONE DID SOMETHING TO WRONG AMERICA... They are a terrorist and should be locked away forever... if he wasn't from the UK they'd probably decide to bomb his fucking hometown as well.

Ah the Uk

The UK, acting like the US' fucking lapdog, again. If I were PM I'd be telling the US government where they can shove their 'special relationship' and their entirely one-sided extradition treaty. Then I'd tell them to put ACTA in the same place.

So, whaddya reckon chaps? Think Anonymous Coward could succeed Gordon Brown?

Re:Ah the Uk

Some of us here in the States are pretty fed up with the US throwing its weight around on the world stage, also.

Re:Ah the Uk

Not without a billion dollars. Dollars are the only votes left that mean anything here. To that end, I send spare dollars to the EFF since they're actually getting things done; things that complaining and protesting do not get done.

Re:Ah the Uk

"huh? how is honoring extradition treaties acting as a 'lap dog'?"

I wish people would sometimes read other comments before replying.

The reason for Britain being named a 'lap dog' is that the extradition treaty is one-sided. The US does not have to show probable cause to get Britain to extradite people to the US, but Britain has to for it to happen the other way around.

Re:Ah the Uk

We discuss this point every time Gary McKinnon's case comes up, but lets go over the problems with the UK-US fast track extradition agreement one more time:

The agreement is supposed to be reciprocal however the US have not implemented their end of it. We can not fast track the extradition of US citizens but any UK citizen can be fast tracked. All of this was introduced to "fight terrorism" but has largely been used for cases like this and the NatWest Three [wikipedia.org].

Secondly our law forbids the extradition of persons to countries where they may face inhuman or unreasonable punishment. As such all states which implement the death penalty fall under this heading. The US should fall under this heading.

There are many other reasons why the UK can rightly be labelled a lap dog unrelated to these issues, our Special Relationship with the US is largely asking how high when told to jump.

one-way treaty

For me the big story is the one-sided nature of this treaty. We regularly extradite suspects to the USA, yet the USA refuses to do the same for people living in the USA wanted for crimes in the UK.
That's just insane, and our government are spineless scum for agreeing to it.

Re:one-way treaty

That's because the UK is our bitch. Come on now, you know it's true.

Re:one-way treaty

Luckily, the policy positions of the UK government do not entirely represent the UK, otherwise I'd completely agree with you.

Outside of the spineless lap-dogs in the government, we still have art, music, comedy and other culture that is very much independent of the United States (although, of course, influenced by US culture) and still worth something.

I may not be very proud of my government but I am (occasionally) proud of the citizens of the UK.

Re:one-way treaty

"an agency"???

Give me a break. I thought the brits had a reasonable understanding of how the courts in the US work. This moron committed a quite serious crime; it is not at all unreasonable that he should suffer significant consequences.

Here is a bit of writeup on the topic in the Washington Post:

McKinnon's lawyers alleged that an American official had told him he would be forced to serve a lengthy sentence in the United States if he fought against his extradition, something they say amounted to an unlawful threat.

The five Law Lords were unanimous in deciding McKinnon had failed to prove his case.

So the brits had their chance to decide if these claims of unfair treatment were credible or not and decided NOT. So WTF is all the whining about? At the absolute highest level this was decided internally in England - the signing of the original treaty PLUS an appeals process. I don't see how this could have been more fair.

Re:one-way treaty

However, if plays nice and owns up to all the stuff he says he didn't do but they claim he did

Not quite true.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2005/jul/09/weekend7.weekend2 [guardian.co.uk]:

Gary was kept in a police station overnight. Then the Americans offered him a deal, via his British solicitor. "They said, 'If you incur the cost of the whole extradition process, be a good boy, come over here, we'll give you three or four years, rather than the whole sentence.' I said, 'OK, give me that in writing.' They said, 'Oh no, we can't do that.' So they were offering a secret trial, no right of appeal on the outcome, no comment to the newspapers, and nothing in writing. My solicitor, doing her job, advised me to take it, and when I said no, she was very, 'Ooh, they're going to come down heavy.'"

Also, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/27/internationalcrime.hacking [guardian.co.uk]...

In a further twist, it has emerged that a crucial file containing details of the early meetings with the US prosecutors, at which the offers were apparently made, has gone missing from the office of McKinnon's solicitor. A laptop holding details of the same meetings was stolen from the car of one of his barristers.

There's still the EU

Hopefully the EU court will have something else to say about this. But anyway, thanks, Blair + new labour for completely fucking up a country.

Duh

From TFA: "Prosecutors allege that McKinnon hacked into than 90 computer systems belonging to the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Department of Defense and NASA between February 2001 and March 2002, causing $900,000 worth of damage.

McKinnon has acknowledged accessing the computers, but he disputes the reported damage and said he did it because he wanted to find evidence that America was concealing the existence of aliens."

Duh. The only reason this topic may recieve negative attention is because its the United States. Truth be told, that if this was ANY country, the same thing would have happened. What did he expect? We are talking about highly classified stuff. He may have not caused as much as the claimed damage, but he DID access them. In some countries, he would be executed...

Re:Duh

I think the sysadmins who set up a "secure military system" that could be breached by an amateur on the internet should be executed.

Re:Duh

"Duh. The only reason this topic may recieve negative attention is because its the United States"

No, the reason is that the UK extradites its own citizens to a foreign country for crimes commited in the UK, when it can't be completely sure of its citizen being given a fair trial.

As it stands he is a foreigner in the US in a harsh political climate which makes it quite likely he could get convicted a terrorist even if he is just a "good old" computer criminal. At the very least he will feel forced to plea bargain for a very bad deal.

The extradition treaty is also completely one-sided, in that the US does not need to extradite its own citizens to the UK. The deal is shameful.

Re:Duh

I were stood on the Mexico side of the border and you on the US side and I shot you, I would have committed my crime in Mexico, no? Same thing, greater distance involved.

Re:Duh

"Bullpuckey. The crimes were committed in the US, against US property."

Bollocks. He was sitting in Britain using his computer. Because of this Britain should have balls enough to tell the US to sod it and try him in his home country instead of shipping him overseas to a country where he has very limited rights as a non-citizen.

Interview

There's a rather good interview with Gary McKinnon [guardian.co.uk] on the Guardian's web site from earlier this month.

Provides quite an insight into what he did, why he says he did it and his mental state.

Wonder if he was a /. poster. Wouldn't surprise me.

Re:Not a death penalty case

"The guy's lawyers are acting like we're going to flog him and throw him in a dungeon or something."

He gained unauthorized access to defense department computers in the months following the September 11 attacks, and he is not a US citizen. Where did we toss other people who pissed off the DoD? He has a semi-legitimate reason to be afraid.

Re:Not a death penalty case

Guess he should have thought about that a little earlier. People are responsible for their own actions. What did he think would happen? Nobody's fault but his own that he didn't think things through well enough.

Re:Not a death penalty case

The linked story doesn't mention it, but he says he was told by US government officials that if he didn't plead guilty and agree to be extradited, he could be facing sixty years in prison.