How not to handle cyber suspects

A British politician is tilting toward common sense in a computer hacker’s case. The US wants to lock up the hacker while a US computer security expert supports using hacking expertise.

Mr Gary McKinnon boasts no great training in computers. Nonetheless, he admits hacking into at least 70 US military and NASA computers between February 2001 and March 2002.

The US alleged Mr McKinnon caused $800,000 damage, peanut really. He also, again allegedly, altered and deleted files in a naval base in the months following 1997 terrorist attacks. How terrorists benefited isn’t clear.

Washington describes Mr McKinnon’s hacking as “intentional and calculated to influence and affect the US Government by intimidation and coercion.” Consequently, Washington wants to give the 43-year-old a possible 60-year-jail term.

Mr McKinnon says all he sought was classified information on crashed UFOs technology. As he told the BBC, he believed US intelligence agencies possessed “crashed extra-terrestrial energy”. This technology could “save us in the form of a free, clean, pollution-free energy.”

A moral crusade

Consequently, if anybody, or a government, withholds information that’s useful to humanity, it’s wrong, according to the Scottish-born wiz kind. Apparently he was high on a “moral crusade” high.

Plausibly, all Mr McKinnon accomplished was to turn many faces red in the US military and space establishment. Here’s is why. He got his first computer at 14, dropped out of school at 17. After a course in computers, he turned to hacking US Government computers. All along, he used his e-mail address. Criminals don’t behave thus.

British authorities caught up with Mr McKinnon when the Bush administration saw Osama bin Laden-types crawling all over the world. Characteristically, US authorities got Mr McKinnon slammed with eight counts of computer-related crimes—”Get him before Osama does,” machismo.

Computer crimes exist and consequences can be deadly. Mr McKinnon obviously committed computer crimes. Otherwise, the entire British judicial system must be phoney because Mr McKinnon lost in every judicial forum.

To compound the case, an extradition agreement between Britain and the US is under assault. Critics of the agreement further charge the government passed laws and agreements masqueraded as anti-terrorist but disadvantageous to many Britons.

Blair danced

Possibly! The two countries reached the agreements when Mr Tony Blair danced to former US President George W. Bush’s tunes.
Additionally, it turns out that Mr McKinnon suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. It’s a developmental disorder. Characteristics include compulsions and lack of interpersonal skills. Defence lawyers base arguments on it, with varied results. It has merits.
Therefore, early last week, Home Secretary Alan Johnson, responsible for extradition, “stopped the clock” on the case proceedings to allow an appeal on medical grounds at the European Court of Human Rights. That veers toward common sense.

However, everything that has happened represents unnecessary bureaucratic, legal, and diplomatic swinging of earrings. A more practical and useful way of dealings with Mr McKinnon existed.

The Director of the US National Cybersecurity Centre, Mr Philip Reitinger, is on record saying the government must “walk a line” in hiring individuals perceived as “hackers.” In other words, some hackers are welcome.