Gary McKinnon as a scapegoat

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I'm very curious. People go on about how Gary KcKinnon is dangerous and that using his AS as a get out of jail card is wrong (which is true), but why doesn't anyone think "You know, America's security is piss poor if a hacker can just break into their systems with little to no effort". I mean, if he can do it, what's stopping teorrists from hacking into their systems?". Apparently, they didn't know he was there until he left notes commenting on how bad their security was.

And I blame The National Autistic Society and Simon Baron Cohen for part of this distraction because they're so intent on supporting him on the grounds that essentially is AS makes him not know any better, which is not justice. Therefore, they use his mental disorder as a distraction. While it's important to remember he's autistic and remember that his actions are influenced by his obsessions, I think that is not the issue, to be honest. The issue is that the American Government has failed it's people in protecting them.

Any thoughts?

It sickens me. It's not like people forced him to do it and threatened him to or else. A crime is a crime and I can just break into someones house to play their Xbox and offer to replace their door but I would still be arrested and charged. That is if the owners decided to press charges of course. Sure what I did was harmless and no one was hurt but I should be free right and I have AS and I desperately wanted to play that Xbox.

Gary desperately wanted to get info on UFOs but he knows what he did was wrong. No one was hurt when he did it.

It's ignorance and people make false assumptions on us. I can probably get away with rude behavior if I told everyone I had AS. Everyone would probably be excusing it and assume I don't mean to do it.

Here is a question I posted a while back:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 804AATf6Kx

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 125AAbWXye

It's made up of course and I wanted to see what responses I get and I was making a point.

Yes, he is being scapegoated. The notion that people who have never stepped foot in the US or born arms against it, can be extradited there from their own nation is abhorrant and frankly scary.

Gary was busted when he logged on using a Department of Defense worker's user name and password.

How he came by that is the main issue.

Gary is a spy. No accident, he had the Golden Key.

That means there was a mole at DoD that fed him that information.

Moles get life in prison with no parole. We want him.

You seem to be unaware that the MoD AND THE DoD actually get on quite well. We "share" information, and regardless of the impression that our leaders might give with their ignorant behaviour, our intelligence services work togetherl. We have "allies" who aren't allowed into briefings because they are compromised, but with whom we can share a room without getting into a fight about who saved who in ww2. Besides which, our government recently released all its UFO information to the public. He wasn't stealing sensitive information, or even relevant information.

Secondly "a mole" who "fed" him his ident and password? Too much Tom Clancy by the sound of it. It has been said here before now that the passes he used were defaults left in place by an idiot, which is highly likely, and even if they weren't, there's no reason to immediately believe that this is some sort of Cold-War era spy-thriller. There are numerous ways to get passwords and idents that involve no moles OR "feeding". There is a line in the film Hackers which mentions that network admins are almost invariably passworded "god" or something similar. Turns out a lot of the time this is still true, and it doesn't take a genius to parse that. Are we to believe that all USgov employees have secure passwords that aren't easy to guess?

Face it. The US failed miserably and is trying to hide its monumental cockup by burning this guy at the stake. It wont stop dedicated hackers with genuine agendas from attacking the US defence networks, and it wont stop stupid people leaving delicate information where people can find it.

And has anybody extradited any hackers anywhere else? I notice the Chinese have been busy raiding peoples networks.. is the US demanding that any of them be handed over to anyone?

Hello,

I've written quite a lot about the McKinnon case, albeit in a somewhat hyperbolic and tendentious way... This gives a fair flavour of my arguments:

http://the-newrepublic.blogspot.com/201 ... s-all.html

I've focused on one single event:

"He faces being made to appear before a jury in a civilian court on charges that could see him spending as long as six months in an American low-security prison before being shipped back to Limeyland.

McKinnon and his Mummy have consistently claimed that he was pursuing a life-long obsessive interest in UFOs during his two year hacking spree that left investigators fearing they were under cyber-attack from Al-Qaeda in the weeks following the 9-11 attacks.

McKinnon who's supporters claim he is so profoundly affected by his Asperger's Syndrome that not only was he unable to control his actions which lead to him hacking at least 97 times into American computer networks but somehow managed to remain undiagnosed until Cleetus told him he'd look real purdy in Orange.

In fact just 12 days after the attacks that left more than 3000 Americans dead, McKinnon, pursuing his belief that the Yanks had hidden extra-terrestrial beings in the computers at a Naval Munitions Yard, returned just to double check in the corners


"the Indictment charges that on Sept. 23, 2001, McKinnon again broke into the NWS (Naval Weapons Station) Earle computer network by accessing the previously-installed RemotelyAnywhere software and using the stolen passwords.

During this intrusion into the network, McKinnon allegedly caused approximately $290,431 in damage to NWS Earle by deleting computer files needed to power up some of the computers on the network, deleting computer logs that documented his intrusion into the network, and compromising the security of the network by leaving it vulnerable to him and other intruders via the RemotelyAnywhere software."

"The Earle Naval Weapons Station, is located along the northern New Jersey shore. Earle is a weapons station, it handles, stores, transports, renovates and issues all types of weapons and ammunition.

The waterfront complex is the homeport to USS Seattle (AOE 3), USS Detroit (AOE 4), USS Supply (AOE 6), USS Arctic (AOE 8), and Combat Logistics Group 2.

Earle provides logistical, technical and material support to the fleet in a variety of areas ranging from combat subsystems and retail ammunition management to ordnance packaging, handling and storage"

It was more than a month before this network was fully functional again. Sometime later he left his now infamous message

Whatever way you cut it, he did a Very Bad Thing. Sure his AS is a factor, but the place for that to be taken into account is at his trial.

This site is not an advertising tool for your personal blog.

Your rantings are certainly more loaded with hyperbole than with fact or realism. You seem to think it is odd or rare for someone with severe Aspergers Syndrome to get to Gary's age without a diagnosis, rather than the norm. Such a belief would be naive and clueless.

Indictments cause Autism a lot lately, with no prior history, or family history.

So far the Courts have not discriminated, and have found them all guilty.

Maybe because so many adults go undiagnosed by frankly useless services until they are shoved head first into a system designed to probe into every aspect of their life? things like adult autism are a lot easier to notice when everything you do is being intrusively analysed.

I'm sure I have said it before, but I would consider it amusing ironic justice if some of the people who are so adamant that AS shouldn't be taken into account in criminal justice were to get busted for a few things..then they might realise exactly how autistic friendly the system ISN'T. ASCs are an integral part of our neurology which affect everything we do one way or another, and affect how people interact with us. OF COURSE it has some bearing on criminal justice matters.

Exactly. Of course, we have to ask how many people with AS would be being hauled through the courts if society included them in the first place. Taking that argument a little further - it could be asked why should any of us be subject to the legal system of a society which has been imposed on us, against our consent. When society corrects for the injustice that it has imposed upon nearly all of us, then we can be answerable to their justice.

My guess on this is that the Chinese hackers have the approval of their government, so even if we can track one down, the Chinese government will get in the way if we try to extradite them, and there would be an international incident on our hands.

McKinnon on the other hand, he was acting on his own, and the British government isn't backing him up. Thus, he's the perfect scapegoat.

Regardless of whether they want to make an example out of McKinnon, what he did was a serious crime, and I think it's entirely reasonable for the UK to hand him over for espionage on one of their allies. The only question is whether McKinnon is mentally competent enough to know the consequences of his actions and as such can be held accountable for his crime, and although I am not a psychologist I believe he is.

Perhaps the case would be different if he had hacked into the network of a business in the U.S., or even a less important government agency. But spying on the military makes for a pretty good reason to extradite him.