McKinnon's last appeal has failed | Hacker News Reader

McKinnon's last appeal has failed

news.bbc.co.uk

26 pointsRobin_Message22 comments

Very disappointing indeed. I shudder to think that this guy (who is quite obviously pretty harmless, even though he also clearly did something stupid) will have to face the full barbaric apparatus of the US anti-terrorist justice system. For all we know, maybe he'll end up in Guantanamo Bay.

Pretty harmless? I'll admit that I don't know much about this case, but this bit seems to indicate otherwise:

"Mr McKinnon admits that he hacked into 97 US computers from his bedroom in north London between 2001 and 2002 and left a message on one machine saying: "I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.""

Two years, almost 100 computer systems, taunting and threats.. that doesn't sound so harmless to me.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5...

The full message that he left was:

“US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days . . . It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year . . . I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels . . .”

In context, it seems less sinister, more stupid / self-important.

I don't doubt he is heading the way of the Intelligence "fusion" centers[1] and some form of interrogation. This is an absolute shambles and shows just how inept and yellow the UK home office are. Not only are they going to hand this guy over in blatant disregard to his Human rights, they are refusing to publicise documents surrounding the Iraq war investigation - mostly due to very subtle pressure levied by US military in regard to "intelligence sharing" (same thing used in this G.M. case). And as a final insult they /demand/ that the UK population bend over and take it when it comes to the National ID scheme, which has been proven time and again to be totally against public consensus....

[1] http://wikileaks.org/wiki/The_spy_who_billed_me_twice

Indeed. This is really sad.

By the way, I would like to know how could he have made $800.000 in damages. Is this the money spent to make the system more secure?

It's pretty easy to envision this. Say something he did caused a pallet not to be included on a manifest and it had to go out on another flight when a human at the other end noticed it was missing.

Say something he did caused a war to be lost... if you stretch it far enough then you get to the horseshoe of the courier. It's up to the military to deal with adversity. All the time. They should have procedures and checks in place to make sure this stuff can never happen.

If one bozo in his moms basement can cause hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage or worse they have real problems, and suing the guy that did the damage is the least of their issues.

Oh yeah, obviously any military system that can affect the real world ought to be protected by the best firewall you can get - the AirGap(tm). I'm just describing a mechanism by which changing data can end up costing money in the real world. You could probably really screw up someone's business just by running their printer out of paper.

It probably comes down to time spent trying to track whether or not he did something malicious and other investigative processes necessary. Put a few security experts or a consulting firm on the case for a year and it gets quite expensive. Also if they found out he compromised sensitive information and had to change plans or reschedule something then expenses start racking up.

This guy is going down not because of the damage he created but because of the embarrassment he created.

A military installation that can be hacked by somebody in a foreign country ought to be plugging holes instead of asking for extradition.

We only have his word that he was "looking for UFOs". Just sayin'.

True.

Even so he should have never been able to do what he did. All he should have found were very securely locked doors, alarmbells going off all over the place and a very stern talking to.

We're not talking about the website of the local football club here, it's the military.

If a foreign nation with a large budget and a concerted effort would be able to crack it that would be embarrassing but at least you could have some understanding. Now the assumption is that if this clown could do it then probably every two bit intelligence agency in the world has been doing it as well. In other words there is lots of egg to go around for various faces.

Instead of turning this guy into an asset they are trying to make him in to a scapegoat. What he did wasn't good but he could only do it because somebody else left cracks that shouldn't even have been there in the first place.

As it is they ought to be very much ashamed.

Of course there will be people that will say 'but he had no business doing that' or 'he should have known better'.

Maybe.

The 'rattling a locked door of my house' analogy has been made plenty of times, I think the military should be held to a much higher standard and that they basically ought to put out a bounty for every hole that somebody proves exists.

That way the script kiddies/blackhats get to make a decent living and we all end up more secure.

"If a foreign national..."

Do you really mean "if"? It won't even be "when", it will be "for some time, now".

Sixty years ago, ish, Feynman found he could pick safe locks in the Manhatten project offices, and alerted the military higher ups to the weakness and how to reset the locks when they close the safes so they would be secure. Their response was to send round a memo banning Feynman from entering their offices. - "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman".

It's all just a little bit of history repeating. Heh.

The US government really really wants to make an example of an aspie UFO believer. Just like they like to throw the book at other mostly harmless kids, Adrian Lamo comes to mind.

I'm disgusted and outraged but can't think of anything I could do that wouldn't be pointless other then making me feel like I did something.

Writing letters to my representatives/senators is not going to make them do diddly squat in defense of a "military hacker", that's the stuff political attack adds would love as fodder.

I am the only one who thinks that if you think you're smart enough to do something you know is illegal, then you should be big enough to handle what comes your way when you get caught? Bollocks to his mental state and his frailty and the other excuses being trotted out on his behalf. He knew he was doing wrong when he committed the hack, and he should grow the necessaries to deal with the consequences now. Too late to cry about.

yeah, you're right, but a lot of people have that sympathize-with-the-little-guy mentality despite what they have done.

Bollocks indeed.

Not sure why everyone is so shocked. Breaking into military computers = you deal with the consequences.

The contention is between his claim that he's a bumbling computer nerd who accessed open unsecured computers and did no damage, and the military claim that he perpetrated the biggest military computer hack ever, rendered 300 computers unusable after 9/11 (?!), deleted weapons logs and caused $700,000 damages.

Which consequences are you ranting that he should deal with, exactly?

I'm not ranting. FYI, "bumbling" is not a legal defense.

Then you aren't making much point at all. He's not arguing to be let off, he's arguing to be tried in the UK instead of being extradited to the US. Which means he is going to "deal with the consequences", so your comment says ... nothing at all.

What it does do, though, is post the subtext "I wasn't shocked because I'm awesome, and he's a big girl's blouse who needs to grow up into a real man like me", like any generic internet tough guy post. i.e. a rant about how weak and pathetic you think other people are (compared to you). Basically.

There should be no extradition for British nationals. It should be handled according to our law.

The US already have a seriously bad reputation when it comes to handling things like this so I'm sure he'll end up bagged and tagged within a year.

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