British Pentagon Hacker Loses Extradition Appeals
August 4, 2009
Britain’s High Court on Friday rejected two extradition appeals by Pentagon hacker Gary “Solo” McKinnon, who’s trying to avoid a U.S. trial for cracking nearly 100 Pentagon and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002.
If convicted, McKinnon, 43, faces anywhere from six months to six-and-a-half years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, depending on how much damage he caused, and other factors.
Lawyers for McKinnon argued that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith failed to consider McKinnon’s recent diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome when ordering his extradition, and that British prosecutors should charge the hacker in Britain, where he lives. But Judge Stanley Burnton said in a 41-page opinion Friday that extradition was “a lawful and proportionate response to his offending,” according to the AP.
McKinnon is accused of breaching 97 unclassified systems: 53 Army computers, 26 Navy, 16 NASA, and one each at the Department of Defence and Air Force. He allegedly crashed some systems, in one case deleting critical files and causing the shutdown of the Army’s Military District of Washington network of over 2,000 computers for 24 hours.
Federal prosecutors claim McKinnon’s intrusions — which took place from February 2001 to March 2002 — caused over $700,000 in damage. “U.S. foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days,” McKinnon wrote on a hacked Army computer in 2002. “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.”
Thanks to http://www.wired.com/ for the quotes where you can get more details.
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