guardian.co.uk — The British computer hacker Gary McKinnon today lost his attempt to be tried for computer offences in the UK and now faces the imminent prospect of extradition to the US. The Crown Prosecution Service announced it would not prosecute McKinnon, who has Asperger's syndrome, leaving the way open for his extradition
Feb 27, 2009 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountFeb 27, 2009Submitter
I heard that Mozart had Tourettes.
mickstephensonFeb 27, 2009
I think apart from that, extraditing hackers is utterly pointless, and can only be achieved by friendly countries anyway, if he was hacking from a non-extradition or unfriendly country there is nothing they could do, he didn't actually cause damage and I can't see justification for his punishment from a danger to society point of view, only from a vindictive sense of revenge.Aside from that hackers can only gain entry where security failures take place, so the hack is actually their fault not his. How many hackers in china consider the US government totally fair game and can hack away with impunity as for them there is no consequence?Why bother with security at all, why not have an open website with a link that says "beware if you enter this website you will be shot" and then just send squads of men round to kill anyone who does.
leaprincesFeb 27, 2009
Actually, extradition has nothing to do with friendly or unfriendly relationships between countries- it is based on the the principle of reciprocity. That means : if you are willing to surrender your citizen for the crime that he committed and which made a damage to our country- then we will do the same. And there is an Act called: Extradition treaty between the government of The UK of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and government of the US of America. So, I hope that Gary McKinnon will be lucky enough to stay at UK.
nowhereelseMar 1, 2009
The only damage Gary McKinnon caused was to NASA's reputation. He showed up their nearly non-existent security and has probably done them a favour by making them less likely to experience a malicious attack in future.