Gary McKinnon
Encyclopedia
Gary McKinnon is a Scottish
systems administrator
and hacker
who has been accused of what one U.S. prosecutor
claims is the "biggest military computer hack
of all time," although McKinnon himself states that he was merely looking for evidence of free energy suppression
and a cover-up
of UFO activity and other technologies potentially useful to the public. After a series of legal proceedings in England, McKinnon is currently fighting extradition
to the United States
.
into 97 United States military and NASA
computers over a 13-month period between February 2001 and March 2002, using the name 'Solo'.
The US authorities claim he deleted critical files from operating systems, which shut down the US Army’s Military District of Washington network of 2,000 computers for 24 hours, as well as deleting US Navy Weapons logs, rendering a naval base's network of 300 computers inoperable after the September 11th terrorist attacks. McKinnon is also accused of copying data, account files and passwords onto his own computer. US authorities claim the cost of tracking and correcting the problems he caused was over $
700,000.
While not admitting that it constituted evidence of destruction, McKinnon did admit leaving a threat on one computer:
US authorities claim that McKinnon is trying to downplay his own actions. A senior military officer at the Pentagon told The Sunday Telegraph: "US policy is to fight these attacks as strongly as possible. As a result of Mr McKinnon's actions, we suffered serious damage. This was not some harmless incident. He did very serious and deliberate damage to military and Nasa computers and left silly and anti-America messages. All the evidence was that someone was staging a very serious attack on US computer systems."
(NHTCU).
In November 2002, McKinnon was indicted by a federal grand jury
in the Eastern District of Virginia
. The indictment contained seven counts of computer-related crime, each of which carried a potential ten-year jail sentence.
, which implemented the 2003 extradition treaty with the US wherein the US did not need to provide contestable evidence), when he became subject to bail
conditions including a requirement to sign in at his local police station every evening and to remain at his home address at night. In addition, he was banned from using a computer with access to the Internet. There have been no more developments in respect of the charges relating to United Kingdom legislation but in late 2005 the United States began extradition proceedings.
If he is extradited to the US and charged, McKinnon faces up to 70 years in jail. He has expressed fears that he could be sent to Guantanamo Bay.
s told the Law Lords
that the prosecutors had said McKinnon faced a possible 8–10 years in jail per count if he contested the charges (there were seven counts) without any chance of repatriation, but only 37–46 months if he co-operated and went voluntarily to the US. US-style plea bargains are not a part of English jurisprudence (although it is standard practice to reduce the sentence by one-third for a defendant who pleads guilty) and McKinnon's lawyers contended that in effect this was intimidation to force McKinnon to waive his legal rights. McKinnon also claimed that he had been told that he could serve part of his sentence in the UK if he co-operated. He rejected the offer because the Americans would not guarantee these concessions.
McKinnon's barrister said that the Law Lords could deny extradition if there was an abuse of process
: "If the United States wish to use the processes of English courts to secure the extradition of an alleged offender, then they must play by our rules."
The House of Lords rejected this argument, with the lead judgement (of Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood
) holding that "the difference between the American system and our own is not perhaps so stark as [McKinnon]'s argument suggests" and that extradition proceedings should "accommodate legal and cultural differences between the legal systems of the many foreign friendly states with whom the UK has entered into reciprocal extradition arrangements".
, which briefly imposed a bar on the extradition, but the request for an appeal was rejected.
On 23 January 2009, McKinnon won permission from the High Court to apply for a judicial review
against his extradition. On 31 July 2009, the High Court announced that McKinnon had lost this appeal. Currently McKinnon's legal team, solicitor Karen Todner and barrister Ben Cooper, have applied for a judicial review into the Home Secretary's rejection of medical evidence, which stated that, when he could easily be tried in the UK, it is unnecessary, cruel and inhumane to inflict the further stress of removing him from his homeland, his family and his medical support network.
, Professor Jeremy Turk and Professor Thomas Bernie) as suffering from an autism spectrum
disorder compounded with clinical depression.
McKinnon's mother, Janis Sharp, claimed that he was suicidal and that he would not survive a U.S. prison incarceration. She has received support from psychiatrist Professor Jeremy Turk of St George's Hospital
, London, who said that suicide was now an “almost certain inevitability”. On 10 November 2009, Janis Sharp gave evidence before the Select Committee for Home Affairs of the UK Parliament. The Committee backed calls for the extradition to be halted because of McKinnon’s “precarious state of mental health” and called for a comprehensive review of the extradition treaty.
of the decision of Home Secretary
Alan Johnson
to allow McKinnon’s extradition. Mitting distinguished two issues which were arguable, the first being whether Professor Turk's opinion that McKinnon would certainly commit suicide
if extradited means that the Home Secretary must refuse extradition under section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998
(which prevents a public authority from acting in a way incompatible with convention rights). The second was whether Professor Turk's opinion was a fundamental change to the circumstances that the courts had previously considered and ruled upon. Mitting ruled that if the answer to both questions was "Yes", then it was arguable that it would be unlawful to allow the extradition.
On 20 May 2010, the new home Secretary, Theresa May, adjourned the pending Judicial Review into the previous home Secretary’s decision The Home Office said May would re-examine the medical evidence for herself to decide whether McKinnon should be extradited.
calling for any custodial sentence imposed by an American court to be served in a prison in the UK. However, on 15 July 2009, many of them voted in Parliament against a review of the extradition treaty.
In mid-November 2008, the rock group Marillion
announced that it was ready to participate in a benefit concert in support of Gary McKinnon's struggle to avoid extradition to United States. The organiser of the planned event is Ross Hemsworth, an English radio host. No date has been set yet.
Many have now voiced their support, including Sting, Trudie Styler
, Julie Christie
, David Gilmour
, Graham Nash
, Peter Gabriel
, The Proclaimers
, Bob Geldof
, Chrissie Hynde
, David Cameron
, Boris Johnson
(Mayor of London), Stephen Fry
, Jonathan Ross
, Terry Waite
, Tony Benn
, Chris Huhne, Lord Carlile, the Conservative Party
, the Liberal Democrats
, the Green Party of England and Wales
, the National Autistic Society
, Liberty, and many others. All of these propose that, at least, he should be tried in the UK. In August 2009, Scottish Newspaper The Herald
reported that Scots entrepreneur Luke Heron would pay £100,000 towards McKinnon's legal costs in the event he was extradited to the US.
In a further article in The Herald
, Joseph Richard Gutheinz, Jr., a retired NASA Office of Inspector General Senior Special Agent, voiced his support for Gary McKinnon. Gutheinz, who is also an American criminal defense attorney and former Member of the Texas Criminal Justice Advisory Committee on Offenders with Medical and Mental Impairments, said that he feared Gary McKinnon would not find justice in the USA, because "the American judicial system turns a blind eye towards the needs of the mentally ill".
The British tabloid The Daily Mail has started a campaign to prevent Gary McKinnon's extradition to the U.S.
Janis Sharp, McKinnon's mother, stood as an Independent candidate in the 2010 General Election in Blackburn
in protest against the sitting Labour
MP Jack Straw
, who was Foreign Secretary when the extradition treaty was agreed. She finished last out of eight candidates with 0.38% of the vote.
On 20 July 2010 Tom Bradby, ITN political editor, raised the Gary McKinnon issue with President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron in a joint White House press conference who responded that they have discussed it and are working to find an 'appropriate solution'.
's David Gilmour
released an online single, Chicago - Change the World, on which he sang and played guitar, bass and keyboards, to promote awareness of McKinnon's plight. A re-titled cover of the Graham Nash song Chicago, it featured Chrissie Hynde
and Bob Geldof
, plus McKinnon himself. It was produced by long-time Pink Floyd collaborator Chris Thomas and was made with Nash's support. A video was also posted online.
, all of which he claims to have proven through his actions.
In an interview televised on the BBC
's Click
programme, McKinnon claimed that he was able to get into the military's networks simply by using a Perl
script that searched for blank passwords; in other words his report suggests that there were computers on these networks with the default password
s active.
In his interview with the BBC, he also claimed of "The Disclosure Project" that "they are some very credible, relied-upon people, all saying yes, there is UFO technology, there's anti-gravity, there's free energy, and it's extraterrestrial in origin and [they've] captured spacecraft and reverse engineered it." He said he investigated a NASA photographic expert's claim that at the Johnson Space Center's Building 8, images were regularly cleaned of evidence of UFO craft, and confirmed this, comparing the raw originals with the "processed" images. He claimed to have viewed a detailed image of "something not man-made" and "cigar shaped" floating above the northern hemisphere, and assuming his viewing would be undisrupted owing to the hour, he did not think of capturing the image because he was "bedazzled", and therefore did not think of securing it with the screen capture function in the software at the point when his connection was interrupted. McKinnon stated the image was approximately 256 megabytes in size, yet that the craft's details were still distinct in the greatly inferior 4-bit color and low resolution he had to reduce the viewing image to appear across his mere 56k modem connection (approximate transfer rate 5.4 KB/s).
The charge that he perpetrated "the biggest military hack of all time" is ridiculed by McKinnon who characterises himself as a "bumbling computer nerd" who undestructively accessed open, unsecured machines while under the influence of cannabis
, and that the destruction claims were manufactured by embarrassed US authorities after the fact, in order to meet the dollar amount required to seek an extradition, to make him a poster child and intimidate any snoopers, especially those interested in the alien technology subjects he believed the public had a moral right to know of.
At the Infosecurity Europe 2006 conference in London on 27 April 2006, McKinnon appeared on the Hackers' Panel. When asked how his exploits were first discovered, McKinnon answered that he had miscalculated the timezone — he was using remote control software to operate a Windows
computer while its user was sitting in front of it.
for all documents pertaining to Gary McKinnon. NASA's documents consisted of printed news articles from the Slashdot
website, but no other related documents. This is consistent with NASA employees browsing internet articles about Gary McKinnon; the records of such browsing activity are in the public domain.
The FOIA documents have been uploaded to the internet for review, and can be downloaded.
broadcast a 45-minute radio play about the case, The McKinnon Extradition by John Fletcher. It was re-broadcast on 2 September 2008. It was directed by Pete Atkin and produced by David Morley.
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
systems administrator
System administrator
A system administrator, IT systems administrator, systems administrator, or sysadmin is a person employed to maintain and operate a computer system and/or network...
and hacker
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
who has been accused of what one U.S. prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
claims is the "biggest military computer hack
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
of all time," although McKinnon himself states that he was merely looking for evidence of free energy suppression
Free energy suppression
Free energy suppression is a conspiracy theory claim that explains why advanced technology that would reshape current energy paradigms is being suppressed by certain special interest groups...
and a cover-up
Cover-up
A cover-up is an attempt, whether successful or not, to conceal evidence of wrong-doing, error, incompetence or other embarrassing information...
of UFO activity and other technologies potentially useful to the public. After a series of legal proceedings in England, McKinnon is currently fighting extradition
Extradition
Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...
to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Alleged crime
McKinnon is accused of hackingHacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
into 97 United States military and NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
computers over a 13-month period between February 2001 and March 2002, using the name 'Solo'.
The US authorities claim he deleted critical files from operating systems, which shut down the US Army’s Military District of Washington network of 2,000 computers for 24 hours, as well as deleting US Navy Weapons logs, rendering a naval base's network of 300 computers inoperable after the September 11th terrorist attacks. McKinnon is also accused of copying data, account files and passwords onto his own computer. US authorities claim the cost of tracking and correcting the problems he caused was over $
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
700,000.
While not admitting that it constituted evidence of destruction, McKinnon did admit leaving a threat on one computer:
US authorities claim that McKinnon is trying to downplay his own actions. A senior military officer at the Pentagon told The Sunday Telegraph: "US policy is to fight these attacks as strongly as possible. As a result of Mr McKinnon's actions, we suffered serious damage. This was not some harmless incident. He did very serious and deliberate damage to military and Nasa computers and left silly and anti-America messages. All the evidence was that someone was staging a very serious attack on US computer systems."
Arrest and legal proceedings
McKinnon was first interviewed by police on 19 March 2002. After this interview, his computer was seized by the authorities. He was interviewed again on 8 August 2002, this time by the UK National Hi-Tech Crime UnitNational Hi-Tech Crime Unit
The National Hi-Tech Crime Unit previously formed part of the National Crime Squad, a British Police organisation which dealt with major crime....
(NHTCU).
In November 2002, McKinnon was indicted by a federal grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
in the Eastern District of Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
. The indictment contained seven counts of computer-related crime, each of which carried a potential ten-year jail sentence.
Extradition proceedings
McKinnon remained at liberty without restriction for three years until June 2005 (until after the UK enacted the Extradition Act 2003Extradition Act 2003
The Extradition Act 2003 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It came into force on 1 January 2004 and all import and export extradition requests submitted or received from this date are covered by the Act...
, which implemented the 2003 extradition treaty with the US wherein the US did not need to provide contestable evidence), when he became subject to bail
Bail
Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...
conditions including a requirement to sign in at his local police station every evening and to remain at his home address at night. In addition, he was banned from using a computer with access to the Internet. There have been no more developments in respect of the charges relating to United Kingdom legislation but in late 2005 the United States began extradition proceedings.
If he is extradited to the US and charged, McKinnon faces up to 70 years in jail. He has expressed fears that he could be sent to Guantanamo Bay.
Appeal to the House of Lords
Representing McKinnon in the House of Lords on 16 June 2008, barristerBarrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
s told the Law Lords
Judicial functions of the House of Lords
The House of Lords, in addition to having a legislative function, historically also had a judicial function. It functioned as a court of first instance for the trials of peers, for impeachment cases, and as a court of last resort within the United Kingdom. In the latter case the House's...
that the prosecutors had said McKinnon faced a possible 8–10 years in jail per count if he contested the charges (there were seven counts) without any chance of repatriation, but only 37–46 months if he co-operated and went voluntarily to the US. US-style plea bargains are not a part of English jurisprudence (although it is standard practice to reduce the sentence by one-third for a defendant who pleads guilty) and McKinnon's lawyers contended that in effect this was intimidation to force McKinnon to waive his legal rights. McKinnon also claimed that he had been told that he could serve part of his sentence in the UK if he co-operated. He rejected the offer because the Americans would not guarantee these concessions.
McKinnon's barrister said that the Law Lords could deny extradition if there was an abuse of process
Abuse of process
Abuse of process is a cause of action in tort arising from one party making a malicious and deliberate misuse or perversion of regularly issued court process not justified by the underlying legal action.It is a common law intentional tort...
: "If the United States wish to use the processes of English courts to secure the extradition of an alleged offender, then they must play by our rules."
The House of Lords rejected this argument, with the lead judgement (of Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood
Simon Brown, Baron Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood
Simon Denis Brown, Baron Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, PC, is a British lawyer and Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.-Early life:...
) holding that "the difference between the American system and our own is not perhaps so stark as [McKinnon]'s argument suggests" and that extradition proceedings should "accommodate legal and cultural differences between the legal systems of the many foreign friendly states with whom the UK has entered into reciprocal extradition arrangements".
Further appeals
McKinnon appealed to the European Court of Human RightsEuropean Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...
, which briefly imposed a bar on the extradition, but the request for an appeal was rejected.
On 23 January 2009, McKinnon won permission from the High Court to apply for a judicial review
Judicial review in English Law
Judicial review is a procedure in English administrative law by which the courts in England and Wales supervise the exercise of public power on the application of an individual...
against his extradition. On 31 July 2009, the High Court announced that McKinnon had lost this appeal. Currently McKinnon's legal team, solicitor Karen Todner and barrister Ben Cooper, have applied for a judicial review into the Home Secretary's rejection of medical evidence, which stated that, when he could easily be tried in the UK, it is unnecessary, cruel and inhumane to inflict the further stress of removing him from his homeland, his family and his medical support network.
Asperger's diagnosis
In August 2008, McKinnon was diagnosed by three of the world's leading experts (Professor Simon Baron-CohenSimon Baron-Cohen
Simon Baron-Cohen FBA is professor of Developmental Psychopathology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He is the Director of the University's Autism Research Centre, and a Fellow of Trinity College...
, Professor Jeremy Turk and Professor Thomas Bernie) as suffering from an autism spectrum
Autism spectrum
The term "autism spectrum" is often used to describe disorders that are currently classified as pervasive developmental disorders. Pervasive developmental disorders include autism, Asperger syndrome, Childhood disintegrative disorder, Rett syndrome and Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise...
disorder compounded with clinical depression.
McKinnon's mother, Janis Sharp, claimed that he was suicidal and that he would not survive a U.S. prison incarceration. She has received support from psychiatrist Professor Jeremy Turk of St George's Hospital
St George's Hospital
Founded in 1733, St George’s Hospital is one of the UK's largest teaching hospitals. It shares its main hospital site in Tooting, England with the St George's, University of London which trains NHS staff and carries out advanced medical research....
, London, who said that suicide was now an “almost certain inevitability”. On 10 November 2009, Janis Sharp gave evidence before the Select Committee for Home Affairs of the UK Parliament. The Committee backed calls for the extradition to be halted because of McKinnon’s “precarious state of mental health” and called for a comprehensive review of the extradition treaty.
Judicial review
In January 2010 Mr Justice Mitting granted McKinnon a further judicial reviewJudicial review
Judicial review is the doctrine under which legislative and executive actions are subject to review by the judiciary. Specific courts with judicial review power must annul the acts of the state when it finds them incompatible with a higher authority...
of the decision of Home Secretary
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson
Alan Arthur Johnson is a British Labour Party politician who served as Home Secretary from June 2009 to May 2010. Before that, he filled a wide variety of cabinet positions in both the Blair and Brown governments, including Health Secretary and Education Secretary. Until 20 January 2011 he was...
to allow McKinnon’s extradition. Mitting distinguished two issues which were arguable, the first being whether Professor Turk's opinion that McKinnon would certainly commit suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
if extradited means that the Home Secretary must refuse extradition under section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998
Human Rights Act 1998
The Human Rights Act 1998 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom which received Royal Assent on 9 November 1998, and mostly came into force on 2 October 2000. Its aim is to "give further effect" in UK law to the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights...
(which prevents a public authority from acting in a way incompatible with convention rights). The second was whether Professor Turk's opinion was a fundamental change to the circumstances that the courts had previously considered and ruled upon. Mitting ruled that if the answer to both questions was "Yes", then it was arguable that it would be unlawful to allow the extradition.
Coalition
In May 2010, the UK elected a coalition government. McKinnon was part of the coalition discussions and in their ‘Coalition Programme’ document it states:- We will review the operation of the Extradition Act – and the US/UK extradition treaty – to make sure it is even-handed.
On 20 May 2010, the new home Secretary, Theresa May, adjourned the pending Judicial Review into the previous home Secretary’s decision The Home Office said May would re-examine the medical evidence for herself to decide whether McKinnon should be extradited.
Support for McKinnon
In early November 2008, a total of 80 British MPs signed an Early Day MotionEarly day motion
An Early Day Motion , in the Westminster system, is a motion, expressed as a single sentence, tabled by Members of Parliament for debate "on an early day" . Controversial EDMs are not signed by Government Ministers, PPS or the Speaker of the House of Commons and very few are debated on the floor...
calling for any custodial sentence imposed by an American court to be served in a prison in the UK. However, on 15 July 2009, many of them voted in Parliament against a review of the extradition treaty.
In mid-November 2008, the rock group Marillion
Marillion
Marillion are a British rock band, formed in Aylesbury, England in 1979. Their recorded studio output comprises sixteen albums generally regarded in two distinct eras, delineated by the departure of original vocalist & frontman Fish in late 1988, and the subsequent arrival of replacement Steve...
announced that it was ready to participate in a benefit concert in support of Gary McKinnon's struggle to avoid extradition to United States. The organiser of the planned event is Ross Hemsworth, an English radio host. No date has been set yet.
Many have now voiced their support, including Sting, Trudie Styler
Trudie Styler
Trudie Styler is an English actress and producer. She is the second wife of the musician Sting.-Life and career:Styler was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England. She attended North Bromsgrove High School, where one of her teachers was Clifford T. Ward...
, Julie Christie
Julie Christie
Julie Frances Christie is a British actress. Born in British India to English parents, at the age of six Christie moved to England, where she attended boarding school....
, David Gilmour
David Gilmour
David Jon Gilmour, CBE, D.M. is an English rock musician and multi-instrumentalist who is best known as the guitarist, one of the lead singers and main songwriters in the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. In addition to his work with Pink Floyd, Gilmour has worked as a producer for a variety of...
, Graham Nash
Graham Nash
Graham William Nash, OBE is an English singer-songwriter known for his light tenor vocals and for his songwriting contributions with the British pop group The Hollies, and with the folk-rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Nash is a photography collector and a published photographer...
, Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
, The Proclaimers
The Proclaimers
The Proclaimers are a Scottish band composed of identical twin brothers, Charlie and Craig Reid . They are probably best known for the songs "Letter from America", "I'm On My Way" and "I'm Gonna Be ". The band tours extensively throughout Europe and other continents...
, Bob Geldof
Bob Geldof
Robert Frederick Zenon "Bob" Geldof, KBE is an Irish singer, songwriter, author, occasional actor and political activist. He rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats in the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside the punk rock movement. The band had hits with his...
, Chrissie Hynde
Chrissie Hynde
Christine Ellen "Chrissie" Hynde is an US musician best known as the leader of the rock/new wave band the Pretenders. She is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, and has been the only constant member of the band throughout its history.-Early life and career:Hynde is the daughter of a part-time...
, David Cameron
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....
, Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a British journalist and Conservative Party politician, who has been the elected Mayor of London since 2008...
(Mayor of London), Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...
, Jonathan Ross
Jonathan Ross
Jonathan Ross may refer to:* Jonathan Ross , English television and radio personality* Jonathan Ross , United States Senator, Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court* Jonathon Ross , former Australian rules footballer...
, Terry Waite
Terry Waite
Terry Waite CBE is an English humanitarian and author.Waite was Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie's Assistant for Anglican Communion Affairs in the 1980s. As an envoy for the Church of England, he travelled to Lebanon to try to secure the release of four hostages including journalist John...
, Tony Benn
Tony Benn
Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC is a British Labour Party politician and a former MP and Cabinet Minister.His successful campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963...
, Chris Huhne, Lord Carlile, the Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
, the Liberal Democrats
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, wealth taxation, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties .The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the...
, the Green Party of England and Wales
Green Party of England and Wales
The Green Party of England and Wales is a political party in England and Wales which follows the traditions of Green politics and maintains a strong commitment to social progressivism. It is the largest Green party in the United Kingdom, containing within it various regional divisions including...
, the National Autistic Society
National Autistic Society
The National Autistic Society is a British charity for people with autistic spectrum disorders , including autism and Asperger's Syndrome. The purpose of the organisation is primarily to improve of the lives of people with Autism in the United Kingdom.Founded in 1962 as the Autistic Children's Aid...
, Liberty, and many others. All of these propose that, at least, he should be tried in the UK. In August 2009, Scottish Newspaper The Herald
The Herald (Glasgow)
The Herald is a broadsheet newspaper published Monday to Saturday in Glasgow, and available throughout Scotland. As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 47,226, giving it a lead over Scotland's other 'quality' national daily, The Scotsman, published in Edinburgh.The 1889 to 1906 editions...
reported that Scots entrepreneur Luke Heron would pay £100,000 towards McKinnon's legal costs in the event he was extradited to the US.
In a further article in The Herald
The Herald (Glasgow)
The Herald is a broadsheet newspaper published Monday to Saturday in Glasgow, and available throughout Scotland. As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 47,226, giving it a lead over Scotland's other 'quality' national daily, The Scotsman, published in Edinburgh.The 1889 to 1906 editions...
, Joseph Richard Gutheinz, Jr., a retired NASA Office of Inspector General Senior Special Agent, voiced his support for Gary McKinnon. Gutheinz, who is also an American criminal defense attorney and former Member of the Texas Criminal Justice Advisory Committee on Offenders with Medical and Mental Impairments, said that he feared Gary McKinnon would not find justice in the USA, because "the American judicial system turns a blind eye towards the needs of the mentally ill".
The British tabloid The Daily Mail has started a campaign to prevent Gary McKinnon's extradition to the U.S.
Janis Sharp, McKinnon's mother, stood as an Independent candidate in the 2010 General Election in Blackburn
Blackburn (UK Parliament constituency)
Blackburn is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The town currently elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election. It has elected Labour MPs since its re-creation in 1955.-Boundaries:The constituency...
in protest against the sitting Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
MP Jack Straw
Jack Straw
Jack Straw , British politician.Jack Straw may also refer to:* Jack Straw , English* "Jack Straw" , 1971 song by the Grateful Dead* Jack Straw by W...
, who was Foreign Secretary when the extradition treaty was agreed. She finished last out of eight candidates with 0.38% of the vote.
On 20 July 2010 Tom Bradby, ITN political editor, raised the Gary McKinnon issue with President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron in a joint White House press conference who responded that they have discussed it and are working to find an 'appropriate solution'.
Song
In August 2009, Pink FloydPink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
's David Gilmour
David Gilmour
David Jon Gilmour, CBE, D.M. is an English rock musician and multi-instrumentalist who is best known as the guitarist, one of the lead singers and main songwriters in the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. In addition to his work with Pink Floyd, Gilmour has worked as a producer for a variety of...
released an online single, Chicago - Change the World, on which he sang and played guitar, bass and keyboards, to promote awareness of McKinnon's plight. A re-titled cover of the Graham Nash song Chicago, it featured Chrissie Hynde
Chrissie Hynde
Christine Ellen "Chrissie" Hynde is an US musician best known as the leader of the rock/new wave band the Pretenders. She is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, and has been the only constant member of the band throughout its history.-Early life and career:Hynde is the daughter of a part-time...
and Bob Geldof
Bob Geldof
Robert Frederick Zenon "Bob" Geldof, KBE is an Irish singer, songwriter, author, occasional actor and political activist. He rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats in the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside the punk rock movement. The band had hits with his...
, plus McKinnon himself. It was produced by long-time Pink Floyd collaborator Chris Thomas and was made with Nash's support. A video was also posted online.
Statements to the media
McKinnon has admitted in many public statements that he obtained unauthorised access to computer systems in the United States including those mentioned in the United States indictment. He claims his motivation, drawn from a statement made before the Washington Press Club on 9 May 2001 by "The Disclosure Project", was to find evidence of UFOs, antigravity technology, and the suppression of "free energy"Free energy suppression
Free energy suppression is a conspiracy theory claim that explains why advanced technology that would reshape current energy paradigms is being suppressed by certain special interest groups...
, all of which he claims to have proven through his actions.
In an interview televised on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's Click
Click (TV series)
Click is a weekly BBC television programme covering news and recent developments in the world of consumer technology, presented by Spencer Kelly....
programme, McKinnon claimed that he was able to get into the military's networks simply by using a Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
script that searched for blank passwords; in other words his report suggests that there were computers on these networks with the default password
Default password
Where a device needs a username and/or password to login, a default password is usually provided that allows the device to be accessed during its initial setup...
s active.
In his interview with the BBC, he also claimed of "The Disclosure Project" that "they are some very credible, relied-upon people, all saying yes, there is UFO technology, there's anti-gravity, there's free energy, and it's extraterrestrial in origin and [they've] captured spacecraft and reverse engineered it." He said he investigated a NASA photographic expert's claim that at the Johnson Space Center's Building 8, images were regularly cleaned of evidence of UFO craft, and confirmed this, comparing the raw originals with the "processed" images. He claimed to have viewed a detailed image of "something not man-made" and "cigar shaped" floating above the northern hemisphere, and assuming his viewing would be undisrupted owing to the hour, he did not think of capturing the image because he was "bedazzled", and therefore did not think of securing it with the screen capture function in the software at the point when his connection was interrupted. McKinnon stated the image was approximately 256 megabytes in size, yet that the craft's details were still distinct in the greatly inferior 4-bit color and low resolution he had to reduce the viewing image to appear across his mere 56k modem connection (approximate transfer rate 5.4 KB/s).
The charge that he perpetrated "the biggest military hack of all time" is ridiculed by McKinnon who characterises himself as a "bumbling computer nerd" who undestructively accessed open, unsecured machines while under the influence of cannabis
Cannabis (drug)
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among many other names, refers to any number of preparations of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or for medicinal purposes. The English term marijuana comes from the Mexican Spanish word marihuana...
, and that the destruction claims were manufactured by embarrassed US authorities after the fact, in order to meet the dollar amount required to seek an extradition, to make him a poster child and intimidate any snoopers, especially those interested in the alien technology subjects he believed the public had a moral right to know of.
At the Infosecurity Europe 2006 conference in London on 27 April 2006, McKinnon appeared on the Hackers' Panel. When asked how his exploits were first discovered, McKinnon answered that he had miscalculated the timezone — he was using remote control software to operate a Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
computer while its user was sitting in front of it.
NASA documents
In 2006, a Freedom of Information Act request was filed with NASANASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
for all documents pertaining to Gary McKinnon. NASA's documents consisted of printed news articles from the Slashdot
Slashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
website, but no other related documents. This is consistent with NASA employees browsing internet articles about Gary McKinnon; the records of such browsing activity are in the public domain.
The FOIA documents have been uploaded to the internet for review, and can be downloaded.
Radio play
On 12 December 2007, BBC Radio 4BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
broadcast a 45-minute radio play about the case, The McKinnon Extradition by John Fletcher. It was re-broadcast on 2 September 2008. It was directed by Pete Atkin and produced by David Morley.
External links
- Gary McKinnon support website
- Support website by Gary McKinnon's mother
- Hacker Voice Radio interview with Mckinnon
- Facing 60 years in US prison after hacking into Pentagon
- British hacker loses extradition appeal
- Profile BBC News - lost his appeal in the UK's House of Lords 30 Jul 2008
- Paranormal Daily News - Gary McKinnon should be praised and not punished
- Dan Bull - Free Gary (an open letter to the Home Secretary)
- Coverage of the Gary McKinnon case since 2006
- Gary McKinnon Famous people with Asperger Syndrome
- 16min video interview on Snotr