p2pnet.net News:- Gary McKinnon is a self-described ‘bumbling computer nerd’ who started his hacking career looking for evidence that governments had orchestrated a UFO cover-up.

The outgoing Bush administration, however, believes, McKinnon is something else entirely – an evil hacker who penetrated more than 90 US government computers, causing millions of dollars worth of damages.

America therefore wants him in America but so far, he’s managed to avoid that.

Now, “The case will be heard in London on February 13, 2007,” says CNET News.

“McKinnon has been waiting for this date to be confirmed since last July, when he lost his first appeal against extradition. The appeal court in that case judged that extradition to the U.S. was justified, after which McKinnon was granted leave to appeal to a higher court. If his second appeal on February 13 is not successful, McKinnon’s only remaining avenue is to appeal to the House of Lords, a British court of last resort.”

But he’s not holding his breath and, “Look what happened to the NatWest Three,” he’s quoted as saying. “They had a lot of people behind them, but they were still not given leave to appeal to the House of Lords.”

When his actions were first discovered, “the U.K. authorities did not think they were serious enough to be worth prosecuting,” says the story.

“The only people who should be facing a trial and punishment are the morons who failed to lock down networks containing classified information,” thought p2pnet reader Tony over in Australia.

“This whole farce is nothing but shooting the messenger,” he said, “Who wants to bet that 90% of those unsecured systems he stumbled into are still unsecured right now?”

“Babar Ahmad. whose extradition case to the USA has been a couple of months ahead of Gary McKinnon’s in the legal system, has lost his High Court Appeal,” the Free Gary site.

“This High Court decison does does not bode well for Gary McKinnon’s case, since Babar Ahmad, whose case also involves computers and the internet, is not accused of directly attacking the US Military, which Gary McKinnon is, although, of course, Gary is not accused of any sort of terrorism.”

---

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

---

---

Also See:
CNET News – Alleged NASA hacker’s appeal set for New Year, December 11, 2006
p2pnet reader Tony – Gary McKinnon extradition, May 10, 2006

---

p2pnet newsfeeds for your site | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 14th, 2006 at 3:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 4858 times