One way transatlantic flight looms for British hacker

February 26, 2009 |

One way transatlantic flight looms for British hacker

By John Lister

One way transatlantic flight looms for British hacker A British man who hacking into NASA has come one step closer to being extradited to the United States. British prosecutors have refused to bring charges against Gary McKinnon, a step which might have kept him out of U.S. courts.

McKinnon admits hacking into 97 American government computers between 2001 and 2002 (which, of course, is when security sensitivity was at an all-time high). However, he claims there was no intent to cause damage and he was merely looking for classified documents about unidentified flying objects.

U.S. authorities say McKinnon caused $800,000 of damages, which, if a court agrees, could mean a 70-year jail sentence.

The attempt to be charged in the UK was one of McKinnon’s last tactics to avoid extradition. He’s previously appealed unsuccessfully to every stage of the British court system and then to the European Court of Human Rights.

McKinnon has signed a legal statement to say his activities broke British laws. His argument was that, he having confessed, the Crown Prosecution Service (roughly equivalent to District Attorneys in the US) had a duty to charge him. He would then argue that he’d already faced British justice for his actions and there was no need for him to stand trial in the US.

The CPS today announced it had decided not to charge him, noting that the evidence it would be able to present in a British court was much weaker than that available to US authorities. It noted:

The bulk of the evidence is located in the United States, the activity was directed against the military infrastructure of the United States, the investigation commenced in the United States and was ongoing, and there are a large number of witnesses, most of whom are located in the United States

The last hope for McKinnon is an ongoing judicial review centered on claims that his suffering from Aspergers syndrome makes him a suicide risk if extradited. He’s attempting to have British law rewritten to ban extraditions in such cases.