A man accused of unlawfully hacking into NASA’s computer systems has been refused permission to appeal to Britain’s supreme court against extradition to the United States. Gary McKinnon’s only remaining option, an appeal to European courts, appears unlikely to succeed.

McKinnon is wanted in the U.S. on charges over his hacking into 97 government computers in 2001 and 2002. He admits doing so but claims he did not cause any damage and was merely searching for evidence of UFO activity which had been kept under wraps.

His legal team has taken a two-pronged approach to fighting the extradition. Earlier this year it failed in a bid to force the British equivalent of a district attorney’s office to prosecute him locally for the hacking. The hope was that he’d get a lesser sentence and then be able to fight the extradition on the grounds that he had already stood trial for the offenses.

After that bid failed, McKinnon’s team called for a hearing in Britain’s newly renamed Supreme Court to argue against that decision. That call was today officially rejected.

That only leaves McKinnon to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that extradition and the potential for a lengthy prison sentence would create a serious risk to his health. McKinnon was diagnosed last year with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and it has been argued that he would be a suicide risk.

If and when McKinnon stands trial in the United States, he could face a 70-year jail sentence. That’s because officials there say he caused $800,000 worth of damages during his hacking.

A host of politicians and celebrities have backed McKinnon, saying that the extradition would be an unfair use of arrangements designed to deal with terrorists and that it would undermine the principle that somebody physically committing a crime in the U.K. should be tried by a U.K. court.

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Entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 3:47 pm under Hacking, Legal, Security.

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