The BBC World Service has an interesting interview with Gary McKinnon, who hacked into Military computers to find out the truth about UFOs and now faces 75 years in an American jail:
This week ‘The Interview’ talks to the man described by US prosecutors as “the biggest military computer hack of all time”. Briton Gary McKinnon stands accused of breaking and entering into US secret computer systems, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage, and effectively immobilising the military district of Washington DC for three days in 2002.
He faces charges in the US which could lead to up to 70 years in jail. Speaking in his first broadcast interview just days before his extradition hearing, McKinnon considers his own sense of naïve wrong-doing, but also denies causing damage and says he was acting out of “humanitarian” motives.
You can listen to the realaudio interview here. It looks like they want to silence this guy and use him as a scapegoat. It would be very disturbing if this guy was extradited to the US to such a inhumane sentance. This truly must be a personal hell for him.
APPENDAGE:
If you want to keep in touch with his case progress check out this blog.
As much as I feel sorry for this guy, I think he should be held responsable for his actions. He was smoking dope and searching for UFO evidence on highly important, but highly unprotected, military servers. He should have acted like an adult and think about the consequences. He thought like a child and saw it just as fun.
While I do not agree with the American penal system, I feel that I he actually caused damage, he should be responsable for that damage.
On silencing him and using him as a scapegoat, I think this is just speculation, easy one If I may say so.
I would agree with you if he really did some damage. 75 years in an American prison is extremely overdoing it in my opionon. He’s getting more than most rapist and murderers. And for what? Hacking into a few insecure windows systems. He would have done worse damage stealing a car (and getting a WAY lower sentence).
Also I agree with him that 900.000 dollars is a ridiculous estimate of any “damage” he might have done. Especially when all they probably had to do was reinstall all the computers he hacked and apply the newest patches (which they should have done in the first place).
They can’t charge someone else for their own negligence and have to take some responsibility for their crappy security. This is the military we’re talking about! I should hope hacking into the Pentagon isn’t just a question of scanning for paswordless accounts.
In an earlier interview here he admits “he inadvertently pressed the wrong button and may have deleted some government files.” This is just lame.
I agree that 75 years is not the right sentence for this crime. It’s way exagerated, but this is a different story.
The things is that this man acted completely irresponsable. You are 39, unnemployed, and all you can think of is scanning windows machines for low passwords account? And to look for UFO evidence? On military servers? At least if you are 16 you now you can still get away with that. But 39?
He’s not a hacker, although the media depicted him as “the greatest millitary hacker ever”. Right now he is a scared man facing a very long term in the US. I feel sorry for him and I feel the punishment is exagerated. Nontheless, I think it is important that he responds for his actions. The justice system is another story.
Wether or not what he did was a smart thing to do when you’re 39 can definatley be debated. However had he actually found tangebile proof that the goverment has been lying to us, this would be a whole different story.
However I would agree with you that based on the interviews, his skill level is highly exagerated. What he did was more of a nuisance, and not a crime. You have to look at it this way:
What’s worse, logging into a passwordless system or stealing a car? While people hacking into computers can definatley be a pain, if they’re not doing it for profit or to damge something they are not criminals and should be punished likewise.