McKinnon Trial Upcoming – Is There a Problem?

On the BBC News site, I came across an article that discusses the many facets of the ongoing story of Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker that shook the Bush administration up quite a bit with his hacking into U.S. military computers during the time of the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

I see several points to the story, not all favoring the same side, which no one on either side seems to be articulating.

Computer hacker Gary McKinnon faces being tried in the US after requests to block his extradition were refused, the Home Office has confirmed.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson told Mr McKinnon’s family he could not block the move on medical grounds.

No, medical grounds just won’t do it here. Look at the amount of public castigation of the British government  that went on when the Lockerbie bomber was released by the British on compassionate grounds.

The rest of the world seems to forget that, as much as America likes to tout itself as advanced, we are the only civilized power that has a death penalty for certain criminal acts, many of them being relatively minor in comparison to paying the ultimate penalty.

Perhaps the rest of the world chooses to look at the claim that we are a Christian nation, and looking at the stories in the New Testament, wonders why we fail to follow the teachings of Christ.

Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon, 43, who has Asperger’s syndrome, is accused of breaking into US military computers. He says he was seeking UFO evidence.

Now of Wood Green, north London, he faces 60 years in prison if convicted.

Mr Johnson said he had carefully considered the representations but had concluded that sending Mr McKinnon to the US would not breach his human rights.

As such, he had no discretion to block the extradition.

No, blocking the extradition would be a huge political problem. McKinnon is a pawn who simply committed  a crime that, today, would be less heinous, but when it happened, this country had been whipped into a panic by the events of the day coupled with the lies of the Bush administration.

“Due to legitimate concerns over Mr McKinnon’s health, we have sought and received assurances from the United States authorities that his needs will be met,” he said.

This one I must give to our side – in all my reading, I have never seen one iota of evidence stating that Asperger’s is a life threatening condition.

Mr McKinnon admits hacking into 97 US government computers, including Nasa’s and Pentagon’s, during 2001 and 2002.

He has told the BBC he was on a “moral crusade” to prove US intelligence had found an alien craft run on clean fuel.

His mother Janis Sharp told the BBC she was “devastated” by the news and that her son had reacted “very badly”.

“It’s a disgusting decision. Gary has been in a heightened state of terror for almost eight years.

“To force a peaceful, vulnerable, misguided UFO fanatic like Gary thousands of miles away from his much-needed support network is barbaric,” she said.

Well, we all know mother’s tend to always believe the best about their progeny, and that a certain amount of distortion of reality is to be expected. On the other hand, this is the sort of thing that truly could be handled better by both sides.

If McKinnon had been handed over immediately, he could have been tried, sentenced, and then allowed to return home – for as much as this is devastating to some, it really is an indictment of how unprotected some of our information was. The fuss is more a reaction forced by national embarrassment than anything else.

She said she was not comforted by the home secretary’s advice that her son would not be held in a “supermax” jail, which hold the highest-security prisoners.

Judicial review

Their solicitor Karen Todner said they had seven days to put a case for judicial review and that she hoped that would be heard before Christmas.

If that failed, they would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights, she added.

Mr Johnson had last month agreed to study new medical evidence before deciding on the extradition. The High Court had previously refused permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Mr McKinnon has been the focus of a campaign to prevent his removal to the US.

Earlier this month, the Commons’ Home Affairs Committee said the move should be halted owing to his “precarious state of mental health”.

They concluded there was a “serious lack of equality” in the way the extradition treaty deals with UK citizens compared with US citizens.

It’s more than a difference in equality of citizens extradited. It is a difference in the way each nation expects to treat its own, or any person individually. Again, I refer to the fact that we are the only ‘civilized nation’ that puts itself so far above any other, presuming to believe that it can be in the position of God, and deal out life and death.

McKinnon should not be given a pass – that is not what I would argue. But letting the punishment fit the crime, let’s restrict his computer usage for a time, and then let it go.

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Darth Cheney at play is what some in England might be worried about…

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