

McKinnon's last appeal has failed - Robin_Message
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8177561.stm

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swombat
Very disappointing indeed. I shudder to think that this guy (who is quite
obviously pretty harmless, even though he also clearly did something stupid)
will have to face the full barbaric apparatus of the US anti-terrorist justice
system. For all we know, maybe he'll end up in Guantanamo Bay.

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cesare
Indeed. This is really sad.

By the way, I would like to know how could he have made $800.000 in damages.
Is this the money spent to make the system more secure?

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gaius
It's pretty easy to envision this. Say something he did caused a pallet not to
be included on a manifest and it had to go out on another flight when a human
at the other end noticed it was missing.

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jacquesm
Say something he did caused a war to be lost... if you stretch it far enough
then you get to the horseshoe of the courier. It's up to the military to deal
with adversity. All the time. They should have procedures and checks in place
to make sure this stuff can never happen.

If one bozo in his moms basement can cause hundreds of thousands of dollars in
damage or worse they have real problems, and suing the guy that did the damage
is the least of their issues.

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gaius
Oh yeah, obviously any military system that can affect the real world ought to
be protected by the best firewall you can get - the AirGap(tm). I'm just
describing a mechanism by which changing data can end up costing money in the
real world. You could probably really screw up someone's business just by
running their printer out of paper.

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jacquesm
This guy is going down not because of the damage he created but because of the
embarrassment he created.

A military installation that can be hacked by somebody in a foreign country
ought to be plugging holes instead of asking for extradition.

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gaius
We only have his word that he was "looking for UFOs". Just sayin'.

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jacquesm
True.

Even so he should have never been able to do what he did. All he should have
found were very securely locked doors, alarmbells going off all over the place
and a very stern talking to.

We're not talking about the website of the local football club here, it's the
military.

If a foreign nation with a large budget and a concerted effort would be able
to crack it that would be embarrassing but at least you could have some
understanding. Now the assumption is that if this clown could do it then
probably every two bit intelligence agency in the world has been doing it as
well. In other words there is lots of egg to go around for various faces.

Instead of turning this guy into an asset they are trying to make him in to a
scapegoat. What he did wasn't good but he could only do it because somebody
else left cracks that shouldn't even have been there in the first place.

As it is they ought to be very much ashamed.

Of course there will be people that will say 'but he had no business doing
that' or 'he should have known better'.

Maybe.

The 'rattling a locked door of my house' analogy has been made plenty of
times, I think the military should be held to a much higher standard and that
they basically ought to put out a bounty for every hole that somebody proves
exists.

That way the script kiddies/blackhats get to make a decent living and we all
end up more secure.

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wildjim
"If a foreign national..."

Do you really mean "if"? It won't even be "when", it will be "for some time,
now".

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biohacker42
The US government really really wants to make an example of an aspie UFO
believer. Just like they like to throw the book at other mostly harmless kids,
Adrian Lamo comes to mind.

I'm disgusted and outraged but can't think of anything I could do that
wouldn't be pointless other then making me feel like I did something.

Writing letters to my representatives/senators is not going to make them do
diddly squat in defense of a "military hacker", that's the stuff political
attack adds would love as fodder.

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FiveFiftyOne
I am the only one who thinks that if you think you're smart enough to do
something you know is illegal, then you should be big enough to handle what
comes your way when you get caught? Bollocks to his mental state and his
frailty and the other excuses being trotted out on his behalf. He knew he was
doing wrong when he committed the hack, and he should grow the necessaries to
deal with the consequences now. Too late to cry about.

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sfphotoarts
yeah, you're right, but a lot of people have that sympathize-with-the-little-
guy mentality despite what they have done.

Bollocks indeed.

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mynameishere
Not sure why everyone is so shocked. Breaking into military computers = you
deal with the consequences.

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jodrellblank
The contention is between his claim that he's a bumbling computer nerd who
accessed open unsecured computers and did no damage, and the military claim
that he perpetrated the biggest military computer hack ever, rendered 300
computers unusable after 9/11 (?!), deleted weapons logs and caused $700,000
damages.

Which consequences are you ranting that he should deal with, exactly?

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mynameishere
I'm not ranting. FYI, "bumbling" is not a legal defense.

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jodrellblank
Then you aren't making much point at all. He's not arguing to be let off, he's
arguing to be tried in the UK instead of being extradited to the US. Which
means he _is_ going to "deal with the consequences", so your comment says ...
nothing at all.

What it does do, though, is post the subtext "I wasn't shocked because I'm
awesome, and he's a big girl's blouse who needs to grow up into a real man
like me", like any generic internet tough guy post. i.e. a rant about how weak
and pathetic you think other people are (compared to you). Basically.

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smithjchris
There should be no extradition for British nationals. It should be handled
according to our law.

The US already have a seriously bad reputation when it comes to handling
things like this so I'm sure he'll end up bagged and tagged within a year.

