With all due respect, because I have no doubt you're actually a totally reasonable and thoughtful person --- my default assumption about people with track records on HN --- but it seems to me like you're wearing a tinfoil hat on this issue.
Like many Americans I'm deeply uncomfortable with the way we handled the issue of foreign "combatants" in AfPak and Iraq. I'm unhappy that Obama didn't simply close Gitmo and force us to suck up the pain and chaos that would have caused the rest of the country; we earned that pain fair and square. However, I understand these issues in context: to wit, (a) our war in Afghanistan, which while ineptly prosecuted was not prima facie illegitimate, put us in a position where neither military nor civilian law nor the resources we were prepared to field in theater were adequate to the task of handling the prisoners we generated, and (b) the widespread belief inside the government that specific named agents of known terrorist networks could be captured and turned to prevent future attacks.
Both are bad. Both are wrong. But they're specific circumstances, and utterly unlike the circumstance faced by McKinnon. It's not as if there's no judicial record for what happens to people who hack our unbelievably wildly insecure DOD networks. Hint: not black sites.
On the one hand you seem to argue that the US justice system is sane, but on the other hand the US operates a prison that's one of the worst ever in existence (I for one would pick a death penalty over being tortured in said prison), and the justice system has not done anything about it.
Why isn't the UK extraditing the operators of said prison for torturing UK citizens? (or are they?)
If you're going to quote something, quote it in such a way that it doesn't change the meaning.
> one of the worst ever in existence
Do you disagree with this? As far as I know the grounds for putting people in there were not good, and the torture that occurred in there was brutal, in fact it was so brutal that many prisoners tried to commit suicide. Would you commit suicide if I cut off your legs and arms? Probably not. Apparently these prisoners thought that what was happening to them was worse than cutting off their legs and arms. Can you name a prison that is worse? Yeah, Auswitz, for example, but that's not a very high standard to compare to is it?
> (The track record I was referring to was prior convictions and sentences for people whose computer crimes included intrusion in .mil systems.)
Right my point was it does say something about the general sanity of the justice system for "terrorists"/"enemies of the US". I can certainly see how this guy could get the label "enemy of the US" and get a very harsh sentence.
You still didn't back up your claims.
>> (The track record I was referring to was prior convictions and sentences for people whose computer crimes included intrusion in .mil systems.)
That would be my preference. Especially since the kangaroo courts may well be CIA flights to Afghanistan.