UK to US: Hire Hacker Gary McKinnon to Prevent Future Leaks
Gary McKinnon
The United States should hire hacker Gary McKinnon to prevent future WikiLeaks revelations rather than putting him behind bars, a former member of the British parliament told her peers yesterday.
McKinnon, who has been dubbed “the biggest military computer hack of all time,” has spent the past six years facing the threat of extradition to the United States after he hacked into military computers in search of evidence of extraterrestrial lifeforms and zero-point energy.
“Do you agree that in the light of the damage caused to the American government by WikiLeaks that rather than trying to imprison an autistic savant, the Pentagon would do well to employ Gary McKinnon to sort out the weaknesses in their computer system?” asked Angela Browning, a British Conservative Party politician.
Browning posed the question to Home Office official Pauline Neville-Jones, who earlier told peers a judicial review of a decision by the previous home secretary to uphold an order for McKinnon’s extradition “stands adjourned,” BCC reported.
“The home secretary is reviewing the case against the sole legal test which is whether – given Mr. McKinnon’s medical condition – extradition would breach his human rights,” she told peers.
The home office minister said McKinnon had been asked whether he would consent to a psychiatric assessment. As reported by Wired and other media outlets, McKinnon was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at age 42.
According to BBC, one of the WikiLeaks revelations suggested former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown had unsuccessfully proposed a deal in August 2009 that would have allowed McKinnon to serve any prison sentence in Britain.
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Computer security is not the issue with the material being released to Wikileaks. The issue is military personnel within the US Military getting free and easy access to material they shouldn’t be allowed to access. But they are. That’s not hacking. That’s FOI going way too far, and the US should protect their documentation better – not with computer security but just better rules of access in the practical sense. Hiring McKinnon would make absolutely no difference to that.