Citizens in the land of bad food and bad teeth shield supposed
AUTISTIC criminal out of sympathy for creepy nerd!
Let's hope this low-life soon gets cancer and dies a slow and horribly
painful,
disabling, and stinking death!
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"British Hacker's Supporters Battle Extradition to U.S."
By Karla Adam
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, August 28, 2009
LONDON, Aug. 27 -- Supporters of autistic British computer hacker Gary
McKinnon attempted to rally support on Thursday for the man who is
fighting extradition to the United States to face federal charges in
Virginia and New Jersey for penetrating dozens of U.S. government
computers.
Sitting in his bedroom in north London shortly after the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks, McKinnon exploited security problems in a
variety of computer programs to tap into dozens of U.S. government
computers, including at NASA, the Pentagon and more than a dozen
military installations in 14 states.
At the time, Paul J. McNulty, then U.S. attorney for the Eastern
District of Virginia, called it the "the biggest hack of military
computers ever detected." McKinnon was indicted in Alexandria and New
Jersey in November 2002 on eight counts of computer fraud. He
explained his actions by saying he was looking for UFOs. But he has
yet to be brought to the United States.
For the last seven years, McKinnon's lawyers have battled his
extradition. They have sought to have the case tried in Britain, where
if he was convicted the penalties would be less severe and he could be
imprisoned closer to his family.
But in February, British authorities refused to charge him or have the
U.S. charges heard here. The Crown Prosecution Service said it would
be best to prosecute McKinnon in the United States and that his
actions were not "random experiments" but "a deliberate effort to
breach U.S. defense systems at a critical time which caused well
documented damage."
And last month, McKinnon lost an appeal of the British government's
decision not to try him here and to extradite him to the United
States.
McKinnon's lawyers are applying to appeal that decision to the newly-
formed Supreme Court, which opens on Oct. 1 and replaces the judicial
role of the House of Lords, currently the highest court in the
country. If that fails, they will appeal to the European Court of
Human Rights, supporters said.
McKinnon has admitted to hacking into 97 U.S. government computers
between February 2001 and March 2002.
His supporters argue that he should not be extradited to face the U.S.
charges because he has Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism that he
was diagnosed with last year. They say the diagnosis explains his
obsession with hacking. His family says that rather than being
America's worst cyber-terrorist, he is a vulnerable eccentric who
could become suicidal if removed from his family.
They also deny the U.S. allegations that his actions resulted in
$700,000 in damage.
Standing outside the U.S. embassy in central London, Janis Sharp,
McKinnon's mother, said in an interview that the hacking was "the most
incredibly stupid thing for him to do," and explained he was partly
motivated by conspiracy theories and was trying to unearth new
evidence around the Sept. 11 attacks, and partly by his "childhood
obsession" of finding proof that UFOs exist. "Please, Obama, he'd
never hurt anyone. Don't let the first person you extradite be a good,
gentle man with Asperger's," she pleaded.
McKinnon, 43, has become a cause celebre here, with backing from the
Daily Mail, a widely read tabloid that frequently campaigns for
populist causes, as well as high-profile figures including David
Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party; Sarah Brown, the prime
minister's wife; and musicians such as Sting and Peter Gabriel.
Supporters have set up a Web site called Free Gary at
http://freegary.org.uk.
The American Civil Liberties Union also released a letter in support
of McKinnon on Thursday. The organization said the case highlights
what some people here think is a lopsided extradition treaty between
the United States and Britain, skewed against British citizens.
Part of the current uproar over McKinnon's case stems from a general
mood that Britain is kowtowing to the United States, said Ben Brandon,
an extradition lawyer in London. He pointed out similar dismay when
three British bankers linked to Enron were extradited to the United
States in 2006, and said that in both cases, campaigners effectively
"tapped in to general feeling that we are in America's pocket, that we
are not exercising our own judgment, that we are letting the Americans
do our job for us."
While McKinnon's campaigners point out he could receive a maximum
sentence of 60 years in U.S. prison, legal analysts said that if he
was convicted in the United States, he would probably serve eight to
10 years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...082703906.html
===========
BUT ... at least the U.S. will make it tougher for his kind of shit to
physically enter our "Land Of The Free."
---------------------
"Bush's Search Policy For Travelers Is Kept"
"Obama Officials Say Oversight Will Grow"
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 28, 2009
The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures
allowing the government to search -- without suspicion of wrongdoing
-- the contents of a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other
electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand
oversight of such inspections.
The policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland
Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush
administration the procedures by which travelers' laptops, iPods,
cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they
cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.
But representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they
see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which
prompted controversy, and this one.
"It's a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy
put in place by the Bush administration," said Catherine Crump, staff
attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It provides a lot of
procedural safeguards, but it doesn't deal with the fundamental
problem, which is that under the policy, government officials are free
to search people's laptops and cellphones for any reason whatsoever."
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano yesterday framed the new
policy as an enhancement of oversight. "Keeping Americans safe in an
increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully screen
materials entering the United States," she said in a statement. "The
new directives announced today strike the balance between respecting
the civil liberties and privacy of all travelers while ensuring DHS
can take the lawful actions necessary to secure our borders."
For instance, searches conducted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection
officers should now generally take no more than 5 days, and no more
than 30 days for searches by Immigration and Customs Enforcement
special agents. The directives also require for the first time that
automated tools be developed to ensure the reliable tracking of
statistics relating to searches, and that audits be conducted
periodically to ensure the guidelines are being followed, officials
said.
Such measures drew praise from House Homeland Security Committee
Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who called the new policy "a major
step forward," and from Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), who
introduced legislation this year to strengthen protections for
travelers whose devices are searched.
But the civil liberties community was disappointed.
"Under the policy begun by Bush and now continued by Obama, the
government can open your laptop and read your medical records,
financial records, e-mails, work product and personal correspondence
-- all without any suspicion of illegal activity," said Elizabeth
Goitein, who leads the liberty and national security project at the
nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice.
Goitein, formerly a counsel to Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), said
the Bush policy itself "broke sharply" with previous Customs
directives, which required reasonable suspicion before agents could
read the contents of documents. Feingold last year introduced
legislation to restore the requirement.
Jack Riepe, spokesman for the Association of Corporate Travel
Executives, said the guidelines "still have many of the inherent
weaknesses" of the Bush-era policy.
Between October 2008 and Aug. 11, more than 221 million travelers
passed through CBP checkpoints. About 1,000 laptop searches were
performed, only 46 in-depth, the DHS said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...082704065.html 
"MASS-HACKER of U.S. Government Systems To Get Mere Slap On Wrist!UK Fights His Extradition!" 
Linear Mode
