LONDON, May 10: A court on Wednesday recommended that a British computer hacker be extradited to the United States to face charges of causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to Pentagon and other computers.
The case of Gary McKinnon, which a US prosecutor calls the ‘biggest military hack of all time’, is expected to be passed to Home Secretary John Reid for a final decision following the recommendation by District Judge Nicholas Evans.
Speaking outside Bow Street Magistrates’ Court in central London, Mr McKinnon and his lawyer Karen Todner said they would appeal to the high court if the home secretary approves his extradition.
Gary McKinnon, a 40-year-old unemployed British computer systems administrator, said he was searching for evidence of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) when he hacked into US computers.
“My intention was never to disrupt security. The fact that I logged on when there was no password meant that there was no security to begin with,” said Mr McKinnon, who was released on conditional bail.
Mr McKinnon denied the damages he was alleged to have caused, claiming it was impossible for one person to bring down an entire computer system, though he has admitted to ‘unauthorised access’ to US computers, which he regretted.
A US indictment alleges he deleted material from computers at US naval weapon station Earle at a critical time following the Sept 11, 2001, attacks, shutting down the base’s entire network of more than 300 computers.
Mr McKinnon and Mr Todner feared he could be held indefinitely without trial along with hundreds of terror suspects in the US Navy’s prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“As one person has said to me, most people in Guantanamo have not been proved to be terrorists but allegedly I directly attacked the military,” an anxious McKinnon said.
But the US government said it had given assurances to the British government that it would not make Mr McKinnon subject to ‘Military Order Number One’, which allows the US president to detain suspects indefinitely.
After having received assurance for Mr McKinnon to be tried a federal court in Virginia, Judge Evans said that ‘any real — as opposed to fanciful – risk’ of his ending up in Guantanamo was removed.
The district judge also rejected claims under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights that his right to private and family life should prevent his extradition.
“I readily accept, if convicted in the US, the probable sentence is likely to be appreciably harsher than, in comparable circumstances, it would be in the UK,” he told the court.
“It must be obvious to any defendant that if you choose to commit a crime in a foreign country, you run the risk of being prosecuted in that country.”
Mr McKinnon was indicted in Nov 2002 by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, on seven counts of computer fraud and related activity, the US justice department said on its website.
If found guilty in the United States, he faces on each count a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a 250,000 dollar fine, it said.
Using software available for download on the Internet, Mr McKinnon allegedly hacked into computer networks operated by Nasa, the US Army, US Navy, Department of Defence and the US Air Force in 2001 and 2002.
The estimated loss to the various military organisations, Nasa and the private businesses was approximately 900,000 dollars, it said.
Mr McKinnon was first arrested in 2002 before action against him was discontinued. He was arrested again in London in June last year by the extradition unit of the Metropolitan
