http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/16/mckinnon_law_lords/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/16/mckinnon_law_lords /print.html
Pentagon hacker vows to take extradition fight to Europe
Published Monday 16th June 2008 17:54 GMTGary McKinnon's legal team said they will take their fight against his extradition all the way to the European Court of Human Rights on Monday, as the highest court in England began deliberations on whether to turn him over to US authorities.
The London hacker now faces an anxious wait for the judgment on his latest appeal, which is expected to take about two weeks.
During a day-long session of legal nit-picking, five Law Lords heard McKinnon's barrister, David Pannick QC, argued that the US had abused process by trying to strong-arm his client into accepting extradition and pleading guilty.
Gary McKinnon at Infosec 2007
'Play by our rules'
Pannick told the hearing: "If the United States wish to use the processes of English courts to secure the extradition of an alleged offender then they must play by our rules."
It emerged that in exchange for compliance, US prosecutors offered to withdraw a threat to block any application for McKinnon to be repatriated to serve most of his time in a UK jail. This threat is central to his lawyers' claims of abuse of process.
The bargain offered by the US Embassy's Ed Gibson (who is now Microsoft UK's chief security adviser) for a guilty plea would reduce his sentence from eight-to-ten years, to between three and four years. Combined with the UK's more generous parole system, that would mean that McKinnon might have served only two years in prison.
In her evidence, McKinnon's solicitor Karen Todner said that in their correspondence the US had told her that failure to play ball would mean "all bets were off" and that repatriation to the UK "would not occur". This threat, charged McKinnon's team, "sought to impose pressure to accept extradition and plead guilty", and represented an unlawful abuse of the court process that was "disproportionate [and] reprehensible".
Prosecutors exaggerated their influence over the repatriation process, said Pannick, in a bid to secure McKinnon's co-operation, and that had "made it all the worse". Edward Fitzgerald QC, who provided supporting intervention at the hearing on behalf of the civil liberties charity Liberty, said: "What the prosecution [was] saying is 'I have immense powers and I will use them against you'."
McKinnon has admitted taking advantage of lax security in US systems to install covert software that gave him control of settings and access to files. He was looking for evidence of UFOs. He has not admitted causing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage, a claim at the heart of the US government's allegations.
Clare Montgomery QC, acting for the US government, disputed this, saying if McKinnon had refused to cooperate he would have still been considered for a return to the UK. "This was very close to the type of plea bargaining that might occur here... this was not a case of 'we [US prosecutors] can give or withold the right to transfer [to the UK]'" she told the Lords.
Montgomery also echoed comments from one of the Lords sitting, Baroness Hale, who had suggested that the deal offered to McKinnon might simply have been "the facts of life", rather than a threat, and that it offered him significant benefits. She scorned calls for Gary McKinnon to face trial in the UK, saying: "He must have appreciated as he hacked into American computers that he was committing an act that would have had repercussions in America."
On a knife-edge
In the Palace of Westiminster corridors after the hearing, the consensus among the gathered legal minds was that the case is poised on a knife-edge. Nevertheless, McKinnon's team were cautiously upbeat.
McKinnon himself attended only the morning session of the hearing, flanked by family and supporters. Win or lose, the saga is set to continue for some time.
Victory will override the extradition treaty between the US and UK, and mean the case goes all the way back to Magistrate's court. In that scenario, unlike during the process seen so far, judges will consider US evidence against McKinnon. The treaty has not been ratified by Congress so does not allow the UK to reciprocally extradite suspects from the US without evidence hearings.
Defeat would be a major blow, but McKinnon's team said outside the hearing that it would be by no means the last stand. The precedent set by the European Court of Human Rights in the Babar Ahmad case (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/27/bbc_al_qaeda _internet/) makes a challenge there likely, said solicitor Karen Todner.
And that can take years. ®
NOTE: Though Gary McKinnon himself has consistently denied that he was the victim of computer entrapment by the U.S. military intelligence, there are many aspects of his story which appear to sustain the profile of an entrapment. It remains an anolmaly why his legal defense team has steadfastly chosen to avoid exploring this obvious line of defense.
EXOPOLITICS.COM
June 13 2008
http://www.itbusinessedge.com
[Quote]
"If this next attempt fails, McKinnon says he will go to the European Court of Human Rights. But due to the backlog of cases in that court, his extradition could proceed."
British Hacker Continues to Fight Extradition
Posted by Kara Reeder on June 13, 2008 at 9:05 am
British hacker Gary McKinnon
is preparing for his final UK appeal to fight extradition to the U.S.
McKinnon has been charged in U.S. District Court for the Eastern
District of Virginia and faces up to 60 years in prison.
Last year, we reported how McKinnon illegally accessed the computers of
the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Department of Defense and NASA looking for evidence of a UFO cover-up.
Even though McKinnon claims he had no malicious intent, the U.S. says
his intrusions disrupted computer networks that were critical to
operations after 9/11.
Infoworld reports that McKinnon has already lost an
appeal in London’s High Court. If this next attempt fails, McKinnon
says he will go to the European Court of Human Rights. But due to the
backlog of cases in that court, his extradition could proceed.
===
http://www.heise-online.co.uk
McKinnon's last ditch appeal to be heard by Lords
Monday June 16 will be a make or break day for Gary McKinnon. His
appeal will be heard by the UK's highest Court against extradition to
the US on charges relating to penetration of NASA and US Defense
Department computers between February 2001 and March 2002. The
Americans alleged that his activities hampered national security
measures in the aftermath of 9/11 and estimated that he caused damage
valued at around $700,000. That sum opens up the possibility of a 60
year sentence at worst.
Arrested in 2002 in one of the NHTCU's
early successes, the London ex-sysadmin has always claimed that
although he did break into the computers he caused no damage, but
merely nosed around among records relating to UFO sightings. He has
also maintained that he was never a master hacker, but found numerous
administrative accounts on US government computers with default – or no
– password. However he cannot use either of these arguments on Monday.
The Law Lords can only hear matters relating to points of law or abuse
of legal process, so McKinnon has had to restrict his appeal to the
apparent lack of ratification for the extradition treaty the US is
relying on. He also maintains that the process has been abused via
threats of extreme severity on the part of the US if he did not
co-operate with them. He claims that on one occasion he was told the US
"wants to see him fry".
He was apparently offered a plea bargain with a four year sentence
attached, but refused the offer as they would not put it in writing.
Other inducements to co-operate have apparently included an unsigned note from the US Embassy,
presented at McKinnon's first extradition hearing, claimed to be a
guarantee that McKinnon would not be tried under Military Order Number
One – used against suspected terrorists to try them under military law,
or hold them indefinitely without trial. His defence argued it was not
legally binding as it was unsigned. There have been rumours that the US
might incarcerate McKinnon at Guantanamo Bay.
In view of the contentious nature of McKinnon's allegations concerning
abuse of process, the US lawyers may challenge his evidence on Monday.
The Law Lords would then have the option of referring the case back to
Bow Street Magistrates Court, where McKinnon's original extradition
hearing took place.
McKinnon gets two hours to present his appeal on Monday, and must then
wait around three weeks for a decision. If the Law Lords decide against
him he says he will take his case to the European Court of Human
Rights. However the backlog in that court is so great that McKinnon
would have long been resident in the US before his case could come up
for hearing.
===
US miliary systems trusted hacker Gary McKinnon
- Author:
- Ian Grant
- Posted:
- 16:51 13 Jun 2008
- Topics:
- Computer Hardware
Self-confessed hacker Gary McKinnon goes to the House of Lords on Monday to fight against extradition to the US.
By his side will be human rights watchdog Liberty and David Pannick, a specialist public and human right QC who has argued many times before the lords.
Opposing him will be the Crown Prosecution Service,
acting for the US government. British taxpayers will pay both the CPS's
costs and much of McKinnon's. The total so far is estimated to be close
to £900,000.
The law lords will decide whether US prosecutors unfairly tried to
coerce McKinnon into a plea bargain. If they judge that the officials'
actions were an abuse of the extradition process, McKinnon will not be
extradited, says McKinnon's attorney, Karen Todner.
US prosecutors accuse McKinnon of hacking into nearly 100 federal computer systems and causing damage worth £350,000 to systems and data files.
McKinnon admits to gaining access to various US government computer
systems, but denies causing any damage or disruption on the scale
claimed.
The former National High Tech Crime Unit
arrested McKinnon in 2002, three years after he began looking for
evidence of extra-terrestrial beings and technologies on US computers.
McKinnon was obsessed with finding evidence that the US government was
hiding alien technology that would provide free energy. Had he found
it, he "was going to blow it to the world's press", he said.
It was child's play to get into US military systems, McKinnon said.
Many were running Netbios over TCP/IP with blank or default passwords,
which allowed him to access-administrator privileges.
He admitted writing scripts to harvest passwords, and to using password crackers to get into more protected systems.
Gaining secret access was clearly seductive. McKinnon speaks of
"megalomaniacal" feelings when he was deep inside systems. But he was
not alone, he said. By querying who else was connected and
investigating IP addresses, he found Chinese, European and other
nationals visiting the same computer systems. "At first I thought they
might be offsite contract workers, but that was not the case," he said.
Once he was inside a network, especially a military network, McKinnon
found that other computer systems considered him a trusted user. This
was how he was able to get into the Pentagon's network. "It was really
by accident," he says.
The most secret system McKinnon said that he hacked was China Lake, a facility that develops airborne weapons for the US Navy and Marine Corps.
He found little evidence of other-world natives or technology, except
for a spreadsheet that listed "non-terrestrial officers, ships' names
and goods movements", and a picture of what he said was a UFO with a
perfectly smooth surface.
Would he do it again? "Never. I would go through legitimate channels such as the Freedom of Information Act," he says.
The former systems administrator supported himself by driving a
forklift truck as he waited for the legal process to run its course.
The work dried up as employers grew unhappy with the attention the
media focused on him. He now lives on benefits.
McKinnon says National Hi-Tech Crime Unit officers told him then a
British court would probably give him six months' community service,
which he was prepared to accept. If extradited and convicted, he faces
60 or more years in a US jail.
Hacker advises on how to protect your network
Gary McKinnon, who is fighting extradition to the US to face hacking
charges, offers CIOs and network administrators a few words of advice
on network protection.
The advice is based on his own experiences of unauthorised access to US federal, defence and space systems.
1. Make sure your PCs run only in business hours, ie. 9 to 5.
2. Do not have blank or default passwords for local administrator privileges.
3. If you set up a password on a PC for a local administrator, make
sure each PC has a different password for that administrator.
4. Do not put unprotected files on the network that describe what each machine on the network does.
5. Do not use Netbios over TCP/IP.
6. Do not run Windows.
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