{"id":1109,"date":"2012-10-18T00:57:08","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T00:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=1109"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:54:06","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:54:06","slug":"u-k-ends-10-year-extradition-battle-of-hacker-gary-mckinnon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/u-k-ends-10-year-extradition-battle-of-hacker-gary-mckinnon\/","title":{"rendered":"U.K. Ends 10 Year Extradition Battle of Hacker Gary McKinnon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, October 17, 2012, by Agnieszka Zmuda
\nU.K. Home Secretary Theresa May<\/a> announced on Tuesday that British hacker Gary McKinnon will not be extradited to the U.S. on human rights grounds.\u00a0\u00a0 Four years ago, McKinnon was diagnosed<\/a> with Asperger\u2019s syndrome<\/a> and depression after losing an appeal.\u00a0 Two years later, a High Court judge, along with psychiatric examiners, determined that McKinnon was at risk of suicide if extradited.
\nAccording to the Guardian<\/em><\/a>, this is the first time that an extradition has been blocked since the signing of the Extradition Act of 2003 between the U.S. and U.K.
\nU.S. Federal prosecutors accused McKinnon of hacking into more than 90 unclassified U.S. government systems<\/a> from February 2001 to March 2002.\u00a0 During those alleged invasions, McKinnon crashed certain systems, causing $900,000 in damages.\u00a0 McKinnon is also alleged to have left a message on a hacked Army computer, saying<\/a>, \u201cU.S. foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days.\u00a0 It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year . . . I am SOLO. \u00a0I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.\u201d\u00a0
\nMcKinnon, labeled<\/a> by U.S. authorities as the \u201cbiggest military computer hack of all time,\u201d admitted to the hacking in 2009, but denied doing any damage.\u00a0 His lawyers claim that his only intention was to cause \u201ctemporary impairment<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 According to the BBC<\/a>, McKinnon said he was on a \u201cmoral crusade\u201d to prove a UFO cover-up by the U.S.\u00a0
\nUnder the federal sentencing guidelines, McKinnon was looking at serving anywhere from just six months to six-and-a-half years. In April 2003<\/a>, he rejected a written plea offer for six to twelve months in a U.S. low security prison, followed by a six-month parole back in the U.K.
\nIt wasn\u2019t until November 2004<\/a>, that the U.S. formally requested his extradition.\u00a0 In 2003, the UK and U.S. signed an extradition treaty.\u00a0 According to a statement<\/a> by the Home Office, \u201cThe information that must be provided by both the\u00a0United States\u00a0and the United Kingdom is effectively the same. The United Kingdom must demonstrate \u2018probable cause\u2019 to the United States courts, while the United States must demonstrate \u2018reasonable suspicion\u2019 to ours.\u201d But the ACLU and others don\u2019t view this treaty as being equal at all, but rather as being \u201clopsided<\/a>\u201d against British citizens.
\nThis has led to years of legal battles and appeals, during which McKinnon garnered huge support from the ACLU<\/a>, Britain, as well as some unlikely famous figures<\/a>, including Peter Gabriel, Sting<\/a>, Bob Geldof, Chrissie Hynde, and Pink Floyd\u2019s David Gilmour.\u00a0 According to the Wired<\/em><\/a>, McKinnon gained such support because \u201che\u2019s seen as the hapless victim of an overreaching American government and an unbalanced extradition treaty.\u201d
\nNow that extradition is off the table, McKinnon is facing possible prosecution<\/a> in the U.K.\u00a0 As for future extraditions, May is planning on taking away the very same power from the Home Secretary position that allowed her to block this extradition and giving it to the High Court.\u00a0 According to the Guardian<\/a>, May announced the future introduction of a \u201cforum bar<\/a>\u201d to balance out the treaty.\u00a0 However, as McKinnon\u2019s family celebrates this decision, other families<\/a> of extradited British citizens are seeing this as a double standard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, October 17, 2012, by Agnieszka Zmuda U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May announced on Tuesday that British hacker Gary McKinnon will not be extradited to the U.S. on human rights grounds.\u00a0\u00a0 Four years ago, McKinnon was diagnosed with Asperger\u2019s syndrome and depression after losing an appeal.\u00a0 Two years later, a High Court judge, along with …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7677,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions\/7677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}