UFO Hacker Gary McKinnon extradition to US blocked by UK Home Secretary.

[PLAYSWITHMACHINES]

the depraved cabal of necrotic geriatrics,

Love it, sounds like our own house of parliament LOL..
Z may be right, i find it hard to believe that NAZA left anything THAT secret lying around.
That sort of stuff doesn't get posted on the net....at least a visible one...

I will say one thing about haqckers;
The gov. is so busy hacking into our lives, tracing calls & emails etc, now & then causing a site to crash....
We need people who can play them at their own game.

[Littleenki]

Well, as it seems there arent many useful things on wikileaks, and Gary didnt have access to any real data...my guess is they are both being used as scapegoats or bait for certain folks to come out of their cocoon and expose themselves.

Another form of disinfo. Diversions.

And, hey Zorgon, Ill trade you some old swarovski crystal rosaries for that dino egg!

Cheers!

[Pimander]

I'm pretty surprised at some of the comments.

1. We don't know what Gary McKinnon saw.  He has not told all because he thought he might need "insurance" (like Lazar) and was obviously told what he could discuss - which also means he was allowed to say what he did IMO.

2.  If he saw nothing then why the massive interest in him by the US authorities?  As Gary said, there were people all over the world accessing the computers.  Somebody DID MAKE A MISTAKE at the DoD end, again in my opinion.

3.  The American government aren't just portrayed as international bullies, they are international bullies (as are the UK are to a lesser extent).   FACT!

4.  Yes, us Brits have every right to be proud that our government is standing up to bullies.  The extradition treaty was signed just after 9/11 and was unfairly weighted in favour of the understandably grief stricken, but oh so opportunistic, USA.

5.  Gary did not hack into the computers, he accessed them.  He was not a US citizen or on US soil so committed no crime in the USA in the first place.

6.  He did probably break UK law.  Gary admits this and will now, rightly, be dealt with by the UK justice system for a crime committed in the UK, as a UK citizen.


As for hackers being all bad.  Complete crap.

In an era when government secrecy keeps free energy technology from the citizens that paid for its development, we need people with the balls to find out what they have.  Hacking for information (not financial or personal gain) is exactly the same thing that motivates researchers like us to look for holes in the elaborate webs of secrecy and misdirection.  There are certain crimes that I'd be tempted to commit to access that information - including hacking.  If you would not, then perhaps courage is something you lack.  Some people are too right wing for their own good.  Think about it! 

If Gary did see something important, public comments like hackers should be shot have already made my attempts to get Gary's confidence practically impossible.  Remember when we regressed Bob Lazar.  Is that likely to happen now? 


ETA:  I am not an anti-American.  I love a lot about you guys and envy your constitution (although I am shocked how often your President and Gov't are allowed to break it or the Bill of Rights).  Many of my criticisms of the US gov't apply to the UK gov't too.  However, we have a better track record regarding how we treat foreigners and justice.  I am considering emigrating to the USA Canada or Oz/NZ so the fact is, I love you really.

[Amaterasu]

As for hackers being all bad.  Complete crap.

In an era when government secrecy keeps free energy technology from the citizens that paid for its development, we need people with the balls to find out what they have.  Hacking for information (not financial or personal gain) is exactly the same thing that motivates researchers like us to look for holes in the elaborate webs of secrecy and misdirection.  There are certain crimes that I'd be tempted to commit to access that information - including hacking.  If you would not, then perhaps courage is something you lack.  Some people are too right wing for their own good.  Think about it! 

Thank You, Pim.  I was casting about trying to find these very words!  Yes, hacking for personal gain or doing damage is reprehensible.  Hacking Our servants' machines to find that which They hide from Us and for which We paid...  Whole 'nother story!

And Gary surely did not hack to do damage or gain anything personally.  I will now admit I am glad He will not be thrown to the wolves.

[petrus4]

As for hackers being all bad.  Complete crap.

As someone who won't necessarily claim to be a hacker, but who probably does consider themselves (at least at times) vaguely hackish...

The Jargon File (which is, at least according to some, a fairly large tome of what used to be hacker vocabulary) includes both the words hacker and cracker.  The media generally mis-defines the term hacker, occasionally deliberately.  From the Jargon File itself:-

hacker: n.

    [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]

    1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users' Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.

    2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.

    3. A person capable of appreciating hack value.

    4. A person who is good at programming quickly.

    5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in 'a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.)

    6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example.

    7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.

    8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence password hacker, network hacker. The correct term for this sense is cracker.

The definition of cracker:-

cracker: n.

    One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of hacker (q.v., sense 8}. An earlier attempt to establish worm in this sense around 1981--82 on Usenet was largely a failure.

    Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion against the theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. The neologism "cracker" in this sense may have been influenced not so much by the term "safe-cracker" as by the non-jargon term "cracker", which in Middle English meant an obnoxious person (e.g., "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?" — Shakespeare's King John, Act II, Scene I) and in modern colloquial American English survives as a barely gentler synonym for "white trash".

    While it is expected that any real hacker will have done some playful cracking and knows many of the basic techniques, anyone past larval stage is expected to have outgrown the desire to do so except for immediate, benign, practical reasons (for example, if it's necessary to get around some security in order to get some work done).

    Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom than the mundane reader misled by sensationalistic journalism might expect. Crackers tend to gather in small, tight-knit, very secretive groups that have little overlap with the huge, open poly-culture this lexicon describes; though crackers often like to describe themselves as hackers, most true hackers consider them a separate and lower form of life. An easy way for outsiders to spot the difference is that crackers use grandiose screen names that conceal their identities. Hackers never do this; they only rarely use noms de guerre at all, and when they do it is for display rather than concealment.

    Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers than breaking into someone else's has to be pretty losing. Some other reasons crackers are looked down on are discussed in the entries on cracking and phreaking. See also samurai, dark-side hacker, and hacker ethic. For a portrait of the typical teenage cracker, see warez d00dz.

I do not consider Gary McKinnon a cracker.  It's possible that his activity was a normal part of larval stage activity, as mentioned; I've gone through that phase, and it is an entirely normal part of hackish infancy, as ESR describes.  It's also possible that he was acting from vigilante motives; I don't know.

As an aside, Julian Assange is what is sometimes known as a grey hat; someone who is involved in security, and occasionally does openly destructive things, while more commonly engaging in beneficial acts.  As the term implies, it describes someone who could be described as having a Neutral alignment.  Assange has the typical psychological profile associated with grey hats; he is extremely arrogant.

The one thing which both of these men have in common, is that they violated the psychological sense of universal or global sovereignty, more commonly known as American exceptionalism, which is traditional among the more degenerate/psychopathic elements of the American government. 

That is the real reason why the American government is prepared to act as relentlessly and tenaciously as it is, in order to capture both men.  McKinnon has not been hunted to the degree that he has because of any specific information that he might have; his real crime was a violation of the American sense of national vulnerability, and the same for Assange. 

The archetypical American national profile, is one of of both chronic paranoia and insecurity; and to a large extent, this is an outgrowth of the country's systemic white supremacist racism.  White Americans tend (whether consciously or unconsciously) to view themselves as the epitome of the human species, and said self-perception probably reaches its' most pathological degree within the Marine Corps.  The only real difference between the Ku Klux Klan and most of the mainstream American population, is that the Klan openly and formally express, what most Americans will not allow themselves to admit that they also think.

It was also this which prompted the annihilation of Iraq, and the degree of torture of Iraqis and Afghans which occurred within Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.  Its' national Superman complex and belief in its' divine right to rule the planet, is the American government's (and to a lesser extent, also that of the domestic population) main psychological vulnerability, and violation of such is the main thing that will cause them to become literally berserk, with Iraq being the most prominent example of the end result of said rage. 

It is my awareness of this, which has caused me to believe that Julian Assange in particular is quite literally a dead man walking, at this point.  Men like Lieberman will not stop until they kill him.  Truman didn't drop the nuclear bombs on Japan because they would not surrender; they were petitioning for surrender before the bombs were dropped.  Truman ordered them dropped as an act of retaliation for Pearl Harbour; as an example of the American belief that while it is perfectly acceptable for any and every other nation on the planet to be utterly destroyed if need be, American territory is sacrosanct, and must never be touched.

This is not intended as a personal attack on the American members of this forum; you think the way you do in this regard because your government wants you to do so, and it has employed its' intelligence system to train you from birth to think that way.  It makes you easier for them to control, and it also makes you more willing to fight the wars that they continually want to start.

ETA:  I am not an anti-American.  I love a lot about you guys and envy your constitution (although I am shocked how often your President and Gov't are allowed to break it or the Bill of Rights).

My own loathing of the American government, should not be interpreted as dislike of Americans themselves.  Quite the contrary, in fact.  I believe that domestic Americans have a moral imperative to dislike their government to a far greater degree than I do.

[Amaterasu]

Here's a write-up of an interview with Gary:

http://paranormalis.com/threads/the-nerd-who-saw-too-much.4150/


PIMANDER NOTE:  The article is slightly inaccurate.  Gary McKinnon did not hack into Pentagon computer systems.  He got into DoD and NASA systems I believe.  He says that Pentagon systems were as secure as the British MoD systems so he could not get in.

[Pimander]

Hacker bashing is just another excuse for the Government to take away your freedoms.

FBI: Hackers Are The New Al-Qaeda

[Amaterasu]

VERY true, Pim!

[PLAYSWITHMACHINES]

The extradition treaty was signed just after 9/11 and was unfairly weighted in favour of the understandably grief stricken, but oh so opportunistic, USA.

Hear hear!

As for hackers being all bad.  Complete crap.

There are so-called white-hat hackers, they do a lot of good
One of them showed me how my internet banking could be compromised, told me not to do it.
He was right.
This was the same guy who as part of a team, shut down an AT&T satellite for a few days, because AT&T had tried to fleece some people over their telephone bills, the hackers heard it, & took action.
That's got to be worth something........ok so a few people couldn't make that connection to the USA, but it cost AT&T thousands in lost revenues....

Hacker bashing is just another excuse for the Government to take away your freedoms.

Yes.

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

Sorry, hackers are scum of the earth!

[biggles]

Rock, your younger than I am, be nice to us elderly ladies.  lol

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

younger? how old do you think I am?

[biggles]

Well I was born on 25 March, 1954.  I'd say you are a tad younger.

[Amaterasu]

3.  The American government aren't just portrayed as international bullies, they are international bullies (as are the UK are to a lesser extent).   FACT!

Yes, Pim.  I know.  I was just amused by the fact that a "news program" gave them that portrayal.  (Especially knowing it's a gatekeeper corp...)

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

Well I was born on 25 March, 1954.  I'd say you are a tad younger.

Lol ... Try 16 Jan 1950!