Yes this is the crux of the issue. No one doubts that if you hack a government computer and get caught, then you are going to pay the price - as almost certainly, will Gary.

But, will Gary’s punishment fit the crime? Or will Gary be used as a warning and deterrent to others? And if the latter, will he be subject to an over-inflated sentence that outweighs his crime just to scare off others?

I strongly suspect the latter.

This is what it should come down to: if it goes to trial, Gary should at least stand trial in the UK (where he lives, and where he committed the crime, on a UK computer); the US should then provide all of the evidence to the UK judge and the UK Government and allow them to decide on the validity of the evidence - rather than just assert such evidence exists, as is the case right now; and if found guilty of something, he should face his sentence in the UK.

As someone who works in I.T. and has had to put up with the problem of keeping out hackers I know that they are capable of some quite sophisticated attacks. In this case the U.S. has been embarassed by their total lack of security.

It is for these reasons that Gary will be extradited and tried to the fullest extent of U.S. law.

I fully agree. He committed a crime on UK soil, he is a UK citizen, and should be tried in the UK.

What a lot of people don’t know is that the US Government have actually not provided any evidence to the British Governnment of a crime having been committed.

Rather, they have simply told the British Government what they claim he did in terms of damage etc, and on the basis of being told (rather than evidence presented) the extradition process began.

That is both highly controversial and very disturbing.

I should stress, none of this makes anything that McKinnon did right or that it should be endorsed.

However, people who think that McKinnon should get everything he deserves, should think of this: what would be the response if a US citizen hacked a Russian Government computer, and then the Russians demanded the hacker’s extradition, provided no actual evidence to the US Government of the damage done, and then the US arranged for the person to be shipped to Moscow to stand sentence?

There would be outrage.

If McKinnon did what it he claimed he did (in terms of damage to US Government computers), then that may come out in trial. But I find it astonishing that this aspect of the case was the crux of elevating it from just hacking; yet no evidence was seemingly needed of this to convince the UK Government to hand him over.

Notably, this was tried with Matthew Bevan too, in 1997 who did something similar.

He was arrested on hacking charges, and then the US Government decided that Bevan had “impaired” their systems.

Again, no evidence was presented of that - ever. The difference with Bevan was that he was tried in the UK; and when the British judge told the US representatives that he wanted to see the actual evidence of impairment, what happened?

This is what happened: the case collapsed because the evidence was never forthcoming.

I wrote all about the Bevan caper in my “On the Trail of the Saucer Spies” book, having interviewed him extensively. It’s a very weird saga.

You can say what you want about and against this guy. I do not support what he did, but I do agree with this. He should be brought to trial in the United Kingdom. This is rampant globalism again and it is just the sort of thing we should be trying to avoid as sovereign nations.

Jess