Technology | 2009.06.16
If Labour can't protect people like Gary McKinnon, it really stands for nothing | Duncan Campbell
Alan Johnson must act: anyone who believes in the principles of justice would be alarmed by this state bullying of a hacker
This morning the high court in London will be the setting for the latest – and perhaps last – act in a drama that has been running for nearly eight years. Its leading character is Gary McKinnon , a self-confessed computer nerd and, despite all the other stories swirling around the media this week, his fate should be of the utmost concern to anyone who believes in the principles of justice and the protection of the vulnerable against the bullying power of the state.
McKinnon is facing extradition to the United States to stand trial for hacking into the computer systems of the defence department and Nasa eight years ago, in an eccentric search for evidence of the existence of UFOs. During the course of his trespass, conducted from a bedroom in a flat in north London, he left the odd message, such as "your security system is crap". Although he agreed to plead guilty to computer misuse offences in the UK, where his punishment would probably have been a fine and community service, he is being zealously pursued by US authorities still locked in a 9/11 mindset over "cyber-terrorism" and embarrassed by the ease with which he entered the systems.
The judicial review taking place over the next two days will examine evidence about McKinnon\'s medical condition, most notably the fact that he has been diagnosed by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen , the country\'s expert in the field, as suffering from Asperger\'s syndrome . The review was granted because the court decided that the then home secretary, Jacqui Smith, had failed to take the diagnosis sufficiently into consideration when she refused to reconsider granting the extradition request and failed to see the significance of his condition in terms of the effect that incarceration in a US jail would have on someone suffering from it.
As anyone who has met him knows, McKinnon is a sweet-natured, rather naive man possessed of a remarkable gift. Any half-smart administration on either side of the Atlantic would have spotted this and asked for his expert advice on computer security. What may have seemed to the US authorities as serious and sinister in 2002 can now be seen for what it is – a slightly irritating infiltration of a system requiring some repair work and costing nothing like the fanciful sums of $800,000 dreamed up by an embarrassed Pentagon. He has not reoffended or sought to hide.
There are major issues here. McKinnon is not accused of violence or drug trafficking or looting the financial system. The American criminal justice process is a roulette wheel and no one quite knows where it will spin in a case like this. His case has been barely covered in the US, and a jury there may well believe the outlandish claims that the prosecution will make about the damage done to national security. If convicted, he would find himself in a jail portrayed as a cyber-terrorist who damaged the US and in the company of prisoners who may not all be regular readers of the Guardian and may thus not know what a bogus and overstated case has been made against him. Guantánamo Bay taught the world a lesson that, when it comes to such cases in the US, justice and the rule of the law rank a poor second and third to notions of state security.
Anyone who knows all the details of McKinnon\'s case is appalled that it has dragged on so long and that the British government has not intervened, at the very least, to ensure that he is guaranteed immediate bail, if extradited, and immediate return to the UK to serve any sentence.
He has attracted an impressive and eclectic list of supporters: Terry Waite , Lord Carlile , Boris Johnson , more than 100 MPs from all the major parties, the National Autistic Society, and a group of artists and musicians, including David Gilmour, Sting, the Proclaimers and Jane Asher, who have all called on the home secretary to act. Jacqui Smith could easily have intervened but failed to do so. Now it may be up to Alan Johnson, her successor.
There has been much breast-beating recently by senior Labour figures over what they and the party stand for and why they entered politics. If they do not stand for the protection of the vulnerable against the oppressive and dishonest use of power, they stand for nothing.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]/08/gary-mckinnon-hacker-court
