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Gary McKinnon (born February 1966) is a Scottish systems administrator and hacker who was accused by a US prosecutor in 2002 of perpetrating the "biggest military computer hack of all time". McKinnon said that he was looking for evidence of free energy suppression and a cover-up of UFO activity and other technologies potentially useful to the public. On 16 October 2012, after a series of legal proceedings in Britain, then Home Secretary Theresa May blocked extradition to the United States.
US authorities stated he deleted critical files from operating systems, which shut down the United States Army's Military District of Washington network of 2000 computers for 24 hours. McKinnon also is alleged to have posted a notice on the military's website: "Your security is crap". After the September 11 attacks in 2001, he allegedly deleted weapons logs at the Earle Naval Weapons Station, rendering its network of 300 computers inoperable and paralyzing munitions supply deliveries for the US Navy's Atlantic Fleet. McKinnon was also accused of copying data, account files and passwords onto his own computer. US authorities stated that the cost of tracking and correcting the problems he caused was over $700,000.
While not admitting that it constituted evidence of destruction, McKinnon did admit leaving a threat on one computer:
US authorities stated that McKinnon was trying to downplay his own actions. A senior military officer at the Pentagon told The Sunday Telegraph:
In November 2002, McKinnon was Indictment by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. U.S. V. Gary McKinnon - text of Indictment (PDF). FindLaw.com. The indictment contained seven counts of computer-related crime, each of which carried a potential ten-year jail sentence.
If extradited to the US and charged, McKinnon would have faced up to 70 years in jail. He had also expressed fears that he could be sent to Guantanamo Bay. 'Hacker' extradition case reopens, BBC News, 14 February 2006 British 'hacker' fears Guantanamo, BBC News, 12 April 2006
McKinnon's barrister said that the could deny extradition if there was an abuse of process: "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."
The House of Lords rejected this argument, with the lead judgement (of Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood) holding that "the difference between the American system and our own is not perhaps so stark as McKinnon's argument suggests" and that extradition proceedings should "accommodate legal and cultural differences between the legal systems of the many foreign friendly states with whom the UK has entered into reciprocal extradition arrangements".
On 23 January 2009, McKinnon won permission from the High Court to apply for a judicial review against his extradition. "Hacker wins court review decision", BBC News, 23 January 2009. On 31 July 2009, the High Court announced that McKinnon had lost this appeal. McKinnon, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Home Affairs 2009 EWHC 2021 (Admin) (31 July 2009)
In August 2009, Gordon Brown attempted to negotiate a deal to allow McKinnon to serve in the UK any sentence he might receive in the US. The deal was rejected by the US government.
Mr McKinnon is accused of serious crimes. But there is also no doubt that he is seriously ill ... He has Asperger's syndrome, and suffers from depressive illness. Mr McKinnon's extradition would give rise to such a high risk of him ending his life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with Mr McKinnon's human rights.
She stated that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) would determine whether McKinnon should face trial before a British court. On 14 December, Keir Starmer, the DPP, and Mark Rowley, an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, announced that McKinnon would not be prosecuted in the United Kingdom, because of the difficulties involved in bringing a case against him and the likelihood he would be acquitted of any charge.
In November 2008, the rock group Marillion announced that it was ready to participate in a benefit concert in support of McKinnon's struggle to avoid extradition to United States. The organiser of the planned event was Ross Hemsworth, an English radio host. No date had been set as of November 2008. Many prominent individuals voiced support, including Sting, Trudie Styler, Julie Christie, David Gilmour, Graham Nash, Peter Gabriel, The Proclaimers, Bob Geldof, Chrissie Hynde, David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Stephen Fry, and Terry Waite. All proposed that, at least, he should be tried in the UK.
In August 2009, Glasgow newspaper The Herald reported that Scots entrepreneur Luke Heron would pay £100,000 towards McKinnon's legal costs in the event he was extradited to the US.
In a further article in The Herald, Joseph Gutheinz, Jr., a retired NASA Office of Inspector General Senior Special Agent, voiced his support for McKinnon. Gutheinz, who is also an American criminal defence attorney and former Member of the Texas Criminal Justice Advisory Committee on Offenders with Medical and Mental Impairments, said that he feared Gary McKinnon would not find justice in the US, because "the American judicial system turns a blind eye towards the needs of the mentally ill".
Web and print media across the UK were critical of the extradition.
Janis Sharp, McKinnon's mother, stood as an independent candidate in the 2010 general election in Blackburn in protest against the sitting Labour MP Jack Straw, who was Foreign Secretary when the extradition treaty was agreed. She finished last out of eight candidates with 0.38% of the vote.
On 20 July 2010, Tom Bradby, ITN's political editor, raised the Gary McKinnon issue with U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron in a joint White House press conference who responded that they had discussed it and were working to find an 'appropriate solution'.
In an interview televised on the BBC's Click programme, he stated of the Disclosure Project that "they are some very credible, relied-upon people, all saying yes, there is UFO technology, there's anti-gravity, there's free energy, and it's extraterrestrial in origin and they've captured spacecraft and reverse engineered it." He said he investigated a NASA photographic expert's claim that at the Johnson Space Center's Building 8, images were regularly cleaned of evidence of UFO craft, and confirmed this, comparing the raw originals with the "processed" images. He stated to have viewed a detailed image of "something not man-made" and "cigar shaped" floating above the northern hemisphere, and assuming his viewing would be undisrupted owing to the hour, he did not think of capturing the image because he was "bedazzled", and therefore did not think of securing it with the screen capture function in the software at the point when his connection was interrupted. The NASA Hacker , BBC Click
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