Poll: Should Gary McKinnon be extradited to the US for hacking?

Should he?

  • Yes

    Votes: 232 19.5%

  • No

    Votes: 823 69.3%

  • I don't like poles

    Votes: 132 11.1%
  • Total voters
    1,187
Tute said:
He'd be treated like someone with Aspergers if he was prepared to admit it and get help with the condition rather than going on a hacking crusade against foreign governments.

Alas it seems Mr McKinnon knew better. :)
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I'll just highlight that for how ridiculous it is and move on then :D
 
Tute said:
You mean like Gary McKinnon?

There's some sweet irony for you. :)
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I wasn't attempting to psycho-analyse - I was just highlighting the fact that many people have no experience of the reality of aspergers and the baring it should have on this case... a point your only reinforcing.
 
So come on then "expert" - what do you suggest to stop people with Aspergers getting into problems like this in the future?

Or if we put our fingers in our ears and shout loudly does the problem go away? :D
 
Tute said:
So come on then "expert" - what do you suggest to stop people with Aspergers getting into problems like this in the future?

Or if we put our fingers in our ears and shout loudly does the problem go away? :D
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The only thing you could do is breach their human rights, which isn't going to happen. That means because you can't stop them doing things, they should still be accountable for it, just like everyone else.

Its interesting that the human rights court denied his plea to stay and get charged in the UK and their experts have a clearer idea of what do than anyone on here :P
 
I'm not suggesting anything - I'm not qualified to proscribe any particular method or treatment... where the condition is recognised there are systems in place... some of them manage to live pretty much normal lives and over time get a handle on the condition - others need constant attention and are dependant on their parents most of their lives incapable of fully self-sustained living without someone else acting as a compass.

Given the right care and guidance most of them can live within the prevailing social normality without any major problems - you can't lock people up on the vague possibility they might commit a crime or we'd all be in jail.

Theres always the possibility this might happen again - but if we recognise the condition we can learn to accommodate these people in society without one dimensional prejudices.
 
That's not really what I asked. I'm not qualified to say either but I gave my thoughts. Sorry Rroff but it looks like to me that you don't have any idea what to do about it, so you're just going to hope for the best.

And that doesn't really help anyone.
 
I said all you can do is recognise the condition and try and give them the guidance and support to prevent them getting into such a state in the first place... unfortunatly you can't second guess every eventuality and you certaintly can't breach their human rights and lock them up and throw away the key on the vague possibility.

They should be held accountable to a degree for their actions - but its not right to just leave them at the mercy of an institution that has shown little understanding of their condition.


EDIT: Further more - as I said previously - many of them begin to realise at some point that they can get away with almost anything and blame it on their condition - its possible that the human rights courts made a judgement call on this aspect and consider him fit to stand trial fully accountable - but thats not really what I was getting at... what I'm saying is there isn't enough recognition of the condition and blindly trying him as a normal person would be a massive injustice.
 
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Human rights can't act on his behalf as they couldn't take the internet from him in the first place, as that now suppoesdly is a basic human right lol. Due to that he is accountable for his actions. If he did indeed take out 300 computers in a naval base thats actually quite disturbing and it also mentions that it was throughout 2001 AND 2002. At the end of the day, the guy is small fry in a stream of salmon and the big bear is waiting :P
 
It is quite distubring if he hacked a naval base by a simple brute force perl script :( any decent auth system should be locking out multiple login fails from a single IP and flag multiple login failures above mean over the whole system... not to mention never having blank or default passwords :(
 
Rroff said:
It is quite distubring if he hacked a naval base by a simple brute force perl script :( any decent auth system should be locking out multiple login fails from a single IP and flag multiple login failures above mean over the whole system... not to mention never having blank or default passwords :(
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I think its disturbing he knew how to do that in the first place lol
 
Which part? brute forcing passwords on systems without active anti-hacking measures is childs play even in perl.

At the simplest level you don't need much more then:

use IO::Socket::INET;

$sock=IO::Socket::INET->new(PeerAddr => $ARGV[0],PeerPort => $ARGV[1],Proto => 'tcp');

...

while ($sock) {

blah
 
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I wonder if a us citizen was in this position, would the yanks be so quick to extradite, imho, gary mckinnon should be given a job with the nsa/cia, help them to protect their systems. After all the fbi gave frank abignale jr a job investigating checque fraud, he was one of the foremost checque fraudsters in history.
 
setter said:
I wonder if a us citizen was in this position, would the yanks be so quick to extradite, imho, gary mckinnon should be given a job with the nsa/cia, help them to protect their systems. After all the fbi gave frank abignale jr a job investigating checque fraud, he was one of the foremost checque fraudsters in history.
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He does not posses the experience or ability to help them protect their systems - its pure fluke and a little blind persistence really he got in at all... your average kiddie scripter could spent the rest of their life carrying out similiar attacks and never make a dent.
 
tbh this situation is a little like watching a small child pretent to drive your car (with the engine off and keys not in the ignition) only this time they somehow managed to start the engine - more by luck than judgement.
 
Ahh, i see, i just seen a bit about his medical condition, reminds me of the film mercury rising. the autistic kid cracks an intelligence code.
 
Many of them are brilliant at unique things - often numbers - one of the ones I know can tell you instantly what day of the week any numerical date was on even 100s of years into the past with 100% accuracy. i.e. can tell you from your dob that you were born on a wednesday or whatever.

A lot of OS kernel mode drivers, etc. are the work of people with conditions involving OCD.

In this case he was driven to find out info on UFOs - given enough time and if that particular attack hadn't worked he would probably have gone on to specialise in whatever particular branch of hacking was required to finally get that info (if it existed).
 
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I suppose Rroff, when we think of autism, we automatically think of rain man, (great performance by hoffman) but i remember seeing a program about a kid from england who could draw amazing detailed sketches of cityscapes just by having a glance or two at them, iirc he drew the house of commons after seeing them on a helicopter trip, he done the sketch and didnt miss a single window pane, in one of the tabloids recently he sketched the skyline of new york in detail that local architects and city planners were astounded by.
 
I think that him having a 70 year sentence is very harsh.

We should be locking up rapists,murderers and Thieves for that long not some guy who sat at his computer and hacked into computers.

At worst he should be banned from using anything that could allow him to be able to hack into the computers.
The US are just embarrassed about the whole situation considering they have been going on about national security since 9/11 and I think they just want to make an example of the guy which I think is wrong.
As I said punish him in a different way ban him from using a computer, smart phone etc. not send him to prison for 70 years. Hell the killers of Jamie Buldger didnt even get a quarter of that sentence and look at what they did (and don't tell me that they were only children. I knew the difference between right and wrong at their age so why should they be any different)
 
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