Always be suspicious when has-been ‘celebrities’ join forces with politicians to campaign for something. Especially when the something in question has been reduced to a black-and-white, good versus-evil protest with political agendas thrown in. Enter Gary McKinnon.
GK has admitted hacking into Pentagon computers and the US authorities, not surprisingly, want to try him for it. He's been fighting extradition. Not because he didn't do it - he's admitted that he did - but because (a) he doesn't think he can handle a long stretch in the clink and (b) he says really didn't mean it - he was looking for aliens, you see.
Now I don't know the full facts of the case. And neither do you. But neither, more importantly, do Boris Johnson and all the other media whores who have jumped on the McKinnon bandwagon. None of them know the full facts. But they are quite happy to prefer not to hear them in a court of law because it means they can use this case as a political football.
Boris Johnson's argument is that McKinnon is a 'classic British nut-job' - and so should not be tried on that basis! I didn't know that being a nut-job determined the validity or otherwise of an extradition request. Don't judge people by your own standards, Boris. The Daily Mail wants another stick to beat the Government with and so has championed his case. Gary McKinnon's mother is deluded in the way that only the mother of a criminal could be - 'not my boy!' is her argument.
There is a familiar narrative of self-pity in this tale. Our culture's first priority is to look for victimisation - either find it, or perpetrate it ourselves. So this story of an alleged crime and possible trial has instead been transmogrified into a pantomime story of victimhood: one of our boys being bullied by the American military; a poor hacker faced with oblivion by a faceless prison-system. No-one actually claims he didn't do it. It's just that his supporters don't want him to be punished; or more specifically, they don't want the Americans to punish him.
If McKinnon had hacked into the American branch of Stop the War, Save the Burkha, or The Campaign Stop the American Military Whilst Spreading Love and Happiness these protestors would swivel 180 degrees and be releasing albums urging he be packed off onto the first jet to the US.
Anti-Americanism. Again. Don't these people ever get tired of it? It's so passé. You can bet your bottom dollar - or British Pound - that if the situation were reversed and an American geek had hacked into the Ministry of Defence's computers and potentially compromised or endangered 'our boys' in the military then the Daily Mail would be screaming for his extradition to Belmarsh.
And then there's a political point that people who don't really care about McKinnon have been pushing. That the extradition treaty between the UK and US, signed in haste after 9/11, is unfair and biased towards the US system, they claim. And maybe it is. But so what? Argue about the treaty, don't have a hissy fit and say "That's it, you're not having this hacker now". The terms of the treaty are clear. If you want to abrogate the treaty then do so - but do it for everyone.
The last argument is a relatively new one in this case. That Gary McKinnon 'suffers' from something called Asperger's Syndrome. Apparently it's a form of autism that, according to the National Autistic Society's website can cause difficulty with social interaction, social communication and social imagination.
Nothing about distinguishing right from wrong. Nothing about being compos mentis. Nothing about being fit or otherwise to stand trial. It's just not relevant.
McKinnon knew what he was doing. He knew that his excuse that he was looking for aliens was hogwash. He just dreamt that up when he got caught, and celebrities-without-a-cause bought his line and signed up to his defence without the slightest clue about what they were doing.
He's as guilty as sin. Think I'm jumping the gun? Fine, let a jury decide. The House of Lords and the European Court have all agreed to his extradition. None of their eminences have agreed with his mum that he faces an unfair trial, that he is unfit to stand trial, that the offence is not serious enough - in other words they have thrown out all the excuses Gary McKinnon has come out with.
So off you go to America, Gary. If you're clever enough to crash Pentagon computers then I'm sure you'll have no problems at all in a court of law. If a jury agrees that you're a harmless fantasist you'll be back home for tea and biscuits. If not, then I hope you like prison food. :)
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The UK authorities monitored McKinnon during his activities and concluded that he did no damage. In order that they can demand McKinnon, the Americans must claim that he caused damages exceeding a certain amount. So they waited until after that one-sided extradition law was passed before telling some lie about $800,000 of damage or so, without any proof. You see, they don't need to provide any proof to have people extradited under that awful law.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I'm concerned, two years is too long for them to ask for an extradition. It's clear that they wanted to wait until this unacceptable law was passed. It's a ghastly law... If you want another example of how horrible it is, there's this Scottish couple, the Howeses, who were selling chemicals abroad... they broke no UK law. One day that Americans demanded that they be extradited as methamphetamine kingpins! They were jailed for 200 days without charges! They face 98 years in prison and they broke no law. The U.S. has not to show any evidence to trigger the extradition. You say, well the "fair system" in the US will clear it up. No it won't. Their lives are already almost ruined and it will be even more so when they lose their children if the extradition goes through. The US prosecutors use the dirtiest tricks and rape is considered to be an acceptable part of "justice" there... the recent OJ Simpson trial should have opened eyes had they decided to pull out of the lynch mob that formed to get this person... American prosecutors are out of control and there's no restraining factor on them, there's no punishment for recruiting, for example, complete strangers from prison to "testify against" suspects in return for some mercy in their own cases. This is a known practice with American prosecutors.
This leads to another problem I see with you and other McKinnon opponents. You say that America has a great system and it can be trusted to bring forth justice, and those who claim otherwise are just mindless anti-Americans. The prison-industrial complex in the U.S. and out-of control prosecutors have helped make the U.S. the country with one of the highest imprisonment rates in the world.
Lastly, I see your research on Asperger's Syndrome is very limited. The issues around it are two. One, people with the syndrome become obsessed with finding knowledge about an obsession they have and are less impressed with conventions that say, for instance, that the Pentagon is the holiest of holies... if the knowledge is there they are more likely to go there.
Second, Asperger's people are less adaptable... they need stability in terms of the environment and the presence of supports... he will not get that in an alien jail in a country that is completely alien to him. Also, Asperger's people have trouble with social convention and unwritten rules, this puts him at grave danger in a prison generally, particularly in an alien one. So the punishment of prison in a foreign country is worse for him than it would be for others...