A UK hacker who broke into dozens of US military computers to find secret evidence of alien life and technology faces up to 70 years in a US prison.
The 40-year-old unemployed systems administrator faces charges of attacking 97 US military and NASA computers between 2001 and 2002. If found guilty, he could face up to 70 years in prison and may even be sent to Guantanamo Bay as a terrorist suspect.
Gary McKinnon will lodge what is likely to be his final appeal against extradition on February 13 next year at London's Court of Appeal. He lost his first appeal against extradition in a High Court hearing last July, but was given leave to take his case to a higher court. If that fails to overturn the extradition order signed by UK Home Secretary John Reid in July, McKinnon's only remaining option to avoid a US trial will be to appeal to the House of Lords. McKinnon is not optimistic of his chances following the Lords' refusal to intervene in the extradition of the NatWest Three, who were extradited to the US in July as part of a £11.5m fraud investigation connected with the collapsed energy giant Enron.
McKinnon has admitted accessing computer systems in the US, including those cited in a US indictment against him. He wanted to find evidence of UFOs, antigravity technology and government suppression of ‘Free Energy', all of which he claims to have gained evidence of through his activities.
In an interview with the BBC, McKinnon said he got into the networks quite easily, simply by using a Perl script that searched for blank passwords. Embarrassingly for the US military, that means computers in the top-secret networks could be hacked using active default passwords.
Unsurprisingly, McKinnon wants to be tried in the UK because he says the crimes were committed on UK soil. He also says he did not damage the systems he trespassed on.
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