US: tackling cyber-crime
Date: August 22, 2008Source: http://www.oxan.com/
His defence hopes to exploit irregularities in the plea bargaining process, in which McKinnon was threatened with a substantially higher jail term if he did not cooperate with prosecutors -- also raising the possibility that McKinnon faced a military tribunal. However, the UK High Court was unsympathetic in a ruling last month, and a European reversal appears unlikely. Even the startlingly downbeat aims of the blog in McKinnon’s support -- “Free Gary McKinnon -- or at least try him in the UK” -- are unlikely to be met.
McKinnon was unlucky in his timing: he was arrested in the more suspicious security climate after the terrorist attacks of 2001 (previous such cases from the 1990s did not lead to prosecution; another, of an Israeli hacker from earlier in 2001, resulted in a local sentence of community service rather than extradition). It seems likely that having expended significant resources to deal with what the Critical Infrastructure Protection Board feared might be “a nation-state or a terrorist group”, the US government wanted to make an example of McKinnon -- wagering that the deterrent effect would be greater than the harm done to public diplomacy from a backlash. Despite attempts by McKinnon’s defence team to mobilise public opinion in his support -- for instance, linking his case to arguments over the asymmetric extradition requirements between the United States and the United Kingdom -- the gamble seems to have paid off, by dint of the obscurity of McKinnon’s alleged crimes.
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2008-08-23 05:18:21 - garry should have never been prosecuted.... Mike Orton |
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