7 Responses so far.

1. 

   Simon says:

   1:03 pm

   This is very disappointing news indeed. I agree with you, John. On both counts, in fact.. that Bobby Robson is not a more significant news event, and that Gary McKinnon's extradition is an absolutely mammoth story of injustice. I don't think people realise how serious the implications of this case are.

2. 

   JOHN MOSBY says:

   12:01 am

   I understand that Bobby Robson was worthy of coverage, I really do. But at one point the Mckinnon story was running behind the 'Official: Peter Andre doesn't cheat on Jordan' headline which I found truly shameful.
   
   I'm legally interested that we could even consider extradition when I thought UK law absolutely forbid us from sending people to countries that have the death penalty (and in this case, one US state wants to put the death sentence as an option for this trial).

3. 

   stevemosby says:

   3:40 pm

   Okay - just to play devil's advocate on this one.
   
   1) The fact he has Asperger's Syndrome is irrelevant, and the media's concentration on the fact is, at the least, mildly patronising in its unspoken implications for disabled people. Regardless, his disability will be taken into account during his trial, wherever that might be. Losing the appeal simply means his health problems were not sufficient to make extradition a breach of his human rights. From the coverage, you'd half-think we were sending Rain Man to be tortured in a gulag.
   
   2) The British Parliament hasn't caved into anything on this case. There is simply nothing they can do to prevent it under the 2003 Extradition Act. You can possibly make a case that the Act itself is unfair or unreasonable, but the inability of the government to intervene is actually meant to prevent political machinations from interfering with justice, which seems, largely, to be a good thing.
   
   3) He wasn't just searching for UFOs, and he didn't just leave them a nice, friendly hacker message. He broke into nearly 100 military computers, destroyed parts of the operating systems, stole data, and left a message commenting on US foreign policy and stating he would continue to disrupt their systems.
   
   4) The crimes were committed in this country, but all their consequences were abroad. It's debatable how people want to see that, but it's fairly easy to construct an example where somebody abroad committed electronic crimes in the UK for which we'd want to try them - and to which nobody would bat an eyelid in opposition.
   
   5) He's not going to get the death sentence or 70 years in prison. Legal experts have said he's likely to serve 3-5 years. Given his actions shut down Washington's military computer system for 24 hours in the wake of 9/11, would that really be a miscarriage of justice?
   
   6) It's not really disgraceful that the story is behind Bobby Robson, when you consider that the majority of extraditions to the US don't make the news at all. This story's only got so high because: a) he's a hacker, which still has a sheen of 80s/90s cool to it; and b) that allows the media to tie the story into the kind of simplistic anti-American, anti-corporate politics that is, unfortunately, rather popular right now, in the same way - and often with the same political depth - that Make Poverty History wristbands were.
   
   Devil's advocate, like I said.

4. 

   JOHN MOSBY says:

   4:12 pm

   The thing is, Steve, that I'm under the impression that we can't extradite people to countries where they face the death penalty - that's against formal UK policy and seems to be the reason that some genuinely dangerous reprobates can't be extradited to elsewhere in Europe even after being found guilty.
   
   Now, we both KNOW he won't get the chair/needle/annual subscription to FOX News (all cruel and unusual) but the American government won't put that in writing and at least one US State, that wants to claim rights to run the trial, is actively pushing the death penalty option to the fore, painting him as a dastardly terrorist for whom waterboarding would probably be too good for starters. I believe you respect the laws of the countries you are in and am in no-way anti-American (you know I love 'em!)but there's a definite lack of context to the crime and the call for punishment.
   
   The way UK law stands there's certainly room for a degree of latitude here, despite some protestaions. Even UK law-lords have tactfully indicated they feel there's a huge degree of heavy-handedness going on.
   
   I don't think anyone is claiming that Mckinnon is utterly blameless, simply that his medical condition at the time affected his perception of the implications of his acts and that a person in a fragile state was then largely manipulated and given false assurances by certain persons into saying things he shouldn't have, to implicate himself.
   
   Punish him for breaking and entering, fine or imprison accordingly. I'm fine with that, there's definitely some penalty to be paid. But refusing to take a 60-70 year sentence off the table? Meh, seems petty.
   
   And while I can see that Bobby Robson was Official Beloved Football Manager (tm) and his death news-worthy, I saw at least one SKY bulletin that also put 'Official: Peter Andre didn't cheat on Jordan' ahead of the extradition story as well. We're truly a 'Hello' society now.

5. 

   stevemosby says:

   8:37 pm

   Okay - so, just for the sake of interest, how many of the previous extraditions to the US did you object to, or see as serious miscarriages of justice? Can you even name any? That's not an accusation, just pointing out that, far from being under-reported, McKinnon's case has actually received a vast amount of publicity.
   
   Have you got a reference for the death penalty thing? Again, not an accusation, simply that Alan Johnson has gone on record saying there are no legal grounds for him to intervene - explicitly stating that facing the death penalty would be one of those grounds, but that the McKinnon case doesn't meet that criteria.
   
   I don't know - I'm not going to object to it because refusing to take a 70 year jail sentence off the table is petty when everyone knows he won't serve that. What's left? He has Asperger's? That'll be taken into account. The fact is he did a hell of a lot of damage - above and beyond the innocent 'UFO' searcher he's being painted as - and probably deserves to do time.
   
   If he'd been operating a paedophile network from the UK on US servers, nobody would care, regardless of Asperger's. This is entirely based on the fact that, oh, he was just looking for evidence of alien life, the kooky fucker, and he left nice messages pointing out the security flaws. Well, that's not what he did.

6. 

   JOHN MOSBY says:

   9:23 pm

   My understanding is that until very recently Mckinnon was to be extradited under the terms of the Patriot Act and therefore the death penalty remained on the table (McKinnon's lawyer referred to a prosecutor in New Jersey's comments that Mckinnon would 'fry' for his crimes. Sorry, don't have the name.). It has now been agreed that he wouldn't be prosecuted under those complete terms but that the charges against him could still see him face sixty years in prison.
   
   God help me for using the Daily Mail in my defence, but they spend a page in today's paper dictating the specifics of the leeway in which UK law COULD have operated in this matter but didn't. You can argue - fairly - whether it should be or not in this case, but the truth is that the law's wording is a matter of interpretation, rather than the immutable ice-cold logic and unbending rules as painted. It's one thing to say 'Given the facts, we chose to define the rules as...' it's another to say 'Under the rules, we had no choice but to...' when that's over-simplifing it as well. The government's hands were not quite as tightly tied as Johnson intimates.
   
   But you're right to the extent that McKinnon is the doe-eyed seal-pup for agitators - it's easy to get indignant about 'Rain Man' than it is a less sympathetic target and, again, I'm not saying the crimes committed weren't (if fully proven) punishable by imprisonment or heavy fines, though context is everything.
   
   But in general I have concerns that under the terms of the Extradition Act (2003) the United States do not have to provide a prima facie case when requesting a trial. It basically has to say 'We have a case and we want him' and produce the correct paperwork, rather than provide any significant evidence to those ends. UK law ( which said previously that they themselves had doubts about the amount of evidence to prosecute this case) then simply has to make sure the paperwork is in order and that international rules and rights haven't been broken.
   
   I just tend to think that a request to take a UK citizen abroad for trial should have a few more strings attached and in this specific case, the trial could just as easily have taken place here anyway IF the evidence was good enough to proceed.
   
   And my original point stands that, IMHO, the Bobby Robson coverage was out proportion to the rest of the news of the day.

7. 

   Simon says:

   12:56 pm

   A few additional pointers.. firstly, the extradition treaty that is supposed to have been jointly signed and ratified by the UK and US governments.. has NOT BEEN. The US has so far failed to ratify its portion of the treaty. Historically this is not uncommon for the US. Nevertheless, until the agreement is ratified I believe there is a case for arguing that it is not "in law".
   
   Gibson, who's a former FBI agent now working for Microsoft, is on record (sworn affidavit) as stating that McKinnon could "fry" for his actions. He now denies saying that, but the affidavit is out there. He also states vehemently that McKinnon's Asperger's syndrome condition would have no bearing on the case. In my opinion, and knowing one or two individuals with Asperger's, this absolute further affirms that a fair trial is not an option. Diminished responsibility is established on this side of the pond, but conveniently ignored state-side. This is key.
   
   While McKinnon freely admits breaking into the systems, he denies causing damage by deleting files etc. The problem is that proving a negative is always challenging, and I have very little faith in the US legal system for maintaining proportionality here. Fundamentally, I believe that if McKinnon had deleted files he would freely admit that too. Furthermore, the suggestion that he left comments on US foreign policy is seriously questionable. McKinnon, who suffers Asperger's, would HAVE NO OPINION on US foreign policy.
   
   The US is "bigging up" the case against him, and making claims that simply don't withstand the simplest of scrutiny, and I would have no faith in any assurances of judicial proportionality, if they were to make convincing assurances of such - which, in my opinion, they are not.
   
   The credibility of "experts" who claim McKinnon would serve 3-5 years is non-existent. The US is selling this case as "the biggest computer crime of all time". Given that the US tends to meter justice to the LETTER of the law, rather than our (granted diminishing) tradition of the SPIRIT of the law, throwing McKinnon - who committed crimes in the UK - to the mercy of the US judicial system is akin to throwing a Christian to the lions, hoping the lions will just ignore the guy. It's simply not worth the risk.
   
   If the 70 year term isn't an option, it would be off the table. The reason it's still on the table is because it IS still on the table. I may seem cynical about the US justice system but I wasn't born this way. It's a learned stance.