Gary McKinnon
Gary McKinnon
Born	(1966-02-10) 10 February 1966 (age 46) Glasgow, Scotland
Nationality	British
Other names	Solo
Citizenship	United Kingdom
Known for	Computer hacker

Gary McKinnon (born 10 February 1966) is a Scottish^[1] systems administrator and hacker who has been accused of what one U.S. prosecutor claims is the "biggest military computer hack of all time,"^[2] although McKinnon himself states that he was merely looking for evidence of free energy suppression and a cover-up of UFO activity and other technologies potentially useful to the public. After a series of legal proceedings in England, McKinnon is currently fighting extradition to the United States.

Alleged crime[link]

McKinnon is accused of hacking into 97 United States military and NASA computers over a 13-month period between February 2001 and March 2002, using the name 'Solo'.^[2]

The US authorities claim he deleted critical files from operating systems, which shut down the US Army’s Military District of Washington network of 2,000 computers for 24 hours. McKinnon also posted a notice on the military's website: "Your security is crap". After the September 11 attacks, he deleted weapons logs at the Earle Naval Weapons Station, rendering its network of 300 computers inoperable and paralyzing munitions supply deliveries for the US Navy's Atlantic Fleet. McKinnon is also accused of copying data, account files and passwords onto his own computer. US authorities claim the cost of tracking and correcting the problems he caused was over $700,000.^[3]

While not admitting that it constituted evidence of destruction, McKinnon did admit leaving a threat on one computer:

US foreign policy is akin to Government-sponsored terrorism these days … It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year … I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels … ^[4]

US authorities claim that McKinnon is trying to downplay his own actions. A senior military officer at the Pentagon told The Sunday Telegraph: "US policy is to fight these attacks as strongly as possible. As a result of Mr McKinnon's actions, we suffered serious damage. This was not some harmless incident. He did very serious and deliberate damage to military and Nasa computers and left silly and anti-America messages. All the evidence was that someone was staging a very serious attack on US computer systems."^[5]

Arrest and legal proceedings[link]

McKinnon was first interviewed by police on 19 March 2002. After this interview, his computer was seized by the authorities.^[6] He was interviewed again on 8 August 2002, this time by the UK National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU).^[6][7]

In November 2002, McKinnon was indicted by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia.^[8] The indictment contained seven counts of computer-related crime, each of which carried a potential ten-year jail sentence.^[6]

Extradition proceedings[link]

McKinnon remained at liberty without restriction for three years until June 2005 (until after the UK enacted the Extradition Act 2003, which implemented the 2003 extradition treaty with the US wherein the US did not need to provide contestable evidence), when he became subject to bail conditions including a requirement to sign in at his local police station every evening and to remain at his home address at night. In addition, he was banned from using a computer with access to the Internet. There have been no more developments in respect of the charges relating to United Kingdom legislation but in late 2005 the United States began extradition proceedings.^{[clarification needed]}

If he is extradited to the US and charged, McKinnon faces up to 70 years in jail.^[9] He has expressed fears that he could be sent to Guantanamo Bay.^[10][11]

Appeal to the House of Lords[link]

Representing McKinnon in the House of Lords on 16 June 2008, barristers told the Law Lords that the prosecutors had said McKinnon faced a possible 8–10 years in jail per count if he contested the charges (there were seven counts) without any chance of repatriation, but only 37–46 months if he co-operated and went voluntarily to the US. US-style plea bargains are not a part of English jurisprudence (although it is standard practice to reduce the sentence by one-third for a defendant who pleads guilty)^[12] and McKinnon's lawyers contended that in effect this was intimidation to force McKinnon to waive his legal rights. McKinnon also claimed that he had been told that he could serve part of his sentence in the UK if he co-operated. He rejected the offer because the Americans would not guarantee these concessions.

McKinnon's barrister said that the Law Lords could deny extradition if there was an abuse of process: "If the United States wish to use the processes of English courts to secure the extradition of an alleged offender, then they must play by our rules."^[13]

The House of Lords rejected this argument, with the lead judgement (of Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood) holding that "the difference between the American system and our own is not perhaps so stark as [McKinnon]'s argument suggests" and that extradition proceedings should "accommodate legal and cultural differences between the legal systems of the many foreign friendly states with whom the UK has entered into reciprocal extradition arrangements".^[14]

Further appeals[link]

McKinnon appealed to the European Court of Human Rights,^[15] which briefly imposed a bar on the extradition,^[16] but the request for an appeal was rejected.

On 23 January 2009, McKinnon won permission from the High Court to apply for a judicial review against his extradition.^[17] On 31 July 2009, the High Court announced that McKinnon had lost this appeal.^[18][19] Currently McKinnon's legal team, solicitor Karen Todner and barrister Ben Cooper, have applied for a judicial review into the Home Secretary's rejection of medical evidence, which stated that, when he could easily be tried in the UK, it is unnecessary, cruel and inhumane to inflict the further stress of removing him from his homeland, his family and his medical support network.

Asperger's diagnosis[link]

In August 2008, McKinnon was diagnosed by three of the world's leading experts (Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor Jeremy Turk and Professor Thomas Bernie) as suffering from an autism spectrum disorder compounded with clinical depression.^{[20][citation needed]}

McKinnon's mother, Janis Sharp, claimed that he was suicidal and that he would not survive a U.S. prison incarceration.^[21] She has received support from psychiatrist Professor Jeremy Turk of St George's Hospital, London, who said that suicide was now an “almost certain inevitability”.^[22] On 10 November 2009, Janis Sharp gave evidence before the Select Committee for Home Affairs of the UK Parliament.^[23] The Committee backed calls for the extradition to be halted because of McKinnon’s “precarious state of mental health” and called for a comprehensive review of the extradition treaty.^[24]

Judicial review[link]

In January 2010 Mr Justice Mitting granted McKinnon a further judicial review of the decision of Home Secretary Alan Johnson to allow McKinnon’s extradition. Mitting distinguished two issues which were arguable, the first being whether Professor Turk's opinion that McKinnon would certainly commit suicide if extradited means that the Home Secretary must refuse extradition under section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (which prevents a public authority from acting in a way incompatible with convention rights). The second was whether Professor Turk's opinion was a fundamental change to the circumstances that the courts had previously considered and ruled upon. Mitting ruled that if the answer to both questions was "Yes", then it was arguable that it would be unlawful to allow the extradition.

Coalition[link]

In May 2010, the UK elected a coalition government. McKinnon was part of the coalition discussions^{[citation needed]} and in their ‘Coalition Programme’ document it states:

We will review the operation of the Extradition Act – and the US/UK extradition treaty – to make sure it is even-handed.^[25]

On 20 May 2010, the new home Secretary, Theresa May, adjourned the pending Judicial Review into the previous home Secretary’s decision. The Home Office said May would re-examine the medical evidence for herself to decide whether McKinnon should be extradited.^{[citation needed]}

Support for McKinnon[link]

In early November 2008, a total of 80 British MPs signed an Early Day Motion calling for any custodial sentence imposed by an American court to be served in a prison in the UK.^[26] However, on 15 July 2009, many of them voted in Parliament against a review of the extradition treaty.^[27]

In mid-November 2008, the rock group Marillion announced that it was ready to participate in a benefit concert in support of Gary McKinnon's struggle to avoid extradition to United States. The organiser of the planned event is Ross Hemsworth, an English radio host. No date has been set yet.^[28] Many have now voiced their support, including Sting, Trudie Styler, Julie Christie, David Gilmour, Graham Nash, Peter Gabriel, The Proclaimers, Bob Geldof, Chrissie Hynde, David Cameron, Boris Johnson (Mayor of London), Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross^{[citation needed]}, Terry Waite, Tony Benn, Chris Huhne, Lord Carlile, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party of England and Wales, the National Autistic Society, Liberty, and many others. All of these propose that, at least, he should be tried in the UK.^[29] In August 2009, Scottish Newspaper The Herald reported that Scots entrepreneur Luke Heron would pay £100,000 towards McKinnon's legal costs in the event he was extradited to the US.^[30]

In a further article in The Herald, Joseph Richard Gutheinz, Jr., a retired NASA Office of Inspector General Senior Special Agent, voiced his support for Gary McKinnon. Gutheinz, who is also an American criminal defense attorney and former Member of the Texas Criminal Justice Advisory Committee on Offenders with Medical and Mental Impairments, said that he feared Gary McKinnon would not find justice in the USA, because "the American judicial system turns a blind eye towards the needs of the mentally ill".^[31][32]

The British tabloid The Daily Mail has started a campaign to prevent Gary McKinnon's extradition to the U.S.^[33][34]

Janis Sharp, McKinnon's mother, stood as an Independent candidate in the 2010 General Election in Blackburn in protest against the sitting Labour MP Jack Straw, who was Foreign Secretary when the extradition treaty was agreed.^[35] She finished last out of eight candidates with 0.38% of the vote.^[36]

On 20 July 2010 Tom Bradby, ITN political editor, raised the Gary McKinnon issue with President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron in a joint White House press conference who responded that they have discussed it and are working to find an 'appropriate solution'.^[37][38]

Song[link]

In August 2009, Pink Floyd's David Gilmour released an online single, Chicago - Change the World, on which he sang and played guitar, bass and keyboards, to promote awareness of McKinnon's plight. A re-titled cover of the Graham Nash song Chicago, it featured Chrissie Hynde and Bob Geldof, plus McKinnon himself. It was produced by long-time Pink Floyd collaborator Chris Thomas and was made with Nash's support.^[39] A video was also posted online.^[40]

Statements to the media[link]

McKinnon has admitted in many public statements that he obtained unauthorised access to computer systems in the United States including those mentioned in the United States indictment. He claims his motivation, drawn from a statement made before the Washington Press Club on 9 May 2001 by "The Disclosure Project", was to find evidence of UFOs, antigravity technology, and the suppression of "free energy", all of which he claims to have proven through his actions.^[41]

In an interview televised on the BBC's Click programme,^[42] McKinnon claimed that he was able to get into the military's networks simply by using a Perl script that searched for blank passwords; in other words his report suggests that there were computers on these networks with the default passwords active.

In his interview with the BBC, he also claimed of "The Disclosure Project" that "they are some very credible, relied-upon people, all saying yes, there is UFO technology, there's anti-gravity, there's free energy, and it's extraterrestrial in origin and [they've] captured spacecraft and reverse engineered it." He said he investigated a NASA photographic expert's claim that at the Johnson Space Center's Building 8, images were regularly cleaned of evidence of UFO craft, and confirmed this, comparing the raw originals with the "processed" images. He claimed to have viewed a detailed image of "something not man-made" and "cigar shaped" floating above the northern hemisphere, and assuming his viewing would be undisrupted owing to the hour, he did not think of capturing the image because he was "bedazzled", and therefore did not think of securing it with the screen capture function in the software at the point when his connection was interrupted.^[43] McKinnon stated the image was approximately 256 megabytes in size, yet that the craft's details were still distinct in the greatly inferior 4-bit color and low resolution he had to reduce the viewing image to appear across his mere 56k modem connection (approximate transfer rate 5.4 KB/s).

The charge that he perpetrated "the biggest military hack of all time" is ridiculed by McKinnon who characterises himself as a "bumbling computer nerd" who undestructively accessed open, unsecured machines while under the influence of cannabis,^[44] and that the destruction claims were manufactured by embarrassed US authorities after the fact, in order to meet the dollar amount required to seek an extradition, to make him a poster child and intimidate any snoopers, especially those interested in the alien technology subjects he believed the public had a moral right to know of.^[42]

At the Infosecurity Europe 2006 conference in London on 27 April 2006, McKinnon appeared on the Hackers' Panel. When asked how his exploits were first discovered, McKinnon answered that he had miscalculated the timezone — he was using remote control software to operate a Windows computer while its user was sitting in front of it.

NASA documents[link]

In 2006, a Freedom of Information Act request was filed with NASA for all documents pertaining to Gary McKinnon. NASA's documents consisted of printed news articles from the Slashdot website, but no other related documents. This is consistent with NASA employees browsing internet articles about Gary McKinnon; the records of such browsing activity are in the public domain.

The FOIA documents have been uploaded to the internet for review, and can be downloaded.^[45]

Radio play[link]

On 12 December 2007, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 45-minute radio play about the case, The McKinnon Extradition by John Fletcher.^[46] It was re-broadcast on 2 September 2008. It was directed by Pete Atkin and produced by David Morley.

See also[link]

• Babar Ahmad
• David Carruthers
• Peter Dicks
• Richard O'Dwyer
• Christopher Tappin

Notes[link]

References[link]

• McKinnon v Government of the United States of America and another (House of Lords 2008-07-30). Text

• The Autistic Hacker: Gary McKinnon hacked thousands of government computers by David Kushner, July 2011 IEEE Spectrum

External links[link]

• Gary McKinnon support website
• Support website by Gary McKinnon's mother
• Hacker Voice Radio interview with Mckinnon
• Facing 60 years in US prison after hacking into Pentagon
• British hacker loses extradition appeal
• Profile BBC News - lost his appeal in the UK's House of Lords 30 Jul 2008
• Paranormal Daily News - Gary McKinnon should be praised and not punished
• Dan Bull - Free Gary (an open letter to the Home Secretary)
• Coverage of the Gary McKinnon case since 2006
• Gary McKinnon Famous people with Asperger Syndrome
• 16min video interview on Snotr

Robert Scott Lazar or Bob Lazar (born January 26, 1959, in Coral Gables, Florida, United States, to Albert Lazar and Phyllis Berliner), has claimed to have worked from 1988 until 1989 as a physicist at an area called S-4 (Sector Four), allegedly located near Groom Lake, Nevada, at the location also known as Area 51. According to Lazar, S-4 served as a hidden military location for the study and possible reverse engineering of extraterrestrial flying saucers. Lazar says he saw nine different discs there and provides details on their mode of propulsion. However, his credibility has come under fire after "schools he was supposed to have attended had no record of him, while others in the scientific community had no memory of ever meeting him."^[2]

Education[link]

Lazar claims to hold degrees from the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1993, the Los Angeles Times looked into his background and found there was no evidence to support those claims.^[1] Stanton Friedman was only able to verify that Lazar took electronics courses in the late 1970s at Pierce Junior College.^[3] The Times did discover that in 1990 Lazar had pled guilty to felony pandering, when he installed a computer system for a local brothel,^[4] declared bankruptcy and listed his occupation as self-employed photo processor on documents.^[1] A 1991 Times article reported, Lazar was "on probation in Clark County, Nevada, on a pandering charge. His educational and professional background cannot be verified -- a fact he attributes to government deletion of records."^[5] However military officials claim Lazar never worked in any of their facilities.

Scientific research[link]

Lazar first jumped on the media map in 1982 in the Los Alamos Monitor. The article titled "LA MAN JOINS THE JET SET - AT 200 MILES AN HOUR" was about a jet car that Lazar had created and worked on for years with help from a NASA researcher. The car was built from a jet engine modified and placed on an existing car model. It is also important to note that the article noted Lazar as "a physicist at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility", as it is one media article that puts Robert on the map as a physicist.^[6]

In November 1989, Lazar appeared in a special interview with investigative reporter George Knapp on Las Vegas TV station KLAS to discuss his purported employment at S-4. In his interview with Knapp, Lazar said he first thought the saucers were secret terrestrial aircraft whose test flights must have been responsible for many UFO reports. Gradually, on closer examination and from having been shown multiple briefing documents, Lazar came to the conclusion that the discs were of extraterrestrial origin. In his filmed testimony Lazar explains how this impression first hit him after he boarded one craft being studied and examined its interior.^[7]

For the propulsion of the studied vehicles, Bob Lazar claims that the atomic Element 115 served as a nuclear fuel. Element 115 (temporarily named "ununpentium" (symbol Uup)) reportedly provided an energy source which would produce anti-gravity effects under proton bombardment along with antimatter for energy production. As the intense strong nuclear force field of Element 115's nucleus would be properly amplified, the resulting large-scale gravitational effect would be a distortion of the surrounding space-time continuum that would, in effect, greatly shorten the distance and travel time to a charted destination.^[8]

Lazar also claims that he was given introductory briefings describing the historical involvement by extraterrestrial beings with this planet for the past 100,000 years. The beings originate from the Zeta Reticuli 1 & 2 star system and are therefore referred to as Zeta Reticulans, popularly called 'Greys'.^[9]

Fact or Fiction[link]

His stories have garnered some rather interesting fanfare and media attention. Some hold out for Bob's story, but others remain skeptical, including Stanton Friedman, who looked into Lazar's claims and did his own investigating on the matter.^[10]

Desert Blast[link]

Lazar and long time friend Gene Huff run Desert Blast, an annual festival for "explodaholics" in the Nevada desert. Starting in 1987 (but only formally named in 1991, inspired by Desert Storm) the festival features home-made explosives, rockets, jet-powered vehicles, and other pyrotechnics, with the intention of emphasizing the fun aspect of physics.^[11][12]

United Nuclear[link]

In the year 2000 Lazar started United Nuclear, an amateur scientific supply company formerly operated in Sandia Park, New Mexico and recently moved to Laingsburg, MI. United Nuclear sells a variety of materials including radioactive ores, powerful magnets, scientific curiosities like aerogel, and a variety of lab chemicals. United Nuclear claims "over 300,000 satisfied customers," including law-enforcement agencies, schools and amateur scientists.^[13]

In 2006 Lazar and wife Joy White were charged with violating the Federal Hazardous Substances Act for shipping restricted chemicals across state lines following a federal investigation started in 2003.^[14] The charges stemmed from a 2003 raid on Lazar's business where chemical sales records were examined.^[14] The maximum penalty is 270 days in prison and a $15,000 fine.^[14] Lazar claimed that he mistakenly concluded that he could legally sell the chemicals after finding incorrect information on the internet.^[15]

In 2007 Lazar/United Nuclear were fined $7,500 for violating a law against selling chemicals and components used to make illegal fireworks.^[16] Lazar "pled guilty to three criminal counts of introducing into interstate commerce and aiding and abetting the introduction into interstate commerce of banned hazardous substances."^[17] Lazar also "entered into a consent decree that permanently limits the amount of future sales of fireworks-related chemicals", and United Nuclear Scientific Equipment and Supplies was placed on probation for three years.^[17]

Lazar again gained attention in 2006 from news reports that he sold small amounts of Polonium, a radioactive element which was in the news because of its role in fatally poisoning former Soviet intelligence agent and whistleblower Alexander Litvinenko.^[18]

Documentary & Media Appearances[link]

• Weird Travels (TV Series) - 2003
• Encounters With The Unexplained (TV Series) - 2000
• Close Encounters: Proof of Alien Contact (video) - 2000
• Area 51: The Alien Interview (Video) - 1997
• Dreamland: Area 51 (TV Documentary) - 1996
• Future Fantastic (TV Series) - 1996
• Yaoi Jun'ichi UFO shuzai tokuhô dai 3 dan (TV Documentary) - 1990

References[link]

External links[link]

• Project Web Official website^{[dead link]} / Mirror website
• United Nuclear (a company founded by Bob Lazar)
• The Bob Lazar Corner

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