US allegations about the severity of Pentagon hacker
Gary McKinnon's crimes were trumped up, a court heard
today.
Edward Fitzgerald QC, McKinnon's barrister, argued that the
Director of Public Prosecutions decided wrongly in February not to
prosecute the hacker in the UK and so allow his extradition to face
charges in the US instead.
Fitzgerald told the court that US allegations that McKinnon was
guilty of "the worst crimes of the century" were over baked.
He submitted a file said to contain DPP evidence that
demonstrated how the US did not have evidence to support these
allegations.
The actual US indictments - as apposed to allegations - were for
computer fraud and damages. These charges were comparable with
those listed under the British Computer Misuse act, the court
heard.
McKinnon, who is accused of causing £475,000 worth of damage to
computers by hacking into computer systems belonging to the
Pentagon, Nasa and the US military from his home in North London,
claims that under human rights law he has a right to be tried in
the UK.
McKinnon hacked military systems in the search for surpressed
evidence of UFOs. He found little evidence of other-world natives
or technology, except for a spreadsheet that listed
"non-terrestrial officers, ships' names and goods movements", and a
picture of what he said was a UFO with a perfectly smooth
surface.
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