KcKinnon News
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I agree to a certain extent: he is a elephanting idiot who went trawling though the military computers of a country still reeling from a terrorist attack by an external enemy. He should be jailed for a long time to dissuade other morons from doing the same thing. Having said that, it was a crime committed in the UK, so it is subject to UK law. To ship him to a foreign state he has never visited under the law of the country that asked for him is a dangerous thing to do: Could China not demand the extradition of everyone who complains about their civil rights record, or their occupation of Tibet? Could Israel not demand everyone who says they shouldn't be in Palestine? If you allow McKinnon to go to the US then China and Israel, and Iran, and North Korea, and... would have the same rights, I assume.
Ideological Purity is no substitute for being able to stick your thumb down a pipe to stop the water
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I agree to a certain extent: he is a elephanting idiot who went trawling though the military computers of a country still reeling from a terrorist attack by an external enemy. He should be jailed for a long time to dissuade other morons from doing the same thing. Having said that, it was a crime committed in the UK, so it is subject to UK law. To ship him to a foreign state he has never visited under the law of the country that asked for him is a dangerous thing to do: Could China not demand the extradition of everyone who complains about their civil rights record, or their occupation of Tibet? Could Israel not demand everyone who says they shouldn't be in Palestine? If you allow McKinnon to go to the US then China and Israel, and Iran, and North Korea, and... would have the same rights, I assume.
Ideological Purity is no substitute for being able to stick your thumb down a pipe to stop the water
OriginalGriff wrote:
Having said that, it was a crime committed in the UK, so it is subject to UK law. To ship him to a foreign state he has never visited under the law of the country that asked for him is a dangerous thing to do: Could China not demand the extradition of everyone who complains about their civil rights record, or their occupation of Tibet? Could Israel not demand everyone who says they shouldn't be in Palestine? If you allow McKinnon to go to the US then China and Israel, and Iran, and North Korea, and... would have the same rights, I assume.
No, don't you see, America is allowed to do whatever the hell it likes and nobody else is allowed to complain or expect the same privileges. That's the message you should get from the state of the world.
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He shouldn't be sent to the US for the very simple reason that what he's supposed to have done occurred entirely within the UK, so the UK's legal system (Scotland's in his case I think?) should have jurisdiction over him. He's never even been to the US, how could he commit a crime under their jurisdiction? It's sad that the family have had to play the illness card to get the right resolution to the extradition fiasco, but that's because the normal methods didn't work. I'm sure he'll stand trial (hacking is illegal here too) and be convicted (since he admitted doing it).
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I agree to a certain extent: he is a elephanting idiot who went trawling though the military computers of a country still reeling from a terrorist attack by an external enemy. He should be jailed for a long time to dissuade other morons from doing the same thing. Having said that, it was a crime committed in the UK, so it is subject to UK law. To ship him to a foreign state he has never visited under the law of the country that asked for him is a dangerous thing to do: Could China not demand the extradition of everyone who complains about their civil rights record, or their occupation of Tibet? Could Israel not demand everyone who says they shouldn't be in Palestine? If you allow McKinnon to go to the US then China and Israel, and Iran, and North Korea, and... would have the same rights, I assume.
Ideological Purity is no substitute for being able to stick your thumb down a pipe to stop the water
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He essentially attacked U.S. military and defense property. If he had done this from Pakistan, or any country in the MidEast, there would be no talk of a trial, just the humming of the missile fired from the drone seconds before his vaporization.
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OriginalGriff wrote:
Having said that, it was a crime committed in the UK, so it is subject to UK law
Same reasoning applied: It wasn't a crime in Afghanistan to attack American buildings in 2001. Thus Osama shouldn't have been hunted... :~
If a country condones an attack on you, for example by it not being illegal to launch terrorist attacks against you or by not enforcing laws forbidding it, then it's an option on the table to say that that country essentially attacked you and to declare international war with them over the issue. I'm not actually sure if it's even true that it was not illegal to mastermind a terrorist attack in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. But there is pretty good evidence that the country as an entity (i.e. the government) was actively supporting al-Qaida and therefore bin Laden's actions could be treated as Afghan-supported national actions. I'm not sure if I actually agree with that invasion but it's at least possible to argue a justification. In addition, that was an immediate visceral reaction to coming under attack, so some poor judgement clouded by emotion can be forgiven – whereas none of the recent extraditions were like that, they were all in the cold light of day and proper legal process in the host country should have been followed. That's clearly not the case with McKinnon.
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Like any hostile action, it should be taken in the appropriate context. A full scale DDoS on military systems from a foreign government agency, for example, could reasonably be taken as an act of war – though I doubt you'd get UN backing for declaring the other side as the aggressor in such a case. (Witness Stuxnet and the sympathy Iran didn't get for any response to that hostile act, for example.) But, yes, I'd say that an individual hacker should never be attacked physically in response to an attack.
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Like any hostile action, it should be taken in the appropriate context. A full scale DDoS on military systems from a foreign government agency, for example, could reasonably be taken as an act of war – though I doubt you'd get UN backing for declaring the other side as the aggressor in such a case. (Witness Stuxnet and the sympathy Iran didn't get for any response to that hostile act, for example.) But, yes, I'd say that an individual hacker should never be attacked physically in response to an attack.
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It's impossible for lives to be lost as a direct consequence. Nobody's life depends directly on a web service. Indirect effects are not generally considered as part of a crime ... i.e. if I speed, get caught, the policeman is giving a ticket and therefore doesn't attend a serious accident in time, so someone dies, I'm not done for manslaughter. In the case of a cyber attack the responsibility for any downstream effects would lie with whoever wrote a non-redundant system where there needed to be a backup capability. Life-or-death systems shouldn't be accessible at all to a hacker, and to make them so that a hack or DoS can kill people is gross negligent on the part of the owner or author.
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It's impossible for lives to be lost as a direct consequence. Nobody's life depends directly on a web service. Indirect effects are not generally considered as part of a crime ... i.e. if I speed, get caught, the policeman is giving a ticket and therefore doesn't attend a serious accident in time, so someone dies, I'm not done for manslaughter. In the case of a cyber attack the responsibility for any downstream effects would lie with whoever wrote a non-redundant system where there needed to be a backup capability. Life-or-death systems shouldn't be accessible at all to a hacker, and to make them so that a hack or DoS can kill people is gross negligent on the part of the owner or author.
Your analogy is quite flawed. Replace speeding with slashing a policeman's tires and you would have a more accurate one. There was direct physical damage to computer systems.
BobJanova wrote:
Life-or-death systems shouldn't be accessible at all to a hacker, and to make them so that a hack or DoS can kill people is gross negligent on the part of the owner or author.
Sounds just like a burglar blaming their victims for having a shitty lock. Would this make the burglar less responsible for his actions?
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Your analogy is quite flawed. Replace speeding with slashing a policeman's tires and you would have a more accurate one. There was direct physical damage to computer systems.
BobJanova wrote:
Life-or-death systems shouldn't be accessible at all to a hacker, and to make them so that a hack or DoS can kill people is gross negligent on the part of the owner or author.
Sounds just like a burglar blaming their victims for having a shitty lock. Would this make the burglar less responsible for his actions?
You still wouldn't be charged for manslaughter under that analogy. So thanks for proving my point.
wizardzz wrote:
Sounds just like a burglar blaming their victims for having a sh***y lock. Would this make the burglar less responsible for his actions?
No, it's not like that at all. It's more like having someone who vandalises your lock charged for the burglary later in the day ... which doesn't happen.
