Hacked Off



I don't like 'hackers' as a general rule, whether the kind who hack into other people's phones or the ones who regularly cause mayhem on the internet.  

So I have little sympathy for Gary McKinnon who instead of doing what any normal person would do by just going and visiting his sick father, instead takes to the the media to demand assurances from the Scottish Government.

Now that's the behaviour of an attention seeking asshole, if you ask me and I fail to see why such a non-story has been published in The Times. 

Hacker seeks Scots extradition pledge

Gary McKinnon has been told by his legal team that it is too risky to go north of the border Sang Tan/AP



By Tom Knowles - The Times

Gary McKinnon has made a passionate appeal to the Scottish government to allow him to visit his sick father in Glasgow without running the risk of being extradited to the United States.

The 48-year-old computer expert wants to see Charlie McKinnon, who is in hospital after suffering a stroke, but has been told by his legal team that it is too risky to go north of the border.

Mr McKinnon told The Times that a visit to Scotland would help him to rebuild his life after his decade-long fight against extradition from England to the US. He faced charges of hacking into Pentagon and Nasa computers while looking for evidence of UFOs.

However, Karen Todner and Edward Fitzgerald, QC, the senior lawyers who helped him to fight his case, have said he should only travel into Scotland if the SNP-led government declares categorically that it will abide by the refusal by Theresa May, the UK home secretary, to allow extradition. Mrs May’s decision applies only to England.

Mr McKinnon, who has Asperger’s syndrome, said: “It’s very upsetting. To have a parent suffer a stroke is bad enough, but then to not be able to visit him, in my own home country, is even more upsetting.”

He described his 70-year-old father, who was a scaffolder in Glasgow before retiring, as a “man’s man”.

The US government was reported to be furious when the home secretary stopped the extradition of Mr McKinnon. Mrs May argued that the Glasgow-born computer hacker would take his own life if moved to the US after doctors rated him a serious suicide risk.

Mr McKinnon, who has now started his own internet company in England, said he was not angry with the Scottish government, adding that it had “to work within existing legislation”, but he believed that all governments should “stand up to foreign governments using undue pressure tactics”.

He said that visiting Scotland would help him to achieve normality. “I lost ten years of my life due to the extradition saga and for the ten years previous to that I was leading a directionless life,” he said. “Now that I’m reconnecting with myself, I would very much like to get to know Scotland, visit my father, stepmother and brothers.”

Janis Sharp, his mother, said the Scots had not yet given them definite assurances that they would turn down an extradition request from the US. She said: “It’s awful. Gary has been very upset and wants to see his dad.”

A spokeswoman for the Scottish government failed to give the definite assurance that the McKinnon family is seeking. She said: “While we do not comment on individual cases, there is no reason to suppose that anyone for whom extradition was refused in the rest of the UK would necessarily see it granted in Scotland.”

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