GARY McKINNON - NO CAUSE FOR SYMPATHY
One of the less edifying aspects of British culture is our lazy assumption that we are superior in every way to the Americans, and even the USA’s greater success is due their innate character flaws. (This side of the British is rather amusingly satirised in the attitudes of the Vulcans to Humans in the unloved Star Trek Enterprise series).
There was a media campaign in 1999 about the allegedly unfair treatment that British nanny, Louise Woodward, was receiving in the American courts after she shook a baby to death. The killing of a vulnerable child placed in her care was an appalling abuse of trust. Yet the British tabloids leapt to her defence solely based on anti-American prejudice.
Now we see the same unedifying spectacle over the case of Gary McKinnon. McKinnon is accused of committing a serious crime, and it is perfectly reasonable that he is extradited to the USA to face trial for it, given that the nature of his crime was a cyber attack on computer equipment located in the USA. The USA is a liberal democracy with a mature legal system that provides at least as much protection for defendants as the English law does. He has just as good an expectation of a fair trial there as he would have in the UK.
Much is made of his Aspergers condition, but the law has safeguards, in the USA as here. The place to argue what effect his Aspergers syndrome has upon his criminal culpability is in court, not through the pages of newspapers. But nothing has suggested to me that Gary McKinnon doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong. It is suggested that his mental condition means that it is too stressful for him to be extradited and face trial. But surely this is an argument that could be used by everyone facing a custodial sentence, especially given the high proportion of damaged and distressed people who commit crime?
But the aspect that really troubles me is that McKinnon and his supporters seem to exhibit no appreciation of the seriousness of what he has done. Hacking into computers is a serious crime, not only due to the intrinsic damage (and it is rubbish to say that no damage was done. As security guru Bruce Schneier explains in his 2000 book Secrets and Lies : “some systems are frangible and simply looking around can inadvertently cause damage. And once an unauthorized person has been inside a system, you can’t trust its integrity. You don’t know the intruder didn’t touch anything”). Literally hundreds of millions of dollars are diverted into the security business to defend society from hackers, virus writers, and other cyber attackers. Important data is lost, time is lost, privacy is compromised.
Indeed, McKinnon hacked into military computers, and the American military have an entirely reasonable concern that security sensitive information could have been compromised. The safety of service personnel might have been put at risk.
Hacking is a serious social problem. McKinnon happened to hack onto military and NASA computers; which might give some people a misguided sympathy with him. But what if a hacker accessed a hospital seeking to satisfy some curiosity about whether Elvis has really died, and compromised medical IT systems, or corrupted medical record databases?
And although McKinnon may have had some skill, most hackers exploit attack software that has been written for them and placed into the public domain, these “script kiddies” exploit security vulnerabilities without much skill, but can cause immense mischief. A sub-culture exists among hackers, sharing information and tools, providing a virtual community, and providing esteem for high profile hackers like McKinnon. He will be a role model for many others. The hacking sub-culture also provides a platform that is exploited by serious organised crime. Suggesting that McKinnon’s behavour should not be treated as criminal just encourages the hacking sub-culture which already refuses to accept that they are doing anything wrong
McKinnon’s mother appears in the press and on TV to minimise the extent of his crime, and make out he is harmless. Gary McKinnon himself has told the BBC he believes himself morally justified. Mr McKinnon told BBC Radio 5 live’s Victoria Derbyshire show:
“I’m not blind to criminality but I was on a moral crusade at the time.
“There was good evidence to show that certain secretive parts of the American government intelligence agencies did have access to crashed extra terrestrial technology which could… save us as a form of free, clean, pollution-free energy.
“I thought if someone was holding on to that, that was actually unconstitutional under American law.”
McKinnon’s lawyers argue that he is merely eccentric. But many anti-social criminals could also be described as “eccentric”, the criminal justice system exists to provide a frame work of socially accepted behaviour, and to disincentivise those who act outside the rules.
By his own admission McKinnon did what he is accused of. Computer hacking is a serious crime, and a very serious and growing social problem - He should face the consequences in an American court, and the American government should be congratulated on treating hacking as the serious criminal matter that it really is.
I disagree with this. The US legal and justice system is notoriously harsh, and for the offence committed McKinnon is looking at the possibility of spending 70 years in a maximum security prison.
The point isn’t so much the McKinnon case in itself, however, it’s the inquituous nature of the extradition treaty between the US and the UK under which his extradition has been sought.
Under its terms the US need only cite suspicion of a crime having been committed for any UK resident or citizen to find themselves in handcuffs on a plane to the land of the free, while if Britain requests the extradition of a US citizen then probable cause - i.e., evidence - must be ascertained and provided in advance.
McKinnon will most definitely not receive a fair trial in the US, just ask the Cuban 5 or Leonard Peltier or Mumia. He’s been charged with terrorist offences, and without the means to pay for a decent laywer, in a society in which the quality of legal representation is inextricably linked to how much you can afford to pay, he’s toast.
I also find it rather inexplicable that you should conflate hacking into the computer systems of the most violent and barbaric empire in history with organised gangs hacking into personal computers for the purposes of identity theft.
Surely as socialists we are driven by ideology and not laws made and maintained by people and nations responsible for wars, crimes against humanity and the subversion of democracy and human rights around the world.
Comment by John Wight — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:15 pm
Was this anti-American prejudice anything to do with the fact Woodward was found innocent?
Comment by Ho-Hum — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:16 pm
If you’re not working for MI5, you’re certainly doing a very good impression of it, Andy. Extradition with no evidence? Are you going to come out in support of internment next?
Comment by Keith Watermelon — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:22 pm
If you’re not working for MI5, you’re certainly doing a very good impression of it, Andy. Extradition with no evidence? Are you going to come out in support of internment next? No doubt you also think Babar Ahmed should be extradited.
Comment by Keith Watermelon — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
For fucks sake - this, on a so-called socialist blog:
By his own admission McKinnon did what he is accused of. Computer hacking is a serious crime, and a very serious and growing social problem - He should face the consequences in an American court, and the American government should be congratulated on treating hacking as the serious criminal matter that it really is.
Comment by Keith Watermelon — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:24 pm
The Treaty in question is not reciprocal. That is the single biggest outrage and yet another example of how our spineless government is subservient to the USA. Britain is an occupied country with US air bases masquerading as RAF installations.
Comment by Mr Spock — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:25 pm
#2
Louise woodward was found guilty of second degree murder at her original trial.
The supreme court subsequently ruled that judge should have allowed the jury to consider the verdict of manslaughter.
They ruled that the jury’s decision would not have been affected by the misdirection but reduced the conviction from 2nd degree to manslaughter.
Comment by Andy Newman — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:31 pm
Andy- do you believe that the maximum sentence he could face would be justified? Surely not.
Ho hum- I thought Ms Woodward was convicted of manslaughter, not ‘found innocent’.
Comment by Armchair — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:33 pm
#8
My limited expereince of the criminal justice system - through close relatives being guests of Her majesty, is that anything over three years is excessive as a punishment for anything.
However, McKinnon’s refusal to accept that he did anythigng worng should be taken into account on sentancing.
Comment by Andy Newman — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:38 pm
#1 “The point isn’t so much the McKinnon case in itself, however, it’s the inquituous nature of the extradition treaty between the US and the UK under which his extradition has been sought.”
#6 “The Treaty in question is not reciprocal”
Well, campaigning over the recriprocity of the treaty is not best served by linking it to an anti-social computer hacker who both admits that he did it, and also doesn’t accept that he did anything wrong.
Comment by Andy Newman — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:41 pm
The Guardian reported this morning that Dallas police had held a 13-year old girl in custody for two week (accused of shoplifting) before she went before a magistrate, which rather contrasts with the view that the USA is a liberal democracy with a mature legal system that provides at least as much protection for defendants as the English law does. One of the reasons that Gary MacKinnon is campaigning for a trial here is that in the US system he could spend years in jail waiting trial.
There are, of course, one or two concerns about Britain’s extradition treaty with the US, as recently noted on Blood and Treasure. I particularly liked the revelation that the British version of the treaty is written using American English spellings.
And I think MacKinnon has good reasons to fear the way he would be treated in a US prison, given the constant reports of corruption, bullying, gang rule and violence from the US prison system.
And the argument that the computer he hacked into was in the US is nonsense. If your blog was hosted on a US server, and I libelled someone, would I be liable for extradition to the US too?
On #8, Louise Woodward’s conviction for murder was overturned almost immediately, and she was instead found guilty of involuntary manlaughter. Her sentence was reduced to the 279 days (eight months) she had spent in prison awaiting trial.
Comment by chjh — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:47 pm
#1
“I also find it rather inexplicable that you should conflate hacking into the computer systems of the most violent and barbaric empire in history with organised gangs hacking into personal computers for the purposes of identity theft.”
It simply is a fact that there is an overlap between organised crime and hackers who do it for other reasons, both in the sense that technology is shared, but also that hackers are recruited by criminals through the sub-culture. This is an established fact.
hacking is a very serious anti-social problem. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars, it disrupts services, it violates privacy, it casues people to lose data, it has caused power cuts, and can even endanger health and safety.
Comment by Andy Newman — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:48 pm
Andy #10
He has admitted it, though. I’m sure I saw a recent interview with his mother in which she said he knows it was wrong and he’s deeply sorry, etc.
I think he’s probably shifted his position in light of the legal case.
The Americans are obviously highly embarrassed at the ease with which their security was penetrated, and I’d say it’s certain they intend hanging McKinnon out to dry for it.
If they had any sense they’d hire him as a consultant.
Comment by John Wight — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:48 pm
Credit’s given where credit’s due, this is a good post. I’ve noticed over time that both the Left and the right can be either pro or anti-American when it suits them. Indeed if memory serves me right the trial of Louise Woodward was described by The Sun (!) as “worse than Nazi Germany”. WTF?
THe US justice system isn’t perfect but then our own bewigged system doesn’t often inspire confidence either. At least over there the presumtion of innocence holds greater weight than over here- remember Double Jeopardy and the pressure to scrap Trial By Jury. In all I’d say McKinnon has greater protection in law over there than over here. And yes Andy, computer hacking is a serious crime.
Oh, and as for “the most violent and barbaric empire in history”- I suppose the First and Fifth Amendments mean absolutely fuck all to John Wight. Just serves to remind me why I stopped calling myself a Socialist a long time ago…
Comment by Johnny Uk — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:49 pm
Andy- if the treaty is wrong it should be fought no matter who it’s being invoked against. And it clearly IS wrong.
Comment by Armchair — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:53 pm
#11
McKinnon could post bail, and it could be arranged for his sentence to be served in the UK.
there is no extradition for libel, duh!
But were my server hosted in the USA, and it was subject to a cyber attack, then yes American criminal law would probably have jurisdiction over that crime; as the object of the attack would be a US based server farm.
Jurisdiction in cyber-crime is a complex issue, but based upon a client server architecture, surely it is correct that the crime is committed where the server is hosted, as well as where the client is located? How else can the owners of servers protect themselves from cyber attack across national borders?
It is not “nonsense” to argue that the issue of juristiction is open to the interpreation that the crime was committed in the USA, because that is actually what the law is.
Comment by Andy Newman — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:56 pm
Johnny #14
And I suppose the execution of juveniles and the incarceration of a full quarter of the entire world’s prison population means fuck all to you.
And speaking of US Amendments, the Second granting the right to bear arms is certainly a cracker.
I wonder how many children in the US would still be alive today if not for that one.
Comment by John Wight — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:58 pm
#13
“If they had any sense they’d hire him as a consultant.”
the NSA used to hire hackers if they are prepared to work in the labs at Fort Meade, and the Israelis still employ hackers.
But the thinking in the industry has evolved to make more of a distinction between “ethical hackers” who learn their skills in a reserach environment, and feral hackers who should be treated as serious criminals.
Comment by Andy Newman — 8 August, 2009 @ 12:59 pm
Incidently., the argument about recricocity is bogus as well.
Becasue there is no necessary reciprococity in the domestic process by which extradition is sought by the country seeking extradition.
In requesting extradition from the UK, the American authorities need to appear before a court in the USA establishing probably cause, and only then can they request extradition. So while no evidence is presented to a UK court, the Uk court knows that due process has been served and probable cause established in the USA. In most cases the US authorities will require a Grand Jury to agree the extradition request, the grand jury being a common law safeguard against malicious prosecution that the Americans have retained, but that was abolished in England decades ago.
it is also the case that the 1973 extradition act made extradition to the USA mre difficult than extradition to European and commonwealth countries, and the 2003 act merely brought the situation for the USA into line with the arrangements that the UK has with Eu countries.
the arrangement by which the Uk extradites to the USA under the 2003 treaty is very similar to that which we extradite to many other countries.
Comment by Andy Newman — 8 August, 2009 @ 1:08 pm
Legality and morality aside. What about the fact that this guy did a damn good job at hacking into military computers. If someone did that to my military networks (I don’t have any btw!) I would think:
1. Can I make an example of him so other people won’t be tempted to do the same this (take the RIAA as a current example of this);
2. Can I hire/us him.
If this guy ends up in a US jail, I don’t think he’s going to be twiddling his thumbs all day with nothing to do.
We could also switch the situation around and ask: how would the British government react if this was a US based US citizen caught hacking into British military computers? I would say it’s rather likely that the UK would want to avoid risking a what could quickly become a very public spat (as the McKinnon case has become in the UK).
Comment by Oliver — 8 August, 2009 @ 1:11 pm
Incidently,
I am suprised at the position being taken here by some that verges on libertarianism.
As socialists, how do we believe that states should deal with deeply anti-social criminal behavious like hacking?
If not prison, then what else?
Comment by Andy Newman — 8 August, 2009 @ 1:23 pm
Yes, Andy, how unsocialist to not ask that a wacky guy with Aspergers looking for aliens on the US government website be thrown into prison. You are a fucking parody of a mad tankie.
Comment by Jaason Simmons — 8 August, 2009 @ 1:24 pm
If we look at it another way.
McKinnon is clearly a very highly skilled hacker, and therefore will have put months and years into reearching his craft. This will also have included him being aware of the law, and the way high profile hackers, like “Coolio”, have been treated by the law in the past; and he will have known that the servers he hacked were in the USA.
He will also have accessed and accepted the warning banners that came up when he logged on, that unambiguosly point out that Jursidiction is in the USA, and that hacking will be treated as a criminal matter.
So he knew that he was committing a serious crime in the USA.
Is it unreasonable for someone who knowingly commits a serious anti-social crime to face the consequences?
Comment by Andy Newman — 8 August, 2009 @ 1:29 pm
#21
So what is the solution to hacking?
And what other crimes do you think people diagnosed with Aspergers should have immunity for?
It seems your idea of socialism is just to imagine happy and healthy young men and women dancing around a maypole with flowers in their hair, and not having to provide solutions to any real world problems.
Comment by Andy Newman — 8 August, 2009 @ 1:32 pm
#23 - Andy, you’re adopting quite a reactionary position on this. We could also ask what’s the solution to benefit cheats?
The point is that the crime or offence committed by McKinnon, who suffers from Asperger’s, is as nothing compared to the crimes of those wishing to prosecute him.
I just don’t seen any ideological framework to the argument you’re making.
In Florida there reside known terrorists, people responsible for planting bombs and acts of sabotage against Cuba. The reason they haven’t been either prosecuted or extradited is due to ideological not legal arguments or on the legal merits of the cases involved.
The Cuban 5 were imprisoned for trying to prevent such acts of terrorism, after the Cuban govt presented the US Justice Dept with a dossier outlining the activities of the people involved based in Florida.
Surely, we should be looking to lessen ties between our legal system and that of the US. Surely, we recognise that an extradition treaty which is wide open to abuse, which has been used as part of the global War on Terror, is something we should not be supporting.
As for computer hacking, I prefer to take it on a case by case basis. McKinnon has no history of hacking into personal computers. He’s a conspiracy theory nut who crossed the line. I see no reason to ruin the man’s life over it.
Comment by John Wight — 8 August, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
Also, it’s almost certain that if he’s tried in the UK he’ll be going down. He’s admitted his guilt and so he will be punished.
Comment by John Wight — 8 August, 2009 @ 2:03 pm
John
I don’t think you fully appreciate what a massive social problem computer hacking is; the degree to which different forms of hacking overlap; and the way that celebrity hackers encourage the sub-culture of script-kiddies.
States should take action to protect society from anti-social criminals like McKinnon, and we shouldn’t be seeking to excuse or minimise what a serious crime this is; and what massive damage it does economically, socially, and potentially to threaten life and limb.
If socialists have nothing to say about how a massive social problem like hacking should be tackled, other than to make excuses for the perpetrators then I think we are in deep trouble. If not government prosecuting, then how else should it be dealt with?
It seems to me that use of the criminal law is proportionate and justified; and I don’t see what other mechanisms exist.
Nor does the fact that the USA’s legal system has abused the Miami 5, or Mumia, or others, change the nature of McKinnon’s crime; or reduce the authority of the American state to prosecute for such a crime.
Comment by Andy Newman — 8 August, 2009 @ 2:11 pm
#25
He should certainly be able to serve any sentance passed in an American court in a UK prison.
But I think it creates problems to claim that the USA has no jursidiction on a crime committed on federally owned property located in the USA. that seems to me an entirely reasnable case for extradition.
The Nat-West three had a much stringer argument than mcKinnon, as they were extradited for a action that took place in the Uk, and was not illegal under English law. McKinnon on the other hand doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
Comment by Andy Newman — 8 August, 2009 @ 2:15 pm
Andy, you know squat all about the US. This is blatantly obvious whenever you write about it. Your assertions about the criminal injustice system here are an insult to hundreds of thousands of people languishing in jail for minor offenses, or often no offenses at all.
Here’s a very incomplete list of problems particular to the US justice system:
1. The adversarial trial: finding exculpatory evidence is, in the US, the job of the defendants’ lawyers. The state’s attorneys, on the other hand, are not required to find out the true culprit, but merely to secure a conviction for the person charged with the crime. This is in contrast at least to systems based on Roman/Napoleonic legal structures. In effect, at a US criminal trial, the state and the defence are treated as co-equal adversaries, which is obviously a fiction.
2. As a consequence of 1., the chances of a defendant in a US trial a extremely dependent on the legal team he or she is able to afford - this does not just include the lawyers themselves, but their investigators, outside experts (in the US, experts aren’t neutral witnesses, but testify on behalf of the state or the defence, resp.) etc. Of course criminal justice is class-based in all capitalist societies, but this is even more pronounced in the US.
3. The punishments: punishments even for very minor crimes are vastly excessive - “three strikes laws”, for example, can get you life without possibility of parole for, say, pick-pocketing. Taken together with the low chances of many defendants at trials (particularly, poor and minority defendants or those accused of certain crimes), this results in huge pressure on defendants to cop a plea. The majority of cases never go to trial.
I could go on, but to be short: the system here is broken. I don’t know a single person vaguely on the left who doesn’t agree with that assessment, nor are there many serious legal scholars who doubt this. One doesn’t have to be a Marxist to notice, either. In the McKinnon case, of course, there’s an additional problem: it’s national security related, which in practice pretty much eliminates all the rights of the defendant (review of evidence and cross-examination of witnesses, to name but two). Just last week, the government announced its intention to retry a so-called “terrorism suspect” who was already acquitted; the administration has made it clear it reserves the right to detain people indefinitely even if acquitted on trial, simply on presidential determination that they are a security risk. And so on. Study the ACLU website if you are interested in more detail.
Comment by christian h. — 8 August, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
Now Andy is talking about “anti-social” people. Wow. He makes Cameron look like a socialist by now.
Comment by christian h. — 8 August, 2009 @ 2:33 pm
Brilliant post, thank goodness not everyone in the UK has lost their head over this case.
Comment by Mr History — 8 August, 2009 @ 2:37 pm
As for whether the US system is unduly harsh in comparison to the British, the case referred to below would undoubtedly have merited a long incarceration in the Anerican prison system.
http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-watch/2009/8/7/mosque-threat-man-avoids-prison.html
Unfair?
Comment by Mr History — 8 August, 2009 @ 2:44 pm
Yes, locking this guy up for life would have been wrong.
Comment by christian h. — 8 August, 2009 @ 2:50 pm
If a journalist obtains secret information that the government is trying to hide socialists don’t call for them to be extradited and sent to prison. The Watergate scandal would never have been exposed if that were the case. Even though McKinnon is not a journalist he hacked to find out information that he believed was being kept secret illigitimately.
Governments hack computers all the time on the pretext of security and solving crime. Mainly it’s to keep tabs on the left and to control any form of dissent. Governments have been caught red handed funding crime such as gun running and drug trafficking as in the case of the US. Without people snooping around none of this would have come to light.
As for the whole issue of what socialists have to say about crime it’s not difficult to find a plethora of information on our response to crime. We start from the position that it is an integral part of capitalism and the only way to deal with it is to end inequality. Locking up McKinnon won’t reduce crime it will serve to highlight the secretive, duplicitous and unjust nature of governments and their criminal justice systems.
Comment by Ray — 8 August, 2009 @ 2:57 pm
“States should take action to protect society from anti-social criminals like McKinnon, and we shouldn’t be seeking to excuse or minimise what a serious crime this is; and what massive damage it does economically, socially, and potentially to threaten life and limb.”
Except that the biggest offenders as far as hacking goes, are big states like Russia and the USA, who use armies of hackers to bring down the computer systems of key institutions as part of psyops, pre-invasion softening of targets, etc. There was lots of information on this viz Georgia, for instance. The US state - and the military specifically - has no moral authority to prosecute anyone on this basis.
But what is disturbing here is your concern for the US military. I’m not into e-terrorism any more than real terrorism - unlike the US military, which uses both - but I have no problem with e-civil disobedience against the military or US state. And I won’t congratulate them for arresting e-activists any more than I will congratulate them for arresting civil disobedience practitioners or those who access government secrets (which are, after all, secrets mostly kept from us about nefarious activities) and spread them around. The more disruption of the US state, the better.
And, while there is some overlap between hackers who create worms, viruses, etc. that target any and all (bad) and those who hack into state institutions to try and uncover secrets (good), we frankly shouldn’t lump all these things together using a reactionary bourgeois category like “anti-social” which is exclusively applied to individuals and primarily working class youths. The real anti-social behaviour that disrupts lives comes from corporations - who are laying off hundreds of thousands - and states - for instance the US so-called justice system, which incarcerates US citizens at a higher rate than any other nation on the planet. A justice system that uses slave labour for corporations, where the drugs of the poor - crack - receive much higher sentences than the drugs of the rich, like cocaine. A country where, if you are black, you are more likely to end up in jail than end up in university.
I’m afraid even the Wachowski brothers (The Matrix) have a better position on hacking than you do.
Comment by redbedhead — 8 August, 2009 @ 2:57 pm
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.
Andy newman’s vision of socialism
Comment by darren redstar — 8 August, 2009 @ 3:14 pm
What a downright nasty post. How anyone (ANYONE, not anyone claiming to be socialist) can claim that the US legal system is roughly alright is beyond me. McKinnon is only criminal in the sense that a graffiti artist is - a minor nuisance who should face no more than a year in prison if he caused damage. If the security people left the doors open, which they did, then people will wander in. Who else has wandered in? What crime gangs and foreign intelligence agencies have been all over the US military networks? McKinnon isn’t a spammer or a fraud involved in large scale cyber-crime; he’s an obsessive nerd who can probably expect to be sodomised on his first night in a US jail (this seems to be a matter of pride to Americans), then maybe have to endure years of this before he finds out whether or not he’ll ever get out. Of course, he probably never will get out. He doesn’t look strong; this will probably be a death sentence for him. If the US authorities want to come down hard over this, they should come down on the inept and probably corrupt computer security people they employ. We should surrender someone up to a possible 70 year sentence for this? That’s a mature ‘legal system’?
Comment by Anonymous — 8 August, 2009 @ 3:37 pm
Andy, I take a position that if people are hacking into the US government and NASA to find aliens, I don’t give a flying fuck. You are a raving lunatic and “society” and “nation” has entirely supplanted “class” in your analysis. You’ve utterly lost the plot.
Comment by Jaason Simmons — 8 August, 2009 @ 4:11 pm
I have to say, Andy, I found this article fairly astonishing. Do you really think that the kind of penalties being touted by the US authorities for what McKinnon did are proportionate - and that the US judicial system is impartial and unbiased when it comes to accusation of terrorism?
Comment by Matt Sellwood — 8 August, 2009 @ 4:26 pm
If the Daily Mail take up Marxism can we expect a post praising Joseph McCarthy?
Two issues are conflated here, hacking as an anti social activity (arguable perhaps in this case as he was searching for suppressed evidence the govt had no right to keep secret) but you are correct it is a serious crime in many cases. And the US legal system (and the UK’s submissive end of it), as the US tortures and executes people no one should support anyone being sent there. Surely a socialist solution would put him on closely supervised probation combined with medical support and a refusal to extradite to a country with a for profit penal system that has form for lethally injecting the disabled!
Comment by RickB — 8 August, 2009 @ 4:27 pm
Christian- a correction, the criminal justice system in England + Wales is not based on Roman law, and is adversarial like that of the USA, and unlike Continental Europe. However I agree with your other points. Andy you really disapoint on this one.
Comment by Armchair — 8 August, 2009 @ 4:47 pm
“If they had any sense they’d hire him as a consultant”
As an IT security professional this one always makes me laugh out loud!!
(Aside the fact that he was caught in any case) - Would you employ an arsonist as a fireman?
These sentiments are invariably always from amateurs who find the world of IT somewhat vaguely magical as are the bleeding hearts who do not know the real details of this case or understand the seriousness of the consequences to these attacks and so cry for this criminal fool.
This man knows very little about IT and IT security; he is a ’script kiddie” as Andy pointed out merely using precompiled point-and-shoot tools that are two a penny on the internet as are its users; the only reason the attack succeeded was the astounding lack of security employed by these US agencies - in some case no passwords were even set and he was able to Telent (!) directly onto the servers. Amazing.
These days, even most small to medium business employ an entry to mid level security professional with an array of appliances, tools and knowledge that would dwarf Mckinnon’s extremely limited usefulness.
But that said, he did know enough to be extremely malicious - and this isn’t printed in any paper I have read here - but he deleted around 40,000 critical files on servers and rendered large elements of the US Atlantic fleet without an organised supply chain; he deliberately erased and corrupted the boot sectors of around 2000 servers rendering them useless until repair and bringing large parts of a critical military network down and he also left threatening notes boasting of his exploits, criticising the US and promising sustained attacks.
All of this before and just after 9/11 and all of the attendant and understandable paranoia.
Contray to popualr belief, he wasn’t just bumbling around looking for UFO’s and the like - he carried out an organised, sustained and deliberately malicious attack, albeit with the assistance of poor security.
The man is certainly a serious criminal, and irregardless of his now supposed intent, I consider that his malicious actions has had the same effect as a terrorist attacking and that he clearly stated his intent to cause terror by leaving the notes he did.
I have no sympathy for this criminal fool at all and if he gets 70 years for committing a crime in a country that gives out 70 year sentences for this crime, then that is tough and he should have thought about that first.
You are spot on Andy.
Comment by kareem — 8 August, 2009 @ 4:58 pm
Armchair (40.): Yeah I know that - it’s really the combination of issues that makes the US system so particularly bad.
Comment by christian h. — 8 August, 2009 @ 5:00 pm
Thanks for that, Kareem, you could have just simplified that post by saying. “Hi, I’m a complete internet nerd with no life. String up lesser nerds from the highest branch!”
Comment by frippertronic — 8 August, 2009 @ 5:10 pm
To add: plea-bargaining (in practice one of the most problematic features of the US system) is considerably restricted, and therefore much rarer in England and Wales than in the US.
Comment by christian h. — 8 August, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
kareem #41
he deleted around 40,000 critical files on servers and rendered large elements of the US Atlantic fleet without an organised supply chain; he deliberately erased and corrupted the boot sectors of around 2000 servers rendering them useless until repair and bringing large parts of a critical military network down
Reply:
Really? In that case I stand corrected. The man shouldn’t be punished, he should be given a medal for services to the human race.
Comment by John Wight — 8 August, 2009 @ 5:15 pm
It’s a new low for you siding with the US military against one sad geek, Andy.
Comment by Tim Vanhoof — 8 August, 2009 @ 5:16 pm
John (45.), indeed. It seems a bit weird that the task of the socialist now seems to include protecting the US Navy from harm.
Comment by christian h. — 8 August, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
I await your post urging the swift execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of a serious crime by the impartial US justice system.
Comment by Tim Vanhoof — 8 August, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
How long till Andy calls for workers who admit to breaking anti-union laws to be jailed. They guy is a crank!
Comment by Jaason Simmons — 8 August, 2009 @ 5:21 pm
“Thanks for that, Kareem, you could have just simplified that post by saying. “Hi, I’m a complete internet nerd with no life. String up lesser nerds from the highest branch!”
And why would I say that when not even one word of it is true?
“Really? In that case I stand corrected. The man shouldn’t be punished, he should be given a medal for services to the human race.”
If he had hacked into your PC (or bank) and stolen your money, private data and porn to show you how funny it all really is then I would agree, but the fact is that elements of this fleet are nuclear too and it is potentially very dangerous to interfere with them - and the fact is that is a crime and whether you like it or not it is a very dangerous crime.
But your support of crime and criminals is pretty odd as is all of the guys here attacking Andy - I don’t think you know what socialism is, I think you are really anarchists at best and just disgruntled, angry malcontents - rebels without a cause - at most likely.
Comment by kareem — 8 August, 2009 @ 5:33 pm
`If he had hacked into your PC (or bank) and stolen your money, private data and porn to show you how funny it all really is then I would agree, but the fact is that elements of this fleet are nuclear too and it is potentially very dangerous to interfere with them - and the fact is that is a crime and whether you like it or not it is a very dangerous crime.’
I’d be more pissed off about the former. The latter I couldn’t give a damn about and anybody who builds a military system that can be hacked and subverted is the one who should be facing jail not the messanger. Anyway, who really thinks it is in anybody’s interest to imprison for 70 years a guy with aspergers who was looking for UFOs because of the incompetence of the US military? Give the guy a job and see if he can advise on how to combat hacking.
As for the US being a liberal democracy. It is a democracy but only in the way Rome was and in their prisons they keep control by actively encouraging prisoner on prisoner violence and abuse. For them that is as much a part of the punishment as the incarceration itself.
Comment by Hacked Off — 8 August, 2009 @ 5:48 pm
FFS.
I am an ememy of everything you belive in. I would kill you all without blinking.
But your right here.
Hat tip to the enemy for honesty truth and reason.
Comment by DavidNcl — 8 August, 2009 @ 6:08 pm
Christian- believe me, plea bargaining happens here as well, and I’ve encountered how apallingly it can manifest itself. We need to learn from negative aspects of the US system. On the other hand are you able to comment on Andy’s point re the grand jury?
Comment by Armchair — 8 August, 2009 @ 6:12 pm
@51
“I’d be more pissed off about the former. The latter I couldn’t give a damn about”
If a nuclear incident had been sparked or even if the US had thought a sovereign nation to be behind it I think you just might have - but in any case it is not up to your or Mckinnon to decide which laws you think should be obeyed.
“The latter I couldn’t give a damn about and anybody who builds a military system that can be hacked and subverted is the one who should be facing jail not the messanger”
Ah, of course, you are yet another clueless amateur out of your depth.
Any internetworked system can be hacked, the goal of network security is to make it so difficult and traceable so as to make the target unattractive as the hacker knows they will face considerable punishment when caught.
The security at these places largely failed to live up to the first part of this, achieved the second part and now the law must play its part in the third part: Punishment and deterrent - and deterrent is the only thing to stop more people hacking into your banks and PC’s etc.
Mckinnon was no “messenger” he was a criminal employing illegal techniques to attack systems that he had no business to be attacking.
If you leave your bedroom window open overnight is it your fault if your wife is raped or you are murdered?
“Anyway, who really thinks it is in anybody’s interest to imprison for 70 years a guy with aspergers who was looking for UFOs because of the incompetence of the US military?”
As explained in detail in my first post, this is a media fallacy - this guy deliberately caused massive and malicious damage and threatened to continue doing so.
“Give the guy a job and see if he can advise on how to combat hacking”
Again as explained in detail in my first post, he cant.
He knows nothing other then how to use two-a-penny point-and-shoot “script kiddie” tools freely available on the internet.
Real network security requires immense knowledge of TCP/IP, firewalls, IPS / IDS systems, ACL’s, routing protocols, routers and switches, AV, VPN, pen testing etc etc
Comment by kareem — 8 August, 2009 @ 6:13 pm
#51 Kareem; you said;
“He knows nothing other then how to use two-a-penny point-and-shoot “script kiddie” tools freely available on the internet.”
But you’ve spent a couple of posts telling us that Mckinnon created mayhem with the US military IT infrastructure.
Specifically @41, you said that he;
“deleted around 40,000 critical files on servers and rendered large elements of the US Atlantic fleet without an organised supply chain; deliberately erased and corrupted the boot sectors of around 2000 servers rendering them useless until repair and bringing large parts of a critical military network down”.
That’s not the result of kiddie scripts is it ?
Your narrative is broken, which is it ?
Master computer hacker that can delete boot sectors on US military computers or clueless script kiddie ?
Comment by Eddie Truman — 8 August, 2009 @ 6:29 pm
It’s hilarious how the moronic arguments are deployed. Would you be pissed off if he nicked your money? Yes! But he didn’t! Is it your own fault if you leave a window open and your wife is raped and murdered? No! But that’s not what happened.
I’m pretty sure that it’s illegal to flypost, or deliver solidarity action, or brick a copper or overthrow capitalism. I think they’re all great. As for hacking into the US goverment’s computers to look for aliens, or fucking with the navy: fine, whatever.
Comment by frippertronic — 8 August, 2009 @ 7:04 pm
The Grand Jury may be a good idea in principle, but in current US practice it is very easy to get one to issue an indictment. It should be added that various US jurisdictions don’t in fact use them - but even where they are used, the jury will very rarely refuse to issue an indictment and if it should refuse, the prosecutor can simply call a new one (an unlimited number of times, in fact).
Comment by christian h. — 8 August, 2009 @ 7:11 pm
kareem is outraged by this child’s fucking with the US military’s computers. I wonder if he was so exercised by the US military causing hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as displacing millions.
And if the US military is damn pathetic that all it takes is one kid - who according to Kareem, knows nothing about hacking - to threaten nuclear holocaust and military attack, then we’re fucked anyway. At some point some slacker will fall asleep and hit a button and we’ll all go up in smoke - apparently it’s that easy. What ridiculous nonsense.
I agree with John Wight - give the kid a medal.
Comment by redbedhead — 8 August, 2009 @ 7:27 pm
yes, I certainly support Gary, I am not sure even if it was bang to rights that the US justice system can be trusted to be just, I will wait and see what Mumia Abu-Jamal thinks and post it up on SU.
Solidarity with Gary!
Comment by Derek Wall — 8 August, 2009 @ 7:44 pm
@ 55
“That’s not the result of kiddie scripts is it ?
Your narrative is broken, which is it ?
Master computer hacker that can delete boot sectors on US military computers or clueless script kiddie ?”
Again, my narrative is not broken but your knowledge is profoundly flawed; you are yet another of these clueless amateurs queuing up to comment on things you know nothing about.
Deleting boot sectors, critical OS files or interfering with the boot.ini is child’s play and can be done extremely easily by anyone with admin access to a box; to delete or amend the boot.ini for instance and you are in trouble - its as simple as right clicking over “my computer” selecting “properties” and then “advanced”, then click on “start up and recovery” settings and “edit” under “system startup” - go on do us all a favour and give it a go! And while you are at it delete some of your system32 files at random too!
@56
“It’s hilarious how the moronic arguments are deployed. Would you be pissed off if he nicked your money? Yes! But he didn’t! Is it your own fault if you leave a window open and your wife is raped and murdered? No! But that’s not what happened.”
Hmmm, I think you need to look up the word “analogy” and then also have a little think about consequential actions, the law and the deterrent effect.
@ 57
“kareem is outraged by this child’s fucking the US military’s computers” / “all it takes is one kid” / “give the kid a medal”
Its obvious you are not even acquainted with the most rudimentary facts of the case: McKinnon is 43 years old - no “child” or “kid”!!!
I think given that it is clear that you don’t even have the most basic idea of the issue you are commenting - or more like ranting - on that your effort is the real piece of “ridiculous nonsense” here.
As a muslim I find your bizarre and flippant comparison to my respect for the law and my professional knowledge of the impact of hacking to the plight of my brethren extremely offensive and unnecessary.
You are obviously guided by your hatred of the US not by common sense and respect for the law. If these laws are not applied at every point then it will be your PC, bank and money that is targeted without fear of consequence, and will be the least of your worries.
Hacking is far from a victimless crime and with pretty much every facet of our lives now digitised it is the new ultimate weapon of crime and terror - just for instance, most hospitals are reliant on computer technology and one obscure example of how crime can take advantage of this is a mafia hit that has been performed by hacking into a hospitals ICU server and changing the dosage of a patient; can you imagine a terrorist organisation performing the same attack for everyone in that hospital or even for dozens, hundreds or thousands simultaneously? Or attacking the critical infrastructure centres, etc.
Without effective deterrent we not only have to worry about the real terrorists that want to do us all harm but idiots like this Mckinnon too - and as I have already detailed that his actions caused much damage and deliberately so in any case - a crime.
You cannot cherry pick the law for the bits that your anti-US hatred and prejudice doesn’t like.
Comment by kareem — 8 August, 2009 @ 8:06 pm
“As a muslim I find your bizarre and flippant comparison to my respect for the law and my professional knowledge of the impact of hacking to the plight of my brethren extremely offensive and unnecessary.”
Well, you seem worried about the condition of the US military’s computers - why is that? If you cared for your brethren I’d have thought you would be happy that some guy was able to fuck up their computers. Maybe a few less Iraqis - not all of whom are Muslims, in any case, might not have died. But if it makes you feel better to use a nation without a Muslim majority, you can slot in any number of countries that have felt American law and order.
“You cannot cherry pick the law for the bits that your anti-US hatred and prejudice doesn’t like.”
You’re right, of course - I’m driven by an irrational hatred of the US. And prejudice - I’ve prejudged the US. I can’t imagine where I might have gotten the idea that the US state is one that ought to be disrupted, or its military derailed. Let’s look at the evidence - I could demonstrate at least 30 countries that the United States has invaded in the last hundred years. I could point to the way in which its laws are written and applied in ways that are racist and biased in favour of the rich - many others on here have done so. I think that ipso facto proves that nobody here is “prejudging” the US.
However, you, in your brilliant grasp of the technicalities of deleting files on remote computers, are also qualified to judge this man on the basis of… oh, yes, using a non sequitur argument and claiming a moral equivalence between organized crime or terrorists attacking “hundreds of hospitals.”
Friend, if you’re going to ride about on a high horse parading your great, superior knowledge over all others in the field of computer hacking, you ought not to demonstrate that in the field of practical logic you are a total moron.
Comment by redbedhead — 8 August, 2009 @ 8:30 pm
#60 after I called them out on the 180 degree switch from describing McKinnon as a dangerous hacker who had brought down the US Atlantic supply chain to a braindead script kiddie;
“Again, my narrative is not broken but your knowledge is profoundly flawed; you are yet another of these clueless amateurs queuing up to comment on things you know nothing about.”
I know something of what we are talking about, I worked for 10 years as a software tester on Adobe products from 1995, moving on in following years to Quality Management.
I’ll repeat, the narrative that you offer is broken, where is it coming from ?
Is it a script ?
One minute you are claiming that McKinnon is so dangerous because he brought US military IT infrastructure to it’s knees, the next that he is but a brain dead script kiddie.
You’re a fraud.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 8 August, 2009 @ 8:45 pm
This guy has not killed anyone or physically attacked anyone or physically damaged anything.
For those of us who are not IT experts, it seems all he’s done is nose around a bit on his computer.
It’s all extremely odd when Andy and Kareem work themselves into a paranoid frenzy over the damage that could, potentially, be done by computer by malicious criminals when they’re totally missing the point that this guy being threatened with a possible 70-year sentence hasn’t actually done any harm to anyone or anything - not here in the real world that is.
It’s really worrying to see Andy going bonkers like this.
For heavens sake man get a grip!
Comment by communist — 8 August, 2009 @ 8:46 pm
I’ve neveer posted before but this stuff by andy is incredible. I rarely bother looking here any more as on every issue, Andy is always pushing to the right. This latest instalment shows he has truly lost his marbles.
Comment by Des Carter — 8 August, 2009 @ 8:51 pm
To be fair Des, Andy often posts up really interesting stuff here. It’s just that every now and then he does bizzarre stuff like this and leaves us all perplexed.
Comment by communist — 8 August, 2009 @ 9:05 pm
#61
No, my “friend” it is you who is the “total moron” and you prove it everytime you touch a keyboard - do you really not understand such simple concepts? Are you really that stupid? Is it possible?
It doesn’t matter which networks, and in which country this idiot attacked, the fact is that he attacked them and wilfully broke the law and for that he must pay and more importantly, been seen to be paying for his crime. The fact that he attacked any government network let alone ones deemed sensitive will obviously increase the punishment, but more importantly the deterrent effect for all attacks against anyone, particular sensitive networks including banks, hospitals, etc. etc and will thus help protect all us in the future as idiots like this will be put off perfoming these attacks leaving us security professionals able to deal with the real threats.
Is it starting to filter through to your tiny little mind now?
The law applies to everyone and in every situation, and the sentence is not just about punishing transgressors but discouraging future transgressors.
Was 9/11 OK because it was an attack against the US and US economic power? Were those laws OK to discare in that case?
Is it OK to kill Americans? Does the law on murder only apply to countries and races that you like?
“You’re right, of course - I’m driven by an irrational hatred of the US. And prejudice - I’ve prejudged the US. I can’t imagine where I might have gotten the idea that the US state is one that ought to be disrupted, or its military derailed… blah…blah…blah…”
Yeah, there we go, absolute confirmation. See above.
And his attacks were perfomed long before the invasion of Iraq in any case you clueless idiot.
“However, you, in your brilliant grasp of the technicalities of deleting files on remote computers” / “Friend, if you’re going to ride about on a high horse parading your great, superior knowledge over all others in the field of computer hacking”
Not at all, I already said it was child’s play (but a massive boast in your IT education no doubt!!!)
But impotent rage and jealousy like yours usually manifest in this blatantly ignorant way - you remind me of “comic book guy” on The Simpsons.
“However, you, in your brilliant grasp of the technicalities of deleting files on remote computers, are also qualified to judge this man on the basis of… oh, yes, using a non sequitur argument and claiming a moral equivalence between organized crime or terrorists attacking “hundreds of hospitals.”
No you fool, I am demonstrating why the law needs to be applied in every case and needs to be seen to be applied with its deterrent effect. Quite obviously, you moron.
As I said, you are guided purely by hatred and not by logic, let alone decency, and are more suited to anarchism then socialism.
#62
” know something of what we are talking about, I worked for 10 years as a software tester on Adobe products from 1995, moving on in following years to Quality Management.”
Given that you do not even know the most rudimentary elements of the boot up process and how easy it is to break I doubt any of that is even remotely true - and supposing it was a massive stretch, then you are most certainly the “fraud” getting away with it.
But in any case it is clear that you know nothing about IT security and are talking out of your arse.
“I’ll repeat, the narrative that you offer is broken, where is it coming from ?
Is it a script ?
One minute you are claiming that McKinnon is so dangerous because he brought US military IT infrastructure to it’s knees, the next that he is but a brain dead script kiddie.
You’re a fraud.”
It was all carefully explained you with a demonstration that anyone can follow (and I wish you had!!) - a couple of simple clicks and either a deletion or an amendment is all it takes once you have admin privileges.
But like I said, anyone can follow the steps I listed and see what a clueless idiot you are and that your rants are based upon nothing more then hot air, hate and bullshit.
“This guy has not killed anyone or physically attacked anyone or physically damaged anything.For those of us who are not IT experts, it seems all he’s done is nose around a bit on his computer.”
He did massive damage!!! That has all been explained already! His actions directly effected a fleet with nuclear weapons and the interdependence of several critical systems by messing with files and boot sectors.
You don’t have to be an expert in anything to understand that your bank account is stored electronically (let alone pretty much every other facet of your life) and I doubt you would want anyone being allowed to “nose around a bit” in it or playing the same games that he did. If you don’t want that - and it is against the law -then you can’t choose this crime as an exemption because you do not understand it or dislike the US.
“this guy being threatened with a possible 70-year sentence hasn’t actually done any harm to anyone or anything - not here in the real world that is.”
Like I said, he should have thought about that long before attacking a sensitive government network in a country that gives out 70 year sentences for having their sensitive governemnt networks hacked!
He did cause considerable damage but the point is that he did it and for that he needs to be punished and for the hacker “community” to see what happens if they play such games for all the reasons I have already given at length.
Like I have said, all of you who are attacking Andy on the basis of technical ignorance, flawed logic and hatred are not socialists at all but anarchists at best.
Comment by kareem — 8 August, 2009 @ 9:21 pm
Surely hacking into US ilitary computers is a good thing. As far as the safety of service personnel is concerned, as a socialist and anti imperialist I have no concern whatsoever about them and their safety. It would be good for all of us to know what the US and other military are up to.
Comment by redstar1917 — 8 August, 2009 @ 9:24 pm
Calm down Kareem please.
Mr Mckinnon has not single-handedly destroyed the US Pacific Fleet from his bedroom, it is all still there.
And Mr McKinnon has not caused hospital doctors to amputate the wrong legs from their patients either - I think we can safely assume that these doctors will make their own considered clinical decisions regardless of any temporary IT difficulties that may arise.
If Mr McKinnon has mischievously deleted some computor files, then the consequence of that would have been a difficult and irritating day at the office at some obscure admin centre in Nowheresville USA.
Computors are not “magic” Kareem, please resist the temptation to compare one sad, lonely geek to the group of fanatics who flew real planes into real buildings and killed real people.
Making such comparisons just makes you look ridiculous.
Even Andy’s not backing you up anymore Kareem.
Comment by communist — 8 August, 2009 @ 9:34 pm
have i gone on the daily mail blog by mistake
Comment by jim — 8 August, 2009 @ 9:37 pm
Andy ,I usually have a degree of respect for much that you write. But justifying hypocritical American State vindictiveness towards a solitary individual based upon a one way, poodle-like extradition treaty is , to my reasoning, along similar lines to defending special rendition.
Comment by Alf G — 8 August, 2009 @ 9:50 pm
Mr McKinnon is being prosecuted in an attempt to deter others from seeking information on the activities of the government.
It is transparently obvious to all that his actions were no risk to the security, welfare or safety of anyone and only an utter fool would be taken in by such nonsense.
By persecuting Mr McKinnon, the state is warning the rest of us not to go “snooping around” trying to uncover its secrets.
Comment by communist — 8 August, 2009 @ 9:52 pm
“the fact is that he attacked them and wilfully broke the law and for that he must pay and more importantly, been seen to be paying for his crime. The fact that he attacked any government network let alone ones deemed sensitive will obviously increase the punishment, but more importantly the deterrent effect for all attacks against anyone, particular sensitive networks including banks, hospitals, etc. etc and will thus help protect all us in the future as idiots like this will be put off perfoming these attacks leaving us security professionals able to deal with the real threats.”
ah, kareem, now I understand, you’re an electronic rent-a-cop with a hard-on for law enforcement to protect the interests of international law and order, ie. the integrity of the state - against those who might try to steal sensitive information or prevent the biggest imperial army in human history from having one more smoothly running day of killing people.
Why are you on a socialist website? Oh, yeah, because on this socialist website Andy believes that the cops who shot Jean Charles de Menezes SHOULDN’T be brought to trial but some computer nerd who deleted some US military files (thus endangering the free world in Kareem’s mind) SHOULD be deported and sent up for 75 years.
Kareem, since you’ve enriched my knowledge of IT, to the great benefit of my career, I’m certain, allow me to provide you with a lesson in basic logic. You’ve provided us with a logical fallacy when you compare this guy’s deletion of computer files form the US imperialist military to “a mafia hit that has been performed by hacking into a hospitals ICU server and changing the dosage of a patient; can you imagine a terrorist organisation performing the same attack for everyone in that hospital or even for dozens, hundreds or thousands simultaneously? Or attacking the critical infrastructure centres, etc.”
That’s called a non sequitur. Literally, it does not follow. Let me provide you an example.
“Those anti-war protestors picketing our elected representatives offices should be thrown in jail. How would you feel if they showed up at your house and picketed your infant daughter’s birthday party and threw eggs at your aging granny, causing her to have a heart attack. These people are murderers!”
Do you see the problem in your method?
Comment by redbedhead — 8 August, 2009 @ 9:53 pm
…and if you world leaders don’t pay me the sum of one million dollars, I will press this button and destroy downtown Swindon..
(puts little finger in mouth and laughs manically while stroking a fluffy cat)
Comment by Dr Evil — 8 August, 2009 @ 10:07 pm
“65.To be fair Des, Andy often posts up really interesting stuff here. It’s just that every now and then he does bizzarre stuff like this and leaves us all perplexed.”
He has done but my point is that especially in the last couple of years, he is always moving to the right. His postings often, as in this case, come across as provocations to the left. However, each time, he is pushing his agenda to the right.
Comment by Des Carter — 8 August, 2009 @ 10:32 pm
#67
“As far as the safety of service personnel is concerned, as a socialist and anti imperialist I have no concern whatsoever about them and their safety.”
You are not a socialist at all, just an angry bitter deluded nut plucking a name out of the air to justify the fact that twisted hate and the fact that they need professional help.
Tell me of one socialist uprising that dispensed with the forces?
#68
“Mr Mckinnon has not single-handedly destroyed the US Pacific Fleet from his bedroom, it is all still there.
And Mr McKinnon has not caused hospital doctors to amputate the wrong legs from their patients either.”
Pure straw man rubbish.
“I think we can safely assume that these doctors will make their own considered clinical decisions regardless of any temporary IT difficulties that may arise.”
Can we safely assume that they will keep their heart beating second after second and constantly monitor their critical signs along with all of the real-time tasks that computers perform too?
“If Mr McKinnon has mischievously deleted some computor files, then the consequence of that would have been a difficult and irritating day at the office at some obscure admin centre in Nowheresville USA.”
Ignorant rubbish and not something you would find remotly amusing if it were your bank account that had been “mischievously deleted” or anything else remotely personal.
“Computors are not “magic” Kareem, please resist the temptation to compare one sad, lonely geek to the group of fanatics who flew real planes into real buildings and killed real people.”
Again, ignorant rubbish; I was quite obviously challenging whether the law applies to everyone in every circumstance and if not how far does that go. Try and think before you type.
But as has already been detailed, attacking networks can and has resulted in deaths and will feature more and more prominently in the future as practically everything is digitised; it is the ignorance of just how much is stake by not deterring idiots like Mckinnon from attacking any networks, let alone ones deemed as sensitive. that reveal the sheer idiocy of your premise.
“Even Andy’s not backing you up anymore Kareem.”
Again, just straw man rubbish - Andy wasn’t “backing me up” at all in any case - he stopped commenting about 10 posts before I started, most likely sick and tired of being the only adult in the room and using logic and reason amongst hate-filled loonies who fail to grasp that this has nothing really to do with the US or the US military at all.
But it is a nice illustration of the way you and the rest of the attack muppets here think; I am now the sole voice of sanity amongst a few voices of idiocy, but because I am outnumbered I must be wrong!!
#71
“Mr McKinnon is being prosecuted in an attempt to deter others from seeking information on the activities of the government”
Oh great, a conspiracy nut into the mix now!!
No, its because he broke the law actually!!! And its the same law that applies to everything from your home PC to a banks server farm!!! My God the ignorance is astounding!! No wonder Andy has left the building…
#72
“ah, kareem, now I understand, you’re an electronic rent-a-cop”
Again you reveal your absurd ignorance and duplicity.
You now try desperately and pathetically to paint ME as some sort of bad guy, as if I am a tool of oppression when in reality I am a network security professional and a ‘pen’ tester that has worked contracts for every conceivable enterprise, from the NHS to banks, airlines to shipping, corporations to charities (pro-bono) and the work I have done has ensured the integrity and safety of these systems from criminals, terrorists and malicious idiots like Mckinnon.
What a bizarre individual you are.
“Why are you on a socialist website? Oh, yeah, because on this socialist website Andy believes that the cops who shot Jean Charles de Menezes SHOULDN’T be brought to trial but some computer nerd who deleted some US military files (thus endangering the free world in Kareem’s mind) SHOULD be deported and sent up for 75 years.”
Because I am a socialist you fool, why are you on this particular website if you hate the main contributer so much?
“Kareem, since you’ve enriched my knowledge of IT, to the great benefit of my career, I’m certain, allow me to provide you with a lesson in basic logic. You’ve provided us with a logical fallacy when you compare this guy’s deletion of computer files form the US imperialist military to “a mafia hit…”
Let me provide you with a basic lesson in English comprehension: I did no such thing - I demonstrated why these laws are in place and why they need to be vigorously and visibly enforced.
I actually said: ‘If these laws are not applied at every point…Hacking is far from a victimless crime and with pretty much every facet of our lives now digitised it is the new ultimate weapon of crime and terror - just for instance, most hospitals are reliant on computer technology and one obscure example of how crime can take advantage of this is a mafia hit that has been performed by hacking into a hospitals ICU server and changing the dosage of a patient…Without effective deterrent we not only have to worry about the real terrorists that want to do us all harm but idiots like this Mckinnon too”
Get it now, or do you need me to go over for you again, but slower?
Do you see the problem in your method?
Comment by kareem — 8 August, 2009 @ 11:17 pm
Hacking the US miltary is classed as anti-social behaviour now?
I guess the Daily Mail were right saying that people viewed ASBOs as ‘badges of honour’. I want one!
This really is hilarious stuff.
MRD
Comment by MRD — 9 August, 2009 @ 12:11 am
“I am now the sole voice of sanity amongst a few voices of idiocy, but because I am outnumbered I must be wrong!!”
Calling Dr Freud! Nurse get the tranquilliser.
“…I am a socialist…”
Are you one of those hang ‘em and flog ‘em breed of socialists in your neatly ironed uniform with clip board and pen that populate NuLabour by any chance? You come across as a very sad, self important jobs worth.
Not only are you regurgitating neo-liberal horse shit about the war on terror you’re actually getting excitement from participating in it. That is truly deluded and frightening. You are a million miles from anything that resembles socialist politics. As someone who prides themselves in their ability to educate others it’s remiss of you to be so clueless about socialism. Your ignorance about socialism doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in your understanding of the McKinnon case. It’s more like the remake of ‘The Taking of Pelham 123′ than reality.
If the government stopped losing discs full of public records and police chiefs stopped exposing secret documents to the press then perhaps it might seem more believable that our personal information is safe in their hands. Not to mention the so-called “intelligence” information that’s just made up as an excuse to go to war. Is that the sort of information you believe in protecting?
Comment by Ray — 9 August, 2009 @ 12:23 am
There are a number of issues here. Firstly, there is the nature of the 2003 Extradition Treaty, and how it was passed. The Treaty is a joke. As has already been pointed out above, there is no need for evidence to be presented for someone to be extradited. This is outrageous. Secondly, the Treaty was passed without being presented to Parliament, even though it represented a fundamental change in the way extradition requests were to be handled. Again, this is outrageous.
Secondly, there is the question of jurisdiction. If McKinnon has broken the law, he did so in Britain, and ought to be tried there. Instead he will be sent to the US, where it will be impossible for him to get a fair trial once the words “national security” are mentioned.
I note these letters in Saturday’s Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/08/extradition-crime-america-request
It seems to me that the one from the US Chargé d’Affaires is being somewhat economical with the truth. Some people here may have heard of the case of Seán Garland, the former President of The Workers’ Party of Ireland, and a citizen of the Republic of Ireland. Garland is a legendary republican, having commanded the Brookborough raid that led to the deaths of Seán South and Fearghal O’Hanlon during the IRA Border Campaign. He also was a leading figure in moving the Republican Movement to the left in the 1960s, and then ending the Official IRA’s campaign in 1972 and transforming the Republican Movement into The Workers’ Party. He is now in his mid-70s and suffering from several different types of cancer.
Garland has been accused of being involved with the distribution of so-called Superdollars, and attempts have been made to link him to a number of people convicted in England in connection with these items. However, there was no evidence to link him to it, and he was not prosecuted. In fact, he met with British ministers several times after these allegations had first been raised.
In October 2005, the US tried to extradite Garland after having him arrested at The Workers’ Party Ard Fheis/annual delegate conference in Belfast using the Extradition Treaty. This on the basis that he had been indicted after the case had been secretly presented to a Grand Jury. As the former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals commented, “a prosecutor could persuade a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich”. In other words, the US was attempting to kidnap Garland and whisk him off to the US where a prosecution that could not even be mounted in Britain for lack of evidence could be guaranteed to result in a conviction once words like IRA, terrorism, Communist and North Korea were mentioned. Garland, who is seriously ill, was allowed to travel to Dublin for medical reasons, and decided not to return due to the impossibility of a fair hearing against these charges.
In late 2008, in an attempt to frustrate any possibility of a new beginning on the Korean pensinula under the incoming President, Condoleeza Rice personally signed an extradition request for Garland from the Republic of Ireland knowing full well that this would result in an angry reaction on the Korean peninsula. And this is where the letter from the US Embassy relating to Mc Kinnon comes in.
The letter states that “Nor can a person be extradited if he or she has already been convicted or acquitted for the offence in question.” However, the Americans have been pursuing those who have already served sentences for handling superdollars, and offering them deals in return for saying that Garland was involved, despite their previously denying any knowledge of him being involved. This has involved having one British citizen extradited from Spain where he was holidaying. So while the letter may be technically true, the US is going against the spirit of the agreement in behaving in this way, in order to secure false testimony against Garland, a revolutionary socialist who has forged links with a state that the Bush regime hoped to invade. A broad-based committee has been formed to oppose the extradition of Seán Garland, with support from people ranging from Gerry Adams to members of Fine Gael and the Progressive Unionist Party. A support group is also now active in Britain.
In light then of the way this Treaty was passed, of the unjust provisions in the Treaty that deny the accused an opportunity to defend themselves before their peers for something supposedly done in their own country, in light of US behaviour regarding the Treaty, and their willingness to use it to pursue politically-motivated vendettas, no-one should be extradited under its provisions, no matter what they have been accused of.
This is the case on the grounds of natural justice, and certainly any socialist viewing the facts of both the McKinnon and the Garland cases should oppose Extradition in both cases. More information on the Garland case, which should be of particular interests to socialists, can be found at www.seangarland.org
Comment by Garibaldy — 9 August, 2009 @ 12:57 am
‘I will press this button and destroy downtown Swindon’.
That’s a little unkind.
Comment by lesser evil — 9 August, 2009 @ 1:06 am
“Because I am a socialist you fool, why are you on this particular website if you hate the main contributer so much?”
I never said I hated him. I don’t even know him. I’m sure he’s a lovely fellow to have a pint or a coffee with - this is a political disagreement. But you’ve, in any case, dodged the point that you are getting utterly exercised by another element in the war on terror and outraged by accusations of anti-US prejudice (what an absurdity) and yet don’t see the problem with calling for the extradition of some guy who is a know-nothing, by your own description, to face 75 years jail - by a state that has killed and been complicit in the murder of literally millions of people. All on the basis that well, the crime that McKinnon committed - it could have been against an important and sensitive public institutiion, like a hospital.
1) It wasn’t any a hospital, it wasn’t your bank account or my bank account. It is utterly irrelevant to bring such things into the conversation because no such action is involved. It is like comparing a man speeding with a man driving horribly drunk and running into someone because both involve infractions that take place in a moving car. They are not related logically or legally.
2) I don’t care what he screwed up in the murdering US military machine. If he caused ships to sink, airplanes to explode, guns to misfire and marines to weep because their cookies from home didn’t arrive on time. The US military machine is a genocidal, imperial monster and the more damage done to it the better. So, if you want to defend and protect an organization that is killing in Iraq, and Afghanistan now - and which trains death squads in Latin America, feel free. But then know, you are a scab against the people who are oppressed by the US military machine.
Comment by redbedhead — 9 August, 2009 @ 1:13 am
I found Andy’s remark about ‘taking into account’ the unrepentent attitude of the accused the most deeply unpleasent thing in this deeply unpleasent and authoritarian post. Very disturbing.
Comment by johng — 9 August, 2009 @ 1:36 am
I think Andy’s problem is when he comes to write his blog he starts from: “What would Josef do?”
Comment by DuncanB — 9 August, 2009 @ 2:38 am
I enjoyed the bit about McKinnon being a potential hospital terrorist. I thought that was quite creative. I think that was lifted from ‘The Dark Knight’ where Heath Ledger, oops, The Joker (let’s not confuse reality with fiction) blows up the hospital.
I’m sure hospital consultants will be surprised to learn that they’ve been replaced by machines and that a terrorist can hack into an ECG machine. Classic Cold War paranoia in the tradition of Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators in Kuwait. Very entertaining!
Comment by Ray — 9 August, 2009 @ 3:17 am
Ray - The slippery slope logic is impeccably delusional in the NuLab style, isn’t it. It’s like the old Ronald Reagan “gateway drug” - you start by taking a toke on a joint and you end up with a needle in your arm dead in an alley.
If McKinnon isn’t crushed utterly, and completely, well, soon masses of mafiosa cyber-assassins and cyber terrorists will be slaughtering us in our houses, bringing down hospitals, and knocking out the piped in muzak at the local shopping mall, won’t they? Then we’ll be screwed!
Comment by redbedhead — 9 August, 2009 @ 3:26 am
Keith Watermelon
He admitted to the hacking. There’s no lack of evidence if the accused admits to the crime. He also admitted to deleting data. The Us prosecutors have stated that if he is found guilty then he will likely face 18 months - 3 years. Which means he will be in and out of a low security US prison in 6 months.
Comment by philip — 9 August, 2009 @ 3:44 am
And here we have the same hard-core of lunatics that form a crazed circle around anyone who dares to stand up to their lunacy on this site. The attack muppets.
I have seen it time and time again on this site (and it is one reason I have rarely bothered to comment) and I have seen the same tactics employed over and over again. You lie, invent, insult, cajole, straw man and attempt to intimidate to try and silence anyone who doesn’t go along with your crackpot ideas of socialism.
First of all the facts of the case were fictionalised; then my technical knowledge was ridiculed; then me personally; then my status as a tool of oppression was invented and now my politics are attacked too.
What next? Tell me as a muslim I cannot be a socialist?
Socialism is about bringing about a fair society, not eradicating the rule of law or choosing what parts of the law you like or which people the law should apply to.
Your tactics are no different from the racists and fascists I have battled my entire life. You are so full of hate that you cannot see past your prejudiced noses.
It is because of cranks like you that socialism has a bad name and is not seen as a viable option in this country.
#76
“Hacking the US miltary is classed as anti-social behaviour now?”
Breaking the law is.
#76
“Are you one of those hang ‘em and flog ‘em breed of socialists in your neatly ironed uniform with clip board and pen that populate NuLabour by any chance? You come across as a very sad, self important jobs worth.”
And you come across exactly the way you are - a delusional crank inventing stories out of thin air.
“Not only are you regurgitating neo-liberal horse shit about the war on terror you’re actually getting excitement from participating in it.”
Again, you are a delusional crank inventing stories out of thin air - I haven’t once mentioned any ‘war on terror” you are the only one that has.
“You are a million miles from anything that resembles socialist politics. As someone who prides themselves in their ability to educate others it’s remiss of you to be so clueless about socialism. Your ignorance about socialism doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in your understanding of the McKinnon case. It’s more like the remake of ‘The Taking of Pelham 123′ than reality.”
Like I said, socialism is about bringing about a fair society, not eradicating the rule of law or choosing what parts of the law you like or which people the law should apply to.
You are not even remotely a socialist. At best you are an anarchist. Personally I just think you are a crank looking for legitimacy.
“If the government stopped losing discs full of public records and police chiefs stopped exposing secret documents to the press then perhaps it might seem more believable that our personal information is safe in their hands.”
That was the British for a start, and it was accidental. Not a criminal offence. Hacking is a criminal offence.
“Not to mention the so-called “intelligence” information that’s just made up as an excuse to go to war. Is that the sort of information you believe in protecting?”
How typically warped. What the hell are you on about man?
#78
I agree that this extradition agreement is very one sided but that is the fault of the British government. Criminals who’s crimes are committed elsewhere have every reason to be extradited and tried in the country of their crime.
# 80
“I never said I hated him. I don’t even know him. I’m sure he’s a lovely fellow to have a pint or a coffee with - this is a political disagreement.”
It sure comes across as much more then that.
“But you’ve, in any case, dodged the point that you are getting utterly exercised by another element in the war on terror”
Again, you see how the tactics of this little band of hard-core cranks work? I have NEVER mentioned any war on terror - you fellow nut Ray did a few comments back and now you take it up as fact!!!
“and outraged by accusations of anti-US prejudice (what an absurdity) and yet don’t see the problem with calling for the extradition of some guy who is a know-nothing, by your own description, to face 75 years jail - by a state that has killed and been complicit in the murder of literally millions of people.”
I have told you repeatedly what the real issue here is:
“It doesn’t matter which networks, and in which country this idiot attacked, the fact is that he attacked them and wilfully broke the law and for that he must pay and more importantly, been seen to be paying for his crime. The fact that he attacked any government network let alone ones deemed sensitive will obviously increase the punishment, but more importantly the deterrent effect for all attacks against anyone, particular sensitive networks including banks, hospitals, etc. etc and will thus help protect all us in the future as idiots like this will be put off performing these attacks leaving us security professionals able to deal with the real threats.”
You are either so incredibly dense that you cannot understand that or you are just a crank who keeps on saying the same thing even though it has been disproved time and time again in an effort to wear down a dissenter — and I think it is an equal measure of both.
Are you really saying that laws only apply to people you like? People that you think are worthy of having the law applied to them? That some people are better then others and deserve special treatment whilst conversely some people are not as good as others and deserve nothing. If so you are not better then the racists and fascists of the BNP and you should go over to there where you really belong.
1) Again, pure straw man bull shit. Its been explained to you at least 5 times that this is not the case. See above and try to sink the idea through your dome that the law was wilfully broken and that it needs to be addressed not only for justice sake but for deterrents sake.
2) Again, see above and try to understand that it is you and your fellow cranks that are a scab on socialism by purporting the idea that we are all antisocial, anti-law hate filled crazies who want nothing other to crash down society and apply arbitrary rules and laws to who ever we choose. You are most certainly not socialist, I truly wonder if you are really a fascist agitator trying to make the rest of us look bad and mad.
#83
“I enjoyed the bit about McKinnon being a potential hospital terrorist”
Again, the same straw man tactic of you of inventing stories out of thin air and then running with them as fact. This one is your own invention.
“I’m sure hospital consultants will be surprised to learn that they’ve been replaced by machines and that a terrorist can hack into an ECG machine. Classic Cold War paranoia in the tradition of Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators in Kuwait. Very entertaining!”
Having worked contracts with the NHS and others I can tell that you that they would not be surprised at all - only ignorant fools like you who don’t their IT arse from their IT elbow.
Virtually all medical appliance devices in a modern hospital are internetworked and can be and are managed remotely and as such they can and have been hacked.
Of course an ignorant muppet like you wouldn’t have the faintest idea though. You are just full of hot air and full of shit.
Comment by kareem — 9 August, 2009 @ 4:03 am
Oh get a grip…
Comment by Ray — 9 August, 2009 @ 6:41 am
Mr. Newman. Do you realize your computer has been hacked? I believe it may be the work of a John Bolton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Bolton
This is rather alarming. He is posting articles putting your name to them!
And to add to this Hilary Clinton is also posting comments under the alias of ‘kareem.’
Now these people are trying to say that some Brits are being anti-American because they are against the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the US.
Now I would expect this kind of stuff coming from some of the right wing radio talk shows over here like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck or some person called Savage. But not from someone who thinks of themselves as a socialist.
So that’s why I know your computer has been hacked.
For a start, the wonderful democratic system over here usually if they want to get some one, they just bonk them over the head as they are walking down the street, bundle them into a car, then an aircraft and fly them off to some distant land. Here they have their penis cut with razors and other such humane things, while their families wonder where they are for seven years.
Well, I suppose they can always appeal to a grand jury. But I don’t know if you’ve every seen a grand jury in action, well these people certainly haven’t.
I can understand the owners of private prisons wanting this guy to be extradited. They are running out of people to lock up over here, well not really. But having a few Brits filling up the cells is all good for business.
Now this guy using your name says
‘McKinnon and his supporters seem to exhibit no appreciation of the seriousness of what he has done. Hacking into computers is a serious crime, not only due to the intrinsic damage (and it is rubbish to say that’
Now this coming from a country that has just spent the last couple of decades bombing Iraq into the last century and many other countries. And of course there is the little case of nuking a couple of cities, firebombing Tokyo and numerous other outrageous acts. But I suppose that if US citizens point this out they must be self hating Americans?
But the danger here is a Brit hacker.
Perhaps they should put him in charge of NASA or something.
After all the US did pick up a bunch of Nazi war criminals and used their expertise to land someone on the moon.
And this is where John Bolton and Hilary Clinton should be sent to.
Comment by Peter Hine — 9 August, 2009 @ 6:51 am
Kareem, how many US Navy vessels were destroyed by the evil genius McKinnon?
How many hospitals’ internal IT systems were interfered with by him? And how many patients received the wrong treatment because of this?
How much money did McKinnon take from online bank accounts?
The answer to all of these questions is nothing, none, zero.
Kareem, you’re a paranoid fruitcake and you need to calm down and stop spouting nonsense.
McKinnon is no more than a rather geeky individual who has inconvenienced those in power and made them look a little foolish - that’s all.
The state - here and in the US - is seizing on this case to try to intimidate the rest of us. To try to deter others - journalists, anti war campaigners, libertarians etc - from questioning them and from seeking the truth.
Sad, paranoid individuals such as yourself who willingly buy into the state’s propaganda simply make their job of controlling us easier.
Comment by Communist — 9 August, 2009 @ 7:16 am
“Having worked contracts with the NHS and others I can tell that you that they would not be surprised at all - only ignorant fools like you who don’t their IT arse from their IT elbow.”
Having worked in the NHS for years you’re lucky if there’s a PC working and you’re not sharing it with at least 3 other workers. I’ll ask my mate Maureen the next time she gives someone an ECG if she plugs it into NHS broadband or the power supply when she uses it.
As someone who has called people who disagree with you a “nut”, “fool” and “fascist” and raised the issue of 9/11 in this thread it’s a bit rich of you complaining about name calling and misrepresentation.
It might interest you to know that you’re to the right of The Daily Mail who are campaigning on behalf of McKinnon.
But what interests me is, as an IT expert, doesn’t it concern you that McKinnon was able to access highly sensitive systems with a simple Perl script because security personnel left passwords active? It makes a mockery of all your bluff and bluster about the sanctity of government networks when not even the staff can be bothered to log off properly. If anything, you should be praising McKinnon for exposing this serious flaw in security.
Comment by Ray — 9 August, 2009 @ 7:20 am
… no you won’t destroy downtown Swindon young man, you’re going to stop playing “Grand World Domination 3″ and get on with your homework at once.
You’re not an evil genius, you’re a very naughty boy!
Comment by Dr Evil's mum — 9 August, 2009 @ 7:35 am
“You’re not an evil genius, you’re a very naughty boy!”
Lol!
Comment by Ray — 9 August, 2009 @ 7:59 am
What’s disturbing are those on this thread who claim to be socialists and say they want to defend the NHS who trivialise McKinnon’s mental condition because they want to see him hung out to dry.
Comment by Ray — 9 August, 2009 @ 8:05 am
Kareem, I think you gave the gamne away a little bit.
I had a bit of a problem with Andy rabidly tagging the term ‘hacking’ with ‘anti-social’ everytime he mentioned it. When I asked if hacking the US military was now classed as anti-social, you replied “breaking the law is”.
Really? Breaking any law?
Wildcat strikes? Non-payment of the Poll Tax? Demonstrating in Parliament Square? Come brothers and sisters, get your ASBOs here.
It is an absurdity to say that all hacking is anti-social. For a start I would dicourage anybody using Orwellian Nu-Lab speak on our side. If you’re going down that route though, surely nothing is as anti-social as unballoted strike action? I mean the utter disruption it causes to peoples lives. I think anybody that goes on strike should feel the full force of the law, I mean, what if solidarity action got out of hand and workers blockaded all supermarkets and people were unable to get adequate food. That would lead to a famine and a large proportion of the country being wiped out. We must stamp all workers action out before people get killed!
What a bunch of utter bullshit.
This whole article is written on WhatIfs. What if somebody hacked into the an hospital mainframe and put lives at risk to find out if Elvis really died? I’d suggest there are much better artists than him to be interested in, but nobody has done it. What if all food shops were blockaded? Workers have the knowledge and power to distribute food and not let people starve.
Let’s leave all this ASBO gush at the side, yeah?
MRD
Comment by MRD — 9 August, 2009 @ 8:31 am
Kareem, you are Andy’s alter-ego and I claim first prize in this month’s SUN “spot-the-spoof-article” competition!
Comment by Prizewinner — 9 August, 2009 @ 9:06 am
…Dr Evil, have you been playing with that naughty McKinnon boy again?
I’ve had Mr Newman-Kareem on the phone and he says you two have sunk the US Navy, the world banking system’s collapsed and England are losing the Test Match.
I told you no good would come of you playing those computer games!…
Comment by Dr Evil's mum — 9 August, 2009 @ 9:54 am
“anti-social criminal”
“it is perfectly reasonable that he is extradited to the USA to face trial”
“The USA is a liberal democracy with a mature legal system that provides at least as much protection for defendants as the English law does.”
“the American military have an entirely reasonable concern that security sensitive information could have been compromised”
“Computer hacking is a serious crime, and a very serious and growing social problem - He should face the consequences in an American court, and the American government should be congratulated”
Possibly the worst load of reactionary bollocks cloaked in disfigured conservative moralising that I have ever read outside of a Daily Mail editorial.
Fortunately most readers will understand that in practice, those few who do control the land, central bank, media and “free market” are the real rulers of America’s corrupt and declining “democracy.”
When the Socialist Disunity websites channels energy, space and time into congratulating the American government - who’s class interests can Mr. Newman really claim to be interested in promoting?
Comment by inf4mation — 9 August, 2009 @ 10:25 am
philip (85.): are you seriously saying the US is doggedly pursuing extradition when they could much easier leave prosecution to the UK, all for six months in jail? If that were true it would be truly farcical.
prizewinner (94.): Nope, in all fairness Andy isn’t arguing anything like Kareem is.
Comment by christian h. — 9 August, 2009 @ 10:45 am
Most of what I want to say has been said I pretty much agree but I have to say ………
WTF!
Good grief Andy, this is an unbelievable shocking post. You are defending the indefensible…Are you taking the contrarian view to the extreme?
I wrote a post about the Gary McKinnon situation here http://harpymarx.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/gary-mckinnon-law-is-an-ass/
Gary McKinnon will he be extradited using a draconian and oppressive law. Is that justice? No it is not!
This is indeed a very cruel punishment for a man, who became a DIY hacker to find out how much the American state knew about UFOs. Pure and simple, that was the method in his madness.
And now the American state want to punish him for exposing their sloppy security and to make an example, a sacrificial lamb, by using the convenient excuse of the century ‘War on Terror’. An excuse that gives the state a right, in their eyes, to shed civil liberties and freedoms.
And the Treaty is based on “reasonable suspicion” this could allow questioning but how can the British state justify extradition based on this as opposed to clear evidence? It is an utter scandal and further attack on the foundations of civil liberties and freedoms.
Again, what purpose will this serve extraditing him.
#26
What do you mean by anti-social criminal? It is meaningless as it’s a surplus phrase because you can apply it to anyone who has committed a crime.
Comment by Louise — 9 August, 2009 @ 11:54 am
And just finally, McKinnon committed this crime in 2002 (a the hysterical height of the War on Terror) or thereabouts. And where was the harm in what he did, who exactly got hurt? It is indeed a long time to be hounded by the state. Yes, McKinnon did a stupid thing but where is the proportionality? He was obsessed with UFOs and engaged in DIY hacking, this wasn’t a conscious attempt to seriously compromise the security systems, he wasn’t some Bond villain. And yet he has been described as public enemy No.1 by the American state. This is rather symbolic of using a mallet to smash to a little nut.
I think McKinnon admits his life wasn’t in a good place in that period of time, he hasn’t (I don’t think) hacked subsequently then why can’t he be left to get on with his life?
But the right-wing need their sacrificial lamb, and it follows the old mantra, ‘Condemn a little more, understand a little less’….
Comment by Louise — 9 August, 2009 @ 12:33 pm
Jeez, someone’s abducted Andy and replaced him with Jack Straw. Andy, GET A GRIP!
Comment by Madam Miaow — 9 August, 2009 @ 12:49 pm
The argument Andy makes in his article appears to suffer from a very basic logical flaw.
Andy says:
“McKinnon happened to hack onto military and NASA computers; which might give some people a misguided sympathy with him. But what if a hacker accessed a hospital seeking to satisfy some curiosity about whether Elvis has really died, and compromised medical IT systems, or corrupted medical record databases?
… The hacking sub-culture also provides a platform that is exploited by serious organised crime.”
The ‘reasoning’ of which seems to run as follows:-
1) Gary McKinnon is a hacker.
2) It is possible that one day, somebody who is a hacker might disrupt medical IT systems and databases.
3) Some hackers are involved in serious organised crime.
4) Therefore, Gary McKinnon should be treated as if he has disrupted medical IT systems and been involved in serious organised crime!
Then Andy continues:
“Suggesting that McKinnon’s behavour should not be treated as criminal just encourages the hacking sub-culture which already refuses to accept that they are doing anything wrong”
Implying that ‘making an example of’ Gary McKinnon would discourage serious criminals etc. Which is most unlikely.
Comment by Noah — 9 August, 2009 @ 12:54 pm
I suspect that the source of Mr Newman’s hostility to McKinnon is the awful possibility that politically independent hackers might find material evidence linking senior Labour Party figures to organised torture somewhere on an NSA server.
Such an attack on the Party and Trade Union Leaders would really be an ‘anti-social’ crime too great to countenance.
Comment by J B Malone — 9 August, 2009 @ 1:27 pm
DuncanB (82):
‘I think Andy’s problem is when he comes to write his blog he starts from: “What would Josef do?”’
That’s right, Duncan B. Stalin would have condemned computer hackers - or anyone else - interfering in any way with the military capacity of US imperialism. That’s why the Soviet Union didn’t go in for spying, atomic weapons or armaments of any kind, or anything else to upset the USA. Which must be why Uncle Joe is so revered by US and British imperialism to this day.
Comment by Good Point, Sir! — 9 August, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
ChristianH(97): I think “Kareem” is Andy. The giveaway for me is “Kareem’s” use of Andy’s favourite “muppet” and “attack muppet” phrases. Plus the fact that Andy’s disappeared.
Comment by Prizewinner — 9 August, 2009 @ 3:48 pm
Here come more of the usual suspects. The attack muppets, rebels without a clue.
After parading your extreme ignorance as well as your despicable tactics around in public, the amusing part of it all is that not even Mckinnon denies he is a criminal who needs to be punished!! That’s right, the centre piece of your xenophobic American hate campaign himself defines his actions as criminal and worthy of punishment!!
But you all purport to know better then the criminal himself!!
Why not just get it all out in the open and admit that this has really has nothing to do with McKinnon and his admitted crimes, but everything to do with your xenophobic hatred of Americans?
Is it because xenophobia is incompatible with socialism and you would be exposed as the duplicitous cranks you really are?
Why not just admit that you think not everyone is indeed equal and entitled to equal protection under the law?
Is it because that is entirely incompatible with socialism and you would be exposed as the duplicitous cranks you really are?
Of course it is.
The real attack muppet agenda has been exposed here time and time again whilst the real issue for genuine socialist has been cited time and time again:
“It doesn’t matter which networks, and in which country this idiot attacked, the fact is that he attacked them and wilfully broke the law and for that he must pay and more importantly, been seen to be paying for his crime. The fact that he attacked any government network let alone ones deemed sensitive will obviously increase the punishment, but more importantly the deterrent effect for all attacks against anyone, particular sensitive networks including banks, hospitals, etc. etc and will thus help protect all us in the future as idiots like this will be put off performing these attacks leaving us security professionals able to deal with the real threats.”
# 88
It has all been carefully explained to you several times before, but as a conspiracy nut you don’t get it. Tell me, do you think NASA is hiding evidence on ET’s and UFO’s?
# 89
“Having worked in the NHS for years”
Considering pretty much everything else you have had to say has been a lie I doubt this is true either. But either ways, you clearly have no idea about IT and clearly have no idea about how dependant hospitals are on IT.
The hospital element was only introduced to in response to a contention that hacking is a victimless crime and that hacking needs to be dealt with in each case, but I can see you like it as a useful distraction away form you xenophobia so I will just prove your ignorance here too.
“I’ll ask my mate Maureen the next time she gives someone an ECG if she plugs it into NHS broadband or the power supply when she uses it.”
Read this the article in the link below first, consult “Maureen” to explain it to you if you have to and then come back and be a man about it and admit that you dont even have the first clue of what you are talking about and / or you are a liar.
http://www.cio.com.au/article/65115/all_systems_down
This describes in great detail what happened in a hospital when just an accidental routing loop occurred: It was a disaster as the hospital was almost entirely dependant on IT and that was in 2002! IT is even father entrenched now with not only labs dependant but virtually every critical system appliance.
‘Over four days, Halamka’s network crashed repeatedly, forcing the hospital to revert to the paper patient-records system that it had abandoned years ago. Lab reports that doctors normally had in hand within 45 minutes took as long as five hours to process. The emergency department diverted traffic for hours during the course of two days…’
“As someone who has called people who disagree with you a “nut”, “fool” and “fascist” and raised the issue of 9/11 in this thread it’s a bit rich of you complaining about name calling and misrepresentation.”
Not people that disagree, but the tactics of this usual circle of attack muppets against those that disagree with them.
“It might interest you to know that you’re to the right of The Daily Mail who are campaigning on behalf of McKinnon.”
It might interest you to know that the Daily Mail campaign, typically, is based on lies, obfuscation’s and fallacy.
It might also interest you to know that your visceral hatred of Americans is xenophobia and far to the right of any socialist; with your tactics and racist beliefs, you belong to the BNP.
“But what interests me is, as an IT expert, doesn’t it concern you that McKinnon was able to access highly sensitive systems with a simple Perl script because security personnel left passwords active?”
Whilst I am professionally annoyed at such idiocy, I am not personally concerned with the former practices because I was not liable for these practices. I am concerned that some idiot took it upon himself to break the law in such a blatant fashion.
“If anything, you should be praising McKinnon for exposing this serious flaw in security.”
Typical response from the IT ignoramus - every time someone smashes a window should we “praise” them for “for exposing this serious flaw” in the security of glass?
Any internetworked system, however brilliant and secure, (not this one was) can be hacked with enough time and knowledge (not that Mckinnon had much) the point is that Mckinnon shouldn’t have any idea of what security loopholes were in place because it was illegal for him to even look.
# 92
“What’s disturbing are those on this thread who claim to be socialists..”
What’s disturbing on this thread are those who claim to be socialists but are really xenophobes who think that law can be applied to whoever they choose on the basis of their prejudices.
# 93
“Really? Breaking any law?”
No of course not. I should have said any law that you don’t think should be obeyed or applied to people that you hate doesn’t count.
“This whole article is written on WhatIfs.”
Not even slightly; McKinnon has admitted his crimes - that he is a criminal - and needs to be punished. His actions and culpability are not even remotely in dispute.
The rest was illustrating how serious hacking can be and why it needs deterrent.
# 94
“Kareem, you are Andy’s alter-ego and I claim first prize in this month’s SUN “spot-the-spoof-article” competition!”
As the latest piece of argumentum ad honimen it is rather lame but now you mention it I do have my suspicions that some of the attack muppets here are using sock puppets, and some are really just fascist infiltrators trying to make socialists like mad and bad.
# 96
“Possibly the worst load of reactionary bollocks cloaked in disfigured conservative moralising that I have ever read outside of a Daily Mail editorial.”
Actually the Daily Mail agrees with you and has done so several times in their editorials!!
Why don’t you go back to your spiritual home?
# 98
“This is indeed a very cruel punishment for a man, who became a DIY hacker to find out how much the American state knew about UFOs. Pure and simple, that was the method in his madness.”
For a start, he hasn’t received any punishment at all yet.
Secondly any punishment he does receive in the country he committed his crimes in he should have considered before committing these crimes in that country.
And thirdly, clearly you didn’t do any more then read the Daily Mail in your article research as he caused considerable malicious damage and left notes gloating about it and threatening to do more.
He was no innocent bumbler - and he shouldn’t have been in systems he doesn’t own in any case.
He himself freely admits he is a criminal who needs to be punished, so really, who are you to say he isn’t?
# 99
“It is indeed a long time to be hounded by the state.”
It could have been dealt with and over a long time ago, it is Mckinnon who has dragged it out.
# 101
“Implying that ‘making an example of’ Gary McKinnon would discourage serious criminals etc. Which is most unlikely.”
Strong deterrents are exactly that: strong deterrents and it helps prevent every man and his dog having a go at hacking leaving the security field open to concentrate on the real menace.
# 102
“I suspect that the source of Mr Newman’s hostility to McKinnon is the awful possibility that politically independent hackers might find material evidence linking senior Labour Party figures to organised torture somewhere on an NSA server.”
Yet more straw man bullshit.
# 104
“ChristianH(97): I think “Kareem” is Andy. The giveaway for me is “Kareem’s” use of Andy’s favourite “muppet” and “attack muppet” phrases. Plus the fact that Andy’s disappeared.”
Grow up you muppet - Andy has most likely not bothered here again because you are a bunch of cranks dragging socialism down and it is depressing.
But tell me “prizewinner” - are you really Ray?
Comment by kareem — 9 August, 2009 @ 4:13 pm
Well, I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies. Neither Mr Newman nor Kareem have called for the death sentence for McKinnon. Yet.
After all, they’ve got capital punishment in Cuba, so presumably criticism of judicial murder now constitutes “draggaing socialism down, and it’s depressing.”
Comment by J B Malone — 9 August, 2009 @ 4:20 pm
Well who ever ‘kareem’ is they are very angry and strangely fond of the phrase “attack muppet”.
This time round no gratuitous dropping of the fact that they are supposedly a Muslim though, I wonder what what that was all about.
A great example of the sociopathic narcissists that blogs give a voice to though.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 9 August, 2009 @ 4:26 pm
Andy,
Maybe I’m really II - your worst nightmare!!
(Love the new “sock puppet - muppet” thing by the way!)
Can anyone else recall a more reactionary and shite article in the history of this site?
Comment by Prizewinner — 9 August, 2009 @ 4:28 pm
‘Can anyone else recall a more reactionary and shite article in the history of this site?’
Not off the top off my head. But there’s been some stiff competition over the years.
My favourite statement: “the criminal justice system exists to provide a frame work of socially accepted behaviour, and to disincentivise those who act outside the rules.”
And those who ‘act outside the rules’ include peace protesters, squatters, women’s groups, strikers, poll tax refusers, soldiers who refuse to kill, vestas workers, social activists, working people, etc.
Is there some daft college in the TUC where they teach this rubbish? A sort of ’school of the Americas’ for technocrats? I can imagine Jack Straw as a guest speaker.
Comment by J B Malone — 9 August, 2009 @ 4:37 pm
“kareem” writes “But tell me “prizewinner” - are you really Ray?”
That’s interesting because ‘Prizewinner’ has written so little that it would be impossible to see similarity in writing style, favourite phrases etc.
But someone could make a seemingly impossible link to other online identities if they had access to the IP address of people posting comments on Socialist Unity.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 9 August, 2009 @ 4:38 pm
Oh come on, John!
The US is not “the most violent and barbaric empire in history”. The US has a long way before it reaches the standards of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, let alone the kind of empires which are now difficult to compare against - the Mongols and the Roman Empire, for instance, without bringing in crazed regimes like Pol Pot’s (which the US aided). The US is an imperialist superpower and it is extremely violent and will, like any previous empire, do anything to protect its “interests”, usually with other people’s blood. No different to any previous empire. As for barbarity and violence, heaven knows if the US is any worse than the British empire. When you’re witnessing imperial might, it’s natural to assume that it’s the worst case in history. But it probably isn’t.
As for McKinnon, none of us really know how much damage this guy could have done. OK, he comes over as a rather weird and disturbed man. That should be taken into account, and hopefully it will be by the US courts. But this isn’t Ferris Bueller’s day off - or am I confusing the changing of exam grades by hacking into the school computer with another film? We live in a highly industrialised and technological world. Hackers are a menace and can cause damage on a mighty scale. Disturbed ones are also a menace, possibly more so because they can’t gauge what the outcomes of their dangerous “hobby” may be.
Andy does point out a very interesting aspect of this whole saga: anti-Americanism. For many Brits (especially those on the Right) this means hating almost everything about America except its extreme propensity to blowing the bejesus out of all “enemies”. For these people, opposing US wars is, by definition, “anti-American”. But all those wonderful things that decent people love about America: music, literature, etc, they detest. However, if many of your favourite cultural pastimes and intellectual heroes are American but you oppose American “military interventions”, then you are guilty of screaming and hysterical “anti-Americanism”. An interesting cultural and psychological case study awaits anthropologists.
Yeah, I remember the Louise Woodward case. How disgraceful and outrageous that she was given a fair trial in a court of law. Even more shocking was the fact that the trial was in open and was appealed to a higher court which considered the legal arguments. The shame of it all! Now, that was “anti-Americanism”. But a total contempt for all aspects of modern American culture and society except its ability to destroy countries whenever the need arises is apparently “pro-American”. Fascinating!
Comment by Tawfiq Chahboune — 9 August, 2009 @ 4:44 pm
Kareem on IT is a laugh. He spent a few summers on a placement in a hospital IT department and now thinks the NHS runs over the internet. The only reason it takes 4 hours to treat a patient when the system is down is because of all the paper work. Consultants were diagnosing and treating illness pretty well before the internet Kareem. They haven’t lost those skills now that we have broadband.
Unless you’re the US or Israeli army it’s unlikely that terrorists will consider hospitals to be a legitimate target.
“For a start, he hasn’t received any punishment at all yet.”
Wrong! Since 2005 McKinnon has been obliged to sign in at his local police station every evening, remain at home every night and has been banned from having an internet connected computer. I can’t be bothered to wade through the rest of your inaccurate and insulting rant.
Comment by Ray — 9 August, 2009 @ 4:58 pm
“We live in a highly industrialised and technological world. Hackers are a menace and can cause damage on a mighty scale”
1. Most ‘hacking’ is legal, it’s done by governments and private agencies. Microsoft products contain planned security holes designed for commercial and governmental hackers. This ‘legal hacking’ is sanctioned by law and causes more damage than teenagers looking for evidence of UFOs.
2. A brief look at reality will reveal that invidual hackers like McKinnon rarely cause serious damage: legal fraud (smart IT salesmen selling shite software to the NHS and others in the public sector)has caused much more damage than any collection of individual hackers.
3. Comprimising the law and obtaining information illegally can be in the public interest. If a hacker or journalist can find evidence of government or corporate crime through hacking they should be encouraged, not deported.
Crucifying some kid with an X-files obsession does nothing to address any of the real issues.
Comment by J B Malone — 9 August, 2009 @ 5:02 pm
#103 Woooosh = the sound of my witticism soaring over ‘a good point sirs’ head.
My argument was that Andy is a Stalinist, and as Stalinists do not beleive that workers them selves can bring socialism we need the state (or the Red Army) to bring it to them. In practice its a form of right wing reformism.
The logic is that if you want to use the state to bring socialism then you need to respect the laws etc in the present day. Hence Andy’s support for this political prosecution.
AndMcKinnon’s prosecution is political. When will Blair be prosecuted for the crime of waging an aggressive war? The whole reason for going to war was that Saddam had WMD. It is pretty clear that Blair and Bush knew that they didn’t exist and the whole basis for war was a fraud. Remember this was the crime that the the nazis were found guilty at Nuremburg. Are the Americans hunting down the criminals responsible for the atrocities of Gaza?
Oops, no they are the USA’s political and military allies, whereas Mckinnon is not.
Comment by Anonymous — 9 August, 2009 @ 5:07 pm
The notion that important hospital equipment such as life support machines, incubators and CAT scanners are maintained by the hospitals IT department is quite bizarre. Kareem had nothing to do with this equipment.
Comment by Ray — 9 August, 2009 @ 5:08 pm
Tawiq #111
‘The US is not “the most violent and barbaric empire in history”.
Reply:
Well, let’s see - first we have the genocide committed against the indigenous people of the North American continent between the 17th and 19th centuries. Then there was the institution of human slavery, which is estimated to have accounted for the deaths of 30 million Africans, not to mention the human suffering of those who survived, the broken families, the exploitation, the degradation, and so on.
Then there is the suppression of national liberation movements throughout the entire developing world, including the annexation of more than half of what used to be Mexico in the 1846-48 war.
We have nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, followed by the Korean War, in which an est 3 million civilians were killed and the entire northern half of the country was laid waste. We have Vietnam, in which another 2 million were killed and the wholesale use of chemical weapons which are responsible for birth deformations in the country to this day. In conjunction was the carpet bombing of neighbouring Laos and Cambodia and the support for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the aftermath.
We have the support, funding and arming of murderous dictatorships all over the world. We have Iraq, in which over i million are known to have been killed, unknown millions maimed, and millions made refugees. We also have Afghanistan, which is no kindergarten neither.
We have that extreme variant of capitalism, neoliberalism, a US construct, largely controlled by the US ruling class by dint of the dollar being the international reserve currency and by US veto control over the IMF and the World Bank, which currently kills an est 6 millions children per year in sub-Saharan Africa, and which ensures that the undeveloped world stays that way.
We have a nation which constitutes 5 percent of the world’s population and yet uses up 25 percent of the world’s resources.
Tawiq, that’s all I could think up off the top of my head, but even so I’d say the evidence is pretty conclusive, wouldn’t you?
Comment by John Wight — 9 August, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
JB Malone: “Crucifying some kid with an X-files obsession does nothing to address any of the real issues.”
Absolutely, and I hope that will be taken into account.
“Comprimising the law and obtaining information illegally can be in the public interest.”
I agree. Many so-called “scoops” have been obtained illegally. But the difference is that usually you are willing to take the consequences, believing that nothing will come of any threatened prosecution because of possible public outrage. See the chap who leaked all the MPs expenses to the Telegraph.
“This ‘legal hacking’ is sanctioned by law and causes more damage than teenagers looking for evidence of UFOs.”
I don’t know, so can’t comment. You may well be right, but it is nevertheless still true that hackers can cause inadvertent damage. That’s an issue that we should concern ourselves with. If someone messed up the NHS database while looking for some malfeasance somewhere or other, then we can take that as mitigation. But that doesn’t take away from the damage done and the criminality of it. McKinnon might be a sad UFO nerd but he could have caused very serious damage. Similarly, when drug addicts break into hospitals looking for whatever it is they look for, we take into mitigation their mental and physical state and all the rest of it, but there is a good reason why the law is at is: we don’t want people breaking into hospitals.
Comment by Tawfiq Chahboune — 9 August, 2009 @ 5:19 pm
But Tawfig,
McKinnon did not cause any damage to anyone or anything, so why oh why do you people keep on making this ridiculous and meaningless point?
Anyone, anywhere, at anytime could, concievably, do something very damaging couldn’t they?
But people should only answer for what they have actually done in reality.
McKinnon has nosed around a bit on his computer. It’s similar to someone in the street wandering into a building through an open door and nosing around.
Comment by Communist — 9 August, 2009 @ 5:29 pm
Tawfiq: I agree that we need laws to protect confidentiality and privacy. But McKinnon is not being deported for malicious breaches of information governance in the UK, and he’s not an anti-social hacker messing with your grannies Choose and Book appointment.
He’s a chap who cheekily hacked the Pentagon looking for evidence of 9-11 complicity in the Bush administration and UFO cover ups. What did he ever jepordise, beyond the careers of a few data security experts? According to US prosecutors he ‘obtained secrets from the Pentagon that might have been useful to the enemy.’ What does that mean: torture rosters from contractors in Morrocco or Egypt? Cheney memos authorising torture, financial details regarding Halliburton? Who knows. But I suspect there’s a public interest defence in McKinnon’s case.
We’re in more danger from the commercial spyware routinely used by online retailers than anything McKinnon did.
Comment by J B Malone — 9 August, 2009 @ 5:44 pm
Andy,
You seem to be the only person in the UK who supports the raving US neo-cons in their vicious persecution of this poor man.
Time to admit you’ve made an error?
Comment by Communist — 9 August, 2009 @ 6:10 pm
Communist: “McKinnon did not cause any damage to anyone or anything, so why oh why do you people keep on making this ridiculous and meaningless point? Anyone, anywhere, at anytime could, concievably, do something very damaging couldn’t they? But people should only answer for what they have actually done in reality.”
I know he didn’t cause any damage. That’s not the point, as it is with much of the law, and with good reason. The comparison would be - although there is not a one-to-one correspondence - something like drink driving. Many drink drivers do not “cause any damage to anything” and that “they could” do “something very damaging” yet they are not prosecuted on that basis, nor are they prosecuted for “what they have actually done in reality” which is in many cases no damage to lifer or property whatever. It’s meant to stop people indulging in such behaviour because the possible consequences are very serious indeed.
I sympathise with McKinnon’s position. I do feel sorry for him. He seems perfectly harmless and probably wouldn’t hurt a fly. But he’s probably unaware of the inadvertent and unexpected damage he could have done. There was nothing malicious in what he did, and that I hope will be taken into mitigation. Like many drink drivers, there is no malice involved but there is recklessness to consider.
Comment by Tawfiq Chahboune — 9 August, 2009 @ 6:14 pm
#114 - ah, now I see. The witty use of terms like ‘Josef’ means a reference to ‘Stalinists’, who don’t believe the workers can bring revolution, and who are therefore guilty in practice of ‘right wing reformism’.
Which means that Andy, in taking a right wing reformist position on the main issue of this thread, must be a Stalinist because, er, his position has nothing in common with the outlook of Stalin and the Soviet Union. Side-splittingly funny, no doubt, if it doesn’t go over your head.
On the plus side, we now know that Dimitrov, the Chinese Revolution, the Soviet Red Army’s defeat of fascism, Ho Chi Minh, Cuba, Harry Pollitt, Angela Davis, the Venezuelan Communist Party, the strategy of the British Communist Party in the fight against the Industrial Relations Act, the 1972 and 1974 miners strikes, the UCS occupation, Andrew Murray, the Communists of Asia, Africa and Latin America - the whole “Stalinist” kit and caboodle in fact - can be neatly wrapped up and dismised as “right wing reformism”. That should save us a whole lot of study, thought and analysis, as well as giving us a good chuckle.
Comment by Good Point, Sir! — 9 August, 2009 @ 6:19 pm
JB Malone #119,
I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said. Is the US overreacting? Possibly. However, we just don’t know what *exactly* McKinnon was doing (he may not know himself, which makes it even more worrying) and how much damage he was near to inflicting.
The extradition laws are something that need to be looked at, and whilst McKinnon may be a harmless UFO nut that does not take away from what he did. It’s a mitigating factor, perhaps an important mitigating factor. That’s all. I wish him all the best, but this kind of hacking will eventually do some extremely serious damage because many of these hackers may genuinely have no idea of what the consequences of their actions are. It’s a computer version of the law of unintended consequences.
Comment by Tawfiq Chahboune — 9 August, 2009 @ 6:39 pm
Hold on, I have woken up in a parallel universe, Andy has become a supporter of the US government and the capitalist rule of law. Memo to self, hack into US intel computers to get info about parallel universe, hang on, better not say that in this universe, Andy might act as a prosecution witness if the Yanks decide to do a McKinnon on me.
Beam me Scotty, take me home to my universe in which Andy Newman is not an appendage of the US justice department, but a fighter for freedom.
Comment by mick hall — 9 August, 2009 @ 6:42 pm
Interesting point with regard to Stalinists: Is McKinnon the victim of a replay of the Hitler-Stalin pact, only this time it’s the Brown/GMB - Obama Pact?
Straussian Neocons and Stalinists united together in a common commitment to statism, tight uniforms, German philosophers and barbaric punishment?
Comment by J B Malone — 9 August, 2009 @ 6:43 pm
Has Andy ever considered a career as a New Labour hack?
Comment by Mr Spock — 9 August, 2009 @ 6:55 pm
Yes but Tawfig, no damage was done to anyone or anything by McKinnon.
Do people get extradited for drink-driving?
Comment by Communist — 9 August, 2009 @ 7:04 pm
Mick Hall: “Hold on, I have woken up in a parallel universe, Andy has become a supporter of the US government and the capitalist rule of law.”
But, Mick, many “capitalist” laws are perfectly reasonable. Let’s take one of the most progressive government’s in the world - that of Hugo Chavez. I can’t see Chavez overturning any of Venezuela’s laws on computer hacking.
Capitalism may be a cancer, and capitalist societies may be cancerous, instituting laws and measures that we find detestable, but not all the laws passed by the capitalist nation state are without justification. One way or another, some vestiges of a “state” will probably always exist. And one of the functions of this state will be at the very, very least to insure that technically-gifted people don’t inflict damage to a highly industrialised society while they idiotically search for conspiracies.
Comment by Tawfiq Chahboune — 9 August, 2009 @ 7:08 pm
#122 What exactly is your point? Other than proving you can look up Wikipeadia?
Comment by DuncanB — 9 August, 2009 @ 7:12 pm
Communist: “no damage was done to anyone or anything by McKinnon.”
But like drink driving, that’s irrelevant. As I’ve said I hope that will be taken into account and he gets off relatively lightly.
“Do people get extradited for drink-driving?”
I agree - that’s why I should it was only an analogy, with no one-to-one correspondence. The extradition laws need to be looked at and changed. As far as I know, no other country has signed this peculiar extradition treaty with the US. It’s a stupid treaty. No government with any self respect would sign it. That’s why New Labour eagerly put pen to paper.
McKinnon isn’t innocent and he should be tried for what he did, and one hopes the courts will be extremely lenient with this UFO conspiracy nerd. What he did was a crime, and no one in their right minds wants to decriminalise or legalise what he did. If the crime is within British jurisdiction, he should be tried in a British court. Otherwise, he should be on a flight to face the consequences of what he did.
Comment by Tawfiq Chahboune — 9 August, 2009 @ 7:18 pm
I think this article raises important questions about this site, its governance and its general political stance.
Andy, your fellow contributors Derek Wall, John White and Louise have all come out publicly against your pro-neo-con stance here, leaving you in a minority of one.
Every other contributor has also come out in opposition to your “hang him and flog him” position on this issue too.
Firstly, is there any form of collective democratic accountability with regard to the political positions that this site takes?
And secondly, if you are the sole owner/decision maker on this site, is this now no longer a socialist site and is it now one that openly supports the US neo-cons “war on terror”?
I really think, in light of the serious offence you have given with this article, that you need to come back on here and clarify these points.
that is if the future political credibility of this site is important to you.
Comment by Communist — 9 August, 2009 @ 7:19 pm
Since this whole thread seems to deal mainly with hypothetical points, here’s another one. If McKinnon had hacked not into a US military computer looking for evidence of little green men, but into an Israeli military computer looking for evidence of shooting stars coming to rest above mangers in Bethlehem, would anyone’s position on this case be any different?
Comment by Francis King — 9 August, 2009 @ 7:31 pm
I don’t really see your point Francis, but in general, if no harm is done to anyone or anything, then neither I nor anyone else in this discussion - with the sole exception of the article’s author - can see the need for any prosecution.
Comment by Communist — 9 August, 2009 @ 7:58 pm
I’ve just re-read Andy’s article. There is absolutely nothing objectionable about it. Indeed, it’s a very balanced and informative piece.
Andy brings in evidence from one of the leading computer security experts. This world authority warns: “some systems are frangible and simply looking around can inadvertently cause damage. And once an unauthorized person has been inside a system, you can’t trust its integrity. You don’t know the intruder didn’t touch anything”. Yet that is ignored by nearly everyone on this thread.
What’s interesting are the attacks on Andy for being a neo-conservative loony. It seems that no one can be bothered to further an argument against what was written or dispute Bruce Schneier’s expert opinion. I would have thought that given the amount of times we’re called supporters of Baathism or “Islamo-fascism” or anti-Semitism just for disagreeing with government policy, we wouldn’t descend to the same vilification without evidence. Andy has evidence and is willing to argue his position. If this were a boxing match, this would have been called off in the first round: Andy knocks out all opposition.
Comment by Tawfiq Chahboune — 9 August, 2009 @ 8:10 pm
Look,poor old Andy has clearly had his mental faculties badly harmed by watching the Ashes cricket.His fantasies of competitive cricket competition between England and Australia have knocked on to his fantasies of progressive English nationalism and the pain must be overwhelming.He is to be pitied not pilloried!
Comment by WG Grace — 9 August, 2009 @ 9:27 pm
Andy Newman is simply slowly, but very surely, abandoning socialist politics. Maybe he is morphing into David Toube … he seems quite fond of the bloke.
The bottom line is … McKinnon’s actions were not a crime from the standpoint of the interests of the working class. The inconvenience caused was entirely to the US military and state, no one else. No ordinary people suffered from what he did. So we have no interest in supporting his being prosecuted. His extradition, under a unequal treaty whose provisions are not reciprocal, is an act of US extra-territoriality with the US insisting that he be tried on US soil for an act committed in Britain. The fact that the treaty is not reciprocal, and has different terms the other way, is a dead give-away. The US has these kinds of arrangement with quite a few countries, but New Labour’s volunteering Britain for an arrangment usually reserved for semi-colonial vassal states reflects the implementation of Alastair Campbell’s instruction to ‘Get up the arse of the [Bush] White House and stay there’. For the Tories, this is a blow to national pride. For the working class, this is a part of the remit of the Project for the New American Century. Different motives, same conclusion. On this issue, there are grounds for a limited degree of political agreement between the left and some Tories.
This is part of the us ‘war on terror’, and should be opposed on those grounds.
Andy’s support for this is a manifestation of support for the war on terror, and actually puts him to the right of many Tories.
Comment by ID — 9 August, 2009 @ 9:32 pm
Communist- clearly you are wrong that Andy is in a minority of one on this. I have to say that I am more sympathetic to his position now, although I think Tawfiq has it about right. And Lenin has a lot to answer for in dismissing the rule of law.
Comment by Armchair — 9 August, 2009 @ 10:25 pm
“I’ve just re-read Andy’s article. There is absolutely nothing objectionable about it. Indeed, it’s a very balanced and informative piece.”
It’s riven with logical contradictions, non-sequiturs and selective inattention to facts.
Andy’s knock out ‘argument’ runs:
“I’ve just seen Star Trek right and it’s brilliant! It’s all about Vulcans (UK) and Klingons (US). McKinnon’s a superior Vulcan bastard. If we all spent our spare time hacking the BNP would probably be elected and your granny would die, and everything like that. And there’s a Klingon bloke, a galactic security consultant called Bob Schnier, and he agrees with me and everything. It’s really true. And America’s great. They’ve got law courts and pretend elections and everthing! And they even kill people. Like in Cuba, and the TUC and Gordon Brown and all the clever important people, they all agree with me! And you’re all muppets…etc”
Knock out stuff, mate. Carry on.
Comment by J B Malone — 9 August, 2009 @ 10:27 pm
One of the basic point Andy doesn’t don’t seem to get is that one of the major reason hacking exists is because of the very existence of the American government in its current hated form.
Putting young autistic men with an interest in UFOs in cages is not even close to the starting point of a reasonable socialist argument.
Comment by inf4mation — 10 August, 2009 @ 1:09 am
Tawfiq #134… “some systems are frangible and simply looking around can inadvertently cause damage. And once an unauthorized person has been inside a system, you can’t trust its integrity. You don’t know the intruder didn’t touch anything”.
So therefore he did them a favour by finding these flaws before certain other parties did. If the system is so fragile it’s not his fault — he’s carrying the can for someone’s incompetence.
BTW, I wouldn’t trust their integrity in any shape or form.
If this were a boxing match, this would have been called off in the first round: Andy knocks out all opposition.
I love the smell of testosterone in the morning.
(Will the real Andy please come back?)
Comment by Madam Miaow — 10 August, 2009 @ 9:42 am
#140 Miaow
I suspect sadly that this is the real Andy, or rather what he has become.
You’ll recall the strange case of Dr Jeykle and Mr Hyde. By drinking too much for too long of the deadly potion to bring on the dark side [Hyde], the saintly Dr J couldn’t come back.
Well by the same token maybe Andy too ? Too much compromise with the insidious influence of the dominant ideas, perhaps a false sense of having to crave order out of chaos, ‘the rule of law’ (whose law ? ), the need in a revisionist sort of way, and as a last resort, to defend the very state that props up capitalism by any means neccessary, secrecy being one of the more insidious.
Who knows ?
Andy himself seems to have gone strangely mute on this, unless he’s reflecting on the overwhelmingly hostile response to his missive.
And boy what a miss ?
Comment by Halshall — 10 August, 2009 @ 11:57 am
Tawfiq
I accept in the immediate future laws that are acceptable to the majority can play a civilizing role within the society we live in. However words like the ‘rule of law’ come straight out of the neo-con cook book and should be dismissed by all progressives, only an idiot would deny the law is based on pure class prejudice. In countries like the US and UK this is doubly so, if you doubt that take a look at the class background of the overwhelming majority of judges and the class make up of those imprisoned.
It is quiet possible that McKinnon committed a crime under US law, you know the same law that imprisoned 791,600 black men in 2003, compared to 603,032 enrolled in college or university, for christ sake the situation has worsened since then, prison had become the governmental social policy of choice for low income US citizens, so before we start bleating about the rule of law, perhaps we should pause and ask who benefits most from US law.
There is absolutely no doubt that the treaty which will end up winging Mr McKinnon to a US court room, was part of the hysteria the UK and US government deliberately created around the so called ‘war on terror.’ Thus we must oppose it and Gary’s deportation 100%,. If it calms some liberals consciences to demand that he is instead tried in a UK court fine, that is for them. Although how any socialist could argue for this option is beyond me, the US judicial and penal system is based on brutality, racism and class prejudice, it regularly carries out capital punishment, we should oppose it with all our might.
What passes for law in the USA is a national disgrace, to hell with its stinking edifice the sooner we see the back of it the better, is it really that easy to forget Guantánamo and the legalized murder that takes place in US prisons on a regular bases.
All the best
Mick
Comment by mick hall — 10 August, 2009 @ 12:17 pm
#129, Whoooosh! My point is that your implied characterisation of Andy’s position as “Stalinist” is as peurile as it is nonsensical. Most of those who you would rush to brand as “Stalinists” (and therefore, apparently, “right wing reformists”) would be very unlikely to share his position. Instead they would support yours, and for largely the same reasons. Does that make your position “right wing reformism”. Of course not. Which is why the use of “Stalinism” as a synonym for repressive state power etc. etc., devoid of any political class substance, is a tiresome and politically illiterate.
Comment by Good Point, Sir! — 10 August, 2009 @ 12:31 pm
While I have huge ‘issues’ with the US legal system, and the UK one for that matter, the one point I do agree with Andy about is the rise of hacking, and the damage it is doing.
My own site was hacked by a combined attack comming our of Russia and China. It destroyed my livelihood overnight, and took 3 months to sort out and will take another two years to get back to where I was at the begining of the year. That was just sophistictaed gambling Black Hatters.
More worryingly GMWatch had their site targetted, huge parts of the largest anti-GMO archive in the world destroyed, and their most effective communication and organising resource destroyed. The very strange nature of the attack, and its level of sophistication makes it difficult to believe that it was a lonely Black Hat who had it in for them.
Palestinian websites have a history of being hacked, offensive content being inserted, trojans and other nasties being placed on their servers.
Black Hat hacking is seriously bad news, whether it be for commercial reasons or policitical ones.
The majority of legal action on hacking revolves around IP holders, mainly record companies protecting their money making machines, and around states protecting their ’secrets’ but there is another world of Black Hats out there, and they aren’t doing it for kicks. Someone somewhere is paying them a consultancy fees.
End of paranoid meanders.
Comment by Pete Shield — 10 August, 2009 @ 12:40 pm
I think your reading a tad too much into what was meant as a throwaway joke. My original remark was a play on “what would jesus do”. Lots of previous contributors had made the accusation that Andy was a stalinist, I made a joke about it, end of. My definition was not meant to be a fully formed critique of stalinism, which has been different things at different times, but see the British Road to Socialism for the dominant form in the UK for the past 60 years.
I agree that the term stalinist is not a fruitful way of describing people. It is a divisive and rather sectarian form of discourse, but hey, this is Socialist Unity the oxymoronic blog what do you expect?
Comment by Anonymous — 10 August, 2009 @ 1:21 pm
Oh and #145 was me @Good point Sir #143
Comment by duncanB — 10 August, 2009 @ 1:30 pm
#141 “Andy himself seems to have gone strangely mute on this, unless he’s reflecting on the overwhelmingly hostile response to his missive.”
Do you think that it could be like that bit in “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and Andy has actually fallen asleep now and is in a pod somewhere fully mutating into a “Jack Straw clone”?
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 10 August, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
How dare you all attack Andy Newman for suggesting that it is important to maintain law and order in a civilised society. With all the problems caused by computer hacking this is no time to respond with a knee-jerk liberalism. As to the suggestion that he is posing as a sock-puppet muppet under the name of Kareem, well that’s just unworthy.String up a few of these crazies, it’s the only language they understand.
Comment by tyresome points — 10 August, 2009 @ 2:39 pm
….and string up all those who can’t spell “tiresome” too……
Comment by comrade spellchecker — 10 August, 2009 @ 2:55 pm
Can’t or won’t submit to your liberal-fascist orthography?
Comment by tyresome points — 10 August, 2009 @ 3:10 pm
Andy Newman has contracted swine flu and gone right-wing bonkers!
Comment by Henry — 10 August, 2009 @ 3:20 pm
Has anyone thought that perhaps the site was hacked by a neo-con cell who are holding Andy hostage this very minute? Perhaps someone should hack in to find out just in case…
Comment by Ray — 10 August, 2009 @ 4:09 pm
# 107
“This time round no gratuitous dropping of the fact that they are supposedly a Muslim though, I wonder what what that was all about.”
Its obvious that you have comprehension problems - It was not gratuitous at it was “all about” telling xenophobes and racists like Ray not to invent stupid comparisons and stories that are highly offensive and especially when they have no idea of what they are talking about.
# 110
If you really believe Andy is that petty and warped so as to use sock puppets to defend his article why don’t you just piss off to a more mature site? After all surely this all beneath such a regal person as yourself?
# 112
I have proved what a clueless idiot and a blatant liar you are Ray but you just keep coming back for more.
And when you are going to admit you are xenophobe who hates Americans so much he is trying to decriminalise someone who themselves admits to be a criminal.
Tell us all Ray, who else do you hate so much? Is it just entire countries or does your hatred extend to races and religions too?
You don’t even understand the difference between bail conditions and a sentence - you are hate filled fool of the most extraordinary dimensions.
# 113
“Most ‘hacking’ is legal, it’s done by governments and private agencies”
Bullshit - it might be done but is not legal in the vast majority of cases; its just a matter of nobody usually able to prove who it is or any agency willing to prosecute.
“legal fraud (smart IT salesmen selling shite software to the NHS and others in the public sector)has caused much more damage than any collection of individual hackers.”
What a load of ignorant crap.
DTI figures reveal that the average fiscal damage caused by a hacker in small companies is £10,000 and in larger companies up to £120,000, in all it costs billions. And then there are the home users who have all of their personal data stolen and bank accounts emptied.
“Comprimising the law and obtaining information illegally can be in the public interest. If a hacker or journalist can find evidence of government or corporate crime through hacking they should be encouraged, not deported.”
I diagree, and so does the law but that didnt happen here in any case.
“Crucifying some kid with an X-files obsession”
He is a 43 year old man, not a kid and this shows just how very little you really know about this case.
And he did more then indulge his “X-files obsession” he maliciously damaged systems, deleted files and left notes boasting about it and threatening more.
Interestingly, this notes didn’t mention UFO’s at all but US foreign policy; the UFO angle came after, probably to dupe gullible ignoramus like you.
Comment by kareem — 10 August, 2009 @ 4:10 pm
Great idea Ray, but who’s going to risk the 70-year prison sentence?
Comment by Saving Private Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 4:30 pm
You forgot to mention my role in THRUSH and my artificial island that is secretly a base for terror.
Chillax…
Comment by Ray — 10 August, 2009 @ 4:34 pm
My last comment was directed at Kareem.
“Great idea Ray, but who’s going to risk the 70-year prison sentence?”
I could use my THRUSH network to trick 007 into taking on the job. That’s if Kareem doesn’t thwart my plan first.
Comment by Ray — 10 August, 2009 @ 4:42 pm
I think Andy/Kareem/Tawfig is quite right here and I’d go even further.
Just to be on the safe side, let’s arrest and extradite to America everyone who ever says or does anything critical of the US, the CIA, the FBI or any other of these fine freedom-defending institutions.
Remember folks - criticism today means terrorism tomorrow!
Just because they haven’t done anything yet, doesn’t mean they might not, one day, potentially, commit an outrage.
Of course these people might not be criminals or terrorists, but there are criminals and terorists out there and we don’t them to think we’re going soft do we?
What!!!! you don’t agree??? You must be an anti-American racist and anarchist!!!
No I’m not bonkers at all, this all makes perfect sense - I saw it on Star Trek once. The one with the Vulcans and Humans.
Comment by Law and Order — 10 August, 2009 @ 4:58 pm
The left has a THRUSH network?!!!
I recommend live yoghurt.
Comment by Madam Miaow — 10 August, 2009 @ 5:53 pm
Ray and Law and Order aka Ray,
I know you’re a clueless coward but why don’t you grow some balls for once and just admit that you’re a xenophobe who is so full of hate he is trying to decriminalise a self admitted criminal!
Why don’t you tell us all the full list of countries, races and religions that you hate and complete the full list of countries, races and religions that you think are not equal under the law?
Why not try and break out of your cowards prison and admit that you know nothing about IT, IT security, hacking, the law or anything you haven’t read in the Daily Mail about the Mckinnon case and just want to impotently vent your cancerous hatred of Americans without any real care or knowledge of the facts?
Why not just admit that in the public exposure of all the above you now have to revert to type - the same way you do on every thread where you have been taken apart and exposed as a hate-filled racist crank who belongs in the BNP - by posting childish and inane distractions and the desperate, pathetic need to have the last word, as though that will prove you right?
Comment by kareem — 10 August, 2009 @ 6:00 pm
This thread has really hacked me off, I know pitiful, Ahaaaaaaaaa
Comment by mick hall — 10 August, 2009 @ 6:00 pm
“…by posting childish and inane distractions and the desperate, pathetic need to have the last word, as though that will prove you right?”
Spot on!
Comment by Ray — 10 August, 2009 @ 6:05 pm
I am not Kareen, and Kareem is not me.
Perhsps unlike most of your commentng here i am a professional engineer specialising in security, although admittedly not in the IT field.
First of all, let us look as the question of jurisdiction and extradition.
Some crimes simply do need to cross jursidictional boundaries, for example, if Alice in England posted a letter bomb to Bob in germany, and the bomb exploded in Germany injuring Bob, then it would be necesary for the country where the bomb exploded to have jurisdiction over the crime. Computer hacking from a client in England to a server in the USA raises the same issues.
On the question of jurisdiction, it just so happens that the extradition has proceded under the 2003 extradiction treaty, where the USA doesn’t need to present evidecne to a Uk court. However, the 2003 treaty only brings the situation with the USA into line with Britain’s extradition relationship with EU countries. But the whole issue is a red herring because if it was ‘t for the 2003 extradition treaty, then the USA would have been able to extradite McKinnon anyway under the terms of the pre-existing 1973 extradition treaty. There is a change of process but no change of substance - there is a substantive case to answer, and the USA could have presented evidence in the UK courts had that been proceedurally necessary.
In fact, McKinnon has a number of high profile and wealthy supporters, and he will get a fair trial in the USA, where the criminal justice system is broadly similar to Britain’s, and there is every likelihood that the USA would consent to him serving any prison term in the UK. with regard to his delusional beliefs and his aspergers, the place to test those arguments is on court, where these issue of legal competence due to aspergers is subject to extensive precedent, and the question of his alleged delusions is one of fact to be decided by a jury that hears all the evidecne, and doesn’ make its mind up based on newsparer articles.
I don’t actually know whether McKinnon was just a script-kiddie,, or whether he had some technical skill. But either way a lot of you here clearly don’t understand the issue. the hacker subculture is not just a lifestyle cult, this is a deeply anti-social semi-underground social network. The hacker community shares knowledge about vulnerabilities and exploits, they write scripts and attack tools and make them freely available, they write worms, trojans and viruses, and distribute them, and they disemminate counter-cultural justifications and rationalisations for their deeply anti-social activities. They even have conferences, they distribute technical papers and have bulletin boards explaining vulnerabilities and attacks.
Even a skilled professional making an attack would draw upon the reservoir of knowledge in the hacker sub-culture - there are no genius loners working from scratch, hcaking is a massive collaborative effort. In this way the professional criminals and the state-terrorists involved in cyber warfare do draw upon the sub-culture. And the sub-culture also creates its own alternative moral and ethical justifications. i.e that no harm is done; that they are actually helping companies improve their security, that it is a harmless battle of wits; that they are anti-corporate heroes, etc, etc.
And it is not hypothetical to discuss power companies and hospitals being attacked. these things have actually happened. Widespread power cuts across the USA a few years ago were attributed within the ITSec industry as having hackers as probable cause. People can die and be injured in power cuts. Hacking causes gross provacy violations, casuses people to lose work, it disrupts communications and critical sociall infrastructure.
As such, the sub-culture of computer hacking is an attack on the technological basis of our current system of mass production, distribution and exchange, which is the shared legacy of humanity’s creativity. As socialists we do not want the machines to be smashed, we want to change the ownership and democratise the priorities of production to met human need not profit.
As it is, malicious cyber-attacks divert absolutely massive resources away from production and towards countermeasures, malware also slows down technical advance, and causes enormous damage.
So as this is an anti-social sub-culture that threatens the technological basis of our whole society, socialists do have an interest in this behaviour being stopped, becasue we want the whole human race to benefit from the fantastic technology that has been developed.
One thing that needs to be done is to counter the innocent but foolish defence of hackers by people who have no technical knowledge or appreciation fo the scale of the problem. The other thing that needs to be done is to break the sub-culture, which means treating hacking as a serious crime, not as mildly amusing eccentric behaviour to be rationalised and excused. They needed to be treated in the same way as international organised crime.
And this is why McKinnon’s lack of remorse or appreciation of what he is doing wrong is such a problem. Hackers don’t believe that what they do is wrong, and society needs to change the culture of tolerence to one of extreme intolerence of this anti-social cyber-terrorism.
I think the fact that the US government is squaring up to the problem and beginning to treat it as a serious crime will genuinely act as, a deterent, and such a deterence is needed to break up the hacker rings. This threat to our soiety is one that is independent of the ideology of governments.
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 6:17 pm
and back to chJH’s nitpicking at 11
“On #8, Louise Woodward’s conviction for murder was overturned almost immediately, and she was instead found guilty of involuntary manlaughter. Her sentence was reduced to the 279 days (eight months) she had spent in prison awaiting trial.”
I recall Ian Hislop’s very sharp response to this sort of argument at the time. “the baby is still dead, that verdict hasn’t changed.”
In fact, despite the media broo-hah-hah in the UK, a young women who abused the trust placed in her by a baby’s partents and who shook an infant until it died was given a fair trail, and when the judge misdirected the jury on a question of law, the supreme court acted promptly, and she served just a few months.
it rather proves my point that the US legal system worked and was seen to work, and the Britosh press hysteria was mindless prejudice against Americans.
I don’t remember the same papers who campaigned for Louise Woodward taking up the serious questions of how Winston Silcott or the Birmigham Six didn’t get a fair trial in England.
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 6:27 pm
“Widespread power cuts across the USA a few years ago were attributed within the ITSec industry as having hackers as probable cause.”
http://business.scotsman.com/energyutilities/Emergency-after-power-cuts-in.2245277.jp
Try US power companies running into debt as the reason for wide spread power cuts, Andy. Unless hackers raided the coffers of the power companies then they didn’t cause it. Meanwhile the hypothetical hacking crisis rages on in the US Homeland Security Department:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2007-09-27-hacker-video_N.htm
Even US officials stated in 2007:
“There was no evidence any U.S. utility company suffered damage from hackers or terrorists using this technique…”
Stan Johnson, a manager at the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the Princeton, N.J.-based organization charged with overseeing the power grid sates, “The video is not a realistic representation of how the power system would operate.”
One individual moved to comment on this video states:
“So much tripe, designed to instill fear and cry out for the state to protect us. Malarkey!
Turbines also have a “manual” overspeed trip, as well as backup mechanical overspeed trip. And more than one. This is pure media hype.
If you were really worried, you might have prepared a little better instead of relying on fed.gov.
Don’t cry, and remember that all news is not news.
That’s a backup generator pictured, way too small to be used to power any grid effort. A paralell unit only for testing.
Didn’t work, oberr Chertoff. I’m not scared and you need better consultants.”
Comment by Ray — 10 August, 2009 @ 6:42 pm
#29
Well of all the ignorant shit I have ever read, this takes the biscuit from Christian H, when he is allegedly describing how the Us justice system differs from England and Wales;
Christian, you have EXACTLY described the common law legal system that also obtains in England! Where do you think the USA got its legal sytstem from?
Do you think that the British tabloids campaigning for mcKinnon would agree that the Roman/civil legal system is superior to that in the UK and USA? Indeed, when prominent trials in Roman law jurisdictions have involved English people (like Geoffrey Boycott) the british press have highlighted the problems with the Roman system.
To argue that McKonnon would get a fairer trial in England becasuue America has a common law legal system is the most eccentric argument I have ever heard.
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 6:56 pm
#166
Ray,
these are not the power cuts I am referring to, they were in the Eastern seaboard, I can’t exactly remember when, but more recent than that, and were caused by catastrophic overloading of control systems. They may not have been reported outside the specialist engineeting press, as the blackouts were short.
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 6:59 pm
“And this is why McKinnon’s lack of remorse or appreciation of what he is doing wrong is such a problem.”
This lack of remorse stuff comes from the same moralistic attitude that denies bail to convicted people who protest their innocence.
On Newsnight recently, after Straw did a u-turn on releasing Ronnie Biggs, Nick Cohn commented that why on earth would Biggs feel remorse for escaping after he was given a ridiculously disproportionate 30 year sentence.
Meanwhile Bush and Blair who are complicit in murdering millions of innocent people remain unrepentant and go free. That’s UK and US justice for you.
Comment by Ray — 10 August, 2009 @ 7:07 pm
#149 Pete
Yes indeed, could as well be! (metaphorically of course)
Well at least the pods produce ‘organic’ (if dehumanised) clones.
Comment by Halshall — 10 August, 2009 @ 8:26 pm
kareem sounds a lot like Mr8 to me…
Comment by Anonymous — 10 August, 2009 @ 8:31 pm
Andy (167.), can you read? I never purported to describe differences between the English and US legal systems. In fact, I didn’t mention the English system at all in that post. I merely pointed out the huge problems with the US system. These problems arise in part because of the interaction of the common law trial procedures and the extremely high penalties imposed in the US. But since you mention differences: the extremely high penalties do not apply in the UK - in particular lowering prosecutorial leverage with regards to plea bargains. (There are also other differences especially concerning plea bargaining - read up on it if you are interested.)
You made claims about the US justice system that are frankly insulting to its millions of victims (”The USA is a liberal democracy with a mature legal system that provides at least as much protection for defendants as the English law does”) and can only be the result of your complete lack of knowledge about all things American. Being called out, you now deliberately misquote me. Sadly, I’m not surprised - that’s been your m.o. for some time now.
Comment by christian h. — 10 August, 2009 @ 8:42 pm
#58
“The Grand Jury may be a good idea in principle, but in current US practice it is very easy to get one to issue an indictment. It should be added that various US jurisdictions don’t in fact use them - but even where they are used, the jury will very rarely refuse to issue an indictment and if it should refuse, the prosecutor can simply call a new one (an unlimited number of times, in fact).”
Yes, but the question was not whether or not the Grand Jury is in absolute terms an effective method of establishing whether there is sufficient probable cause to proceed to trial.
The issue is whether the US or UK legal systems are comparable, and as Grand Jury’s were abolished in England in 1948 they were replaced by commital proceedings before a magistrate, who almost never refuse a prosecution going to crown, and arguably their main function is to stop the crown courts being overloaded by offering a defendent an opportunity to plead guilty at commital, thus availing themselves of the lesser sentancing powers of a magistrates court.
it is quite rare for a defendent to contest a commital ( the last prominent case I remember was the trial of Jeremy Thorpe, IIRC).
the Residual Grand Jury system is certainly no worse than the current commital system in England.
But the other point is that I understand that the 2003 extradition arrangements with the USA do not override the American’s own proceddural requirements for probably cause to be demonstrated within the US legal system (often the a grand jury) prior to extradition being requested. An English court presented with a US extradition request does therefore know that probably cause has been already tested in an American court.
But the killer argument of why the 2003 extradition treaty is not relevent in McKinnon’s case is that the Us government would have had no difficulty in establishing probable cause in an English court as required undetr the 1973 extradition treaty. there has been a change of procedure, but even had the 2003 arrangements not been made, then McKinnon would still have been extradited under the 1973 arrangements.
Where is the injustice in that?
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 8:51 pm
Andy, the question is not at all whether the US and UK systems are different (and yes they are, unless you don’t notice the difference between probation and 25 years in prison…). The question is, should socialists actively campaign to support state repression against an individual who has not, in fact, harmed anyone but the US military machine? An ancillary question is, should we campaign to validate the US “justice” system by supporting extradition in this, or in any case?
Most comrades seem to think the answer to both questions should be “no”.
Comment by christian h. — 10 August, 2009 @ 9:03 pm
#172
Christian,
the whole point of the argument in British domestic politics is the common sense assumption that the American legal system is fundamentaly inferior to the british one, an assumption held by many right wingers who actualy agree with the American’s harsh sentancing - so that aspect is a red herring.
Even the quote you make from my article shows that the comparison with English law is at the heart of the political issue concerning McKinnon, where I wrote “(”The USA is a liberal democracy with a mature legal system that provides at least as much protection for defendants as the English law does”) “
So when you wade in with critisisms of the American legal system the politically relevent comparator has to be the English legal system. I may not be an expert on the US legal system but you seem woefully ignorant of the English legal system wihich is the relevent jurisdiction for comparison in the case of mcKinnon; and is the whole point of this aspect of the debate.
It is certainly true that plea bargaining is a developed system in the USA, and is marginal in England, and that American sentances longer and prison conditions often harsher. (although remember “three striked and you are out” was also intriduced in sentancing guidelines here under Margaret Thatcher)
However, the American legal system has preserved certain significant safeguards that have been removed from the common law in England, such as double jeopardy, the fruit of the forbideen tree, right of silence, restrictions of Jury trials. The difference in evidential rules certainly favours the defence in the USA compared to England. Much prosecution evidence that would be ruled inadmissible in an American court would be accepted in an English court even if the prosecution had obatined it in highly questionable ways. In England we have special immigration courts, like we have seen with the manchester students recently, where people can be deported based upon secret evidence presented to the court by MI5, that cannot be challenged by the defence.
With regard to miscarriages of justice, you talk about insulting the victims, but to imply that the English criminal justice system is considerably fairer than the US system is an insult to the victims fitted up over here - the repeated miscarrages of justice, and in some cases like the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad there was serious systemic abuse spanning decades.
where the American system is different is in the high proportion of long custodial sentances, and the resulting high prison population. But England and Wales has the highest prison population in Europe, and while we don’t approach the USA’s level’s we are in the same ball park as China. In many respects our legal system suffers from the same cankers as the Americans. So this is a false comparisn for us. we are not Norway or Finland.
And that is the political question behind the furore over McKinnon being extradited to the USA, that it feeds into a knee jerk anti-Americanism, and relies upon a sanitised view of the reality of the legal system here; especially as most of those campaigning for McKinnon, like the daily mail, actually favour the harsher sentances and barabaric prison condition of the USA being brought here.
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 9:12 pm
#174
“An ancillary question is, should we campaign to validate the US “justice” system by supporting extradition in this, or in any case?”
An interesting question.
A few weeks ago two british neo-nazis who had been running a vile race-hate web-site advocating racial attacks were being prosecuted in England, and they skipped court and calimed political asylum in the USA. Britain successfully applied for extradition, and they have now been sentanced.
Are you opposed to their extradition to the UK? Because it is impossible to have an extradition treaty that goes only one way.
And internationally the left has been campaigning for some years for the extradition of Posada Carilles from the USA to Venezuela. Would you be opposed to his extradition? one of Venezuala’s key arguments is that they honour extradition requests with USA.
If you are arguing that the UK should withdraw from extradition arrangements with the USA, woudl you also advocate that the UK withdraws from extradition with every other state with a harsh criminal justice system? Wouldn’t this make it impossible to bring Britosh criminalls to justice, and also lead to oragniased criminals from around the world coming to Britain to escape justice at home? Is that sort of gangster-friendly right wing libertarianism your idea of socialism?
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 9:16 pm
#174
“the question is not at all whether the US and UK systems are different”
There is no UK wide criminal justice system, for someone who likes to throw around accusations of ignorance you don’t take much care with your own facts. Scotland doesn’t have a common law system similar to England and the USA.
“unless you don’t notice the difference between probation and 25 years in prison”
Yes, sentancing is harsher in the USA, that would be a good disincentive from commiting crimes that might lead to you getting extradited to the USA; but it doesn’t fundamentally relate to the question of whether McKinnon would get a fair trial.
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 9:24 pm
Noah #103
Noah.
in order to have carried out the attack he did, mcKinnon must have used information about vulnerabilities and used attack scripts and other on-line hacking tools that he derived from the hacking community. I haven’t strudied the technical details of the case, but clearly the fact that the vulnerabilites were exploited means that the systems hacked were employing operating systems and network equipment that also exist outside the military.
McKinnon’s particular target was the US military; but the attack tools developed, the techniques of network discovery, and the vulnerabilities exploited have been learned and disseminated by the hacking community in attacks against softer non-military targets.
Now, perhaps instead of using the example of a medical system (and medical systems have been hacked), let us go in a different direction, and ask what would have happened if the US military had assumed that this attack was coming from a hostile government, perhaps Cuba or Venezuela, and had taken military reprisals. Not so far fetched.
the assumption that many of you are making is that hacking is an essentially harmless activity. It is not it is a social plague, like organised crime, and needs to be treated as such.
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 9:37 pm
Andy, the whole point by the British tabloid press may be that the British system is much better - so what.
(To belabor the point, the absurd incarceration rates and long sentences in the US aren’t simply a cosmetic difference, they imply a qualitative difference. Among other things, they utterly undermine all those pretty rights defendants enjoy in principle. Be that as it may, it is simply a fact I did not compare the systems, so you claiming I did so is a misrepresentation of the argument I was making. I also wonder how you conclude I was ignorant of the fact common law is applicable in England/Wales given I never mentioned those jurisdictions…)
In any event, your original post isn’t, for the most part, a critique of condescending attitudes towards the US in the UK; it’s an impassioned argument for punishing McKinnon because hacking is “anti-social behavior” etc. pp. Being of a different opinion there does not mean embracing media narratives.
As for the British Neo-Nazis, they could not have legally stayed in the US indefinitely, as they aren’t US citizens. Denial of political asylum is not the same as extradition.
Comment by christian h. — 10 August, 2009 @ 9:41 pm
#179
“As for the British Neo-Nazis, they could not have legally stayed in the US indefinitely, as they aren’t US citizens. Denial of political asylum is not the same as extradition.”
they were in fact though extradited.
Britain applied for extradition, the Us courts agreed to it, and they were sent back here in custody.
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 9:50 pm
Christian, some 70% of the readers of this site are from britain.
So when you wrote at #29
You were clearly explaining inadequacies of the US legal system as you see them towards the people engaged in the debate on this very site, and therefore addressing those deficiencies towards people who live in a common law jurisdiction that is essentially the same as the one you describe.
Now i don’t know if you randonly post commenst about comparative legal systems around the internet, i am assuming that you don’t.
therefore I assume that you intended these criticisms to be somehow relevent to the debate we are having here. Now the first third of my original article was addressed to the incorrect British prejudice that our legal system is considerable fairer than the USA’s, beacsue that is the actual political context within which the McKinnon case is being discussed.
If McKinnon had hacked into Aldermaston and the British nuclear dockyards on the Clyde, then many of the same people opposing his extradition to the USA would be caling for him to be locked up for 30 years here.
Why would you post those criticisms of the US legals system onto an website in England, making the implicit assumption that those criticisms would not apply to our own legal system.
Your criticisms of the US legal system may be sound ones, but they are way off beam when debating with people in England who think that our system is considrably fairer than the American system.
Yes,yes plea bargaining means a lot of cases don’t get to court. but that would not be the case with high profile extradition cases from Britain.
I fact the American common law system has safeguards for the defence that we don;t have in England , for example, the evidential rules, particlarly the “fruit of the forbidden tree” much more favours the defence in the USA than it does in England.
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 10:00 pm
Yes but Andy, the point is that McKinnon is not:
A neo-nazi
A terrorist
A member of an organised criminal gang.
McKinnon has not:
Interfered with any hospital IT systems
Stolen any money
Harmed anyone or anything in any way
He has searched on a secret US military website for information.
Whatever serious crimes may or may not be comitted via the internet by criminals or terrorists, this is utterly irrelevant to the McKinnon case.
McKinnon is being hounded by the US neo-cons and their supine UK poodles for one reason and one reason only.
To intimidate the rest of us and try to deter us from seeking the truth about the secret activities of our governments.
This is the politics of this debate Andy, a debate in which you have chosen to side with the US neo-cons, while the rest of us are opposing them.
Comment by Communist — 10 August, 2009 @ 10:15 pm
#179
“Andy, the whole point by the British tabloid press may be that the British system is much better - so what. “
Because many socialists consider opposing thr national chauvinism of the country they live in to be a good thing to do.
Interestingly, a number of socialists in this thread who usually falsely accuse me of pandering to nationalism are falling over themselves to describe the US legal system as terrible, without noticing that they are feeding the cancerous British assumption that pervades our whole society that we are intrinsiclly better than the Americans
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
“McKinnon is being hounded by the US neo-cons and their supine UK poodles for one reason and one reason only.”
No, that may be one reasoon in mcKinnon’s particular case, but they are also taking a very hard line legally on computer hacking generally in recent years, and that is what they should be congratulated upon, and it is a shame that the UK government doesn’t show some of the same vigour in investigating, prosecuting, convicting and incarcerating commputer hackers.
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 10:19 pm
I don’t think British justice is inherently better than American Justice, but the recent record of the US has been appauling - Torture and kidnap op people in the “war on terror” is just one part of that.
How would Gary McKinnon survive in a US prison? I’m not sure.
Comment by Green Socialist — 10 August, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
#182
”
McKinnon is not ..
A member of an organised criminal gang.
McKinnon has not:
Harmed anyone or anything in any way
”
So while he may not be a member of a gang, how did he gain knowledge of vulnerabilities and access to the exploits and attack scripts if he did participate in the virtial community where hackers excahnge such knowledge and boast of their exploits.
he deserves to be heard in court to defned himself, but I find it incredible that he managed what he did wo
ithout being part of the hacker community, which is effectively a loose network of criminals.
And how do you know that he didn’t harm anything? He may have compromised military security in such a way that put lives at risk, and not just US military lives.
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 10:24 pm
#185
“How would Gary McKinnon survive in a US prison? I’m not sure.”
I am sure that the UK givernment could arrange for hin to serve his time in Britain. That is something that we should campaign for.
Comment by Andy Newman — 10 August, 2009 @ 10:25 pm
The British system of justice is superior by UN standards. We don’t execute mentally compromised children any more. The US does. Whether this truth is being articulated by right wing chauvanists or socialists makes no difference.
Mr Newman has provided us with an illustration of what’s sometimes called the ‘bad company’ fallacy: In other words, I reject a claim because people I dislike accept it.
So what.
Comment by J B Malone — 10 August, 2009 @ 10:40 pm
Andy,
There is no record whatsoever of anyone having been harmed or of anything having been damaged as a result of McKinnon’s internet search for information.
Not even the US neo-cons whom you admire so much have brought any charge of actual harm to anybody or of actual damage to anything.
It is really quite remarkable that not only do you admire, support and wish to congratulate the US neo-cons for their hounding of this poor man, you actually feel that the US neo-cons do not go far enough!
Comment by Communist — 10 August, 2009 @ 10:46 pm
Andy: where to start? I am not posting comments “about comparative legal systems” [sic], randomly or otherwise - I didn’t compare anything. You claiming otherwise won’t change that and, as I have pointed out to you I didn’t, does by now amount to blatant lying.
Rather than comparing, I explained in my post that you are advocating extradition to a country whose justice system is utterly unjust, something you are either unaware of or choose to ignore. The fact that the country McKinnon is extradited from also has a sucky legal system is neither here nor there. Although one might mention that McKinnon and his lawyers probably have some reason for fighting extradition.
Your understanding of legal practice in the US seems unfortunately due to watching Law & Order, as you somehow seem to have come to the mistaken belief that the evidentiary rules you mention are, in practice, safe-guarding anyone targeted by the state against unjust persecution. This is, quite simply, not the case. It is most definitely not the case in any national-security related proceedings, or in general for those who cannot afford high-priced lawyers and support. Indeed, those rules are probably making the class-based nature of the justice system more pronounced.
Finally, you are now debating straw men. I sincerely doubt anyone here - with the possible exception of yourself and kareem - would call for jailing a person hacking UK military systems for 30 years (or at all). I rather assume such a person would be feted by the regulars. Likewise, I didn’t post my comments on the Daily Mail website, but here. On a blog that at least pretends to be socialist. This is the context of all of our comments, not some imagined nationalist mob holding up the UK as a paragon of virtue. Jeez.
Comment by christian h. — 10 August, 2009 @ 11:07 pm
“I think the fact that the US government is squaring up to the problem and beginning to treat it as a serious crime will genuinely act as, a deterent, and such a deterence is needed to break up the hacker rings. This threat to our soiety is one that is independent of the ideology of governments.”
After this, I expect you to change the name of the site to “defend the imperialist state”.
Comment by Des Carter — 10 August, 2009 @ 11:44 pm
Bloody hell, Andy: you’re a bit soft on the Yanks and a bit…well…right wing, aren’t you?
Comment by Jim Denham — 11 August, 2009 @ 12:19 am
# 171
“kareem sounds a lot like Mr8 to me…”
Really Ray? Because I sounded like Andy to you earlier, before Andy came back that is…
# 182
“He has searched on a secret US military website for information.”
Again, your astounding ignorance shines through and shows everyone just how out of your depth you really are.
He did not search on any “secret US military website” he hacked into a private government network using techniques that were illegal and that he accepts were illegal - so why do you have a problem believing McKinnon when he admits he is a criminal who needs to be punished?
“Whatever serious crimes may or may not be committed via the internet by criminals or terrorists, this is utterly irrelevant to the McKinnon case.”
It is completely relevant to the McKinnon case as he acted in a malicious and destructive way that a criminal or terrorist might and he needs to be punished and with a visible deterrent effect.
“McKinnon is being hounded by the US neo-cons and their supine UK poodles for one reason and one reason only…To intimidate the rest of us and try to deter us from seeking the truth about the secret activities of our governments.”
Like I said before, you are a conspiracy nut - do you really think that NASA and the US military has evidence of ET’s & UFO’s on their servers?
When Mckinnon signed the notes he left as ’solo’ on the comprised systems he derided US policy and threatened more malicious action - never once till after he consulted a lawyer did this new “I’m just an eccentric UFO hunter” angle come out as mitigation.
# 189
“as a result of McKinnon’s internet search for information.”
Come on now really, ignorance is a bad thing, not something to wear as a badge of pride.
You really don’t even has the most basic grasp of what has happened here at all but yet you keep on commenting on something you clearly know absolute naught about. Quite scary really.
Comment by kareem — 11 August, 2009 @ 12:47 am
“# 171
“kareem sounds a lot like Mr8 to me…”
Really Ray? Because I sounded like Andy to you earlier, before Andy came back that is…”
#171 was by “Anonymous”. What or who is Mr8? I’ve never accused you of being Andy. You’re your own special person and I don’t need to post under any other name to take the piss out of you.
Comment by Ray — 11 August, 2009 @ 1:01 am
Mick Hall- the rule of law is not a ‘neo-con’ idea. It is one of the pillars of democracy. In my view socialists may often need to break the law, in which case we should be prepared to defend why we have done so, and/or defend others who have broken it…
Comment by Armchair — 11 August, 2009 @ 7:50 am
Oh so we think that people who damage or interfere with US/UK military installations should be punished by the authorities? Does that include people like Trident Ploughshares? http://www.tridentploughshares.org/index.php3
Andy/Kareem I would be interested to know what your position on this campaign is.
Comment by DuncanB — 11 August, 2009 @ 9:11 am
…but that doesn’t mean that we should dismiss or reject the concept of the rule of law, because the alternative is that everyone just decides for themselves how to behave- and it works both ways, those with power can just behave abitrarally (if that’s how you spell it) and lock people up and shoot them at will.
The Bolsheviks did not have a proper understanding of this, in particular Lenin and Trotsky. They wrongly saw it as an entirely bourgeois concept. Ironically it was when it was too late, and Stalin was firmly in power, that any attempt was made in the USSR to put this right.
If we are seen as rejecting the principle of rule of law, don’t be surprised if people suspect that socialists, when in power, are likely to act at whim against whoever they decide is a reactionary or class enemy without the need to worry about legal constraint.
Comment by Armchair — 11 August, 2009 @ 9:32 am
#190
“Rather than comparing, I explained in my post that you are advocating extradition to a country whose justice system is utterly unjust, something you are either unaware of or choose to ignore. The fact that the country McKinnon is extradited from also has a sucky legal system is neither here nor there. Although one might mention that McKinnon and his lawyers probably have some reason for fighting extradition.”
Christian h
The reasons that you gave at comment #29 above of why the US legal system are bad are comparative ones based upon a preference on your part for the Roman/napoleonic system. It simply was your contention that the US legal system was flawed because of its common law nature - a view that I have never heard echoed by any socialist in the UK.
when you say ” am not posting comments “about comparative legal systems” [sic], randomly or otherwise - I didn’t compare anything. “, that isn’t true, becasue at #29 you compared the US legal system unfavourabley with Roman legal systems.
England and the USA (and many other countries from Australia to Zimbabwe) have a common law legal system, based upon adversarial advocacy. Now, to my knowledge, no socialist active in the British labour movement has ever called for the common law criminal system to be scrapped and replaced by the Roman system. No socialists active in the british movement has ever argued that the Scottish system is so superior that its operation should be extended to England.
As a socialist society would also rely upon the rule of law, then i assume that the basic framework of criminal law would stay the same in a socialist England, adapting as it did in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, but retaining the basic outlook of common law.
My knowledge of the American legal system does not come from the TV but comes from my study of the English legal system, and the comparative differences with the USA are of interest to the English legal system because of the shared root, and hence differences act as a ready comparitor for the effect of changes. As precedence operates in the common law system, decisions made by courts in other common law jurisdcictions on questions of law may be referred to in English legal argument, although they are considered as only persuasive rather than binding precedents.
Now I don’t know, but I have never heard of the socialist movement in the USA campiagning against the basis of the common law legal system either. you argue that the evidential rules in the USA exagerate the class bias of the system, what an abstract position. The fruit of the forbidden tree evidential rule simply does provide defendents with legal rights that they don’t have in England, and acts as a limited restraint upon the American law enforcement that doesn’t operate over the police in England. Do you really think this exagerates class bias? I would think it provides some limited restraint upon the state and should be defended.
With regard to extradition, everytime there is an exradition to the USA where there is a media angle to exploit, then there is a furore in the UK, usually based upon factual errors and anti-American prejudice.
Now, we could take the stance that you do that extradition is always wrong of anyone to the USA. But we would then also have to accept that the British stste would be unable to seek extradition from the USA. but that stance is hard to reconcile with the rule of law, as it would make it harder for both jurisdictions to bring criminals to justice. Socialists are surely not opposed to states tacking serious crime?
You seem to misunderstand how the Gary McKinnon case has become a political issue. this is not due to socialist and progressive campaigners; it is due to an essentially right wing argument about the superiority of the English legal system, being echoed in the right wing press; and an essentially ignorant argument by non-technical people that he didn’t cause any harm, and that hacking is not a serious problem.
You say that people here should applaud anyone hacking into AWE, or the RN docks for Trident. Well let us look at that argument. Both the nuclear subs, and the AWE labs at Aldermaston and Burghfield have safety critical computer systems. Now I am pretty confident that the AWE labs and their IT systems are designed to be very safe, and are well secured, indeed I have been on training courses with guys from AWE and they seem very competent to me.
However, imagine that a curious hacker finds some vulnerabilites and hacks into their systems. Would they have the technical expertise to be absolutely certain that they were not compromising the integrity of the control systems for the nuclear reactor at Aldermaston? Or would they be reckless like McKinnon seems to have been.
From the safety of California you can regard an accident at a nuclear reactor in Aldermaston as a trivial matter, but that would not be true for the perhaps half million or more people who live in Newbury, Reading and Basingstoke.
So you would shake by the hand someone who recklessly broke into the computer system of a secure lab controlling a nuclear reactor, who had no knowledge or training to be sure that they could not compromise the safety of that nuclear reactor? Does that sytrike you as a responsible position?
When McKinnon was disrupting the IT system of various American military installations, could he be sure that he wasn’t affecting any systems with a safety impact?
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 9:47 am
Whose rule and whose order? Who decides that mugging an ex worker for their pension is a crime but that taking a ‘pension holiday’ depriving thousands of workers their pension is good business practice?
If you or I went into a shop and paid for an item in the knowledge it was worth a great deal more we would be guilty of theft. If we did that in the stock market it would be entirely legal.
Thousands of workers are dying because of the effects of breathing in of asbestos fibres. The fact that asbestos is deadly has been known since the late 19th century but still workers were made to work with it without any protection. Why is is not manslaughter at the very least?
Who decides that to blatantly lie about the capabilities of a state thus providing a reason to invade that state, is good statesmanship? Again if you or I were to behave like this, provide a tissue of lies in order to justify a defence of self defence, we would be prosecuted. Where is the ‘rule of law’ here?
Never forget a judge is just a Tory in a wig.
Comment by DuncanB — 11 August, 2009 @ 9:48 am
#196
“Andy/Kareem I would be interested to know what your position on this campaign is.”
I fully approve of the Trident Plughshares campaign.
Iit is very different from McKinnon’s case.
Ploughshres activists do not avoid criminal proceedings. they admit that what they do is illegal and are prepared to heroicly take the conseqences.
Ploughshares actvists do not gain or provide support to networks of people attacking all technology - their activities are foccused upon the military. McKinnon is a computer hacker. and will have drawn upon knowledge and expertise derived from th ani-social hacking community. Inceidently, for those of you who assume that McKinnon has only ever attacked the US ilitary targets (and Ii don’t know the fact,s I hasten to add), does it seem likely to you that the first ever practice you would do at hacking would be against NASA and the Pentagon? Where did Mckinnon lean to do what he did, and what were the targets when he was learning?
Ploughshares activists are careful that the damage that they do doesn’t compromise safety.
Ploughshares activists are also seeking to make a political issue of the arms industry, not hide behind an alleged delusion about UFOs.
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 9:52 am
Duncan B- just because the law, like everything else, tends to operate in the interests of the ruling class, is not a reason to reject the rule of law as a principle.
Modern bourgeois democracy is an advance on a society controlled by unacountable feudal warlords isn’t it?
Comment by Armchair — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:01 am
Andy,
Every time you post on this your arguments just get weaker and weaker. You keep on saying: “What if this” and “what if that.”
The fact is, once again, McKinnon did no harm to anyone or anything.
Yes of course computer-based crime is a problem, just as street crime, car crime, house burglaries etc are also serious problems.
No-one here is arguing that the rule of law should not exist or that criminals should not be punished.
The point is Andy, that McKinnon - no, not the various serious criminals who commit serious crimes via the internet, not terrorists who use the internet to aid their activities, but McKinnon - has done nothing wrong.
Your argument is similar to saying: “There’s serious crime on the streets, so let’s imprison children for ‘illegally’ playing football in the street.” And then rabidly denouncing everyone who disagrees with you as being “soft on crime.”
Your argument is similar to saying: “There have been terrorist attacks on the London Tube, so let’s imprison anyone who travels without a ticket.”
Andy, come on, for heavens sake, pull yourself together.
Comment by Communist — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:05 am
“just because the law, like everything else, tends to operate in the interests of the ruling class, is not a reason to reject the rule of law as a principle.”
You don’t see a contradiction there? Created by the ruling class, in the interest of the ruling class, yet apparently impartial?
Comment by DuncanB — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:16 am
#202
“No-one here is arguing that the rule of law should not exist or that criminals should not be punished.”
Well actually some people here are indeed arguing that the rule of law is just about class bias, for example comment #203.
McKinnon is a long term hacker, he should be prosectuted for what he has done. McKinnon casued no harm in the same sense that a drunk driver who doesn’t actually have an accident causes no harm.
Laws against cyber crime should be used to prosecute him, not anti-terror legislation; but when he chose to commit an attack on the Pentagon, and commiited offences under American law, he was rather opening the door himself to the likely consequences.
My argument is with those who think that extradition to the USA is per se wrong; and with those who don’t appreciate that hacking is a serious problem that needs to be severely dealt with.
Hackers reppresent a serious social danger, and need to be treated as such.
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:30 am
Duncan B- Did I say “impartial?” I don’t know if you’re a Leninist of some type, but I suspect your’e making the same errors that V.I. himself made.
This whole issue demands far more time than I am able to snatch at the moment and I suggest to Andy that we have a post dealing with Socialism and the law.
Comment by Armchair — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:36 am
#202
you say;
” McKinnon - has done nothing wrong.”
that attitude is the problem.
McKinnon has done something wrong. he hacked into computer systems that didn’t belong to him, and he has been doing so for years.
That is something wrong! that is part of the culture of cyber criminality that causes tens of millions of pounds of damage, diverts hundred of millions of pounds of rsources into counter-measures.
we shouldn’t be minimising it.
he shouldn’t be disproprotionatly punished for picking a military target, but he was reckless to the consequences of his hacking a military target. and he is seemingly unrepentant about his hacking. There is no miscarriage of justice in asking him to face the consequences of his own criminality.
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:37 am
“I suggest to Andy that we have a post dealing with Socialism and the law.”
It is a good idea. I am off on holiday tromorrow. but will have a look when i get back.
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:38 am
Andy,
Organised criminals and terrorists who commit serious crimes and/or plan/facilitate atrocities via the internet should, of course, be prosecuted and only a fool would disagree.
But such crimes are no more serious when committed via the medium of the internet than they are when committed in the “old-fashioned” way.
Therefore, simply saying “hacking” is a serious crime in itself is a nonsense.
What I have a problem with is your implication that there is something unique about this particular medium - the internet - that impies that even low-level “nuisance” offenders should be treated as seriously as everyone else.
This argument would not be made in the context of any other medium would it?
Holding up a bank at the point of a gun is not remotely comparable to a child pinching a mars bar from a corner shop is it?
So why, when the context is not the high street but the internet, are you comparing this low-level nuisance geek to professional criminals and terorists?
Comment by Communist — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:45 am
#208
The low level cyber-geeks help sustain the on-line community of hackers who exchange information about vulnerabilities, exploits, and the distribute and publicise, and in some cases write, the attack scripts.
for example, the discussion of how to exploit vulnerabilities in SCADA contol system for public utilities - water, gas and electricity, has been going on for a couple of years now on the hacker forums.
all of the participants of those hacker forums collude to create the knowledge base, and self-referencing moral justification for the cyber attacks that will follow.
Also, the social damage from hacking is the huge diversion of effort and resources into counter-measures, that has a serious effect on slowing technological advance.
Now one of the social problems is the attitude that low level hackers are essentially harmless, but in fact they learn vulnerabilities and then publicise the details on hacker forums that are directly useful to organised criminals and terrorists. even low level hackers cause untold problems for both commercial and personal computer systems.
the correct comparion is not between the bank robber and the child shop lifter
the comparison is between the person importing and distributing illegal guns, and those using them.
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:56 am
What if, what if, what if…. Oh, what if the moon was made of cream cheese…
Andy, again you are making assumptions as well as the continuation of hypotheticals… ‘existence of Elvis so someone might hack into some database somewhere or other therefore compromise security..’ Great idea for a television script, some cyber thriller with added comedy for the BBC…etc etc. But that is precisely it, a bit of fiction ‘what if’….scenario, where is your evidence that has happened?
“And this is why McKinnon’s lack of remorse or appreciation of what he is doing wrong is such a problem”
How do you know he lacks remorse? In the interview I read he seemed to be appreciative of what he did was wrong, it seems as well he wasn’t in a great place mentally, he made a mistake, where was the harm, where is the proportionality? And also, maybe, the lack of remorse or appreciation may be symptomatic of the Aspergers.
And you make this guy out as some Bond villain, hacking into databases for nefarious reasons. Methinks you have blown it out of proportion yourself.
Show a bit of humanity and compassion…and a bit proportionality yourself.
Comment by Louise — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:56 am
Louise
McKinnon’s argument is entirely to minimise what he did, that he was only looking for UFOs, and he can’t really understand what the fuss is about.
that is not remorse, that is self-justification. But why it is particularly damaging is not that he personally thinks it, which may be attributable to aspergers ( something to be tested in court) , but that this has become the basis of a public political campiagn to minimise the perceived severity of hacking. I judge his lack of remorse by the attitude of his political campaign.
We do know that violating the security of computer systems can have unpredictable consequences, and therefore that risk was increased in an unpredictable way on these military systems. His recklessness is therefore not a hypothetical, but a known fact.
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 11:11 am
Andy, I can’t agree with this from you “the comparison is between the person importing and distributing illegal guns, and those using them.”
No-one has died here, no-one has been shot, or harmed in any way. Nothing McKinnon has done has led to harm being done to anyone or damage being done to anything.
The whole case against McKinnon is based on “what ifs.”
Therefore, comparing McKinnon with an importer of illegal arms is utter nonsense.
Comment by Communist — 11 August, 2009 @ 11:19 am
“that he was only looking for UFOs, and he can’t really understand what the fuss is about.”
Well, from McKinnon’s own perspective he probably doesn’t see what the fuss is about. Frankly, I don’t either. He wasn’t hacking for personal financial gain/profit or to consciously cause damage, to knowingly seek information that could damage individuals for nefarious reasons. He was looking, pure and simple, for the existence of UFOs. Unfortunately, the guy got caught up in the whipped up hysteria around the War on Terror! What was McKinnon’s intent, did he intend to commit as much damage and destruction, and knowingly compromise security systems, did he mean to endanger lives (were lives endangered?… But that’s all hypothetical again).
Yes, he was reckless BUT is the punishment proportionate?
Comment by Louise — 11 August, 2009 @ 11:23 am
Incidently, the lurid argument is that McKinnon will face 70 years in gaol.
Back in 2003 there were the same lurid arguments about Brett Edward O’Keefe who did exactly what mcKinnon did, and the press talked up his probable 30 year sentance:
the reality:
How was this accomplished, it was accomplished by one of those terrible plea-bargains that Christian h tells us makes the US legal system so class biased and barbaric.
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 11:28 am
#213
” He wasn’t hacking for personal financial gain/profit or to consciously cause damage, to knowingly seek information that could damage individuals for nefarious reasons. He was looking, pure and simple, for the existence of UFOs. ”
but this sort of justification for hacking - which is a very serious social problem - is the trouble.
Most hackers don’t think they are doing anything wrong, most hackers dont see the enormous cost, the fact that their community of sharing information about vulnerabilities, and sharing attack tools and exploits empowers other people to commit extortion and vandalism.
the whole appreciation of how serious hacking is needs to be changed.
what you are doing is minimising the social cost of hacking by making excuses for mcKinnon.
70 years would obvioulsy be disproportionate. but it is not disproportionate to beleive he shoudl face trial.
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 11:37 am
“Also, the social damage from hacking is the huge diversion of effort and resources into counter-measures, that has a serious effect on slowing technological advance.”
This just simply isn’t true. The development of counter-measures is a stimulus to technological advance. Andy, you can’t approach the modern IT industry with a Stalinist mentality. It’s just too complex for facile generalisations to hold.
Incidentally, most of the serious damage to computer systems is caused by individuals inside organisations; and most security and audit functions are designed to prevent disgruntled or hostile workers from causing damage. It’s analagous to shoplifing - most of it’s done by peole working for the organisations concerned.
Comment by B Kahuna — 11 August, 2009 @ 11:39 am
#216
Insider attacks are certinly a problem, but it is still the case that the majority of techniical effort is put into the exterior perimeter.
To take an example of technical advance being impeded, SCADA systems on industrial plant were impervious to hacking when they used RS485 comms, but now that they are transitioning to a layer 3 IP protocol there are known vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities that are being discussed on hacker forums.
Now there are clearly advantages in terms of cost and reslience of using an IP backbone for SCADA, but some utilities will hold backk on that transtition due to security concerns - concerns that are based upon outsider hacker danger. Also in a case like that, insider knowledge may be exploited, but is there was no outside hacker community to interact with, the insoder danger would be smaller.
To take a very obvious example of security concerns impeding progress, the slow transition from IPv4 to IPv6 has arguably been conservatism of network security boffins reluctant to abandon the anonymising of local internal IP addresses by NAT on IPv4.
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 11:52 am
This idea of a highly organised international conspiracy of “hackers” who swap tips on how to destroy civilisation as we know it really does belong to the realms of fiction.
Where’s the evidence that such an organisation actually exists?
And where’s the evidence that McKinnon belongs to it?
Pure fantasy Andy. You’re simply trying to harness the fact that the internet is a relatively new medium, one which many of us are still not very knowledgeable about and one about which there is a relatively high level of suspicion and apprehension, to try to scare people into thinking that low-level nuisance geeks like McKinnon are far more dangerous than they actually are.
And that’s exactly the same tactic that the US neo-cons are using here.
The fact is that the internet - yes it’s newer than most other media and yes many of us don’t know that much about its detailed technicalities - is simply another medium.
Serious crime committed in this sphere is no more or less serious in essence than crime comitted anywhere else.
And low-level nuisance in this sphere is likewise no more damaging than low-level nuisance anywhere else.
Comment by Communist — 11 August, 2009 @ 11:52 am
#216
“This just simply isn’t true. The development of counter-measures is a stimulus to technological advance. Andy, you can’t approach the modern IT industry with a Stalinist mentality. It’s just too complex for facile generalisations to hold.”
Well, the cost for an enterprise system of having a state of the art security management system can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
I worked on one bid for a government system for one European country, where the ITSec component represented tens of millions of euros over the lifetime of the system. Money that could have been spent elsewhere if the vulnerability landscape was not so perilous.
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 11:57 am
“It is a good idea. I am off on holiday tromorrow. but will have a look when i get back.”
Andy- you have my email address if you want any ideas.
Comment by Armchair — 11 August, 2009 @ 12:02 pm
Hey Andy,
Enjoy your holiday - you need a break - and we all hope you come back refreshed and most importantly, back on the left where you belong!
Comment by Communist — 11 August, 2009 @ 12:08 pm
#218
“This idea of a highly organised international conspiracy of “hackers” who swap tips on how to destroy civilisation as we know it really does belong to the realms of fiction”
No that is what happens.
How do you think computer viruses get launched? People write them and maliciously distribute them, and to write an effective virus takes skill and nkowledge, and to distribute them requires malice.
if I may refer you to the most authorative academic book on the subject: Ross Anderson’s “Security Engineering” Wiley 2001, page 369:
“One of the main cultural changes brought about by the Net is that, until recently, sophisticated attacks on communications (such as middleperson attacks) were essentially the preserve of national governments. Today we find not just password snooping attacks but also more subtle routing attacks being done by kids,, for fun. The critical change here is that people write the necessary exploit software, then post it on sites such as www.rootshell.com , from which script-kiddies can download and use it. this terms refers primarily to young pranksters who use attack scripts prepared by others, but it also refers to any unskilled people who download and launch tools they don’t fully understand. as systems become ever more complicated, even sophisticated attackers are heading this way; no individual can keep up with all the vuknerabilities that are discivred on operating systems and network protocols. In effect hacking is becoming increasingly deskilled, while defence is becomming unmanageably complex”
There is a simliar discussion in Bruce Shneier’s 2000 book that I reference in the riginal article on pages 21 to 22. In particular:
“only the first atacker has to be skilled. After the initial hacker posts it to an archive - anyone can download it and use it….. …. we’ve seen the same problem with hacking tools: software packages that break into computers, bring down servers, bypass copyright protection measures, or exaploit browser bugs to steal data. …. It took no skill to launch the wave of distributed deial of service attacks against ajor Web sites in early 200, all it took was downloading and runnuing a script.”
We understand that McKinnon broke the passwords of the US military witha a brute force attack - using trial and error combinations. Do you think he typed all the possible millions of permutatios, or did he use an attack script? If he used an attack script where did he get it from?
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 12:16 pm
Incidently, on the reasonable nature of the US request for extradition,
A few years ago there was a series of attacks mounted on Commercial American computer systems from the Federal Republic of Germany. But there was no crime committed under German law becasue the servers were in the USA, and no crime as it stood at that time in the USA becasue the perpetrators were in the BRD.
It was sensible for both laws were to be changed, in particular, goven the global distributed nature of the internet it was sensible for the US law to make the location of the server the point of crime, to protect themseves from attacks from countiries with lax cyber-laws
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 12:27 pm
Again, whose law and whose order? Or to put it another way what is a crime and what is not a crime?
The deliberate taking of a life is the most heinous of crimes. Yet often the longest sentences are not handed out for murder. Its arguable that the great train robbers committted the ultimate crime, that is workers stealing from the ruling class.
After sentencing him to 30 years for theft they pursued Ronald Biggs, literally to the ends of the earth. Men killing their wifes are often excused as being ‘provoked’, getting minimal sentences.
Workers stealing from workers is regarded as a minimal offence despite the traumatic effects of burglary. The attitude is unless you are insured then theres nothing to be done. Anyone expecting the finger print squad is likely to be disappointed.
The bosses stealing from workers. Already mentioned pensions. The minimum wage is routinely ignored. In any case its not a police matter. Nor is Health and Safety, despite the fact that something like 2 people a week die on building sites, the police are hardly ever called in when someone dies. And when a prosecution does take place conviction is almost impossible to get. The police would laugh at you if you called them over an issue in your workplace. The H&S Executive itself is starved of resources.
The Trade Unions are legislated to the point of impotence while the Stock market is ’self regulated’.
Banks regularly lose millions the police are hardly ever called in, funnily enough its mainly by IT that these frauds take place.
Bosses regularly rip up workers contracts, apparently its not against the law to do so. Maybe I’ll try and tell Orange that my mobile contract is rubbish and I’m moving to another provider, see how far I’ll get with that.
So where is the rule of law in all this? Or is it class law?
Comment by duncanB — 11 August, 2009 @ 12:30 pm
Duncan- I think the answer to your question is best reached by asking what the alternative would be.
There is nothing wrong with stating that the legal system in a capitalist society will tend to favour those who are in a dominant position- whether they be men against women, the rich against the poor, bosses against workers etc. It will in any class society, and should favour the working class and opressed in a socialist society.
The rule of law means that there is a principle that nobody has the right to inflict punishment on anyone else unless they have legally defined sanction to do so and that they do so in accordance with laid down rules.
That does not prevent the law from operating in the same way as everyting else in a class society- ultimately in the interests of the dominant class-, but you do have to ask what would happen if you didnt have it.
Why is it wrong for a Police officer to beat the hell out of someone? Why is it wrong for a someone to be locked up idefinitely without going before a Court? Why is it wrong for a politician to decide what punishment an individual criminal should receive?
Part of the problem is that if you don’t respect the principle of rule of law, how do you convince people that if you were in power, you would’t dispense with the whole concept of due process and simply lock people up or execute them just because they’ve offended “the party” or some local functionary who considers them to be a counter-revolutionary or a class traitor?
Don’t we want to move forward in terms of the type of class society we want (with the working-class in power), and not back to early feudal times?
A useful answer to this will not consist of a long list of examples of how the law favours the bosses and not the workers. I have good reason to be very well aware of that.
Comment by Armchair — 11 August, 2009 @ 1:10 pm
Of course the law should apply to every one in society and that is what happened in the Russian revolution until it was isolated and defeated. See Trotsky having to negotiate his way past a guard at the Petrograd soviet in John Reeds book 10 days that shook the world for example.
However, the point is that in capitalism it patently doesn’t apply to all. Wealth makes the difference and I don’t just mean that wealthy people can afford to hire lawyers etc although that does play a large part in it. Its because the laws were written to reflect the property relations of capitalism. That can be followed historically. Through the 18th Cent even the definition of private property had to be fought over. The English common law was well suited for this based, as it is, on the prejudices of the judges and juries. Look at the way that the trade union laws are being reinforced as we speak. Case law is being used to make repressive laws even more repressive without the Government lifting a finger.
This doesn’t mean that we don’t have any right under law but the ones we do have are ones we have had to fight for, free speech, Trade Unions, freedom of assembly, the franchise etc. All have had to be fought for in the teeth of an establishment that were determined not to give us them.
As I said, a judge is just a Tory in a wig.
Comment by duncanB — 11 August, 2009 @ 2:03 pm
Incidently, one of the problems with cyber crime is that companies rarely report it, and prosecutions are even rarer becasue the victims don’t want to admit what happened.
That is why prosecutions are comparatively rare, and the the ITSEc community has argued for a long time that there shoudl be more prosecutions.
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 2:08 pm
So when was the Russian revolution isolated and defeated? 1919,1920,1921,1922, 1923??
Lenin did not believe that the law should apply to eveyone equally, because he got it wrong about the relationship between law and class power, for all the right reasons maybe, but he got it wrong.
Part of the reason that he got it wrong was that he didn’t in fact believe that the issue was important, and saw the discussion itself as a bougeois deviation. Does that ring any bells?
Comment by Armchair — 11 August, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
Andy (198.): Sigh. I never claimed that the US system is bad simply because it isn’t based on the Code Civil. As I have written several times now, there’s a confluence of factors accounting for its extremely sorry state. It’s the practice of common law in the US that makes US jurisdiction a perversion of justice, not the theory of it - a practice that draws upon certain features of the adversarial system. In states that use the inquisitorial system, its particulars are similarly adapted to class justice.
I’m not sure what you mean by “abstract”. Are you? I’ve certainly been talking about the concrete, the actual practice of law in the US.
In theory, defendants have all kinds of shiny rights (although one should remark that very recent SC decisions have restricted several of them even in theory); in practice, only rich or celebrity (as in , whose case becomes a celebrated one, not as in Hollywood) defendants do (to be fair, McKinnon while not rich would be a cause celebre and might well have excellent representation if he went to trial in the US).
As I tried to point out, those rights are basically non-existent in particular when it comes to national security (or for that matter, “organized crime”) related trials. The use of conspiracy and material support charges (laughably easy to prove as shown by numerous recent trials), the admissibility of secret evidence that can’t be challenged by the defense (that kind of makes all those evidentiary rules a bit useless, don’t you agree) - these have made a mockery out of justice long before the advent of the “War on Terror”. And, as you may have noticed, things haven’t improved since 2001.
Anyway, have a nice holiday!
Comment by christian h. — 11 August, 2009 @ 2:50 pm
Christian
The question under discussion here is specifically related to whether or not Gary McKinnon could get a fair trial, not whether a poor and anonymous black teenager in Philidelphia would. And the general context is not how the system works for people domiciled in the USA but how it works for British residents being extradited to the USA.
In Britain too there is different justice for people from different classes, incidently Britain happily extradites people to countries that are both less democratic, and with less fair legal systems than the USA.
That is the political context within which this debate is taking place. Would McKinnon get a fair trial in the USA - where he commited his crime (although through the wonders of technology over a wire from North London)
Your argument about evidential rules is abstract because while the class bias of the system may manifest itself in many ways, the concrete example we were discussing is the difference of law of evidence between the USA and England. So a concerete comparison would be whether or not the “fruit of the forbidden tree” rule (which is present in the USA but not in England) really helps to create a greater class bias in the American system than in the English system; and the comparison would have to be with England, where there is de jure greater leeway for police malpractice in collecting evidence.
There are two issues, aren’t there. the question of extradition, and the nature of the crime.
Had McKinnon hacked into equivelent British military computers and been prosecuted under English law, he would have been treated severely by the courts; and very few of those campaigning for him now would have thought that an injustice.
The campign against his extradition is based upon both minimising the nature of his offence, and exagerating the difficulties of him getting a fair trial in the USA, where as you sayy he will get excellent legal representation, and will be able to avail himself of those nuances of the US legal system denied to those anonymous victims going through the plea bargaining mill.
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 3:15 pm
I can’t say I know much about Lenin and ‘the rule of law’ except its what his enemies or at least those hostile to him go on about. And the problem is that so many of his enemies (and not a few of his friends) distort what he said.
If your going to go around telling people that we live in a society where everyone is equal before the law then you will be laughed at. From breach of the peace (just an upper class jape) to war crimes (I’m a decent sort of guy) the idea we are all equal before the law is a joke. You can’t look at the MP’s expenses scandal and seriously say they were not above the law? This is not to ignore that people want everyone to be treated equally. The blatant fact, though is that they are not.
Bourgois deviation? Well if you put like that yea well I would find it hard to disagree with that.
1928, the first five year plan marked that final defeat for the working class.
Comment by duncanB — 11 August, 2009 @ 3:28 pm
# 196
“Does that include people like Trident Ploughshares?”
I was not aware of them until I followed your link but it seems to me that they are not computer hackers breaking into systems that they do not own and have no business in; certainly I didn’t see any mention of that on their site and so I am not really sure of the relevance.
# 199
“Whose rule and whose order?”
That is the rationale of the anarchist, not of a socialist; and it is usually the rational of the career criminal too.
Our laws are overwhelming formed by elected representatives; if they don’t enact the laws we want then they need to be removed from office ASAP, not an anarchic lawless society enacted in lieu.
# 202
“Yes of course computer-based crime is a problem”
Odd you now say that when you have spent quite a few posts revealing you immense ignorance on the subject and telling us all Mckinnon did was to access a “secret US military website” and carry out an “internet search for information”!!!
Astounding!
“The point is Andy, that McKinnon - no, not the various serious criminals who commit serious crimes via the internet, not terrorists who use the internet to aid their activities, but McKinnon - has done nothing wrong.”
I don’t know how many times you need to be told this before you get it: Mckinnon himself admits he is a criminal that needs to be punished!!
Maybe because he actually understands, unlike yourself, what he actually did and why it is wrong.
But if he says he is a criminal in need of punishment, who are you tell him he is wrong?!
# 208
“What I have a problem with is your implication that there is something unique about this particular medium - the internet - that impies that even low-level “nuisance” offenders should be treated as seriously as everyone else.”
Really? Because in you last post you said that Mckinnon had done nothing wrong and therefore no crime had been committed at all?
Which one is it?
“Holding up a bank at the point of a gun is not remotely comparable to a child pinching a mars bar from a corner shop is it?”
Which is why different laws applies to different crimes; even with murder (and the lesser charge of manslaughter) there are degrees of mitigation.
But the first issue is to establish that a crime has been committed in the first place, and the business of the prosecution is to secure a conviction on that basis; it is then up to the judge to decide the various features of the case before sentence.
# 210
“What if, what if, what if”
There are no “whatifs” in this case. McKinnon has admitted he is a criminal that needs to be punished..
The rest is a matter of deterrence to help prevent future idiots like this thinking they can do the same thing which in turn makes it more a more effective environment for security professionals to do their job and keep systems integrity assured, and in many cases, public safety assured.
You seem to have bought this “I’m just an eccentric UFO hunter” line along with the rest of the Daily Mail readership. This only ever came about as mitigation after a meeting with his lawyer.
Conversely the notes he left on the systems he comprised boasted that his malicious actions were due to US foreign policy and that he would continue doing them.
He himself gave an entirely political reason for the damage he was causing and that is why the US are treating him as a potential terrorist. His declared intent and actions may have amounted to this, but that is for a court of law to decide.
# 212
“No-one has died here, no-one has been shot, or harmed in any way”
And accordingly he hasn’t been charged with any such offences, so what is your problem now?
And you still haven’t answered the question of whether you believe that NASA and the US military are holding secret evidence of ET’s and UFO’s on their servers…
# 213
“He wasn’t hacking for personal financial gain/profit or to consciously cause damage”
Again, complete ignorance of the facts of the case. He has freely admitted to deleting around 40,000 files and damaging around 2000 servers by corrupting or deleting their boot sectors. Deliberately and maliciously then he left notes boasting about his actions, threatening more and assigning a purely political motive. The US Atlantic fleet was left with serious supply issues as one result and critical portions of the network were brought down; I am sure more will emerge in the trial.
You need to do more then just read the Daily Mail to really know the truth of this case, beyond the tabloid populist campaign for more readers.
Comment by kareem — 11 August, 2009 @ 4:15 pm
#213
“He was looking, pure and simple, for the existence of UFOs. ”
Inceidently Louise, you say this is “pure and simple” but this is not a fact that has been established bfore a jury, it is what he has told a newspaper and some TV journalists.
Surely the correct place to establish the facts is in a court of law, not via media gossip.
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 4:31 pm
More what-iffery / guilt by association from Andy, at #222:
“How do you think computer viruses get launched? People write them and maliciously distribute them, and to write an effective virus takes skill and nkowledge, and to distribute them requires malice.”
So far as I know, there are no allegations that Gary McKinnon has been involved in creating or launching any viruses.
But if there is any evidence that he has, by all means that should be investigated and if the allegations are substantiated, he should be charged with the relevant offences. But either way Andy, by raising the issue of viruses you are just chucking another of your hare-brained red herrings into this debate.
But by the way, I don’t agree with those on this list who are claiming that Andy’s support for McKinnon’s extradition is further proof that ‘Andy is moving to the right’ etc.
Andy is a treasure. A stalwart of the left, whose articles are generally very useful and based on solid research.
However, not unlike many other wonderful people, Andy has some reactionary opinions on a range of subjects- in his case, from killing defenceless animals for sport to the desire for an English parliament; and now also, we discover, an obsession with the dastardly scourge of the ‘hacking community’ which demands that we must seek out and crucify a mentally-disabled individual- in order that the serious organised criminals may take note and leave our bank accounts and hospital IT systems alone.
In the wider scheme of things, these opinions are relatively harmless- certainly no more harmful than McKinnon’s belief in UFOs.
Although I don’t set much store by the concept of ‘Englishness’, I am happy to note that both Andy Newman and Gary McKinnon are carrying on the great tradition of English eccentricity.
Comment by Noah — 11 August, 2009 @ 4:42 pm
duncanB: “1928, the first five year plan marked that final defeat for the working class.”
Oh sure. The working class in the USSR were successful- until the tragic year when they began to build factories and power stations, and took agriculture into collective ownership.
Comment by Noah — 11 August, 2009 @ 5:02 pm
This is outrageous.
Firstly, the supposed ‘damage’ he caused was non-existent. He left messages on the computers he entered point out he had done so. The figure for ‘damages’ the Americans are using is the cost of getting experts in to check no damage was done. No systems or information was altered by Mackinnon, and frankly he drew attention to a gaping hole in their security which outsiders could well have been making use of for years. In some cases he literally just typed admin:admin as the username and password.
Secondly, the reason for the mobilization around this case is the blatantly asymmetric extradition treaty, in which we must extradite to the US but no provision for the reverse is included - a more obvious example of an Imperial - Client relation is hard to envisage. The case exemplifies the fact that the UK is presently reduced to being a de facto satrapy of the US
Comment by Z — 11 August, 2009 @ 5:02 pm
Duncan -”If your going to go around telling people that we live in a society where everyone is equal before the law then you will be laughed at.”
Well the rule of law and the principle of equality before the law are not the same thing, although both are espoused by this society.
Equality before the law is something which is preached but clearly fails to be practiced on all sorts of levels, precisely because we live in a class society, something which, as a socialist with pretensions to Marxism, I do understand.
If your message to the masses in this country is that the idea of no punishment without due proccess is a bourgeois deviation, then don’t expect a great deal of sympathy.
Demcratic rights are held dear because they had to be fought for, and continue to need to be defended and extended.
Comment by Armchair — 11 August, 2009 @ 5:36 pm
#235 And working class living standards, which had been slowly drifting along, collapsed and a large chunk of the working class became slaves in order to build the factories and power stations.
Comment by DuncanB — 11 August, 2009 @ 5:48 pm
# 236
“Firstly, the supposed ‘damage’ he caused was non-existent…No systems or information was altered by Mackinnon…”
Bloody hell, how many people have swallowed the populist Daily Mail campaign fallacies without question?
He himself admits causing damage - he just (understandably) contests the value or the intent.
And as for his intent, whilst not one of the many notes he left as “solo” even remotely mentioned any search for UFO’s, they did leave political reasons for his attack:
“I said US foreign policy was akin to government-sponsored terrorism and I believed 9/11 was an inside job. It was a political diatribe,” he has admitted.
Comment by kareem — 11 August, 2009 @ 5:57 pm
DuncanB #238:
“And working class living standards [in the USSR after 1928], which had been slowly drifting along, collapsed and a large chunk of the working class became slaves in order to build the factories and power stations.”
Utter drivel. Working class living standards in the Soviet Union greatly improved following the implementation of industrial planning. Despite the massive rise in state investment, wages and consumption rose significantly even during the early five year plans.
As Canadian researcher Robert C. Allen remarks:
“The dominant interpretation of Soviet industrialisation maintains that the average standard of living fell in the 1930s. However, when the most recent evidence and theory are used to measure per capita consumption, they show that it increased 22% between 1928 and 1938. This was exceptionally rapid growth – not abject failure.”
And the improvement in the quality of life of the masses was not merely material:
“Between 1926 and 1939 the overall literacy rate in the USSR (for people from 9 to 49 years of age) increased from 56.6% to 87.4%”
http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/the_soviet_model_and_the_economic_cold_war_01331.htm
Then, following the massive devastation of WW2, there were further huge improvements- in nutrition, sanitation, healthcare, housing, provision of electricity to households, free education at all levels, free or very cheap sports & cultural provision, and the aquisition of ‘consumer durables’ - eg, a refrigerator and a TV set- by working class people.
Between 1925 and 1960, average life expectancy in the Soviet Union approximately doubled.
Urban transport was provided at nominal cost, workers could retire at 55 or 60 on a decent pension, and there was zero unemployment.
If you think that’s an example of defeat for the working class, do please show me some victories.
Comment by Anonymous — 11 August, 2009 @ 7:04 pm
Oops. Last post is by me.
Comment by Noah — 11 August, 2009 @ 7:05 pm
kareem at #239 quotes Gary Gary McKinnon:
“I said US foreign policy was akin to government-sponsored terrorism and I believed 9/11 was an inside job. It was a political diatribe.”
Well OK, so perhaps he is a 9/11 nut as well as a UFO nut. Nobody’s perfect. But the fact that McKinnon correctly states that ‘US foreign policy was akin to government-sponsored terrorism’ can only increase one’s sympathy for him.
Comment by Noah — 11 August, 2009 @ 7:15 pm
# 242
“But the fact that McKinnon correctly states that ‘US foreign policy was akin to government-sponsored terrorism’ can only increase one’s sympathy for him.”
And obviously it strengthens the US case that his actions were purely political and that the attack he carried out and the damage he caused was for political intentions and that has been the US contention all along.
The “eccentric UFO hunter” element never played a part in the reasoning / mitigation until after he was caught and consulted with lawyers - an ingenious caveat as it turns out as most casual commentators cannot see past the fact that this was never his stated aim in any of the notes he left on the systems he illegally accessed.
But this is all rather circular now.
All in all, short of a miracle, McKinnon will be extradited and face trail in the US where he will have ample opportunity to state his case in open court in front of an independent judge and a jury of his peers.
Comment by kareem — 11 August, 2009 @ 9:07 pm
Desperate, desperate stuff Mr.Newman - there really was no need to compound your wrong headedness on this issue.
Your style of argumentation displays the repetitive patterns of an internet troll.
Perhaps take time to reflect more deeply on your behaviour and consider why hacking continues to blossom under conditions of contemporary monopoly capitalism. It might be helpful for you to consider what might represent a better starting point for a sound line of argumentation about the issue.
Comment by inf4mation — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:13 pm
#244
Well lots of undesirable social behaviours might be attributable to capitalism, and perhaps they might not exist under a more just and less alienating social system.
However we actully live now, in the present and under capitalism, and we have to cope with these anti-social behaviours within the existing structures and institutions.
if your answer to all crime is “ahhh, that is the product of monopoly capitalism, what we need is a socialist society”, then that may not be seen as very convincing by a bank clerk with a gun pointing at her head,. who might prefer a rapid police response and the armed robbers to be arrested and prosecuted..
Comment by Andy Newman — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:27 pm
This is internet justice US style:
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86759/tenenbaum-fined-675000-for-sharing-30-works/
If this bloke got over half a million dollar fine for downloading 30 songs then they’ll throw the book at McKinnon.
Comment by Ray — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:34 pm
# 244
Oh come on now, that is just rubbish. Crime is crime and McKinnon is no noble class warrior even if that made crime somehow less criminal.
The law is supposed to apply to everybody and he will have his opportunity to defend himself.
As for the “take time to reflect more deeply on your behaviour” line, how sickeningly superior and arrogant - like you are some ultimate arbitrator of opinions and their correctness; some infallible sole judge of people.
You very much strike me as the “take time to reflect more deeply on your behaviour” in an “asylum” or gulag type and are such are no friend of any free person of any political persuasion.
Comment by kareem — 11 August, 2009 @ 10:41 pm
Andy #244: “…if your answer to all crime is “ahhh, that is the product of monopoly capitalism, what we need is a socialist society”, then that may not be seen as very convincing by a bank clerk with a gun pointing at her head…”
Come off it Andy. The offence that McKinnon committed bears no resemblance to pointing a gun at anybody. In fact the people whose computers Gary McKinnon broke into are the biggest and worst gunmen in the world.
It’s worth considering why the US state machine has thrown its resources into tracking down Gary McKinnon (rather than any other of the many in the ‘hacking community’) and demanding that he be extradited.
Comment by Noah — 12 August, 2009 @ 12:01 am
“In fact the people whose computers Gary McKinnon broke into are the biggest and worst gunmen in the world”
yes Noah - but… but…. but he broke the law!!
“that may not be seen as very convincing by a bank clerk with a gun pointing at her head…”
or, say, a policewoman, faced with some awful, smelly, drug-taking and lawless anarchist scum rioting. Andy knows which side he will be on, for sure! The side of decency!
“A sub-culture exists among hackers, sharing information and tools”
A sub-culture you say. Dammit, they sound suspiciously like criminals to me. Imagine - sharing information and tools. I hope they don’t do it for free. They would be forced to pay a tax to Microsoft and Google if I had my way
“Hacking is a serious social problem”
… generally undertaken by malingerers with no sense of propriety or common decency.
Andy - you take a break and make yourself a nice cup of warm tea with a good few spoons of sugar in it, I’ll get the placards ready…
Comment by Andy Wilson — 12 August, 2009 @ 1:20 pm
This thread is hilarious, Andy and his right-reformist chums have built more straw men than touring production of The Wizard of Oz. Mackinnon is elevated to a bankrobber with his gun to a bankteller’s head in his most recent, desperate riposte. The law is the law for Andy and his acolytes. Class doesn’t even come into it.
Comment by Jaason Simmons — 12 August, 2009 @ 5:30 pm
You guys really are a terrible advert for socialism.
Do you really believe that the law only applies when it suits your very strange political sensibilities?
Or for some of you here, that there shouldn’t be any laws at all?
How very surreal.
Comment by kareem — 12 August, 2009 @ 7:08 pm
“You guys really are a terrible advert for socialism.”
You don’t even know the meaning of the word. Have you even read the Communist Manifesto? You won’t find Marx promoting a hang em and flog em solution to individuals who break the law.
Go away and learn something about socialism because you are obviously clueless about class politics. Andy, on the other hand, does have a clue which makes it all the more bizarre why he’s falling on the side of the US security services on this issue. Especially considering their pretty standard tactic of lying about evidence, framing individuals and other completely unethical practices.
Comment by Ray — 12 August, 2009 @ 9:20 pm
# 252
“You don’t even know the meaning of the word. Have you even read the Communist Manifesto?”
Don’t make me laugh!
You are a self-confessed xenophobe and a racist who is better suited to the BNP then the SWP! You hate entire nations of people!!! Tell where that is expressed in any of Marx’s work?
“Go away and learn something about socialism because you are obviously clueless about class politics”
Is that a fact? Class politics as defined by you?
Give me one quote from the the CM that says rational laws should be broken because individuals like you are xenophobic and racist?
“Andy, on the other hand, does have a clue which makes it all the more bizarre why he’s falling on the side of the US security services on this issue.”
He is not “on the side of anyone” of anyone you incredibly stupid man, and neither am I.
This law applies to all.
“Especially considering their pretty standard tactic of lying about evidence, framing individuals and other completely unethical practices”
McKinnon has admitted most of what he did and the evidence for the rest can be tested in a court of law.
Because IT and the process of IT forensics is all as alien to you as socialism and decency, this is just another area where you are talking out of your arse.
I am an expert witness in the field and have appeared as a both a prosecution and defence expert witness and I can tell you that if these systems have been tampered with in any way, or if the forensic procedure has not been followed then the case will fall apart.
Comment by kareem — 12 August, 2009 @ 10:14 pm
Kareem, despite all your lying about me and others on here, the name calling and self-aggrandising, you don’t even know the first thing about being an anti-racist or an anti-fascist. Your support for US imperialists who perpetuate the war on terror and Islamophobia is a mockery of anti-racism. Your ‘hang ‘em and flog ‘em’ attitude to McKinnon is straight out of the worst far right text book. The irony is you don’t even realise how mixed up you are. If you weren’t such an objectionable little opportunist who descends into lying in an attempt to undermine others I would feel truly sorry for you. Fortunately your duplicitous behaviour has saved me from wasting my time.
Comment by Ray — 13 August, 2009 @ 12:42 am
# 254
No lies at all Racist Ray, just your own account of why you hate at least one entire country and its people and why in your view – purely in your view – your xenophobic prejudice should translate in the selective appliance of the law.
Who else do you hate Ray? Who else isn’t equal?
Why can’t you quote Marx’s or the Communist Manifesto to support your xenophobic drivel after invoking them? Is it because you know as little about socialism as you do about IT, law, court proceedings, and decency?
All of this crap about my supposed duplicitous behaviour is pure transference as I have repeatedly called you out about your own duplicitous behaviour and you have been unable to cop to it.
At least I have been able to add another word to your limited lexicon and teach you a few things.
You belong with the right Ray, you are a grubby little hate filled BNP’er who wont accept his failings.
Comment by kareem — 13 August, 2009 @ 3:56 am
“No lies at all Racist Ray, just your own account of why you hate at least one entire country and its people and why in your view – purely in your view – your xenophobic prejudice should translate in the selective appliance of the law.”
You ARE a liar because I have criticised the US military and not US workers. But in your ignorance of socialism and class struggle you believe the two hold the same interests. If you had read the Communist Manifesto you would understand that they don’t.
As for your insults they are tiresome but entirely predictable for someone who hasn’t the first clue about how to be fraternal nor what it means to be a socialist. They tie in very well with your cynical class betrayal of McKinnon. The only thing I can ever learn from you is how to be a class traitor. That’s not something I would arrogantly crow about on a socialist website if I were you.
Comment by Ray — 13 August, 2009 @ 5:25 am
PS. I really hope for the sake of those on trial that you don’t behave in the immature way you behave on this blog while acting as a so-called “expert witness”. It doesn’t bode well for a just verdict if you do.
Comment by Ray — 13 August, 2009 @ 5:59 am
kareem, I have no idea who you or Ray are, but I think you owe an apology for tagging him ‘racist ray.’
Over here in the US at the moment there are people going around to town hall meetings comparing Obama to Hitler!
Even in another thread on this blog it points out how Palestinian activists are being called racist because they oppose Israel.
Now you are doing it.
The whole of Newman’s posting is out of line.
There are plenty of people in the US who know all too well about the ‘justice’ system. Just look at death row and the innocent people on there.
If US citizens can’t get justice what on earth makes you think that anyone else will.
All the other arguments have already been made enough against this drivel you have written.
The Rev Dr Martin Luther King was called anti-American, so I suppose the people who you accuse of it have good company
Comment by Peter Hine — 13 August, 2009 @ 6:30 am
Peter - I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Ray calls anyone that disagrees with him or the SWP line a Nazi or fascist. I’m sure he won’t be too upset.
Comment by anti fascist fighter — 13 August, 2009 @ 7:54 am
AFA your desperate attempt to attack anyone associated with UAF and the SWP before Saturdays demo against the BNP is pathetic.
Comment by Ray — 13 August, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
Ray, you do that well enough yourself. But it’s funny that you come on here and accuse others of not being able to discuss and be fraternal when at the first sign of disagreement you call people Nazi’s and fascists. Not people that actually are either of those things, but anti-fascists and socialists. Says a lot about your politics really. It is you who is pathetic.
Comment by anti fascist fighter — 13 August, 2009 @ 2:34 pm
# 258
“kareem, I have no idea who you or Ray are, but I think you owe an apology for tagging him ‘racist ray.’”
I do not owe anyone anything - read the the droves of his previous hate filled comments before commenting friend, then go back over the post and watch his hate and his hateful tactics spill over from thread to thread.
As for the rest of you statements, they are pure straw man.
Ray is a self confessed xenophobe who drips with hate for an entire nation of people and uses tactics to try and silence opposition that belong with the BNP and their ilk.
As has been pointed out he is quick to use extreme labels on anyone who disagrees with him and so it is hardly injudicial that he has been introduced to a couple himself.
He has been invited several times now to back up his bluster about his obvious anarchistic and nihilistic political outlook really being socialist in nature with quotes from Marx’s or the CM that he keeps invoking but he is wholly unable to do so because he is a shallow fraud and he knows it.
From this rant and his dozens of others, including defending the most vile of people, it is obvious that Racist Ray is neither a socialist nor a decent human being.
He is a dangerous malcontent nut who wants to dress his hate of everything and everyone in some sort of political legitimacy.
Comment by kareem — 13 August, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
Mercy me. A state comes crashing down on someone that made their military look like overfunded incompetents.
But he’s part of an “anarchistic” “anti-social” “underground network” that “shares information”, so that’s ok and the responsible thing to do is condemn him. You sound like the Stasi.
Comment by milgram — 13 August, 2009 @ 10:07 pm
#245 basically misses the point.
The starting point of your response follows the well trodden trolling path of misrepresentation through de-contextualsition and use of bizarre analogy.
However the impact of such a response is perhaps more likely to reinforce readers perceptions that you are desperately attempting to save a fundamentally flawed line of argument.
Accepting being wrong is not that hard a thing to do - although I accept that you have dug so far down into a hole of your own making that perhaps the darkness is now obscuring the light. Think of the respect you would glean if you came clean and simply accepted that you might have been a bit of diddy with this whole posting.
Your current position promotes and celebrates the application of unjust, unidirectional US extradition law and associated forms of extreme punishment on the basis that “we have to cope with these anti-social” autistic UFO internet buffs “within the existing structures and institutions”
Socialist argument has got very little to with dedicating time space and effort to supporting the expression of oppressive powers by “existing structures and institutions”. Yours is essentially a right wing conservative starting point of argumentation.
Why has hacking is growing and blossoming in the internet age of monopoly capitalism? Your utopian dream of a hacking free interweb present may never be achieved especially if do not seriously consider why the behaviour is so widespread in our society. Unfortunately it appears your views remain clouded by ill-founded non-class based strangely draconian thoughts.
Comment by inf4mation@hotmail.co.uk — 13 August, 2009 @ 11:01 pm
“It is you who is pathetic.”
No you are! Na! Na! Nanana!
Actually, I have called someone a nazi on SU who it was confirmed was a nazi. It’s rather naive of you to believe that they don’t troll here on SU. But your rather odd principle for an ‘anti fascist fighter’ that we shouldn’t call anyone a nazi fails in its consistency because you haven’t chastised Kareem for doing exactly that. If you believe in fraternal behaviour towards nazis then that’s your problem but between the left that is expected is it not?
What this is really about AFF, external bulletin, or whoever you really are is your double standards towards anyone in the UAF or the SWP. You’ll never miss an opportunity to join in and take a pot shot at either organisation or anyone associated with them regardless of how dreadful the behaviour of those attacking them.
Comment by Ray — 14 August, 2009 @ 1:04 am
You’re not convincing anyone Kareem. Even old AFF wouldn’t back your bizarre definition of a socialist and s/he is a pretty opportunistic character. Keep trolling though it’s highly amusing. Especially the responses that marvel at your delusions.
Comment by Ray — 14 August, 2009 @ 1:10 am
As for the Communist Manifesto what’s the point of quoting from it if you haven’t read it Kareem? It’s the ABC of socialism. Every socialist of any importance has read it. I suggest you do to. It will open your eyes. Here you go:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/
Comment by Ray — 14 August, 2009 @ 1:25 am
“You’re not convincing anyone Kareem”
Based upon what Racist Ray?
“As for the Communist Manifesto what’s the point of quoting from it”
Because you keep evoking it as a reason d’etre for your xenophobic and racist outlook.
“if you haven’t read it Kareem?”
I have my strange little friend, have you? And not the pop-up version.
“Every socialist of any importance has read it. I suggest you do to. It will open your eyes. Here you go”
I went out and bought it years ago you hate filled troll, now stop the evasion and get to it: Where does it support your xenophobic racist anarchistic, nihilistic view of the world?
Shit or get off the pot.
Comment by Anonymous — 14 August, 2009 @ 3:22 am
That was me, actually, not ‘Anonymous’
Comment by kareem — 14 August, 2009 @ 3:24 am
I recall a case in Texas where a 17-year-old boy was sentenced to 50 years in prison for possession of ONE JOINT.
Sure, the judgement was later reversed but the legal costs reduced his family to utter penury.
Comment by bobby — 14 August, 2009 @ 7:52 am
Re. 269 above -
This case - the 17-year-old boy sentenced to 50 years in prison for possession of ONE JOINT - was well over 20 years ago but I am certain that more recent cases of horrendous injustice could be cited which are far more recent.
Anyway, Gary McKinnon ought to be on the FBI - NSA - CIA payroll as and from tomorrow.
Comment by bobby — 14 August, 2009 @ 8:42 am
“I went out and bought it years ago you hate filled troll, now stop the evasion and get to it: Where does it support your xenophobic racist anarchistic, nihilistic view of the world?”
Did you notice the bit where it said that workers have nothing to lose but their chains? That’s why your lick spittle support for the US government makes you a class traitor. As you think that anyone who criticises the US government is a so-called “racist” and “fascist” then it’s obvious that IF you did read the Manifesto you certainly didn’t understand it. That doesn’t bode well for those who should get a fair trial if you are the expert witness.
Comment by Ray — 14 August, 2009 @ 10:40 am
Then there’s my friend John Sinclair who was busted for giving, not selling, a couple of joints to someone who turned out to be a narc. He got ten years and did three of them, only being released when there was a huge outcry.
There’s a strong possibility that they’ll throw the book at Gary because so much ego has come into this and because he fought extradition. He’ll be punished not for what he did, but to deter others. Sense of proportion, much?
Revolutionary socialists beware — if you challenge the state, the state will come and getcha! And other socialists will help them.
Comment by Madam Miaow — 14 August, 2009 @ 12:28 pm
# 269
“but I am certain that more recent cases of horrendous injustice could be cited which are far more recent.”
Well go ahead then…
# 270
“Anyway, Gary McKinnon ought to be on the FBI - NSA - CIA payroll as and from tomorrow”
For what purpose exactly?
# 271
Oh come on Racist Ray keep up - give us these quotes from Marx and the CM that you keep claiming support your xenophobic racist anarchistic, nihilistic view of the world.
You cant can you?
“That doesn’t bode well for those who should get a fair trial if you are the expert witness”
Hang on Racist Ray, I thought it was “a so-called expert witness”?!
But of course, yet again you talking out of your fascist arse again as there is, in any case, no opinion involved in being an expert witness - just the cold hard technical facts. You may be asked to explain it in layman’s terms and sometimes to give an assessment on anomalous findings but the forensic procedure is solid and clear.
# 272
“There’s a strong possibility that they’ll throw the book at Gary”
His own lawyers admit he was offered a deal of 6-12 months in low security so this fool has only himself to blame for any escalation.
His crimes were malicious and political and he threatened to continue to “disrupt at the highest levels” having already done so, just before and after the biggest terrorist attack in US history so if the US are note exactly impressed with this UFO crap now spouted and think that his actions resulted in the same effect as a terrorist, go figure.
“Revolutionary socialists beware — if you challenge the state, the state will come and getcha! And other socialists will help them.”
Nope. If you break laws that apply to everyone for everyone’s protection.
Comment by kareem — 14 August, 2009 @ 4:16 pm
Come on Andy, give it up and stop making such a silly fool of yourself please.
Comment by Communist — 14 August, 2009 @ 4:20 pm
# 274
“Come on Andy, give it up and stop making such a silly fool of yourself please.”
You are the only using sock puppets here and making a fool of yourself.
Comment by kareem — 14 August, 2009 @ 7:50 pm
I would like an answer to a question. Has the Extradition Act of 2003 formed an article under US law that specifically refers to “Hacking” as an act subject to Extradition?
Nearest I can get is their “threat or breach to National Security” clause under their constitution.
Their legislation does give to precursors to extradition - one, it is in the national interest; two, it serves to protect the National Interest from further harm; three, and perhaps most importantly, the serving of justice is proportional to act or acts committed.
If anyone believes that in this particular case that Justice - given our “special relationship” with the US, cannot be best served by holding a trial in this country - they are truly off their little trolleys.
We may be considered quaint and a little regressive these days as an international nation but I’m sure we can handle a hacking case on our own soil. Or don’t the Americans trust us?
All that taxpayers money - so sad, so sad.
Comment by Nick Grady — 21 November, 2009 @ 1:32 am
Mr McKinnon should be tried in Britain.
http://dorodon.wordpress.com/2009/10/
to extradite is to punish. punishment should follow trial and conviction not precede it.
Comment by Rob Selby — 27 November, 2009 @ 10:01 am
So you support the US military machine, a system you yourselves call genocidal and imperialist, against a mentally ill man.
Comment by Anonymous — 7 January, 2010 @ 5:22 pm