The British government has decided that hacker Gary McKinnon, who allegedly broke into 105 U.S. military networks in 2001, won’t be extradited to the U.S. because he is seriously ill.
The government made the announcement this morning in the House of Commons. Here are reports from Forbes and the Naked Security blog of antivirus maker Sophos.
McKinnon has Asperger’s Syndrome and depression, conditions that put him a risk of committing suicide.
We first carried reports on the break-ins in 2002, when, after a 17-month investigation, federal grand juries in Virginia and New Jersey indicted the 36-year-old British computer administrator for allegedly hacking into 105 U.S. military networks over 12 months beginning in March 2001.
McKinnon was apprehended in London by Britain’s National High Tech Crime Unit, which has cooperated with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command’s Computer Crimes Investigative Unit and other U.S. agencies. McKinnon was accused of deleting files and causing loss of Internet access to thousands in the Defense Department, Army, Air Force and NASA.
He later admitted breaking into the systems, but said he was looking for information on UFOs. But British investigators alleged he did more than that, claiming McKinnon admitted to leaving a note on a U.S. Army computer that read “U.S. foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days…. I am Solo. I will continue to disrupt at the highest level.”
In 2006 a British judge approved his extradition to the U.S., a decision he has been fighting ever since. Two years later the European Court of Human Rights refused to overturn that decision.