With the help of the superb Jack of Kent blog, I have (like many of his readers) become much more interested in the details of the Gary McKinnon case. Gary, if you recall, was the man who is alleged to have hacked into over 90 US computers belonging to their Army, Navy and NASA over a period of months. According to the US’s indictment, McKinnon used readily available tools to identify vulnerable computers, and, having found them, used these computers to find other such computers. He found a lot.
He installed various pieces of software to facilitate this access, and appears to have deleted log files (in order to cover his tracks) and, most damaging, user accounts. The US says he caused real operational damage, but most damaging for McKinnon himself is the message he left behind on one of the computers:
US foreign policy is akin to Government-sponsored terrorism these days … It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year … I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels …
Having looked at the details, I’ve realised, belatedly, that the portrayal of Gary as some sort of teenage savant searching for UFOs is, simply put, fiction. In techie circles, Gary appears to have been something of a “Script Kiddie,” a derogatory term for people, usually teenage males (but, Gary, as has been pointed out, wasn’t at the time), who use tools and scripts programmed by others to attack computer systems and they’re something of a right royal pain in the arse. They’re not “leet hackers”, but they certainly like people to think they are. A proper “leet hacker” would have understood what they were doing properly and only have taken the risk if they could be sure they’d be able to successfully cover their tracks. Gary stood on the shoulders of giants and, in doing so, got his head chopped off.
Having said that, Gary has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, which I’ve also been doing a lot of reading about today – specifically how it might relate to ‘diminished responsibility’. It works like this: While someone with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) may know and understand that it’s wrong to cause harm, they may not actually understand that what they’ve done has actually caused harm due to an impairment in empathic understanding. Unlike psychopaths – who also demonstrate really rather severe inability to comprehend how their actions impact others, AS sufferers don’t have the same superficial charm and ability to manipulate. AS suffers, as part of their diagnosis, simply don’t understand social interactions, norms and rules well enough to ‘fake it’ like the psychopaths can. Importantly, AS sufferers are typically far more likely to be victims of crime than they are perpetrators as a result of their impairments.
It’s argued that AS sufferers are significantly easier to manipulate into becoming accessories to crimes than many other types of people – they are, in many respects, those ‘vulnerable adults’ we often hear so much about. I worry that rather than the ‘leet hacker’ he’s portrayed as, Gary is someone who seems to have found a bunch of websites with tools and instructions, read a few conspiracy theories and simply started using these tools, without really understanding the risks he was taking with his freedom or the damage he was doing to the computers he infiltrated.
But no attempt on his behalf has been made to suggest that he’s not fit for trial, or that his criminal responsibility has been diminished. Instead his team have concentrated on – with the help of Professor Baron-Cohen – on the disproportionate suffering that Gary might endure (see para 28) having to serve time in a US prison, as a result of his Asperger’s Syndrome.
The Courts have not been impressed and, legally speaking, it hasn’t given anyone strong enough grounds to prevent his extradition. The US authorities have reassured the British courts that they’ll treat any medical condition he might have properly, and that’s that. I hope this is true.
I think, having looked at all this, I’m still no clearer about whether or not I want to “Free Gary”. What he’s done is serious, and there’s no doubt paying the price will not be easy for him. At what point can Gary be seen to have made amends for what he’s done? A year? Two years? 5 years? In the UK the same crime carries a life sentence, after all.
The whole thing strikes me as yet another horrible, senseless waste of human life whichever way it works out in the end. I may not be an especially compassionate person myself, but it seems as though there’s something wrong with our extradition arrangements here that the Home Secretary seemingly has no discretion or choice in the matter. Then again, even if she did, it’s hard to see whether the Asperger’s factor would be enough.
If Gary was your own son, you’d probably regard his crime as simple, reckless, juvenile stupidity (except involving computer software rather than spray cans of paint) deserving of little more than a clip round the ear. If you’re responsible for the security of the US’s computers, watching systems come down and operations being disrupted you’re viewing Gary as a malicious menace determined to cause trouble who needs banging up for as long as possible as a warning to others.
The truth, as always, probably lies somewhere in-between.
Update: Thanks to Al Jahom for pointing out that Gary was born in 1966, and wasn’t a teenager despite what it says all over the flippin’ internet. Grr!!
