I was with someone from the Home Office the other day when the subject of Gary McKinnon came up. He of course is the computer guy who got access to US military computers.
‘You do recognise the political fall out if you allow the US to extradite him?’ I asked my Home Office friend…
Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister gave the impression when they were in opposition that they were completely opposed to his extradition. So first they’ll be accused of reneging on promises made.
Then they’ll be the physical process of having Gary extradited. His mum, who by now will be on the television in tears, fears her son will not be able to handle the pressure. Once he is in the US there’ll be a trial. Then perhaps prison. And every step of the way the government will be accused of failing him.
Little wonder that the case is still on the Home Secretary’s desk. Her department has been trying to agree with Gary’s family the right psychologist to assess his Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of Autism. This condition should be taken into account, his family say, because it limits his ability to see danger in the actions he takes. They say given his psychological state he should be tried in a UK court.
Today ITV News Political Editor Tom Bradby asked the President and the Prime Minister about the case. ‘It’s in the hands of the British legal system’, the President said. ‘It’s in the hands of the Home Office’, the Prime Minister responded. They are certainly both politicians.
The politics of this case may be as important as the medical issues. And by asking a simple question ITV News today helped to keep it front and centre in the minds of the politicians. Whilst in the back of the Prime Minister’s mind will be the fall out that will unfold if he can’t stop Gary McKinnon’s extradition.
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Tags: cameron, gary mckinnon, home office, Keir Simmons, obama, Politics
The real reason the Americans want to extradite him is not for any damage he has done, for in fact there wasn’t any. They are pursuing him because of what he might have seen. Specifically, documents revealing a list of “Non-terrestrial officers” and off-world cargo operations somewhere out in space, hinting at the real possibility of military activities taking place in relation to other planets.
Such a possibility has got to be mind-blowing to the average person who barely grasps that there might actually be aliens from other worlds interacting with earth and governments in the vicinity of our solar system. Key to the whole extradition matter is the issue that there were NO passwords required in order to access this material… and that a relatively unprofessional hacker, self-taught albeit brilliant, would be able, using a dial-up modem, to gain top secret access to NASA files and places as sacrosanct as the Pentagon.