I found this story in UK News Headlines in Life Style Extra,
"Computer nerd" hacker could face torture by US Government It's got quaint prose such as "A forty-year-old computer nerd who, with a twopenny-halfpenny computer, embarrassed the United States by hacking into their sensitive computers."
So now we want to torture 40 year-old British hackers. Well maybe, but we won't rule it out and we're doing things that suggest we want to. It turns out that between Autumn 2001 and March 2002, "Gary McKinnon, 40, remotely-controlled 97 US army, naval, airforce, NASA and defence department computers". He's being tried in Britain and is out on conditional bail. He's admitted that he accessed some U.S. military computers, but has denied causing serious damage. Apparently he went searching for info about UFOs. Here's some more details on the charges.
But the US government wants him extradited to the US, however they won't say why. People are guessing it's to impose harsher penalties or even so they could subject him to rendition, torture, or indefinite imprisonment. What we know comes from the defendant's lawyer, Edmund Lawson, but apparently the US embassy in London said he would not be tried as a terror suspect. All we have is a diplomatic note that "is anonymous and unsigned and is neither effective or enforceable." Mr. Lawson added "The President himself has the right to say who can be dealt with under the order. The President has made it quite clear that he is not going to promote discussion in the area to be hampered or restricted by British or the US courts." And he's right. See what happen when you act like a omnipotent bully, people stop trusting you.
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