July 21, 2006 12:22 PM The NatWest Three have secured the services of a PR company<\/a>; Gary McKinnon hasn’t: he can barely afford to pay his phone bill. People such as Sir Digby Jones, the former director general of the CBI, have been giving speeches about how US-UK business relations are suffering in the wake of the NatWest Three’s extradition; nobody is giving influential speeches in support of Gary McKinnon. The only people who seem to care much about him – besides the odd Lib Dem MP – are his fellow stoner UFO nerds. And who is going to listen to them?<\/p>\n Finally, though, there seems to be some mainstream interest in Gary’s plight. This evening he is due to appear on Richard and Judy<\/a>. This really is his big – and last – chance to win the support of the nation.<\/p>\n US federal prosecutors want to extradite Gary for perpetrating, in their words, “the biggest military computer hack of all time. [He] caused damage and impaired the integrity of information … The US military district of Washington became inoperable and the cost of repairing [the shutdown] was $700,000 … These [hacking attacks] occurred immediately after 9\/11.” And so on.<\/p>\n You probably don’t know this, because it only got a few paragraphs, but on July 6 the home secretary, John Reid, ruled that Gary could be extradited. The next stage is an appeal to the high court, but suddenly the stages are running out. The prison sentence the US justice department is seeking is up to 70 years. What Gary was hunting for, as he snooped around Nasa and the Pentagon’s network, was evidence of a UFO cover-up.<\/p>\n More….. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jon Ronson July 21, 2006 12:22 PM These past few weeks, politicians and newspapers and business leaders have been falling over one another to support the NatWest Three, the bankers extradited to the US to stand trial for their alleged … Continue reading
\nThese past few weeks, politicians and newspapers and business leaders have been falling over one another to support the NatWest Three, the bankers extradited to the US to stand trial for their alleged part in the Enron collapse. And as they do, I think: what about north London hacker Gary McKinnon<\/a>? He’s about to be extradited, too. Why is nobody interested in Gary McKinnon?<\/p>\n