Obama: Gary McKinnon’s fate is in the hands of the British legal system

We’ve written on many occasions on the Naked Security site about the case of British computer hacker Gary McKinnon.

McKinnon, who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, was arrested in 2002 after breaking into computers belonging to the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, Department of Defense and NASA.

The 45-year-old hacker claims that he accessed the computer systems only to hunt for top secret information about anti-gravity propulsion systems and alien technology, which he believed the authorities were hiding from the public.

For their part, the US authorities claim that McKinnon caused some $800,000 worth of damage.

ITV reporter Tom Bradby quizzed Obama and Cameron about whether the leaders had found a solution to the vexing question of whether McKinnon should be extradited to the United States.

As you can see in the following video of what was said, there may be cause for some…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.

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