Very disappointing indeed. I shudder to think that this guy (who is quite obviously pretty harmless, even though he also clearly did something stupid) will have to face the full barbaric apparatus of the US anti-terrorist justice system. For all we know, maybe he'll end up in Guantanamo Bay.
Pretty harmless? I'll admit that I don't know much about this case, but this bit seems to indicate otherwise:
"Mr McKinnon admits that he hacked into 97 US computers from his bedroom in north London between 2001 and 2002 and left a message on one machine saying: "I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.""
Two years, almost 100 computer systems, taunting and threats.. that doesn't sound so harmless to me.
“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 . . .”
In context, it seems less sinister, more stupid / self-important.
I don't doubt he is heading the way of the Intelligence "fusion" centers[1] and some form of interrogation. This is an absolute shambles and shows just how inept and yellow the UK home office are. Not only are they going to hand this guy over in blatant disregard to his Human rights, they are refusing to publicise documents surrounding the Iraq war investigation - mostly due to very subtle pressure levied by US military in regard to "intelligence sharing" (same thing used in this G.M. case). And as a final insult they /demand/ that the UK population bend over and take it when it comes to the National ID scheme, which has been proven time and again to be totally against public consensus....
It's pretty easy to envision this. Say something he did caused a pallet not to be included on a manifest and it had to go out on another flight when a human at the other end noticed it was missing.
Say something he did caused a war to be lost... if you stretch it far enough then you get to the horseshoe of the courier. It's up to the military to deal with adversity. All the time. They should have procedures and checks in place to make sure this stuff can never happen.
If one bozo in his moms basement can cause hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage or worse they have real problems, and suing the guy that did the damage is the least of their issues.
Oh yeah, obviously any military system that can affect the real world ought to be protected by the best firewall you can get - the AirGap(tm). I'm just describing a mechanism by which changing data can end up costing money in the real world. You could probably really screw up someone's business just by running their printer out of paper.
It probably comes down to time spent trying to track whether or not he did something malicious and other investigative processes necessary. Put a few security experts or a consulting firm on the case for a year and it gets quite expensive. Also if they found out he compromised sensitive information and had to change plans or reschedule something then expenses start racking up.
