The McKinnon affair

There has been a fair amount in the media about the case of the British computer hacker Gary McKinnon who lost his case last week and faces extradition to the United States.

His portrayal ,as a harmless UFO enthusiast who is going to succumb to the worst excesses of the American justice system, has touched the heartstrings of the British public.

However all you read is not necessarily the truth.Over at Corante,Kevin Anderson(and a big hat tip to Charlie Beckett here) dissects the claims and counter claims made in the story and his thoughts are well worth a read.

One example that he cites is the American courts threatened to "make him fry" a claim refuted by Kevin who says

In actual fact, these claims were based an unrelated case in Canada in which a prosecutor said on Canadian television when asked to describe 'stringent conditions' a person might face if they didn't agree to a plea bargain responded: "You are going to be the boyfriend of a very bad man if you wait out your extradition". McKinnon's legal team never claimed that such threats were made to McKinnon, but the insinuation successfully upped the ante.

The press coverage according to Kevin has propagated two further myths,

McKinnon is going to be declared an enemy combatant and disappear into George W Bush's extra-judicial black hole, Guantanamo

and secondly

The US is angered at his resistance to extradition. The US military is embarrassed by the intrusion and 'want to make an example of him'. They will give him the maximum sentence, a 'life' sentence, condemning him to die in a US prison.

Both are wrong,

at the extradition hearing in 2006, US officials gave the judge assurances that this case would remain in civilian jurisdiction

and

Gary McKinnon was offered a plea deal, standard practice in the American justice system. While British audiences might find such deals unseemly, they are common in the US. By offering a guilty plea, criminals also are often seen as taking the first step towards taking responsibility for their crime. They also save the costs of a trial,