International pop star Sting is the latest British celebrity to throw his weight behind 9/11 truther and admitted Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon, the U.K. man who's still fighting tooth and nail to avoid a U.S. trial on computer hacking charges.
"It's a travesty of human rights that Gary McKinnon finds himself in this dreadful situation," the former Police front man told the Mail on Sunday.
"The U.S. response in relation to the true nature of Gary's crime is disproportionate in the extreme," Sting said, referring to the extremely disproportionate response of charging a 43-year-old man with computer intrusion, when all he did was intrude into some computers.
Prosecutors say McKinnon broke into more than 90 unclassified Pentagon systems in 2001 and 2002, allegedly crashing some of them. He has said he was looking for proof of a UFO cover-up, though he left this message in an Army computer in 2002: "U.S. 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."
With the help of British police, "Solo" was easily tracked down, and is now charged with damaging protected computers in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Threat Level knows better than anyone that hackers in the United States are starting to face life-ruining sentences stretching to decades in prison. McKinnon, though, is not. He already turned down an 18-month plea deal, and he now faces six months to six-and-a-half years in custody under federal sentencing guidelines, depending on how much damage he caused. He claims to have caused none, and if he's telling the truth, he could be extradited tomorrow and be back home for Christmas.
Instead, McKinnon has garnered massive support in the U.K. in a years-long legal battle to avoid extradition. Several prominent British lawmakers joined his side after his lawyer announced last August that McKinnon had been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. It's not clear, though, if any of them have the foggiest idea what they're talking about, since they're often heard grumbling about McKinnon's "70-year" sentencing exposure on "terrorism charges."
Even Sting worries that the hacker might take his own life rather than go to jail "as a terrorist." He also complains: "The British Government is prepared to hand over this vulnerable man without reviewing the evidence."
That last bit is especially puzzling, because McKinnon gave the British government a signed confession in January. He was hoping to get U.K.
prosecutors to charge him locally, keeping him out of America. They recently declined and his case is now under judicial review to decide if his alleged Asperger's syndrome should keep him from being tried in the United States.
Throwing the kitchen sink into his defense of his countryman, Sting even told the Mail that McKinnon faces extradition under a one-sided treaty the U.K. signed, and the United States did not. Wrong again. Who would have thought a pop star would be ignorant of international treaty law?
Photo courtesy Lionel Urman (CC)
