Faceless Sense of Void

Free Gary McKinnon.

Today, numerous newspapers reported on how Glasgow-born Gary McKinnon is to be extradited to the United States to faces charges on Computer Hacking which could result in a 70 year jail sentence because he used his talents to try and find evidence on UFOs on USA military computers.

It would be churlish of me to argue that being a half-wit isn’t a crime, but that ignores the spirit of rules where sometimes motive isn’t a requirement of guilt. Take the TUC policy on workforce bullying: in this definition, the person conducting the bullying campaign need not ‘intentionally’ be bullying the victim. Only the behaviour concerned counts. This is why that particular TUC policy is ignored by most, if not all, Local Government Authorities.

More pertinently, however, is the argument from the Herald that American Prosecutors have never had to provide evidence of Mr McKinnon’s guilt, and therefore this is in breach of his human rights.

This is a curious area where the fundamental political theory regarding a Liberal Democracy goes against the individual human rights of a citizen. What I’m referring to in “political theory” is the principle of John Locke that any Nation has the right to protect its borders using military force. From the USA perspective, he brought down a bunch of US Army Computers, breached the security of NASA… all on a Quest the country’s entertainment industry vaunted and validated through the TV series the X-Files. This, obviously, is in direct conflict with his human rights as the USA has not submitted proof of guilt.

According to the Sun: “McKinnon, originally from Milton, Glasgow, also allegedly disabled a naval weapons station for a week.” In my opinion, if he’s that damned good, don’t charge the fucker, HIRE HIM. Everyone has a price, especially those people who claim they don’t. That sounds cynical and blunt, but it’s true. And this brings up an interesting point, if he WAS so damned good, and if he committed all the unspeakable computer acts associated with him, then how come we ended up hearing about it? If *I* were in MI5, I’d have called the Americans and gone: “Look, we know the guy’s a nugget, but we’ll hook him up with GCHQ and make him pay penance on some anti-western Al Queda websites… He got into yours, the odd PHP3 board won’t be too difficult to break…”

Nah, this is far more simple than all that. Some nut with a predilection for the X-Files got himself caught, and the authorities thought: “Oh ho… now we have a lamb to sacrifice and make all those hackers think twice before they fuck with us!” And the unfortunate thing is, it’ll probably work.

Your super-soaraway-Sun has the answer. According to a poll in today’s newspaper (31-07-08) between 8 and 16% of people think Stonehenge, the Pyramids and Crop Circles are proof of alien life. Why is this proof? Because if you feed a population the same tired lie time after time, time after time, for long enough it becomes the truth.

This same poll argued that 42% of the population believed that Alien Life in our Solar System either “Definitely” or “Maybe” existed. If this poll means ‘Algae’ or ‘Bacteria’ then the answer could well be yes. Europa is a moon of Jupiter, and there is evidence of a watery interior being kept warm (or at the very least liquid) by the Gravitational Pull of that groovy failed star, Jupiter…

But I’ve this horrible feeling that most people are thinking about Greys, X-files, Stargate and Spaceships when they answered that question. THIS was the very question which apparently spurred on Gary McKinnon. Answer me this, does he deserve 70 years in the darkest American hole they can dig because of this?

For me, though, this isn’t entirely the USA’s fault, though. Somewhere along the line political correctness became corrupt and meant that asking simple questions became a crime. Somewhere, we molly-coddled ourselves so much that anything less than being pampered was unthinkable. We put up CCTV cameras to combat crime, and in the same instance neutered our crime fighters and rehabilitation institutions so that the prisoners didn’t have it too bad. If some Ned knives someone because they were bored, and end up caught on CCTV then I’m going to be a little pissed off if the end result is them playing Nintendo and learning how to nick cars from the other lags. I know this sounds right-wing, and I’m not, but being nice to killers plainly isn’t working.

But that’s not what computer hacking did… All that did was to cause a bit of embarrassment to the Americans and give them an excuse to threaten the world of computer hacking with a very Old Testament threat if they breached their databases. But that’s okay… Because our system means that you can happily abuse children, kill your neighbour, rape his wife and bitch-slap as many Salvation Army weirdoes who turn up at your door all you like, because you get less time in Prison!

[irony]All those crappy routines you learned to pull that girl of your dreams? Pointless. Rape her, get a few years in jail, play some Nintendo for that ‘10’ you like… it’ll be worth it… But touch an American Computer or breach whichever war we’re in this month…. Christ no… You’ll end up tortured or in Jail for the rest of your life![/irony]

Raus Raus Scotland! Arbecht Macht Frei! Heil! Heil!

I will write you the inscription on the gates of your freedom in Italian:

Per me si va ne la città dolente,
per me si va ne l'etterno dolore,
per me si va tra la perduta gente.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore:
fecemi la divina podestate,
la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore.
Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create
se non etterne, e io etterno duro.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intratex