McKinnon charges exaggerated by governmentJune 14, 2010, Computer WeeklyThe British government may have exaggerated the charges against Gary McKinnon and distorted a High Court judgment, making it appear the hacker's extradition was irrefutable when it was not, according to evidence presented to courts as part of his extradition process.
Alan Johnson, the former home secretary, made the accusations against Gary McKinnon, a British citizen, on 1 December. Alan Johnson told Parliament he would not stop McKinnon being extradited to appear before a US court.
The home secretary said he could not interfere with the judicial process. The Extradition Act required him to represent in Parliament the interests of US prosecutors over those of a British citizen, before the case had even been brought to trial and where the prosecution evidence was in doubt.
"Gary McKinnon is accused of serious criminal offences," Johnson told Parliament on 1 December.
"He is alleged to have repeatedly hacked into US government computer networks over a period of 13 months, including 97 US military computers from which he deleted vital operating systems and then copied encrypted information on to his own computer, shutting down the entire US Army's Military District of Washington's computer network for 24 hours."
The accusation made McKinnon's hacking sound like a frontal attack on the heart of the US military. But these were not the allegations the US made against McKinnon. Nor were the actual allegations as serious as had been portrayed in the extradition case against the hacker.
The crucial allegation over which McKinnon is being extradited, and which rests on unsubstantiated US evidence, was that he brought down the Washington military computer network. But the "entire" Military District of Washington (MDWA) conducts little more than ceremonial, administrative and transport duties.
MDWA is responsible for conducting military parade ceremonies. It is home to The Old Guard, the US Army's ceremonial parade troop. It houses Pershing's Own, the US Army brass band. It is caretaker to the Arlington Military Cemetery. It provides a helicopter chauffeur service for army bigwigs and visiting dignitaries.
It does have the operational duty to provide emergency services to Washington should there be a disaster, and hosts the White House Transportation Agency, which runs the presidential motorcade. It also operates an HQ for the eight bases under the MDWA umbrella, spread as far away as New York, to which it provides administrative and janitorial services.
It is home to the National Defense University, operates a home removal service for army personnel, runs a bus service, operates a museum, keeps some fixed-wing aircraft and provides riverside housing for Army brass.
McKinnon was accused of knocking out an internet server, a computer that provided internet access to people at the MDWA HQ, Fort Leslie J McNair.
"Testimony of the system administrator will prove that the compromised computer was a network or domain controller (authenticates that users are permitted to access the network) for the MDWA network, which network provides email and internet services for military personnel at two US Army bases," said the affidavit accompanying the US extradition request, signed by Scott Stein, assistant US attorney.
The other base was Fort Myer, where the server was hosted, and where many of the ceremonial functions attributed to MDWA are located.
Myer also hosts a CID unit of the military police, the 1101st Signals, a secretive unit of cyber warriors, and the Directorate of Information - the IT department. Had McKinnon been able to outwit these units, his crimes may have been very serious indeed.
But McKinnon's hacking skills were not good enough to break into anything but unprotected computer systems. All 97 of the PCs hacked by McKinnon contained unclassified data - that is, none of them contained information that might damage US national security, were it exposed to hackers. They were so poorly secured their administrators used blank passwords.
McKinnon did try to get access to the US military's classified computer networks. He said he was looking for secrets about UFOs. But he was unable to break the security on the classified computers, as was revealed by US testimony to London's Bow Street Magistrate's court on 27 July 2005.
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