Thread: UK Hacker loses extradition appeal, he was only looking for UFOs

Originally Posted by Texpat

If I break into Northern Rock, assuming they had any money, and wiped out 5 million accounts, I would expect to be extradited to that country, tried and punished.

As far as im aware, the US wont allow any citizen to extradited to the UK for trial. They would have to be tried according to US law.

The US has extradition treaties with countries shown in light blue.

Wiki sez: Extradition is the official process by which one nation or state requests and obtains from another nation or state the surrender of a suspected or convicted criminal. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties. Between sub-national regions (for example, the individual states of the U.S.), where extradition is required by law it is more accurately known as rendition.

I agree with Norton. The lad's talents will be assessed, and if appropriate any sentence will be commuted with the provision of immediate parole, so that he can be recommissioned.


The alternative is to send him to prison for a long tme, and squander a priceless commodity.


Singular talents are useful.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

I hope he got all the info about the UFOs, can he tell us if they are aliens out there ?

Maybe tell us who the aliens are on TD

Originally Posted by ChiangMai noon

"American officials involved in this case have stated that they want to see him 'fry'. nice.

Non-verifiable statement by someone on the defence trying to gain support from gullible public (TDrs)

Originally Posted by Carnwadrick

Non-verifiable statement by someone on the defence trying to gain support from gullible public (TDrs)

maybe, but hardly unimaginable is it?

I don't think any Govt. will be too sympathetic to anyone found hacking into any Government system - either their own or someone elses - extradition sends out a strong message to the consequences of doing so.

I haven't got any gripes with this guy being sent to the US other than that had he taken what was on offer, it would have all been done and dusted long ago. Instead, his lawyers will have received thousands if not a million+ in legal aid paid by UK tax payers for representing him. Kind of makes you wonder about the impartiality of their advice?

The US can't be seen to back down now or the wrong message would be picked up loud and clear by those so inclined. Either way, I expect him to get a 'notional' sentence as against what the papers are spouting. I'm sure this has been 'mentioned' in talks between the two governments.

Those computers should not be online if they are so secret. Total chickenshit

Originally Posted by Norton

That would be in the US. Had he hacked into a computer in the UK he would be tried in the UK. The UK has no jurisdiction to try him. The UK has agreements with many countries including the US to arrest and detain hackers. Had it been someone in the US hacking into the Ministry of Defense computers, the US would be obligated to send the hacker to the UK for prosecution under UK law.

But you miss the point. At the time of the alleged offence, the defendant was in the UK. If he hacked into the computers he is said to have, he would have contravened the Computer Misuse Act 1990. A summary of the act is below:

Computer Misuse Act 1990

The Computer Misuse Act 1990 creates a number of criminal offences:

1. Unauthorised access to computer material ('hacking') including the illicit copying of software held in any computer. This carries a penalty of up to six months imprisonment or up to a £5000 fine.

2. Unauthorised access with intent to commit or facilitate commission of further offences, which covers more serious cases of hacking, with a penalty of up to five years imprisonment and an unlimited fine.

3. Unauthorised modification of computer material, which includes the intentional and unauthorised destruction of software or data; the circulation of "infected" materials on-line; and the unauthorised addition of a password to a data file. This offence also carries a penalty of up to five years imprisonment and an unlimited fine.

Now, UK law takes precidence when a defendant was situated in the jurisdiction of UK law, so he should be properly tried and punished in the UK (if convicted). That is what he has been asking for all along.

Originally Posted by Carnwadrick

Originally Posted by ChiangMai noon

"American officials involved in this case have stated that they want to see him 'fry'. nice.

Non-verifiable statement by someone on the defence trying to gain support from gullible public (TDrs)

No, no member of the prosecution has challenged the fact that this term was used, despite it being reported by every media outlet in the UK.

^Non-verifiable statements are best ignored, to do otherwise is to give them some credence..which is what I should have done here!!

The crime was done in syber space on American " soil " so he would be as if in America when he commited the act.

A "law" created by Americans should not apply to non Americans outside America. Otherwise the citizens of the friendly country, with extradition laws, are unfairly penalized vs say an unfriendly country, without extradition laws.

It is al about some chicken shit little bureaucratic twerp bullying someone. Enough to make ya sick.

^ I want to answer this but best leave it to someone with better wit

Originally Posted by Norton

Originally Posted by ChiangMai noon

don't they have more important things to worry about, like sorting out their leaky computer system.

Wouldn't be unusual to grant him immunity to prosecution if he pleads guilty and cooperates in helping sort out the "leaky computer system". Might even put him on the payroll to hack other countries computer systems. It's been done before.

I don't think they are gunning for this line I'm afraid. They will be looking to make an example out of him.

But what pisses me off and is disturbing is that the UK is rolling over like a poodle to placate the US. We need to distance ourselves from our colonial brothers in these crazy days.
Most other Euro countries would stick two fingers up and do the court sessions over here and jail him in the UK if guilty.
The third thing I want to know is if he found any juicy info, he's in so much sht he might as well open any cans of worms he came across and let all of us know

Just thinking - if Teakdoor was hosted by an Iranian server, and you posted pictures of nude women here, would it be OK if Iran asked to have you extradited for offending their laws.....?

Yeah, a bit far fetched, I know......

^^ apparently he found something, but I am a bit suspicious about his story, the way he describe what he did seems a bit amateurish, worse inconsistent. He claims he used VNC to open the large images, over a 56k line, even in 4 bit, that would take forever, and not only that but VNC would keep probably losing the connection, so not much you could do with it.

further "questions" is how he could find the workstation with all the pics on it without using some kind of reference material ? or did he just got "lucky" ?

He was also questioned on different blogs and a number of other questions were also raised,

This quote is very suspicious, what would he says that ? it's completely irrelevant, and nothing to do with java, non-sense, does that guy knows what he is talking about ?

Because I was using a Java application, I could only get a screenshot of the picture -- it did not go into my temporary internet files. At my crowning moment, someone at NASA discovered what I was doing and I was disconnected.

yeah, right !!!

They had huge, high-resolution images stored in their picture files. They had filtered and unfiltered, or processed and unprocessed, files.

It would take days to do a reckon of a large organization network, let alone find out what's available or where to find things, hell it takes hours sometimes for a sysadmin to locate his shit on his network, and he built it

What Norton said in post #43.

Originally Posted by Slipstream

the UK is rolling over like a poodle

Originally Posted by dirtydog

He first lost his case at the High Court in 2006 before taking it to the highest court in the UK, the House of Lords.

I assume the the various court decisions are available on line for us to peruse. What were they and what were the legal justifications for denying him extradition?

[quote=Slipstream;737731]

Originally Posted by Norton

Originally Posted by ChiangMai noon

don't they have more important things to worry about, like sorting out their leaky computer system.

Wouldn't be unusual to grant him immunity to prosecution if he pleads guilty and cooperates in helping sort out the "leaky computer system". Might even put him on the payroll to hack other countries computer systems. It's been done before.

That happened recently actually, some so-called 'whizz-kid' from New Zealand. Apparently he was self-taught at hacking and managed to get into some system or other. He was eventually caught, faced charges and was convicted, but the sentence was suspended and the same agency (also US if memory serves) offered him employment.

Originally Posted by bkkandrew

Originally Posted by Carnwadrick

Originally Posted by bkkandrew

Do you dispute that the US has, by far and away, the world's largest prison population, both by size and percentage?

It is a bloody big country and in some places quiet dangerous so yes it has a one of the worlds largest prison populations. The hacker, if convicted will serve time in the Federal system commonly known as ClubFed so don't cry for the criminal

From:

U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations - International Herald Tribune

The United States comes in first, too, on a more meaningful list from the prison studies center, the one ranked in order of the incarceration rates. It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.)

The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England's rate is 151; Germany's is 88; and Japan's is 63.

The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate.

and it's the War on Drugs that is driving it:

"prisoners sentenced for drug offenses constitute the largest group of Federal inmates (61%) in 1999, up from 53% in 1990. On September 30, 1999, the date of the latest available data in the Federal Justice Statistics Program, Federal prisons held 63,360 sentenced drug offenders, compared to 30,470 at yearend 1990." (Source: Beck, Allen J., PhD, US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 1999 (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, August 2000)).

more from http://www.bccla.org/prohibition/Law%20Enforcement.htm

Legalize drugs and the crime rates, prison populations and law enforcement budgets will plummet.

Fuck that. Make the sentences longer. Who wants deranged druggies running around the streets?

Legalise drugs, rape and murder and you could close the prisons and declare a perfect society.