In March of 2002, Gary McKinnon was arrested in his home in North London. He was arrested and charged with having used cyber-criminal techniques on United States of America government computer systems. Mr. McKinnon had hacked into US Army, Navy, US Air Force, Department of Defense and NASA systems. He was accused of having gained access to these systems, deleting vital information from them, which at a minimum shut down the entire US Army’s Military Washington DC network of over two thousand computers for no less than 24 hours. Over 2,400 US Army user accounts were impacted in such a way that deemed the affected computer systems unusable. Deletion of logs from US Naval computers made an entire network of over 300 computers unusable right after September 11, 2001. This left the network vulnerable to attacks for a still undisclosed amount of time that was described by some as a dangerously long time.

McKinnon later commented that his ultimate motivation for the attacks were neither “The Hacker’s Handbook” nor “War Games.” McKinnon claimed and maintained throughout the judiciary process that he was on a “moral crusade.”

Mr. McKinnon later divulged that he was in search of “suppressed” UFO technology that could greatly enhance the human condition. He stated that his attacks revealed the existence of UFO harvested “free energy” and “anti-gravity” technology.

McKinnon was diagnosed with Asperger’s Disease in 2008.

Activities:

1. Research the McKinnon case on the Internet and watch the associated video.

2. Using information from your classroom, additional materials provided by your instructor, and your own independent research, discuss the impact of these widespread intrusions, and comment on McKinnon's self-proclaimed motivations. Describe McKinnon in the context of the frameworks and theories of cyber-crime and cyber criminals discussed in the classroom. Are the efforts to extradite McKinnon to the United States simply a political stunt, or are they an important precedent in prosecuting international cyber-crimes? Finally, make recommendations to prevent similar incidents in the future.