Gary McKinnon

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Gary McKinnon

Gary McKinnon is a British computer hacker known for having managed to access information on NASA computers. He has been threatened with extradition to the United States to be tried there, and may face a very strict jail sentence.

McKinnon has said in interviews that he is not very expert at computers, and that he was able to hack into the NASA computers over the Internet using common software and by finding NASA administrator level computer accounts that had blank passwords. According to himself, he was driven by an interest in finding proof of the existence of UFOs and aliens, which he believed NASA was hiding from the public. By using information he got from The Disclosure Project, he made his way in the computer network to a specific department at NASA, where he says he indeed found indications of NASA possessing knowledge proving the existence of aliens. Among other things, McKinnon claims to have seen photographs of UFOs, but because he became too bewildered by what he saw he never thought to use the screencapture feature on his computer, and the remote controlling software he used did not actually download the images onto his computer in a way that automatically saved the UFO proof. Just as he was looking at the evidence over the Internet, he was discovered by a NASA employee and his connection became terminated.

Gary McKinnon has explained that he initially assumed that if he was caught, he would face only a small reaction from the legal system since he, according to himself, was only looking at information and did not harm any of the NASA computers or the information stored on them. However, the legal situation was dramatically changed in the wake of the bringing down of the World Trade Center on September 11 2001 which happened right in the middle of the period of months when McKinnon was conducting his hacking and search for information. When he was eventually caught, the situation he became faced with turned out to be a very dramatic one.

During the period he was conducting the hacking, he was living with his girlfriend in the house of the girlfriend's aunt. When law enforcement caught him, McKinnon says even the aunt's computer equipment was confiscated by the authorities, which he felt very upsetting. The relationship with the girlfriend later ended.

McKinnon's legal system case has not been finally settled (April 2007).

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