'World's most dangerous hacker' to be extradited to US

A British hacker who broke into computers at the Pentagon will face trial in the US after the law lords ruled that he should be extradited.

At the House of Lords this morning, Gary McKinnon, 42, was told that his appeal against extradition would not be granted.

McKinnon, an unemployed computer systems administrator from north London, invaded computer systems belonging to the US military in 2001 – shortly after the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

He said he was merely searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life, but American officials labelled him the world's most dangerous hacker and accused him of deleting important files and causing hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of damage.

According to prosecutors, McKinnon scanned more than 73,000 US government computers and hacked into 97 machines belonging to the US army, navy, air force and Nasa.

His lawyers have fought vigorously against the extradition, arguing that McKinnon could face up to 60 years in prison as a result of his actions, and could even be classed as an "enemy combatant" and interned at Guantanamo Bay. Instead they argued that he should face prosecution under Britain's more lenient computer crime laws because he carried out the hacking from his bedroom in London.

But the law lords today rejected that argument. "The difference between the American system and our own is not perhaps so stark as the appellant's argument suggests," said Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood in his ruling.

"It is difficult to think of anything other than the threat of unlawful action which could fairly be said so to imperil the integrity of the extradition process as to require the accused to be discharged irrespective of the strength of the case against him."

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