Stop Extradition of Gary McKinnon

We, the undersigned, request that Gary McKinnon not be extradited from the UK to the US.
After the 9/11 attacks in the US, McKinnon hacked his way into 97 computers belonging to NASA, the Pentagon and several branches of the US military. McKinnon was obsessed with science fiction and Area 51, and had hacked into the computers to find information about them. He was arrested in 2002 after investigators traced the hacks back to his girlfriend's email account and charged with cyberterrorism by the former Bush Administration. Since then, the US Justice, Defense and Homeland Security Departments have been fighting to extradite McKinnon to stand trial in New Jersey Federal Court under the 2003 UK Extradition Act. If convicted, McKinnon could face up to 60 years in prison in a US SuperMax prison.

In August of 2008, McKinnon was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. McKinnon's expertise with technology, obsessive focus on one thing (UFO's) and his incomprehension of social mores and limitations -- all traits of Asperger's -- are some of the reasons he was hacking into the US government databases. His hacking exposed a potentially embarrassing lack of firewalls and security in the NASA and Pentagon computer systems. Indeed, while in the system, McKinnon noted that he could see the IP addresses of hackers from China, Russia and other countries. When he couldn't find the information about UFO's he was looking for, McKinnon "became upset... and started leaving notes and traces of his entry calling the US government ‘liars’ for discrediting the existence of UFOs and lax 9-11 air security."

In other words, he made it quite possible for authorities to identify and find him, a display of honesty not uncharacteristic of autistic individuals and one that has, arguably, only got McKinnon into even more trouble.

There is no need for McKinnon to face what amounts to a show trial on heightened terrorism act charges in New Jersey. He knows he committed wrongs. He is not a terrorist and never was -- and he should neither be extradited from his country nor made to stand trial in the US.