April 04, 2007 ... Enemy of the State? Few day-to-day users of computers will be sympathetic to the plight of United Kingdom citizen Gary McKinnon who deliberately hacked into the secure computer systems of the United States’ Navy and Pentagon, since hackers, distributors of viruses and denial of service perpetrators are a scourge in general which costs too many computer users real money and time in the endless pursuit of security patches, anti virus and firewall products, and the occasional need to wipe hard drives and reinstall the operating system and application software, etc. Whilst this kind of criminal activity deserves to be punished by way of financial restitution to the victim of such crime, there is another valid viewpoint: If a computer enthusiast and IT administrator of Gary McKinnon’s capabilities can access secure defence department computer networks and crash them as described in his extradition warrant, they are hardly secure or fit for purpose in the face of vastly more determined interference from international and domestic terrorism. So although Gary McKinnon has confessed to what he has done to a court in London, and should be heavily fined for the inconvenience caused to the United States’ defence departments involved, it must also be the case that the defence departments are culpable for the hubris behind the abysmal lack of security pertaining to their supposedly secure networks. In addition to the above, we must also be extremely concerned about how anti-terrorism legislation at home and abroad is being used to justify criminal proceedings against criminals who can hardly be classified as terrorists in the normally accepted sense of the term. Gary McKinnon and his ilk are criminals, but we do not want them to become the-thin-end-of-the-wedge, too. |
