A Briton is taking his fight against US extradition for allegedly carrying out the "biggest military computer hack of all time" to the House of Lords.

Glasgow-born Gary McKinnon, a systems analyst, is accused of gaining access to 97 US military and Nasa computers from his north London home.

Known as Solo, he was arrested in 2002 but never charged in the UK.

Ex-Home Secretary John Reid granted the extradition request but lawyers argue the move would breach his human rights.

Mr McKinnon's legal team argued at the High Court in London in 2007 that he was subjected to "improper threats".

If extradited, they said, he would face an unknown length of time in pre-trial detention, with no likelihood of bail.

They argued he would face a long - about 45-year - prison sentence, and might not be allowed to serve part of it in the UK.

But two High Court judges said they could find no grounds for appeal.

The Law Lords will examine alleged threats by US authorities, including one by New Jersey prosecutors that Mr McKinnon "would fry".

He has never denied accessing the computer networks between February 2001 and March 2002.

Mr McKinnon has always maintained he was motivated by curiosity and only managed to get into the networks because of lax security.

Taken from: BBC News

My Gallery is now online (Click Gallery in the side menu)

Predominantly it will be of pictures that i have taken personally, but i may add in a new album at come point for things like Desktop wallpapers etc

Enjoy!!

Whitehall was left combing its season ticket loan records this weekend as another set of top secret papers did the rounds of the 5.45pm from Waterloo.

Just days after a Cabinet Office worker left a stack of top secret anti-terrorist papers – including an analysis of Al Qaeda - on a train to Surrey, it emerged that a second set of papers detailing Treasury Dept efforts to fight financial fraud had gone walkies on another train around the same time.

As well as detailing weaknesses in how the HMRC’s computer systems can counter fraud, the papers covered government efforts to counter terrorist financing and money-laundering, and ways in which the finance system can be manipulated to finance Iran’s development of weapons of mass destruction.

Apparently the papers were left on a Surrey-bound train last Wednesday, the same day that the Cabinet Office papers were mislaid on another Surrey-bound train. The Cabinet Office papers were immediately passed on to the BBC which handed them back to the government – albeit on camera. The finance papers found their way to the Independent on Sunday, but not apparently until Sunday.

The question of what happened to them in the meantime will cause someone in Whitehall absolute nightmares. Still, if nothing else, the fact that they were passed on by an Independent on Sunday reader will dramatically narrow the hunt for the picker-upper.

The Surrey-bound civil servants’ apparent carelessness with top secret papers is just the latest in a tide of government data breaches. If civil servants aren’t losing CDs with the details of every family in the UK, they’re leaving laptops chock full of details of servicemen in the pub.

Out of their brains on the 5.15
Whitehall has already launched an investigation into the loss of the Al Qaeda documents, and the civil servant responsible has been suspended.

Home secretary Jacqui Smith has been summoned by MPs to explain how the gaffes might affect the fight against terrorism. Her department didn’t actually lose any of last week’s papers. In fact, Smith is unlikely to ever leave secret papers on a train, given that she rarely walks the streets of London, never mind takes public transport.

According to The Times, a Treasury spokesman said of the latest gaffe, “We are extremely concerned about what has happened and will be taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future.”

Sadly, with this government’s record the surest way of clamping down on civil servants leaving important documents on trains is to let the operating companies jack up train fares so that even Whitehall fat cats have to get on their bikes.


Story From: The Register

Well i think a lot has happened since i last posted, we got two new kittens who are mental, climbing up you when your sleeping, i am absolutely covered in scratches.

Me and the wife are still very happy and still get along great, although i think i annoy her sometimes with my complete geekiness lol

Well i think i have completed the first stage of my stats package, a mate online is testing it on his very busyt site to test the code and the stats

i will then puit it up for download if the code is working ok and i can redeign the layout a bit coz its a bit boring right now