downside of the media attention was that because of the publicity, despite his best efforts Gary could no longer get any job in computers, but managed to get a job as a trainee forklift truck driver which he then lost because his employer was being bombarded constantly by phone calls from the press trying to find out information on Gary. ‘The biggest military hack of all time,’ they said, quoting the US prosecutors.
How could it be ‘the biggest hack of all time’ when Gary had a basic home computer on a 28K dial-up connection and had had no need to hack as there were apparently no passwords or firewalls on the machines he was alleged to have accessed? As computer expert Oxblood Ruffin said: You hack into a jungle, you don’t hack onto a bowling green.
Gary had left cyber-notes informing the Pentagon that theirsecurity was crap and that he’d keep disrupting ‘by leaving cyber-notes’ until someone at the top paid attention and sorted it out.
Gary is a pacifist and genuinely believed that US security had been infiltrated by aliens. He stupidly left a cyber-note accusing the US of state-sponsored terrorism – in essence a cyber-peace protest that if scrawled on a wall few would have noticed. He also left a cyber-note that tied into some of the conspiracy theories that were prevalent on the internet at the time.
It didn’t help that some of this happened after 9/11 when paranoia reigned and the news was obsessed with ‘terror, terror, terror’, which for some reason always reminded me of Violet, the little girl with the red hair in the TV series
Just William
when she threatened, ‘I’ll scream and I’ll scream and I’ll scream until I make myself sick.’
I still couldn’t believe that Gary had managed to access NASA and Pentagon computers from his home computer. Although when one of the US prosecutors said in an interview that the computers Gary accessed were ‘protected’ by easy-to-guess passwords (including the word ‘password’) it became easier to understand.
It was heartbreaking that someone as nice as Gary, the boy who was fascinated by UFOs and aliens and who used to be afraid to travel on a bus, was now being destroyed by prosecutors treating naive computer pioneers as some kind of 21st-century witches.
In 2002 prima facie evidence that could be contested in a British court of damage amounting to $5,000 on each machine was required in order to make the crime of computer misuse an extraditable offence. The US alleged exactly this amount of financial damage in Gary’s case but no evidence of the alleged damage was ever produced and no prima facie evidence was eversubmitted to the CPS. We believe this is why the US did not officially request extradition from the UK for Gary until late 2004, as by then the 2003 extradition treaty had begun to be used and under this new treaty with America no evidence is required in order for the US to extradite anyone from the UK.
Gary was being threatened with being dragged from his home, his family and everyone and everything he ever knew, to be taken in chains to a foreign land. The terrifying prospect of a sixty-year sentence made it likely that he would die there and never set foot on British soil again.
One weekend when his dad Charlie was visiting us, I mentioned that Gary was young for his age in many ways and he said, ‘I’m not, am I, Dad?’
‘I’m afraid you are, son,’ said his dad.
It seemed so unbelievably wrong that this unique and gentle man, our son, should find himself in a position worse than that of most murderers, rapists and war criminals. Gary had never hurt anyone. Could someone please tell me how this could be happening?
Gary never leaves the UK, rarely leaves north London and never goes on holiday, yet they wanted to drag him to a foreign land and incarcerate him in some godforsaken prison for sixty years. Well, he couldn’t go, he just couldn’t. Anyone thinking a computer geek should serve sixty years in a US prison,
How could it be ‘the biggest hack of all time’ when Gary had a basic home computer on a 28K dial-up connection and had had no need to hack as there were apparently no passwords or firewalls on the machines he was alleged to have accessed? As computer expert Oxblood Ruffin said: You hack into a jungle, you don’t hack onto a bowling green.
Gary had left cyber-notes informing the Pentagon that theirsecurity was crap and that he’d keep disrupting ‘by leaving cyber-notes’ until someone at the top paid attention and sorted it out.
Gary is a pacifist and genuinely believed that US security had been infiltrated by aliens. He stupidly left a cyber-note accusing the US of state-sponsored terrorism – in essence a cyber-peace protest that if scrawled on a wall few would have noticed. He also left a cyber-note that tied into some of the conspiracy theories that were prevalent on the internet at the time.
It didn’t help that some of this happened after 9/11 when paranoia reigned and the news was obsessed with ‘terror, terror, terror’, which for some reason always reminded me of Violet, the little girl with the red hair in the TV series
Just William
when she threatened, ‘I’ll scream and I’ll scream and I’ll scream until I make myself sick.’
I still couldn’t believe that Gary had managed to access NASA and Pentagon computers from his home computer. Although when one of the US prosecutors said in an interview that the computers Gary accessed were ‘protected’ by easy-to-guess passwords (including the word ‘password’) it became easier to understand.
It was heartbreaking that someone as nice as Gary, the boy who was fascinated by UFOs and aliens and who used to be afraid to travel on a bus, was now being destroyed by prosecutors treating naive computer pioneers as some kind of 21st-century witches.
In 2002 prima facie evidence that could be contested in a British court of damage amounting to $5,000 on each machine was required in order to make the crime of computer misuse an extraditable offence. The US alleged exactly this amount of financial damage in Gary’s case but no evidence of the alleged damage was ever produced and no prima facie evidence was eversubmitted to the CPS. We believe this is why the US did not officially request extradition from the UK for Gary until late 2004, as by then the 2003 extradition treaty had begun to be used and under this new treaty with America no evidence is required in order for the US to extradite anyone from the UK.
Gary was being threatened with being dragged from his home, his family and everyone and everything he ever knew, to be taken in chains to a foreign land. The terrifying prospect of a sixty-year sentence made it likely that he would die there and never set foot on British soil again.
One weekend when his dad Charlie was visiting us, I mentioned that Gary was young for his age in many ways and he said, ‘I’m not, am I, Dad?’
‘I’m afraid you are, son,’ said his dad.
It seemed so unbelievably wrong that this unique and gentle man, our son, should find himself in a position worse than that of most murderers, rapists and war criminals. Gary had never hurt anyone. Could someone please tell me how this could be happening?
Gary never leaves the UK, rarely leaves north London and never goes on holiday, yet they wanted to drag him to a foreign land and incarcerate him in some godforsaken prison for sixty years. Well, he couldn’t go, he just couldn’t. Anyone thinking a computer geek should serve sixty years in a US prison,
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