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When a smart guy make something big....but in the wrong place....

This story just amazed me....again the security system in the world is under review because someone threatened it...without knowing it!.

A smart UK guy is to be condemned to US prision (considered a terrorist threat) by hacking and US security department wants him to be extradited. He was obsessed of UFOs since he was a child, and loved virtual games, spent most of his time "hacking" but hacking is not bad, until you go happily into the US NASA Space Center, Navy and even the Department of Defense, after creating a "simple" perl script that discover thousands of passwords, letting the security under risk....but he was only searching for UFOs signs and best of all, he is autist.

After reading the story, I was guessing about how is this to be considered a bad moral action, at the end he was only searching for evidence of UFOs, and as per his declaration, he did not mean to threat the security, but only spent his time and search something that he really enjouys with.

What is open here is that probably security is not secure enough, and should be improved when applies. Because what would happen if someone that really knows what is doing and really wants to cause damage starts surfing the systems that theorically protects us all? how this improve would be funded?

In addition, would someone that has a beheavioural disease to be condemned for prision instead of being trated? and in which cases or for which disease? and were should the trial take place? at the original of the threatener or at the affected country? For this case, McKinnon did not cause more than technical damage (more than US $ 700 000) but none was phisically damaged, and his family is beggin for a fair trial at the UK instead of extradition to the US.

I checked the whole story at the spectrum-IEEE july magazine (paper copy).

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