British hacker loses appeal against extradition

shadowshiv

Dark Overlord
May 29, 2007
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One way or the other, he will end up back in the US. It's just a question of how it will happen.
 

dj03

Electoral Member
Oct 9, 2007
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Calgary
I could bet £100 that if it was an American who hacked into Britain's Ministry of Defence computers the US would refuse to extradite him to Britain.

Because of this Britain should have refused to extradite this man.

The extradition process between Britain and the US is very unfair towards Britain and favours the US.

This raises the question of just how valuable holding citizenship in the UK...or even Canada, is compared to the US.

I think of the recent media reports that seem to indicate that the Conservatives aren't that interested in advocating for Canadian citizens who run into trouble in foreign countries. When foreign officials hold a Canadian citizen the first thought at seeing our passport should be "Holy Crap! We better be careful here", not "your ours now".
 

dj03

Electoral Member
Oct 9, 2007
160
1
18
Calgary
Regarding the OP...

I watched a documentary on YouTube this afternoon where they interviewed this guy. When he was talking about how he hacked into US government computers to find proof of advanced UFO technology that the government is allegedly suppressing.

For the first half of the video he looks straight into the reporter's eyes as he answered questions posed regarding how he hacked into the computers. Then, the conversation switches to what he found regarding UFOs and suddenly his eye contact falters, the hands start waving...and despite viewing an undoctored UFO picture, he managed to forget to take a screenshot of it. :roll:

 

Scott Free

House Member
May 9, 2007
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A person is innocent in a court of law until proven guilty. I'm not on the jury, so I can take his word for it that he did it. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that.

That isn't common sense tracy. He may have admitted guilt in that he did the thing but that doesn't prove criminal intent. It is very easy to accidentally "hack" something these days. Running a spider program, for example, can crash a server and in Canada could get someone charged with unauthorized use of a computer a.k.a "hacking," even though there may have been no intent to do harm.

There are also a million "script kiddie" appz out there that will let someone hack another computer before the person using the application can even realize its real.

So it is very conceivable that someone might admit "hacking" but not be ready to plea bargain as though they were guilty of intent.

This is one area where there is a huge difference in US law vs Canadian in that intent is very important to the sentencing in Canada and less so in the US. The US is more interested in punishment where Canada is seeking a change in behaviour.
 

tracy

House Member
Nov 10, 2005
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I didn't say he had to take a plea. I only said that it's silly to assert that I shouldn't believe he's guilty before his trial when he admits to being guilty. People are allowed to have opinions on someone's guilt or innocence before a trial without it meaning that the judicial system has lost the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Saying you have no opinion until the courts rule is suspending your own common sense and power of reasonning which would make you a government controlled drone.

BTW, he left a post saying he was going to continue to cause more havoc ("I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels"). That's makes intent a bit of a no brainer.
 

Scott Free

House Member
May 9, 2007
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I didn't say he had to take a plea. I only said that it's silly to assert that I shouldn't believe he's guilty before his trial when he admits to being guilty. People are allowed to have opinions on someone's guilt or innocence before a trial without it meaning that the judicial system has lost the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Saying you have no opinion until the courts rule is suspending your own common sense and power of reasonning which would make you a government controlled drone.

BTW, he left a post saying he was going to continue to cause more havoc ("I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels"). That's makes intent a bit of a no brainer.

His post does seem to indicate an intent but without that evidence it wasn't common sense. Still, when it comes to government it could easily be that he left no such post. It has become common IMO for government to trump up evidence like this.
 

Zzarchov

House Member
Aug 28, 2006
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I didn't say he had to take a plea. I only said that it's silly to assert that I shouldn't believe he's guilty before his trial when he admits to being guilty. People are allowed to have opinions on someone's guilt or innocence before a trial without it meaning that the judicial system has lost the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Saying you have no opinion until the courts rule is suspending your own common sense and power of reasonning which would make you a government controlled drone.

BTW, he left a post saying he was going to continue to cause more havoc ("I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels"). That's makes intent a bit of a no brainer.

I still don't get why when he commits a crime in the UK, as a UK citizen and is still in the UK..that he should be extradited to another country.

Guilt isn't the issue, if he's guilty then a court of law can find him guilty and sentance him to prison time in the country in which he resides, is a citizen of and committed the crime in.