Evidence of NASA UFO Fraud Might Kill UK Hacker Case

I've been watching the news stories around Gary McKinnon for quite some time, and I just saw this fantastic story come out today which seems to provide the details of how the defense team could be gearing up to protect him in the event that he is extradited:

Evidence of NASA UFO fraud might kill UK hacker case

From the article:

The space agency is attempting to prosecute McKinnon for hacking into NASA computer files. McKinnon has stated that he saw UFO-related files in NASA’s computers. But NASA has denied any “cover-up”. NASA’s claim of innocence faces a serious challenge. Some of the whistleblowers are former NASA employees and contractors with inside knowledge of NASA’s operation. If NASA’s destruction of public property is confirmed, the alleged cost of McKinnon’s hacking would be insignificant compared to NASA’s annual funding of more than $17 billion. Even worse, NASA’s year 2000 mission statement boasted that it is “ethical and honest” in all that they do. Part of NASA's mission is to look for signs of intelligent life in outer space. So asking for more money to 'look', after they've already destroyed evidence that they 'found', is a not going to be easy.

If this case does go to trial, I hope it's televised

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[edit on 16/1/2009 by Mirthful Me]

I so hope you are right, but I doubt they will let him get away scott free. This may make them go easier on him or even drop the charges, but unless they drop them, he is out of luck.

I do hope that this flap will force NASA to come clean. Perhaps this will be the door that Obama can walk through for full disclosure. We certainly can hope.

It will be very interesting if they do bring him to trial and I think it may be a good thing, as no doubt it will open a can of worms the size of 40 gallon drum.

Or NASA may just pull the plug at the last minute if there is the slightest chance of a disclosure which is not in thier favour?

Mind you Nasa has the backing of the Military I bet and I wonder what strings will be pulled to put him away.

Great post Star & Flagged

Just to hope that no one will experience any nasty "accidents" in the meantime.

Here's a great video, speaking of NASA's airbrushing policies, with a mosaic of some interesting shots on the moon:



Hopefully the individuals speaking in this clip will be brought in as witnesses.

[edit on 15-1-2009 by jeff.behnke]

i always wondered what happened to that guy. good to see he hasnt been offed.

I hope NASA gets reemed by itself, I hope employees come forth with information against their own employer and provide evidence for Gary at the same time bringing up another lawsuit by us the people.

=)

The article is nonsensical.

The space agency is attempting to prosecute McKinnon for hacking into NASA computer files.

NASA is not attempting to prosecute him. McKinnon was indicted by the US Government for hacking the computers of the US Army, US Navy, Department of Defense, and the US Air Force, as well as NASA.

The article says nothing about the "whistleblowers" being any part of his defense should he be extradited. In any case their testimony is irrelevant to the case.

Another high profile NASA 'edit' that I remember quite distinctly was the weird slinky thing the SOHO observatory recorded shooting out of the sun in 09/22/1999:




It was an image found on NASA's sungrazer server, only to be taken down minutes later. In addition, at the time, the images taken from the Lasco instrument used to be pieced together and placed on a separate military website (can't remember which one, maybe someone can help) as a video clip. I remember finding the video of that day, and hours of pictures are missing from that video as well surrounding the time this picture was taken. The other videos of previous days did not have the same problem. Although not specifically a 'UFO' it was obviously proof to me that they weed out images that might cause a stir.

I actually asked NASA at the time why they removed it, and they said they didn't know. Hah! They said the fact it WAS removed (and the surrounding images before and after) was some type of 'problem.' Nice timing to have a hardware failure

And then this story just died...

Originally posted by Phage
The article is nonsensical.

The space agency is attempting to prosecute McKinnon for hacking into NASA computer files.

NASA is not attempting to prosecute him. McKinnon was indicted by the US Government for hacking the computers of the US Army, US Navy, Department of Defense, and the US Air Force, as well as NASA.

The article says nothing about the "whistleblowers" being any part of his defense should he be extradited. In any case their testimony is irrelevant to the case.

I Agree but the OP was just generalising I believe as all the above departments will have to present evidence at the trial.

His defence will then use every trick in the book be it irelevent or not including whistleblowers if it even gets that far that is.

And yes the judge would throw that out as being irelevent but stranger things has happened in courts.

Here's a good but older interview with Gary:

The NASA hacker: Scapegoat or public enemy?

Q: Why do you think the US authorities behaved the way they did, with an extradition order?
A :Well, the reason they give is that I, on my own, closed down the entire metro district of Washington for a few days, including a weapons station, which I dispute. My thing was being quiet and not being seen and getting the information out. And also, when I was there, you do a NetStat routine and you see all the other connections to that machine and there is a permanent weakness for foreign hackers because their security is not even lax, it is non-existent. You wouldn’t believe it. They might claim that by installing a remote control program, I opened them [the systems] up, but the access was already there. I didn't even have to crack passwords.

Q:What about the damage you are said to have caused?
A:What they call damage is really just them realising that they have been accessed without authorisation. Then they say things like I deleted 300 users, deleted systems files and such. That was one instance when I did a batch file to clean up all my stuff. I think once and only once, though perhaps I ran it on the root drive of the "c:" drive. But it certainly wasn’t every machine I was on and, if you believe them, they talk about 94 networks being damaged.

Q: Surely all the data was backed up anyway?
A: Well, it should be and it should be behind a firewall, and the local administrator should not have a blank password. Take one defence computer where they use image-based installation techniques where most of the machines have the same BIOS, the same hard drive, the same hardware specification and you just whack it out across the systems. Unfortunately for them, the local system administrator's password was blank. So you don't even need to become the domain administrator. That's 5,000 machines all with a blank system level administrator password. To be fair to them, as I got deeper into it they closed me down pretty quickly.

I'm not sure if you can classify walking into a machine with a blank password "hacking" but whatever. And further down in the interview...

Q: Was your main motivation the search for extra-terrestrials?
A: That is how it started off and it then grew into suspicions about 9/11, because there are hundreds of unanswered questions about 9/11, the dragging away of all the forensics evidence, and the sale of all the concrete and steel to China. Even the firemen of New York organised their own web site to complain that this isn’t a proper process. Then there are the schools for terrorists run by America to help Latin-American dictatorships and stuff.

And finally, here's another interesting bit of info:

Q. So what is the official position?
A. I asked my solicitor why the CPS had taken my case away from the UK police and handed it to the US. She was speaking to someone who was fairly high up and he said that it had gone way above his head. Reading between the lines, that means the Home Office.

He went into NASA computers for UFO info.
NASA were UFO deniers.
NASA now allow Moon walkers to say they saw UFOs that were undoubtedly Alien.
So they must have disclosed all the information already on their own.
All this after this incident.
I thought he went into Pentagon computers.

I have a gut feeling that he won't get extradited in the end.

With just five days left until a final decision is made on his controversial extradition to the US, Keir Starmer QC will examine whether Mr McKinnon should instead be prosecuted on a lesser charge in the British courts.

Pressure is mounting to halt the extradition of Mr McKinnon, who has not denied hacking into a high-security network of American Navy, Army, Nasa and Pentagon computers.

Mr McKinnon, 42, from Wood Green, north London, insists he was looking for evidence of UFOs when he broke into the sensitive military networks in 2001 and 2002.

Source: www.timesonline.co.uk...

I hope he doesn't get extradited because I am opposed to the double standard in international law when it comes to the extradition of suspects for trial in the US. If the US wants to try one of our citizens, they need not show ANY evidence of wrong doing, our government will bend over backwards to meet the demands of the US requests. However, the double standard in a situation like this is even if the British courts produce evidence of a US citizen committing a crime in the UK, there is a SLIM chance that person will be released to British custody.

This guy is a scapegoat for Nasa. He was using crude methods to obtain access to their computers, furthermore, it is NASA's responsibility to ensure they have a secure system! When he described how he obtained access it seemed like the fault lies solely with Nasa for not having a good IT security team. I bet their IT guys are all ex military that have access to this level of information.

Free Garry Mckinnon!

[edit on 16-1-2009 by IceColdPro]

Originally posted by Phage
The article is nonsensical.

Beyond nonsensical, Phage. Whether or not McKinnon found certain files when he hacked into government computers is irrelevant to the case; he was prosecuted because he hacked into the computers. It would not matter if he found files on UFOs and NASA was lying about it, because that is not what the case is about.

Originally posted by IceColdPro
This guy is a scapegoat for Nasa. He was using crude methods to obtain access to their computers, furthermore, it is NASA's responsibility to ensure they have a secure system! When he described how he obtained access it seemed like the fault lies solely with Nasa for not having a good IT security team.

If you break into someone's home and steal something, whether that person locked their door or not is irrelevant. The same principle applies here. He committed a crime, which he admits to.

Originally posted by SaviorComplex

Originally posted by IceColdPro
This guy is a scapegoat for Nasa. He was using crude methods to obtain access to their computers, furthermore, it is NASA's responsibility to ensure they have a secure system! When he described how he obtained access it seemed like the fault lies solely with Nasa for not having a good IT security team.

If you break into someone's home and steal something, whether that person locked their door or not is irrelevant. The same principle applies here. He committed a crime, which he admits to.

True. However, a house and a computer are 2 completely different things! For one, they are secured in completely different ways.

Your example reminds me of the ridiculous comparisons made by the film industry in their commercials about the ethics of piracy.

If Nasa doesn't secure their computers sufficiently then that's their problem! If someone installs a trojan on my PC, downloads personal images from my computer and I went to the police, do you think they would open up an investigation? What if I mentioned in my report that I took no steps in securing my PC?

If I leave a photo album on a bus, should I complain when someone sees it opens it and view the images? Or should the fault lye in my own carelessness?

If I leave my computer unsecured and connected to the PUBLIC domain that is the internet, should I complain if someone enters it?

Gary was one of us, he was just searching for the truth. He in no way deserves a possible 60 year sentence, especially since Nasa cannot prove that he caused the significant damages to their equipment that they are claiming he did.

Nasa should properly secure their systems and keep sensitive information off of online systems... This is basic stuff here!

[edit on 16-1-2009 by IceColdPro]

Originally posted by redhead57
I so hope you are right, but I doubt they will let him get away scott free. This may make them go easier on him or even drop the charges, but unless they drop them, he is out of luck.

I do hope that this flap will force NASA to come clean. Perhaps this will be the door that Obama can walk through for full disclosure. We certainly can hope.

not to be mean, but what makes one think that Obama would even have anything to gain whatsoever from disclosure, maybe there's s reason Carter went back on his promise to get to the bottom of things. What makes one think that disclosure is in our best interests? I don't like secrets, but the more and more I study these things, i am coming to believe that there is a type of quarantine of the human race from the rest of the universe or at least the galaxy, several superior races do exist but they do not have anything to gain from us knowing they do, it's even possible i soppose that our leaders are under direct order from these races to NOT disclose anything. We might be thinking much to highly of ourselves; what if we are the galactic equivelant of the cockroach? Look at us, we are a mess. I don't see any reason AT ALL of an alien race wishing to be known to us until we at least progress to the point of being unified globally. Think about it.

I would really like to know what he damaged that costs 2000 for every govt. computer he penetrated or have they gone back on that statement now?

Originally they claimed 2000 in damages to each computer he had access too and he denied even accessing those computers but admitted to the NASA one originally and told the NASA story.

I'm sorry but there is no way he caused 2000 dollars worth of damage to every single computer they claim he hacked.

If it was that problematic they would have tagged him long before the NASA incident because there would have been signs.

There is nothing he could do that would permanently destroy any information on the computers. Now days you can wipe a drive multiple times, burn it in a fire, drowned it and still retrieve all the data off it given enough time.

Worst thing he could of done sense he wasn't physically there is wipe the drive a few times, but so what even the IT in my workplace can recover a wiped drive. Maybe overclock it and short out the board or something? Never seen that happen but I would never say it's not possible. Normally too much heat just shuts down the system/locks up the CPU.

I would love to see this televised because he said if it ever went to trial he had something in his back pocket so to speak. Also want to know what constitutes 2000 dollars worth of damage.

It is possible he is just blowing smoke but I would assume if he was it wouldn't have been delayed for this long. I'm sure his govt. would have just handed him over if they thought he was just a kiddie hacker. If not they would keep him as long as possible to find out how he did it and what he found that could benifit them.

He's going against agencies with any resources they want at their disposal with unlimited funding by us American citizens, who pay for EVERYTHING.

Also, don't think that behind closed doors that lawyers aren't working hand in hand with the prosecutor. It's the Corporate American justice system.

He's screwed or as some stated, will ave an "ACCIDENT".Paid for by the people who actually want the truth.

Gotta love how our country and Government publicly try to base everything on morality while they rig justice and off people at the drop of a dime. Is this the new meaning to morality?

Originally posted by IceColdPro

True. However, a house and a computer are 2 completely different things! For one, they are secured in completely different ways.

You're completely wrong. Hacking into another computer is a crime. Hacking a government computer is a federal crime.

If Nasa doesn't secure their computers sufficiently then that's their problem!

Yeah it's a silly mistake not to secure a computer, that's a given.

If someone installs a trojan on my PC, downloads personal images from my computer and I went to the police, do you think they would open up an investigation? What if I mentioned in my report that I took no steps in securing my PC?

Nope because your no one! Sorry but that's the truth. To suggest hacking you're computer is the same level of offense as hacking a government computer is misguided.

If I leave a photo album on a bus, should I complain when someone sees it opens it and view the images? Or should the fault lye in my own carelessness?

Terrible Analogy!

If I leave my computer unsecured and connected to the PUBLIC domain that is the internet, should I complain if someone enters it?

You can complain if you want!

Gary was one of us, he was just searching for the truth. He in no way deserves a possible 60 year sentence, especially since Nasa cannot prove that he caused the significant damages to their equipment that they are claiming he did.

He searched for the truth in a knowingly illegal way. However I agree about the damage. The only real damage was to NASA's ego.

Nasa should properly secure their systems and keep sensitive information off of online systems... This is basic stuff here!

Agreed!


IRM