"for the little person"

Sorry, I'm not going to comment on the debate, no matter what manner of manic behavior it caused in Andrew Sullivan or Chris Matthews, but feel free to comment below.

Meanwhile, you may never have heard of Gary McKinnon, a rather talented but eccentric British man (Asperger's among other conditions) but he won a major victory yesterday.

Ten years ago, McKinnon hacked his way into US military and NASA sites not for the purpose of espionage, but rather for the rather bizarre purpose of finding out information about UFOs. Naturally this did not go over well with the U.S. government which has been trying for a decade to get him deported to our shores where he faced up to 60 years in jail.

One might think the Cameron Government wouldn't care, but a surprising development happened yesterday:

[Home Secretary Theresa] May told MPs there was “no doubt” that Mr McKinnon was “seriously ill”. She said that after taking extensive legal advice, she concluded that his extradition “would give rise to a high risk of him ending his life”. “The decision to extradite Mr McKinnon would be incompatible with his human rights,” she said.

This isn't to defend hacking, but this is yet another example of our bizarre and crushingly stupid laws when it comes to technology and it's inapplicability to real-world situations. Luckily this guy was not an American citizen.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]