A computer geek faces 70 years in jail for hacking into the top levels of US defence. He tells Jon Ronson how, hooked and stoned, he landed himself in such hot water.
Last month he attended extradition proceedings at Bow Street Magistrates Court in London. He had, the US prosecutors said, perpetrated the “biggest military computer hack of all time”. He “caused damage and impaired the integrity of information. The US military district of Washington became inoperable and the cost of repairing the shutdown was $US700,000 [$932,500].” These hacking attacks occurred immediately after September 11, 2001, they said.
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This is McKinnon’s first interview. He called me out of the blue last week, just as I was screaming at my child to stop knocking on people’s doors and running away. “Your son sounds like a hacker,” he said. Then he invited me to his home in Bounds Green, north London.
He is good-looking, funny, slightly camp, nerdy, a chain-smoker – and terrified. “I’m walking down the road and I find I can’t control my own legs,” he says. “And I’m sitting up all night thinking about jail and about being arse- f—-ed. And, remember, according to them I was making Washington inoperable ‘immediately after September 11’.
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