hacked off!

toby, if your son or grandson was a computor 'wiz-kid' and during the course of 'playing' with his computor in his own bedroom, hacked into the computor system of a foriegn government, then seven years later that foriegn government wanted him extradited by force to stand trial in that foriegn country with the possibility of you or his family not seeing him again, would you be happy?.  Lets not be nieve about it, I'm sure the persons in the foriegn country involved in this case have done (and probly are still doing), exactly the same thing to us and other foriegn countries wether friendly or not. I think this particular country involved is just embarressed, if I was them, instead of making such a big thing out of it which makes them even more of a laughing stock, they should just quietly lick their wounds, learn from thier mistakes, spare their blushes and move on.

No offence intended to our friends across the pond

Still support this young man with Aspergers, maybe because we have a grandson with same and know how he would be affected should he be taken away from an environment that he knows.

I hope they manage to delay any final decision until David Cameron gets in because it appears he may well block extradition.

Far from being a "young whiz-kid, playing on a computer in his bedroom",  this (37 year old at the time) guy knew exactly what he was doing when he hacked into 97 computers. The computer networks he is accused of hacking include networks owned by NASA, the US Army, US Navy, Department of Defence, and the US Air Force.

The US authorities claim he deleted critical files from operating systems, which shut down the US Army’s Military District of Washington network of 2,000 computers for 24 hours, as well as deleting US Navy Weapons logs, rendering a naval base's network of 300 computers inoperable after the September 11th terrorist attacks. They claim the cost of tracking and correcting the problems he caused was $700,000.

He also left the following threat on one computer -

"US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days? It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand-down on September 11 last year...I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.”

Tell me, would we still have such sympathy for this guy had he been of middle eastern origin? Also, if someone broke into your home in the middle of the night and left without taking anything, would you still say he was innocent of any crime?

This guy commited a serious crime in a sensitive era where we are   all constantly under threat of terrorist activity and should go and answer for his actions, or if only to apologise.  The guy is facing the U.S.A. legal system for crying out loud, not being thrown into a snake pit or being forcibly held in front of a Somalian kangaroo court!  Since when were our American cousins a barbaric race baying for blood or heads on sticks? I feel sure he would receive a fair and just trial and with his mitigating circumstances a short (if any) prison sentence or similar lenient punishment.  The "60 year" sentence which is being bandied about by his supporters is, I should imagine, a most unlikely outcome.

Interesting post Toby but how do you know what he has supposedly done, is it public knowledge somewhere?

Further, our consideration is for his well being, especially so if he is suffering Aspergers but again if he is so clever, why not put him to work here in the UK?