Earlier this week, The Home Secretary Teresa May decided that Gary McKinnon should not be extradited to the USA to stand trial there for alleged 'hacking' of a number of US government computer systems. I very much welcome this decision, which has taken far too long in my opinion.


However, rather than stopping this abuse of process on the grounds that the UK-USA treaties are lop-sided – with substantially different requirements for the UK to extradite from the USA compared to the reverse – she chose to prevent it on the grounds of possible effects. This, to me, is likely to open a whole can of worms (US: 'can of whoop-ass') as others could, possibly rightly, say they are in the same position and would kill themselves should they be forced abroad to stand trial.

What Gary (probably) did was, indeed, wrong. The response of the US government though to seek to punish him by extended incarceration instead of thanking him for opening their eyes to their poor standard of online security is far worse.