photo by Adam Proctor

London’s mayor Boris Johnson, a former journalist who wrote for the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator magazine, now writes a column in the Daily Telegraph (for £250,000 a year). Johnson seemingly won the mayoral election on a platform of being goofy and causing his opponent not to take him seriously enough. 

Johnson’s most recent column attacks the one-sided UK-US extradition treaty and the ongoing attempts by the US DoJ to extradite Gary McKinnon, a 43-year old Briton who apparently hacked into some computers over a period between early 2001 and early 2002.  The computers belonged to The US Army, The US Navy, NASA (!), the DoD, the US Air Force and some private companies/libraries.  McKinnon has been indicted on 7 counts of fraud and related activity in relation with computers. 

Johnson begins his column with  some Obama lovin’:

Way to go, Mr President. I think we can all agree that it has been a cracking first week. Apart from the swearing-in glitch – which was entirely the fault of that judge – I have supported just about everything that Barack Obama has done. 

But quickly he changes tack and appeals to Obama to undo what he calls “one last piece of neocon lunacy.”

To listen to the ravings of the US military, you would think that Mr McKinnon is a threat to national security on a par with Osama bin Laden. According to the Americans, this mild-mannered computer programmer has done more damage to their war-fighting capabilities than all the orange-pyjama-clad suspects of Guantanamo combined.

Johnson points out that McKinnon, who has since been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome was looking for the existence of US governmental coverups of aliens and UFOs.  He then fills a few grafs with fluff about how he couldn’t disprove the existence of aliens, and how David Cameron and Gordon Brown might be lizard people.  Good stuff for £250K a year, by Jove.

For the big finish, Johnson gets serious again:

It is time for Barack Obama to show the new leadership the world has been crying out for. It is time for the Commander-in-Chief to tell the US military to stop being so utterly wet, dry their eyes, and invest in some passwords that are slightly more difficult to crack.

In the words of the spiritual with which he began his inauguration ceremony, it is time for the new President to let our people go. [Oh, no you didn't! - Ed]

photo by Adrian Pingstone

But he then refers to the Joint Chiefs as a gaggle of extraterrestrial geckos, and therefore loses all credibility once again.

As a fan of technology and progress, I have fairly little sympathy for organizations that get hacked when their security is weak – especially if that organization is the government or the military.  As a former member of that massive bureaucracy I had to change my 8-12 character password with numbers, letters, symbols and no recognizable WORDS in it every 90 days.  And that was going back to 2000, so the workgroup administrators responsible for those PCs  were wrong.  They got what they deserved.  Most organizations realize that having hackers attempt to break into their systems is actually a good thing – how can you say you have good cyber terrorism protection measures unless you are actively being tested?

However, if McKinnon had perhaps just left his hacking at looking at files for UFOs, and leaving the message  “Your security is crap” which he did, and which it was, then he would have a better chance at getting away with it.  Since he ended up deleting files required to boot the machines and deleted user information, the DoJ says, “McKinnon faces a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.”

The moral of the story?  Password protect everything, and back-up your data.  

Obama is no slouch when it comes to progressive, or at least contemporary, thought about technology as his Technology Agenda lays out his intentions on whitehouse.gov:

[My administration will] appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure the safety of our networks and lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.

Certainly this is more than could be said for the previous administration’s approach which included some combination of sand and ostrich heads.  McKinnon might stand a chance yet.