Sitting in London, in his then girlfriend’s aunt’s flat, McKinnon had scrounged his way into databases that belonged to Pentagon and NASA, all in the hope of uncovering secrets that he believed (like millions of others UFO enthusiasts all over the world) were suppressed: secrets such anti-gravity, alien technology, or alien spacecraft that had crash-landed on earth. He became so obsessed with his mission (a manifestation of his Asperger’s Syndrome, that he was diagnosed with much later) that in the process of finding clues to the UFOs, McKinnon ended up deleting crucial files from the computer databases that rendered a whole bunch of them inoperable for a length of time.

Unfortunately, McKinnon had only a fuzzy idea that he was rubbing the deadliest military establishment in the world in the wrong side. In less than a year since he started, sometime in March 2002, McKinnon was charged with committing crimes against the USA and his extradition to America became a certainty. This was imminent in the wake of the implementation British ‘Extradition Act’ of 2003, and the UK-US extraction treaty, which came into the line of fire of human rights law campaigners for being unfair to British citizens, as they could be extradited to US despite committing the alleged crime in UK, or even in the case US proffers up something as flimsy as ‘reasonable suspicion’ as the ground for demanding extradition.

Gary McKinnon went on from being a complete nonentity to become the face of the extremely controversial UK-US Extradition Treaty, that is before the world was made aware of the existence of a wily Australian called Julian Assange, who transformed cyber transgression into a useful political tool. McKinnon, unlike Assange, wasn’t trying to change the world; he was digging only for a bit of a worldview shift regarding stuff that we basically deem science fiction. However, the central question that remains unasked in the nitty-gritties of this mindboggling cyber-legalese is this: are McKinnon and Assange digital terrorists? Are they ‘Cyber Osamas’ (as Assange has been branded), who pose serious threat to American national security? How are we supposed to treat hackers — like political offenders, revolutionary activists taking on the establishment or like heinous terrorists (albeit they haven’t harmed a human soul but themselves perhaps)?

After over a decade of struggle and fierce campaign by several human rights groups, McKinnon’s extradition was at last withdrawn by British Home Secretary Theresa May on October 16, 2012. Suicide risks were cited in his defence. McKinnon, now aged 46, will be tried in a British court, however, and would face about three to four years of imprisonment. Nevertheless, incarceration in Britain, where his mother Janis Sharp could come and visit him, where he’s a familiar face to everyone, ostensibly appears to be heaven compared to what could have happened to him had he been shipped off to distant America for his trial.

Compared to Assange, McKinnon is only a tiny fry in the eyes of US military, though the latter’s digital trespassing has been touted the biggest cybercrime in history. Yet what gets conveniently forgotten is that in 2001-02, digital security was a nebulous area and even the Pentagon had not fully woken up to the possibility of cyber attacks. While McKinnon’s hacking skills (his online alias was ‘Solo’) were considerable, what ultimately worked in his favour and helped him cross the security firewalls was the fact that the passwords were often set at default blanks — clearly a lapse on the part of those on the other side of the digital fence.

While idle curiosity had driven McKinnon, Assange’s crusade has been determined by a fully developed ideology of right to information and free internet. Julian Assange was not an ordinary hacker: he was/is a ‘hacktivist’; he is someone who has visualized the digital frontier as one that is truly beyond borders, without boundaries. When he founded WikiLeaks, it was with the aim of changing the rules of the game by which the media functions. A prophet of the freedom of the press, Assange has overseen and helped happen a sea change in the universe of hardcore investigative journalism. In an essay he wrote in 2006, he set out the philosophy behind WikiLeaks: “To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly, for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not.”

Half a decade into its existence, WikiLeaks has been responsible for breaking more stories and uncovering ugly truths than many of the giant media establishments have achieved in their entire lifetime. Examples of such ‘news leaks’ include the gruesome video depicting bombing of innocent bystanders by US Apache bomber planes in Baghdad, Iraq (Collateral Murder video, 2007); dossier charting the illicit transactions occurring in large banks like the Icelandic Kaupthing and the Swiss Julius Baer; release of Afghan War Logs and Iraq War Logs that clearly showed extensive use of torture in over 15,000 unreported incidents and massive civilian deaths as a result of military air strikes and ground operations; and finally, in coordination with the British newspaper The Guardian, the release of US diplomatic cables, that caused a maelstrom of rabid public opinion against the machinations of the US government and confirmed many of the suspicions that political observers had known for a while.

Because of his unorthodox techniques, a ‘bizarre, unhealthy, blinding contempt’ (to quote the Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald) has increasingly come to cloud the mainstream media view of Assange. That is seriously unfortunate, as Assange, in a very short time, has rewritten the rules of journalism and has managed to reconfigure as well as expand the true power of the fourth estate.

Because the US couldn’t nab him directly — he had too much of public sympathy as a crusader of truth — rape allegations from two Swedish women in 2010 were made, clearly aimed to besmirch and undo Assange’s enormous achievements as a new media force to reckon with. Ever since, a European Arrest Warrant has hung upon his head like Damocles’ sword, and his worst fears — that Sweden would pack him off to America where he would be subject to political persecution by the same arbitrary, vindictive, indefinite and opaque hand of law, worse than Kafka’s penal colony in fact, that he had been fighting through his WikiLeaks work — had been hounding him. After a lengthy trial in UK, which he lost, Assange has been confined in the Ecuadorian embassy for more than three months now, which has granted him diplomatic immunity. One step out and he could be arrested and fall into the endless dark abyss that life of a high-profile political prisoner, an “information terrorist,” could become.

The only way to counter these draconian measures against people like Assange, or Private Bradley Manning (the British-born American soldier who had leaked classified materials to WikiLeaks and has been in solitary confinement since May 2010 when he was arrested in Iraq), is to galvanise massive public support for them. The ‘secular fatwa’ against Assange must be lifted because governments must bend before public pressure. Yes, the prophets and the visionaries, such as Assange, too, need our protection, especially because they put their own lives to considerable risk as they keep pushing the boundaries of human possibilities through their relentless politicisation of usable technology.

So, instead of reproducing the same old regime of fear, paranoia, constant suspicion and surveillance, let’s support, and indemnify, Julian Assange and the other invisible army of ‘hacktivists’, as they help forge a free, open access virtual world. The least we can do is stand behind them in these trying times. We, the general public, will benefit the most from what these tireless innovators have set out to do in the first place. (IPA Service)