So -- Gary McKinnon

[xiphias]

The BBC rebroadcast a piece of an interview they did with him last year.

The background of his story: he hacked into NASA and Pentagon computers in order to find out if they were hiding information about UFOs, aliens, and antigravity drives. This was remarkably easy for him to do, because many of the computers were Windows machines with blank Administrator passwords.

Frankly, I've got to ask -- if you're running Windows, and you don't actually set an Administrator password, and someone accesses your files, can you REALLY claim that they're hacking? I mean, c'mon -- if you walk through an unlocked door, you may be trespassing, but you're not breaking and entering.

Anyway. . .

So, McKinnon claims that
1. A NASA scientist said in an internal thingy that he found that they airbrush out the alien vehicles from pictures from Building 8 so that people don't see them.

2. He found the non-retouched pictures from Building 8, and there was an alien spacecraft in it.

3. He found Excel spreadsheets that were about personell transfers from one ship to another -- and several of the ship names show up nowhere else, and one of the personell spreadsheets was titled "Non-Terrestrial Officers."

So, I've been thinking about possible explanations for this.
Explanation #1: He's lying. I mean, that's always one that you've got to suspect. He broke into the computers, 'cause, well, if he didn't, why would the Pentagon be upset, but is just making up what he found.

Explanation #2: The things he saw in the photos weren't alien spacecraft, but rather, weird-looking scaffolding or something like that -- and the Excel spreadsheets were for a roleplaying game one of the NASA scientists was running, doing personal hobby stuff on a work machine.

Explanation #3: NASA and the Pentagon are covering up the existence of, not only alien spacecraft, but an entire spaceborne branch of the military.

Personally, I like #2 the best. Any other thoughts?

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I thought everyone knew that the government is running a secret Stargate program. :-)

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

Explanation #4: He's a nut?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, doesn't that fall more or less under #1?

And the fact that he was smoking a lot of pot while doing the hacking?

By the way, if a drunk stoner who has NO training in network security, but saw "WarGames" once and downloaded a commercial network sniffer can get into your computer system, it really suggests that you maybe should kinda do a little better on securing your systems. . .

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

I consider lying and craziness to be two separate things. One involves the willful misrepresentation of information, the other involves an entirely different framework for interpreting and processing information. They're the same in that what he is describing is fundamentally not what he found, but the intention is different.

[tongodeon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the argument that the Bush people use against the claims that Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq. "Bush was so convinced that there really were weapons in Iraq, and he was willing to distort all availiable fact so that this 'truth' could be delivered."

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

I've never understood why that's supposed to be any better. "He didn't lie; he was just delusional!" Um... yay?

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Actually, walking through an unlocked door without authorization *is* B&E, at least in Massachusetts. Pushing open the door constitues the "breaking" element of the crime. If your intent is to commit a further crime, such as the taking of property that doesn't belong to you, it then becomes burglary.

http://dictionary.law.com/default2.asp?selected=98&bold=

"Failure to secure does not imply permission to access."

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

There are many complications to this, especially in the twisted mass of the MGL; for example, areas where service personnel (mailmen) could reasonably expect to be allowed are considered part of the curtilage, and do not comprise areas for trespass or B&E unless you explicitly mark the edge of your property. This is different than, say, TX, where I imagine you're allowed to shoot people on your property, whether or not they know it...or NY, where you can be in a "public" place up to but not past the time when you are asked to leave (plus a reasonable amount of time to leave the property) -- except if you're living there, in which case you're squatting and can't be evicted by simple declaration, ...it gets complex.

That being said, "unauthorized access of a remote system" has been codified as a crime, whether or not that system has absolutely no security on it. Wish I could find the reference on this right now.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

You're close on TX, but not quite exact. Someone I know in TX was being hassled by someone else. The first someone's lawyer advised that if the hassler showed up on the hasslees doorstep, the hasslee should shoot him, then drag his body across the threshold and call the cops. I guess even in TX you're supposed to let the intruder actually get into the house before blasting away.

[tongodeon.livejournal.com]

I like a combination of 1 and 2. If I were doing that stuff I'd have a dead-man switch somewhere to release the content I'd gathered to the public if I was apprehended.

[navrins]

I believe that some branch of the military uses the term "terrestrial" to distinguish either from at-sea or in-the-air. That's a vague recollection from someone I know (and I forget who) with a military background using the term that way, and me going "huh?" and either getting or deriving an explanation.

Anyway, assuming that I'm not completely pulling that out of thin air, it's possible that "non-terrestrial officers" could be a perfectly ordinary term to refer to officers serving on a naval vessel at sea, or officers who regularly fly planes.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

NASA uses "terrestrial" in the sense of "not in low earth orbit." And they're a government agency. I'm not a bit surprised to find they classify people according to the project they work on, using clumsy language. (The terrestrial experiment involved this much money, so many people, that much equipment. Was Ed one of the terrestrial people? No, Ed is still working on the space station.) Someone hacking in to read a bit out of context might conclude Ed was of non-terrestrial *origin*, rather than recognizing he was just doing a job with non-terrestrial focus.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

I think #2 is the most *likely*, but I *like* #3 the best.

best,

Joel

[redbird]

#4: The photos he's calling the originals were in fact doctored to look as though they contained alien spacecraft. Those, and the spreadsheets, are part of an attempt to make the USSR Chinese and French think NASA has alien technology.

[bimmer1200.livejournal.com]

I'll go you one better...

NASA, does, in fact have space alien technology. We've even got a Space Corps branch of the USN and the Air Force.

But the stuff this guy found isn't the -real- stuff. All of it is fake, and was put on a computer easily hacked so that someone would find it and make it public. NASA, knowing full well that denying his allegations would only fuel the flames, is setting up a sort of fake conspiracy to distract from the real one.

I mean, it doesn't quite reach the levels of 'the Gov't had Nicole killed to destroy OJ's credibility so he can't reveal that the moon landing was faked' crazy, but, well, there you have it.

[anhelometuo.livejournal.com]

So what RPG do you think they were using?

Could always go with the GURPS: Illumanti, that would fit perfect. haha ;)

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

Having read some of the transcripts of interviews with McKinnon, I'm reasonably sure he's lying. Check this one out, in particular. He states:

No, the graphical remote viewer works frame by frame. It's a Java application, so there's nothing to save on your hard drive, or at least if it is, only one frame at a time.

I believe that he didn't have a graphic file he could just save to his disk. But he doesn't explain why he couldn't have made a screen capture. Windows comes with screen capture capability built in, and has for years. He could also have taken a photograph of the screen (which wouldn't have come out that well, but it would be better than nothing).

He then says he was cut off while trying to download a frame of an image. He says he "saw the guy's hand move across." This is impossible without some kind of camera setup.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i haven't read much at all about this yet, but not knowing how to work one's software, and interpreting vague shadows in a manner that would give rorschach a wet dream doesn't translate to lying in my book. i make the same strong distinction between lying and craziness as burgundy above. (though not all craziness is 100% full-on, which explains why somebody like GWB can be deluded and a liar.)

i vote for #4 (mckinnon is a kook), but i like redbird's version best. :)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I heard that he saw the guy move the mouse. He was remote logged in, with the remote desktop as a window on his desktop, and he saw the mouse pointer move when he wasn't moving it, which told him he was screwed.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

I like #2, and variations thereon.