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?

[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."

[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.

[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.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

I like #2, and variations thereon.