Hacker 'was naive not criminal'

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Gary McKinnon, 42, is fighting extradition to the US, where he faces up to 70 years in prison if he is found guilty of gaining access to and damaging 97 American Navy, Army, Nasa and Pentagon computers.

His supporters held a press conference to make a desperate plea for him to be prosecuted in the UK on a lesser charge instead.

Cambridge University professor Simon Baron-Cohen, a leading expert on Asperger's Syndrome, said what Mr McKinnon did was "the activity of somebody with a disability rather than a criminal activity".

Mr McKinnon, from Wood Green, north London, was only diagnosed with the condition in August last year. He insists he was looking for evidence of UFOs when he hacked into the US military networks in 2001 and 2002.

Prof Baron-Cohen said Mr McKinnon's behaviour was typical of the "social naivety" that is common in people with Asperger's Syndrome.

He said: "It can bring a sort of tunnel vision so that in their pursuit of the truth they are blind to the potential social consequences for them or for other people."

The academic added: "There are questions about whether he should be imprisoned at all because someone with Asperger's Syndrome will find it very difficult to tolerate a prison environment.

"If, as I believe, the crime was committed through naivety and through an obsession - in this case with computers and trying to find information - without any intent to deceive, without any attempt to hide what he was doing, we should be thinking about this as the activity of somebody with a disability rather than a criminal activity."

Prof Baron-Cohen said Mr McKinnon "believed that what he was doing was right" when he hacked into the computers because he was trying to uncover the truth.