Claiming that he will not receive a fair trial in the U.S., and could just as easily be tried in Britain, McKinnon has been fighting extradition. His solicitor, Karen Rodner, says they will appeal the decision to extradite. Although McKinnon’s crimes were committed in 2001 and 2002, the government waited (for unclear reasons) until 2005 to begin the extradition process.

McKinnon has expressed concern over the possibility of being jailed in the Guantanamo Bay facilities. The U.S. government has provided documents to his defense team that the admitted hacker will not be tried as a terrorist, or under military law.

McKinnon maintains that he, as a self-professed “bumbling computer nerd,” never intended to disrupt security, and some are arguing that his hacking did the U.S. government a favor by highlighting its networks’ weaknesses. The government rejects this claim, estimating the damage caused by the hacks at over $1 million, although McKinnon denies taking any harmful actions.

McKinnon went on to say that he was merely trying to investigate the existence of aliens and UFOs. He also mentioned an American conspiracy to suppress knowledge of so-called “free energy” and the existence of antigravity systems.

If McKinnon is convicted in the United States, his UFO research could result in a 70-year prison sentence and up to $1.75 million in fines.

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Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.

We posted a new video with the team up on Channel 9 (and that links to all the important stuff). Thanks Charles Torre for getting this up. Dave Winer promptly posted his thoughts. We were promptly Slashdotted.

In other news

Rebecca McKinnon notes that we have a new privacy policy to deal with government organizations who want us to do things. Great first step! Now, start a blog and be transparent. Let us know EVERYTHING that comes in as a request to see data, whether we think it’s important or not. Great job Rebecca on reporting this and keeping our feet held to the fire, thanks!

TDavid reacts to my request for bloggers to make it easier to deal with them in email. Says that he doesn’t like email. Oh, neither do I, neither do I, but sometimes there are times when I need to get ahold of you privately and not in chat rooms or blog comments (and not via Skype or MSN Messenger either). What else is left? Email.

Oh, Marc Canter, you’re so funny! All I have to do is snap my fingers, huh? Truth is I’d jump if Marc told me to too. We’re all jumpy. I see that JD, over on Marc’s blog, left a comment about audience participation via little clickers. Oh, the first time I saw that done was at CNET’s Builder.com Live conference. Not sure who came up with that idea, but Dan Shafer, the guy who ran that conference liked those. Anytime someone got too commercial you’d hear tons of little clicks. It was even funnier if the speaker wasn’t in on the feedback mechanism. Then it turned into a game. Click. Click. Click. Click.

I’m in NJ right now, leaving to fly to Geneva soon.

Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

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