Times interview McKinnon's mother

The Times has an interview today with Gary McKinnon's mother.

"“It doesn’t excuse it, because if you commit a crime, you commit a crime,” she toldThe Times, in her first major interview. “I would say to Gordon Brown and David Cameron, you both have vulnerable young sons. Should we really be extraditing our vulnerable adults and letting them serve 70 years abroad? Seventy years for looking for UFOs?”

Mrs Sharp argues that Asperger’s – a form of autism that causes obsessive or repetitive behaviour and impairs social skills, renders her son dangerously unready for life in an American penitentiary – Also, for all his snooping around cyberspace in search of extraterrestial life, McKinnon has never even left the UK “He won’t survive. He’s absolutely petrified. We’ve already received taunting messages about male rape, stun guns,” she says. “We worry that we won’t be alive to see him free.

[...]

“He’s not a genius. He good, but he’s not the best. They had no passwords, no firewalls, and that’s the problem. Gary embarrassed them. They wanted to make an example of somebody for computer crime, so they thought Gary was a soft touch. I think governments try to frighten people. They like to create villains and threats to justify some of their actions.” "

Update: Also in the Times: Let's face it, soon Big Brother will have no trouble recognising you