A poll of over 500 IT professionals has found opinion is split over whether a British man should be extradited to the US for allegedly breaking into Pentagon and NASA computers.

Gary McKinnon, a computer enthusiast from North London, is alleged to have hacked into computers belonging to the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, Department of Defense and NASA. British Home Secretary, John Reid, signed the order approving the extradition on July 6th.

In an online poll of 565 respondents conducted by online security firm Sophos, 52 per cent said McKinnon should not be extradited, while 48 per cent said it was correct for him to face a US court.

‘It's fascinating to see how the IT community is split down the middle. Many have expressed sympathy with his plight and think the British authorities have let him down by agreeing to extradite him to the States,’ said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.

‘This is a marked difference to the tough reaction we normally hear from the public when alleged virus writers and hackers are making the headlines. Hackers should take heed of the McKinnon case, and think carefully about their actions if they don't want a one-way ticket to an American court,’ said Cluley.

40-year-old McKinnon claims he did not break into the networks with malicious intent but to uncover confidential information about anti-gravity propulsion systems and extraterrestrial technology which he believed the authorities were hiding from the public.

McKinnon has been leading a high profile campaign to avoid extradition, demanding that the US authorities provide evidence of his supposed crimes and damage caused to the UK court, and claiming that he could be sent to the US military camp at Guantanamo Bay.

His campaign has been supported by many others in the hacking community.

McKinnon says that he was caught while viewing an image of what he believed to be a UFO on a NASA computer.

He has two weeks to appeal against the Home Secretary's decision.

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Further reading:

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