Gary McKinnon (born February 1966) is a Scottish systems administrator and hacker who was accused by a US prosecutor in 2002 of perpetrating the "biggest military computer hack of all time".

[2] The US government accused McKinnon of hacking into 97 United States military and NASA computers over a 13-month period between February 2001 and March 2002, at the house of his girlfriend's aunt in London,[3] using the name 'Solo'.

[7] McKinnon remained at liberty without restriction for three years until June 2005 (until after the UK enacted the Extradition Act 2003, which implemented the 2003 extradition treaty with the United States wherein the United States did not need to provide contestable evidence), when he became subject to bail conditions including a requirement to sign in at his local police station every evening and to remain at his home address at night.

U.S.-style plea bargains are not a part of English jurisprudence (although it is standard practice to reduce the sentence by one-third for a defendant who pleads guilty).

"[14] The House of Lords rejected this argument, with the lead judgement (of Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood) holding that "the difference between the American system and our own is not perhaps so stark as [McKinnon]'s argument suggests" and that extradition proceedings should "accommodate legal and cultural differences between the legal systems of the many foreign friendly states with whom the UK has entered into reciprocal extradition arrangements".

On 16 October 2012, then-Home Secretary Theresa May announced to the House of Commons that the extradition had been blocked, saying that: Mr McKinnon is accused of serious crimes.

[23] On 14 December, Keir Starmer, the DPP, and Mark Rowley, an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, announced that McKinnon would not be prosecuted in the United Kingdom, because of the difficulties involved in bringing a case against him and the likelihood he would be acquitted of any charge.

[27] In November 2008, the rock group Marillion announced that it was ready to participate in a benefit concert in support of McKinnon's struggle to avoid extradition to United States.

[29] In August 2009, Glasgow newspaper The Herald reported that Scots entrepreneur Luke Heron would pay £100,000 towards McKinnon's legal costs in the event he was extradited to the US.

[30] In a further article in The Herald, Joseph Gutheinz, Jr., a retired NASA Office of Inspector General Senior Special Agent, voiced his support for McKinnon.

[32] Janis Sharp, McKinnon's mother, stood as an independent candidate in the 2010 general election in Blackburn in protest against the sitting Labour MP Jack Straw, who was Foreign Secretary when the extradition treaty was agreed.

[34] On 20 July 2010, Tom Bradby, ITN's political editor, raised the Gary McKinnon issue with U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron in a joint White House press conference who responded that they had discussed it and were working to find an 'appropriate solution'.

[35][36] In August 2009, Pink Floyd's David Gilmour released an online single, "Chicago - Change the World", on which he sang and played guitar, bass and keyboards, to promote awareness of McKinnon's plight.

[38][39] In an interview televised on the BBC's Click programme,[40] he stated of the Disclosure Project that "they are some very credible, relied-upon people, all saying yes, there is UFO technology, there's anti-gravity, there's free energy, and it's extraterrestrial in origin and [they've] captured spacecraft and reverse engineered it."