If you believe 40-year-old Gary McKinnon, he’s just a ‘bumbling computer nerd’ who happened to stumble onto NASA and other US government computer systems in search of evidence of UFO technologies. And he claims to have done it through computers with default admin user names and no passwords.

BBC News has an interview with him now that the US government wants to put him on trial. He claims to have found evidence of UFOs. Here’s his description of what one is reported to look like:

It was above the Earth’s hemisphere. It kind of looked like a satellite. It was cigar-shaped and had geodesic domes above, below, to the left, the right and both ends of it, and although it was a low-resolution picture it was very close up.

This thing was hanging in space, the earth’s hemisphere visible below it, and no rivets, no seams, none of the stuff associated with normal man-made manufacturing.

I’m with Slashdot reader, Suso:

What kind of moron spends 3 years breaking into government computers and doesn’t know how to do a screen capture or see the importance of saving what he’s doing. Sorry folks, but from reading this interview, he seems like bullshit.

From a security standpoint, if hacking the US government networks was as easy as he reports, eWeek.com writer, Peter Coffee thinks he just might have defense:

So, here’s the picture that McKinnon’s defense team can paint: These systems had their front doors wide open, with a cosmopolitan come-as-you-are party going on inside. Lawyers can invoke at least three different labels to describe this situation, with many variations under the law in different countries.

“Permissive easement” can arise if you continually let a person do something with your property; at some point, a court may find that that person has acquired the right to keep on doing it.

“Estoppel by acquiescence” may be found to arise if you don’t complain that you’ve been harmed; your silence becomes a consent that bars future complaint.

“Laches” can become another party’s affirmative defense if you don’t assert a right promptly against that party, and that party proceeds in (presumed) ignorance of your right. You can’t then ambush the infringer, complaining of an augmented offense that you could have prevented by earlier action to minimize your own harm. It’s like a statute of limitations, but one that’s based on fairness rather than an arbitrary length of time.

Regardless of the lawyerly label, though, you’re in a weak position if someone accesses your systems and can claim that there was no barrier-not even a notice of ownership-to make it clear that a resource on the public network was not being offered for public use. Centuries of precedent make it the obligation of an owner to assert control or lose it.

And we’re worried about border control in Mexico?