Top court allows extradition of UK hacker

London: A British computer hacker lost his appeal on Wednesday against extradition to the US, where he is accused of breaking into Pentagon and Nasa networks, something he says he did to search for UFO records.

Gary McKinnon, 42, faces extradition and trial for what US officials say was a series of cyber attacks that stole passwords, attacked military networks and wrought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of computer damage.

The decision by Britain's House of Lords exhausts McKinnon's legal options in Britain, but his lawyer said she would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

The five Law Lords, comparable to US supreme court judges, decided unanimously that McKinnon had failed to prove his case.

US prosecutors allege that McKinnon trespassed onto more than 90 computer systems belonging to the US Army, Navy, Air Force, Department of Defence and Nasa between February 2001 and March 2002, causing $900,000 worth of damage.
McKinnon has acknowledged accessing the computers. But he disputes the reported damage and says he did it because he wanted to find evidence that America was concealing the existence of aliens.