For two years Gary McKinnon, an unemployed Scotsman armed with only some spliffs, a few beers, and a dial-up internet connection, went looking for beings of superior intelligence. He couldn’t find them. Instead, he found the US Military-Industrial Complex, an altogether different grade of brain. And, after he’d found them, and fooled around inside their computer systems for a few years, he got sloppy. And so, in turn, he was found in Crouch End, north London, by the US Justice Department, or rather its surrogates in the UK, the Home Office’s then National Hi-Tech Crime Unit…
