Gary McKinnon, threat to America, or another victim of conspiracy theories?

A British man by the name of Gary McKinnon, who ten years ago hacked into NASA and US military computers (apparently damaging some of them in the process) was spared from being extradited to the United States from the United Kingdom by United Kingdom Home Secretary Theresa May.

Now the reason cited for this isn't because the crimes he has been accused committing wasn't enough extradite him. The reason stated is because he has Asperger's syndrome (which is a mild form autism) and depression, and it has been determined that there is a high likely that if he were to be brought over here that he would most likely try to commit suicide.

Now many of you are probably asking why exactly did he hack into NASA and US military computers in the first place?

Well apparently back when he did this (which was about ten years ago) he was obsessed with UFOs and a alleged cover-up by our government, so he hacked into our government and military computers to find out any information about aliens that he believed the United States was covering up.

I have no doubt in my mind that Gary's autism caused him to become so obsessed with these UFO cover-up conspiracy theories that it caused him to do something that most people who do not have this neurological disorder, or any other type of neurological or mental disorder, would not do.

But, the existence of these conspiracy theories, and those who promote them, are also partially to blame as well.

Now most people don't take these UFO conspiracy theories that seriously. They might believe in it, but they usually don't obsessed with it to the point where they would commit a crime. Heck, I even once believed in them, but I never took it seriously enough to even buy a book on UFOs, much less do something that is as highly illegal as what Gary McKinnon is accused of doing (he admits to hacking into our computers, but not damaging them) but, if these conspiracy theories didn't exist then people who are like Gary who can become obsessed to the point where they have a great amount of difficulty controlling themselves and their actions, and thus they do stuff like this.

In my opinion this is another example of how destructive conspiracy theories can be, and how it can cause a person to rune their life.

The Slate article about this story

Gary's Wikipedia article