The right to silence.

Computer programmers and software engineers tend to score highly on the autistic spectrum. They are not actually all mad as hatters, but those that are do well in that introspective and highly focussed career.

Little surprise then to find that one of their number is ever so slightly odd. Gary McKinnon odd. Interested in peculiar things, like model rockets.

'J' ran true to course, had his own software business and a model rocket making hobby. Declared himself to be a Libertarian. Moved to the Netherlands because he thought the UK was becoming a police state. Obviously certifiable.

He had at one point attempted to go to Canada without the required visa. Further evidence of his increasing mental instability was that he then took a train back to England to keep an appointment with HM Customs in respect of this offence - an offence for which no charges have been laid..

The authorities needed little more. The new French/English customs/anti-terrorism/passport control at the Eurostar terminal in Paris detected by cunning use of an x-ray machine that he had a model rocket about his person. No fuel, no explosives, nothing else, just a model rocket still in its packaging. Fool that he was.

They promptly radioed ahead to operation headquarters in England, and by the time our friend landed at St Pancreas, a full complement of our friendly local anti-terror Gestapo were waiting for him.

They broke into his hotel room and impounded his computer. Being a software developer he had a considerable amount of open source software code on his machine, as you do, and he had taken the precaution of encrypting his work. The police demanded the encryption key, they gave him one hour to hand it over under the UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers act (RIPA). Our friendly computer programmer, already believing the UK to be a police state, and having left the country to escape this sort of treatment, remained silent for the entire hour.

The police charged him with 'remaining silent', when he tried to get another passport to escape this hell hole, they also charged him with trying to obtain a new passport whilst they were still holding his old one. At no point have they charged him with anything to do with his model rocket, nor with anything found on his computer, nor with his earlier transgression regarding his attempted entry into Canada.

His crime was refusing to speak during that hour.

"There could be child pornography, there could be bomb-making recipes," said one detective.
"Unless you tell us we're never gonna know... What is anybody gonna think?"

He was sentenced to 13 months in Winchester Jail.

In his judgment, Judge Hetherington accepted 'J' was no threat to national security and noted his outsider lifestyle. "You... wished to involve yourself in a world which was largely based upon the access to the internet and using computers and not really interacting with other people in the ordinary outside world to any great extent," he said. "It is said on your behalf that you lead an existence rather akin to that of a monk, and that there is nothing sinister in any of this but it is essentially private matters and you do not see why you should have to disclose anything to the authorities."

Despite referencing his solitary existence, Judge Hetherington appeared not to know about 'J's mental health problems and criticised him for not speaking to authorities.
Abandoning normal court procedures, he said: "It was because I was satisfied you would not tell the Probation Service anything significant further that I saw no purpose in obtaining a pre-sentence report which is normally a prerequisite for someone of no previous convictions who has not previously received a prison sentence," he said.

Originally sentenced to 13 months for ten separate charges relating to ten separate requests of provide encryption keys, he was subsequently interviewed by a police psychiatrist.

"Do you think they are out to get you?"

Indeed he did. Little wonder! He says he felt harassed by authority and helpless against police he believed were determined to pin a crime on him.

The psychiatrist diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic, and he is now held at a secure hospital, where his release date is subject to approval by his Doctors that he no longer thinks 'they are out to get him'.


OH Update: As if by magic, the Police were wrong to arrest someone for being too tall