Gary McKinnon

Um, no hacking background.

I used to, I was good with computers.

I had a, I started off an Atari games console in like 78, 79, and then eventually got the Atari computer, learned to program in basic at first and then machine code, assembler language.

uh moved up from that and um then eventually got jobs in computing very low level jobs to start off with network installation windows configuration um then did uh computer science degree uh which i eventually failed because i spent too much time in the student bar

But yeah, so I eventually ended up contracting with a bank.

It's quite high level stuff, but doing very basic sort of networking stuff.

So I had a good background in networking, especially Windows, knew how they communicated and some Linux stroke, Unix, Solaris, stuff like that.

So when, I mean, the internet came to Britain in 95, I think I first had the internet.

And the first thing I searched for was UFOs.

And it was very popular, loads of websites, loads of information.

And fast forward about five or six years, I read the Disclosure Project book, Stephen Greer and his team.

And they told you installations, locations.

And I thought, I've got to have a look at this.

I wanted it from the horse's mouth.

I didn't want to just believe, I wanted to know.

And so I thought I could use my...

basic networking skills, just to do a scan, you know, a light scan on American military networks, which is mad now.

But back then it was just kind of like a playful idea.

And I wrote a Perl script.

Perl is a programming extraction reporting language, just a scripting language.