It has been eight years since Gary McKinnon took a troll through the NASA and the US Department of Defence computer systems; with the US government subsequently determined to prosecute him.
However, it would seem despite McKinnon's hacking, which he acknowledged when apprehended, NASA still has crap security.
The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a comprehensive report damning NASA's IT security. The report states NASA failed to consistently implement effective controls to prevent, limit and detect unauthorised access to its networks and systems.
IT security by its very nature is an ever-evolving concept and all organisations face being hacked into.
Here's the rub: NASA networks and systems have been successfully targeted by cyber attacks 1120 times in the past two years according to the report.
Eleven hundred times! And that's in just the past two years!
So where is the wave of prosecutions against hackers for having breached NASA security? If McKinnon could be tracked down under the Computer Misuse Act by the UK National Hi-Tech Crime Unit; given the plethora of intrusions, why no more high profile prosecutions? Eleven hundred hacks in the past two years and the US government is incapable of nailing one further person for hacking into NASA.
Now McKinnon's case has been passed around the justice system, having been before the High Court in London, the House of Lords, the European Court of Human Rights, the director of public prosecutions and various judicial reviews.
The establishment remains resolute. Gary McKinnon committed a crime and he must be extradited to America and be punished. To use a house burglary analogy, the US government claims he broke into a house, smashed some furniture but stole nothing. McKinnon says he went through an open door, rearranged some furniture, left a note and then departed.
Yet, all of those high-minded judges, lords and the UK director of public prosecutions might like to consider the GAO report and wonder about the dearth of prosecutions for the hackers who have followed in McKinnon's footsteps.
Those "legal beagles" (when supping a G&T at their private clubs) also might like to consider their role in serving Gary McKinnon up to the US justice system, for a crime that the US government now no longer seems terribly bothered about securing further convictions on.
If those "beagles" did, and if they truly believed in justice, they would ensure that McKinnon was tried in a UK court, rather than be used as a show pony for the US justice system.
