A British hacker accused of accessing and damaging without authorization 92 computers belonging to the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, Department of Defense and NASA, as well as a number of 6 other computers belonging to private businesses, will be extradited to the United States after House of Lords judges Wednesday denied his appeal. Gary McKinnon, 42, alleged that he was threatened by U.S. prosecutors with life in jail, because under the laws here he faces up to 70 years in a maximum security prison.

His lawyers claim that the U.K. government wants to surrender him in order for the United States to make an example out of him, by imposing a disproportionate punishment. Gary McKinnon alleges he is an unemployed nerd whose hacking of U.S. government computers was an almost innocent act, motivated in part by his obsession with UFOs.

Gary McKinnon's defense team wants to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, but it is unclear whether they can prevent his extradition in time. His computer crimes took place between 2001 and 2002, and he was taken in in 2002 by the U.K. National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU), under the Computer Misuse Act, but he wasn’t initially charged.

U.S. authorities indicted McKinnon later that year on charges of hacking NASA, Department of Defense, Air Force, Army and Navy computers in violation of US computer laws, and they were granted an extradition request in 2005, which was stalled by an appeal.

The loony hacker does not dismiss the accusations but instead claims he wanted to uncover secret stuff that the government is allegedly hiding from the public, which would supposedly greatly benefit mankind. This hidden knowledge includes UFO stuff, Gary McKinnon says. It seems that the only thing he uncovered was the anger of U.S. authorities, which are not happy of his intrusions which caused damage and lost money and functionality.

For example, he is accused of crashing the U.S. Army's network of 2,000 computers for 24 hours, significantly disrupting government functions. Gary McKinnon's attacks also allegedly rendered inoperable 300 computers at a U.S. Navy weapons station immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The network was effectively shut down for an entire week, and for another three weeks afterward, the computers at NWSE were only able to send and receive internal e-mail. The problems lasted for a month, after which NWS Earle regained ability to automatically route Naval message traffic and access the Internet, prosecutors allege.

He also managed to anger U.S. authorities with a message he left on a hacked computer, which said that U.S. foreign policy is akin to government sponsored terrorism these days. Gary McKinnon should have known that the U.S. always takes everything personally, for some obscure reasons.

Gary McKinnon's defense team says that he could be properly prosecuted in the U.K., where he allegedly faced 37-46 months in jail if he cooperated, or 8-10 years if he refused to do so, but the deal was never made into writing and thus he refused it.