Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, was interviewed on BBC Radio 5 earlier this week and said that, whilst he had not changed his view on the case, he did not think he had the power to stop Mr McKinnon being extradited to the US.
According to Clegg – who had previously campaigned for Mr Mckinnon and admitted he had not changed his views on the case – he did not think he had any power to prevent the extradition.
It is, he said, a complex legal case... "what I haven't got the power to do, neither has the Home Secretary, neither even has the Prime Minister, is to completely reverse and undo certain legal aspects of this", he said on Radio 5.
As reported previously by Infosecurity, Mr McKinnon's hacking activities – which he freely admits took place – are alleged to have cost the US military significant sums of money.
Last week, Mr McKinnon's lawyers reported that the review had been adjourned by the Home Office whilst the government reconsiders his extradition order.
Reporting on the Radio 5 interview, the Daily Telegraph said that Mr McKinnon, accused of hacking a number of US networks from his bedroom in north London over eight years ago, "disrupted important US defence IT systems in the days after the September 11 terrorist attacks of 2001."
According to the Telegraph, in an article last year Mr Clegg wrote that it is simply not good enough for Alan Johnson [the then Home Secretary] to claim that nothing can be done.
"It's completely within his power to enact amendments from the Police and Justice Act, which would allow Gary McKinnon to be tried over here", he said at the time.
Infosecurity understands that the central problem now facing the UK government is that far too much time has now passed since the US extradition request and this considerably weakens any legal arguments against his extradition.
"Had Gary's lawyers capitulated at an early stage in the extradition and he were allowed to be sent to the US, then the government would have a strong hand in persauding the US regarding the actual punishment. That no longer appears to be the case", a leading legal and IT security expert told Infosecurity, requesting that he not be named.