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Gary McKinnon — accused of breaking into military and NASA computers in what he claims was a search for UFOs, allegedly causing nearly $1 million in damage — has lost his appeal against extradition to the United States.

In his defense, McKinnon, known online as SOLO, said he was trying to expose security weaknesses and uncover evidence of UFOs.

"I was a man obsessed," McKinnon wrote on The Guardian newspaper's Web site last year, describing a year spent trying to break into U.S. military systems: eight hours a day at a computer in his girlfriend's aunt's house while unkempt, drinking beer and smoking marijuana.

In interviews, he claimed that his hacking uncovered photographic proof of alien spacecraft and the names and ranks of "non-terrestrial officers."

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