The United States should be thanking hacker Gary McKinnon for exposing holes in its security, according to Boris Johnson.

London’s mayor joined calls for Mr McKinnon to be spared extradition to the US, where he is set to stand trial for hacking into NASA and military computers.

His comments came as Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, broke ranks with Government colleagues and suggested Mr McKinnon, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, should be tried in the UK.

A High Court last week ruled against Mr McKinnon’s appeal against extradition, paving the way for him to stand trial in the US.

Mr McKinnon, from Wood Green in North London, has admitted hacking computers owned by NASA, the US Army, US Navy, Department of Defence, and the US Air Force, but insists his actions were not malicious.

He has said he was looking for evidence the US authorities were covering up the existence of UFOs and sources of infinite energy.

Mr Johnson, writing in the Daily Telegraph, said there was no need for a trial because Mr McKinnon had already admitted his crime.

The Mayor said: “He has generously helped America to prepare against attack from a more sinister foe.

“If it was so ludicrously easy to penetrate these encryptions, then what could al-Qaeda have done? Just imagine if America’s defence establishment had commissioned IT consultants to probe their systems as exhaustively as Gary McKinnon.

“The contract would have been worth far more than £500,000.

“McKinnon did it without charge, sitting up all the night, hardly eating, smoking heavily and spending so long tap-tapping in his dressing gown that his girlfriend gave up on him.

“The Americans shouldn’t be threatening him with jail. They should be offering him consultancy.”

Mr Hain said he would prefer Mr McKinnon to stand trial in the UK, in comments to the Daily Mail, which has led a campaign to prevent the extradition.

He said: “We could then have had a position where it could have been assessed in a British context – after all, he was sitting in his bedroom by a computer, as a kind of computer geek zapping the American defence system and therefore he was committing an offence on British soil.”

Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, insisted this weekend that he was unable to intervene in the case.

Peckham MP Harriet Harman, Labour’s Deputy Leader, also said that the Government could not prevent Mr McKinnon standing trial in the US.

If he was convicted and received a jail sentence, Britain would ask that he be returned home to serve his time in a UK jail, said Ms Harman.

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