Between February 2001 and March 2002, the Scottish hacker Gary McKinnon ( aka Solo ), exploited unused default passwords in United States military computers for the purpose of gaining access to secret information about UFOs and other technology that he believed could benefit the public at large. He was unable to discover and save any meaningful data before he was caught. However he does claim to have gained access to secret NASA files where he saw an unretouched photo of a UFO. He believes this confirms Disclosure Project participant Donna Hare's testimony that NASA removes UFO images from its high altitude photos before releasing them to the public.