Gary McKinnon, a computer expert who hacked into dozens of US military computers, lost his appeal to the European court of human rights today and faces extradition to the US in the next fortnight, his solicitor said.

McKinnon has fought a long-standing battle with authorities over his extradition to the US, which has dubbed him the "the world's most dangerous hacker".

The computer expert broke into the Pentagon's system from his north London flat and left a message saying "your security is crap".

Last month, he lost his battle against extradition in a House of Lords ruling. He was granted a temporary delay two weeks later by the European court of human rights, pending the meeting of its chamber today.

Karen Todner, from Kaim Todner solicitors, said her client was "distraught" about the decision and appealed to the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, to intervene.

"Mr McKinnon has recently been diagnosed as suffering from Asperger Syndrome. As a result, we will be writing to the Home Secretary again inviting a prosecution in this country," she said.

"Our client now faces the prospect of prosecution and imprisonment thousands of miles away from his family in a country in which he has never set foot."

"Our client's case highlights a worrying trend where UK citizens are at the mercy of the ever-increasing tendency of overseas prosecutors to extend their jurisdiction to crimes allegedly committed in this country."

Using the codename Solo, the 42-year-old hacked into 53 US Army computers and 26 US Navy computers, including those at the US naval weapons station Earle in New Jersey, which is responsible for replenishing munitions and supplies for the Atlantic fleet.

The US military said he left 300 computers at a US navy weapons station unusable immediately after 9/11.

He was caught in 2002 as he tried to download a grainy black-and-white photograph he believed was an alien spacecraft from a Nasa computer housed in the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas.

He was easily traced by the authorities because he used his own email address.

Mark Summers, an official representing the US government, said McKinnon's hacking was "intentional and calculated to influence and affect the US government by intimidation and coercion".

American officials claim he caused $700,000 (£354,000) damage and threatened national security.

If extradited, McKinnon faces up to 70 years in prison and his lawyers have argued he could even be given "enemy combatant" status, the same category applied to terrorist suspects interned at Guantánamo Bay.

After last month's House of Lords decision, McKinnon said the case had proved devastating in the six years since he was arrested. With his bail conditions barring him from using the internet, a return to his previous work in IT is near impossible and potential employers are scared off.

"I've lost two jobs because of this; my bosses just didn't want to be associated with the publicity," he said.

"Gary McKinnon is neither a terrorist nor a terrorist sympathiser," said Todner. "His case could have been properly dealt with by our own prosecuting authorities. Instead, we believe that the British government declined to prosecute him to enable the US government to make an example of him.

"American officials involved in this case have stated that they want to see him 'fry'. The consequences he faces if extradited are both disproportionate and intolerable and we will be making an immediate application to the European court to prevent his removal."

McKinnon has consistently argued he was merely a "bumbling computer nerd" who caused no damage but was merely searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Between 2001 and 2002, he scanned thousands of US government computers from his bedroom, looking for loopholes which would help him get inside their networks in order to prove his contention that the existence of aliens had been covered up by the CIA.

He left messages on the desktops of computers he had hacked into, a mistake that allowed the authorities to trace him.

"It got a bit silly," he told the Guardian in 2005. "I suppose it means I'm not a secretive, sophisticated, checking-myself-every-step-of-the-way type of hacker."

McKinnon's lawyers have argued he should face trial in the UK as the hacking raids were conducted in Britain. He would face a much shorter sentence under Britain's more lenient computer crime laws. The defence argued he was being unfairly targeted because his work embarrassed the US security services.

They argued that an attempt by US prosecutors to make a deal with McKinnon - in which he would be offered a six-month sentence for his cooperation - constituted an unfair derailment of British legal procedures. That contention was rejected by the law lords, who said that granting the appeal would "imperil the integrity of the extradition process".

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood said in the written judgment: "The difference between the American system and our own is not perhaps so stark as the appellant's argument suggests."

Computer security experts said it was unlikely US prosecutors would give up their pursuit. "The US is making a clear stand that anyone making any attempts to compromise its computers and data will face the consequences," said Graham Cluley, of IT security company Sophos.

Hollywood writer-producer Aaron Sorkin, co-creator of The West Wing, is to write a film about the creation of Facebook - and has entered into the social networking spirit of the website by setting up a group page to find out "how this works".

Sorkin, who also scripted recent Tom Hanks film Charlie Wilson's War along with the Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson feature A Few Good Men, announced his latest movie project to users of the social networking site by launching a group page on Facebook called Aaron Sorkin & The Facebook Movie. Sorkin has also set up his own private profile page on Facebook.

"I've just agreed to write a movie for Sony and producer Scott Rudin about how Facebook was invented," Sorkin wrote in his introduction on the group page.

"I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I've started this page."

The film is likely to look at how, following its creation in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg in his university dorm, Facebook quickly became an internet, business and social phenomenon with more than 100 million users worldwide.

Membership at first was restricted to Ivy League university students before being expanded to all US and Canadian universities and high schools, and was later opened to web users worldwide.

Facebook's overnight success changed the life, and massively increased the wealth, of Zuckerberg and friends Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, who helped set up the site.

Sorkin wrote in his Facebook group page: "I understand there are a few other people using Facebook pages under my name, which I find more flattering than creepy - but this is me. I don't know how I can prove that, but feel free to test me.

"I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I've started this page. (Actually it was started by my researcher, Ian Reichbach, because my grandmother has more Internet savvy than I do and she's been dead for 33 years.)"

Embracing the community ethos of the social network, Sorkin asked members to get in touch with stories relating to the site and engaged users in a Q&A on his group page fielding questions on issues as diverse as studio interference and the best place to get cheap food in New York.

In answer to a question about the proposed Facebook project, he said: "I honestly don't know how I'm going to write the movie yet."

Sorkin signed off from his introductory message on Facebook saying: "I feel about this introduction the way I felt about Sophie's Choice - It could have been funnier."

The creator of the West Wing, Sports Night and the short-lived Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip recently told the US version of GQ magazine that he had had a meeting with Sue Naegle, prompting speculation that his next TV project might be a cable show.

Despite being offered billions for the site, Zuckerberg has remained independent, taking investment from just a few interested parties, including PayPal creator Peter Thiel and Microsoft.

The company was reportedly valued at about £8bn last year when Microsoft invested approximately £125m for a small stake in the company.

Facebook's key rivals in social networking, MySpace and Bebo, have both sold out to larger media organisations.

MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation for $580m (£299m) in 2005, while Bebo was sold to Time Warner's internet arm, AOL, in March this year for $850m.

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As far as space monsters go it is less menacing than Daleks or Klingons, but an unwanted intruder has made its way aboard the international space station.

Gammima.AG, a malicious password-swiping computer virus, has broken new frontiers, by infecting two laptops on the ISS orbiting 215 miles above Earth.

The virus was first detected on Earth in August 2007 infecting machines to steal login names for popular online games.

Nasa officials have begun an investigation into how the virus made it aboard the ISS, but it is thought it might have been inadvertently carried into space on an astronaut's USB drive.

Reports suggested that once on board the station, the memory device was plugged into the computers, infecting them both.

Computers on the ISS are not directly connected to the internet but they have access to a satellite data link. They are not part of the space station's "command and control" network, Nasa said.

It is understood astronauts were using the laptops to compose email and store information on nutritional experiments.

Once it has scooped up passwords and login names Gammima.AG tries to send them back to a central server. It targets a total of 10 online games most of which are popular in the Far East.

Nasa, who described the virus as a "nuisance" is now working with its international partners on the space station, including Russians, to find out how it got on board. Nasa spokesman Kelly Humphries said: "It's not a frequent occurrence, but this isn't the first time."

The ISS is a joint project between Nasa, the European Space Agency, and the space agencies of Canada, Russia and Japan. It has been continuously manned by astronauts since 2000.