Russian Snared By The FBI Sentenced To 3 Years

Mark Cantrell writes "Vasiliy Gorshkov, one of two Russian crackers who were arrested in November 2000 after the FBI broke into their computer systems were sentenced Friday. Taking pity on Gorshkov's family, they sentenced Gorshkov to 3 years in prison and a fine of nearly $700,000 USD. They also mention how a U.S. judge found that the FBI wasn't breaking any laws in breaking into a Russian computer system, despite the fact that they were breaking a Russian law doing so. So apparently, it's ok for Americans to break Russian law if they're in the U.S., but not ok for Russians to break U.S. law, even while in Russia."

Comments

Re:No wonder everyone hates the USA

[thelexx]

Have you read it? Please post a link if you have, I can't find it. What I can find are several articles with statements like these:

From http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_312763.html
The men claim the FBI acted improperly by covertly stealing their passwords and using that information to gather evidence against them.

Their lawyers contend that all material obtained from the computers should be suppressed ahead of any trial.

Seattle District Judge John Coughenour rejected the motion on the grounds that "the (FBI) agents had good reason to fear that if they did not copy the data, (the) defendant's co-conspirators would destroy the evidence".

He also added privacy rights contained within the Fourth Amendment do not extend to individuals or property located outside the US.

From http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=5 82&e=1&cid=582&u=/nm/20021005/wr_nm/tech_russianha cker_dc
Russian's state security service, the FSB, lodged a complaint against the FBI earlier this year, alleging that the FBI didn't have authorization to break into a computer system in Russia and download files.

The FBI countered, and the judge agreed, that Russian law does not apply to the agents' actions.

Seems pretty clear the judge is saying that the FBI doesn't need to follow the laws of either our own country or those of any other nation in an international pursuit of 'justice'.