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Peter Adekeye Freed, Judge Outraged At Cisco's Involvement
puppetman writes "Ars Technica has an article relating the recent release of Peter Adekeye, a former Cisco employee who was arrested in Canada on trumped-up charges that appear to have been fabricated by Cisco. Slashdot covered the story back in April, 2011, during which time Mr Adekeye was still being detained. In the ruling, the judge squashed the US extradition request, rebuked both the Canadian and American authorities for 'an appalling abuse of process,' and goes as far as to say that the criminal proceeding was launched on behalf of Cisco, to mirror the civil proceedings that Mr Adekeye had launched against the powerful Cisco." The full judgement (PDF) is quite readable and damning.
Great. It's "damning". Yay.
Will we see any penalties for Cisco breaking the law?
*crickets*
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They don't rely much on Canadian precedent, though.
The same company that's all but leading the charge to lower the corporate tax rate in the US, while simultaneously shipping jobs overseas?
Whatever for?
This is just another sad statement showing the "End of America" and the dream it was, under Bush/Cheney civil liberties became secondary and Obama/Biden has done nothing to restore justice. If we in the US isn't careful we'll start blaming our countries problems on the poor/sick/gay, which is only one step away from rounding up groups and shipping them off in rail cars.
Effective use of mass transit in this counry. I don't think so.
Thank God for Canada. This case illustrates exactly why the trend internationally to reduce the role of the courts in extradition to mere rubber stamping is so dangerous (for eg, the EAW and the removal of the need for a prima facie case to be made to the responding court in new extradition treaties).
Bureaucrats have long viewed the need for anything other than a simple request for extradition to be produced to the other country as an annoying inconvenience and, arguing that extradition is merely an 'administrative' and not a criminal procedure, have secured changes in the law in some countries. But how can anything resulting in the removal of someone's freedom *not* be a criminal procedure? Were it not for the fact that some civil law states in Europe absolutely refuse to hand over their own citizens to any other State (I suppose with the exception of within the EU under the EAW), we would rapidly be heading towards a world where any government hands over any person to any other government on flimsy grounds. This is the case already between certain countries.
Have you ever noticed the "WHOOSH"ing sound mass transit vehicles make?
linuxrocks points out that Canadian courts will look at this precedent, even if American's don't.
however the DOJ has to deal with courts in other countries. especially in extradition cases, of course.
cases like this are embarassements. when other countries completely trash our justice system, it looks bad, it makes the US look bad, and it makes the president look bad. this is not some crazy anti-american judge in a dictatorship, this is an ordinary canadian judge, whose justice system largely derives from the same source (english common law) as ours does.
its not just about the precedent in US law... the DOJ has to look at what a Canadian court is likely to do, before it orders extradition. So the US prosecutors will be looking at the history of Canadian law, and deciding whether or not they have a chance of extraditing someone, before they spend all of the time and money, and risk embarassing losses, to actually try to do it.
And there's the rub. "They're a company, so, of course they're just a big sociopath" isn't really an excuse, is it?
the CFAA (18 USC 1030) was the law they attempted to use against Adekeye
this law is seriously flawed and possibly unconstitutional.
Lori Drew, Thomas Drake, Peter Adekeye, George Hotz, all of them allegedly violated it. What kind of law outlaws such a broad range of things?
Corporate Death Penalty
Since the US treats corporations as individuals this is not a bad idea and has the huge benefit that nobody actually dies. Just shut the corporation down, all property is confiscated and sold to recompense the victims and any excess donated to relevant charities and all IP is released the to public domain (to repay damage to society the company caused). Executives get nothing - all pay, bonues, pensions etc cancelled (and they may be liable for further criminal charges/penalties if warranted) and most importantly even the shareholders get nothing so that they are very strongly motivated to not turn a blind eye if they suspect something is rotten.
Of course we will never see anything like that actually happen because the corporations are far too powerful but wouldn't that be an amazing deterrent to corporate misbehaviour!
Linksys being a brand much more likely to be found in your average home, for those who want to protest with their wallets - an act which I highly encourage in this case.
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