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Hacking Victim Can't Sue Foreign Government For Hacking Him On US Soil, Says Court (vice.com)
According to Motherboard, a court of appeals in Washington D.C. ruled that an American citizen can't sue the Ethiopian government for hacking into his computer and monitoring him with spyware. "The decision on Tuesday is a blow to anti-surveillance and digital rights activists who were hoping to establish an important precedent in a widely documented case of illegitimate government-sponsored hacking." From the report: In late 2012, the Ethiopian government allegedly hacked the victim, an Ethiopian-born man who goes by the pseudonym Kidane for fear for government reprisals. Ethiopian government spies from the Information Network Security Agency (INSA) allegedly used software known as FinSpy to break into Kidane's computer, and secretly record his Skype conversations and steal his emails. FinSpy was made by the infamous FinFisher, a company that has sold malware to several governments around the world, according to researchers at Citizen Lab, a digital watchdog group at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, who studied the malware that infected Kidane's computer. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that Kidane didn't have jurisdiction to sue the Ethiopian government in the United States. Kidane and his lawyers invoked an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), which says foreign governments can be sued in the U.S. as long as the entire tort on which the lawsuit is based occurred on American soil. According to the court, however, the hacking in this case didn't occur entirely in the U.S. "Ethiopia's placement of the FinSpy virus on Kidane's computer, although completed in the United States when Kidane opened the infected email attachment, began outside the United States," the decision read. "[It] gives foreign governments carte blanche to do whatever they want to Americans in America so long as they do it by remote control," Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group who represented Kidane in this first-of-its-kind lawsuit, told Motherboard.
The CIA has been doing this for ages.
I guess here is your big chance to fuck us without retaliation. Also Dear Russia, I guess you all were right to do what you did all along.
for corporations to extradite* people from other countries for copyright infringement ...
* by buying the correct political process
Look at what would happen if you shot an American on American soil from Canada or Mexico.
Now get your lawmakers to apply that same logic to digital aggression and draft some new legislation for what happens if you commit a computer offence against someone across legal jurisdictions.
If the US wants spy on a US citizens computer, they contact the British Government, allow the British Government to hack and break in and collect all the data necessary.
100% legal since the US government doesn't do it. But then the British Government hands all data over to the US agencies and parallel construction method is dreamt up.
If they allowed this case for Ethiopia they would have to allow it for the British Government. Can't have that happening.....
Captcha: poetic
It strikes me that anyone who wants to play an active role in this world (as opposed to being a passive consumer) needs a good, strong understanding of safe computer practices. Such people will always have opponents (if not enemies) who will want to control them and know what they are doing and who they are corresponding with. And there are an abundance of readily available tools out in the wild to infiltrate the computers of the careless or the unwary.
Which is unfortunate, since most such people are not techie types, and likely do not have sufficient self-discipline to consistently follow instructions about computer safety.
The US government uses foreign governments to spy on US citizens, just because the US isn't allowed doesn't mean the NSA/CIA/FBI don't use foreign governments to do their work for them...
People in the US are the most tracked people online by foreign countries, because many white extremists fund Islamic terrorism just because that is in their best interest (even though you're more likely to get killed by thunder than by a terrorist, about 100,000 people die of extremism each year ON THE WORLD!!! 56 million die of natural causes/diseases/illness)
The whole "fighting isis" thing is just complete and utter hyperealist HOGWASH created by the media (the scale of terror actually = fake news)
hacks us govt computers from the UK and is shipped over to the US for prosecution?
something not quite right here.
What if they allowed this, and then massive numbers of people sued the US government in their own courts
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
This incident should be ruled on by the Elders of the Internet, since the Internet is a world-wide network without borders (except for China). But they have no courts of law, so until they get one it's the world-wild-web out there.
The gander I'm wondering about are people who have hacked US government systems while not on US soil. Seems like the US should not be able to extradite them either....
According to the court, however, the hacking in this case didn't occur entirely in the U.S. "Ethiopia's placement of the FinSpy virus on Kidane's computer, although completed in the United States when Kidane opened the infected email attachment, began outside the United States,"
So based on this decision a foreign government can also send letter bombs to get rid of dissidents and be safe from lawsuits by any relatives since, in the words of the court, "although the bomb exploded in the United States when the recipient opened the booby trapped letter, the attack began outside the United States".
So besides squashing this lawsuit will the US do anything?
"Hacking Victim Can't Sue Foreign Government For Hacking Him On US Soil, Says Court "
It SHOULD say "US Court Rules that it lacks jurisdiction to hear a lawsuit against a sovereign government by a private citizen."
It didn't say that the hacking victim can't sue the Ethiopian government, just that he can't sue the Ethiopian government in U.S. Court. Sounds like the U.N. or the African Council of Nations, or another international body - someone that has any purview over the Ethiopian government would be the place to go.
Otherwise, we'd have every-day, all-day long lawsuits of individuals against governments around the world - further clogging up our courts - with people expecting the U.S. to uphold their private agendas against other countries.
They are making RETALIATION HACKING legal very soon... Start Making Honeypot Systems, that do NOTHING but infect the systems that attack them. BAIT THEM OUT AND DESTROY THEM! (Soon to be Legal in your home town!)
How surprising - the country with the most prolific espionage apparatus not keen to open itself up to reciprocal suits in other country. Please contact me when you nitwits climb off your high horse.
When a US citizen is meddling in the affairs of a foreign government, on their own soil, with their own people, the US government is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Whether or not to assist is no longer a matter of principle, but prudence. The court got it right because you cannot sit on US soil and remotely target a foreign government and then cry uncle when they retaliate. That is, by definition, literal hypocrisy in this case. "Wahhh, Ethiopia targeted a US citizen." Well, what was a US citizen doing remotely agitating in Ethiopian society against their government?
Whether you like it or not is immaterial. What their government did was not disproportionate. Had they sent a death squad to kill him, that would be an entirely different matter as it would involve armed agents invading US soil and committing a violent crime. We often talk about how stuff that happens online is treated differently when it shouldn't be, but pretending that this is an act of serious aggression against the US and US citizens is just that, but in reverse.
No, it only applies to governments and those working for them, not individuals.
No people should not be allowed to sue foreign governments for this type of attack. Its not a job for the courts. The Executive should treat attacking a US Citizen on our on soil and act of war however. This sort of thing out to trigger an immediate response, at the very least cessation of all foreign aide to the nation in question and a banking sanctions against the government.
Send a strong and clear message this WONT be tolerated!
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
What is good for the goose ...
If they would not do that, the rest of the world would sue the US out of business within a week,
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Some years back the Chilean government murdered a guy they didn't like with a carbomb in Washington D.C. It somewhat annoyed the Reagan government but the perpetrators were released without charge. When governments break laws in other nations it tends to get sorted out with diplomatic shouting instead of anything related to the rule of law.
I guess nukes are ok too then as long as you launch them from another country.
So what choice do you have to sue another government? Go to international court? They won't pick up shit like this and the foreign government won't admit and won't turn up and won't ackowledge. US would do exactly the same if another government sue them.
So what are you gonna do? Sanction them? Go to war? The collateral damage would be too great for that.
Common sense dude. There is too much injustice in the world to address everything fairly legally and the common approach is to control it so it doesn't go out of control.
I suppose the prices for bribing a judge have gotten down to the level where even the skinnys can afford one. This makes no sense since they are pushing to make it legal for foreign governments to be able to sue US citizens for piracy and possibly other breaches of us law.
be a mouse that roared.
Yep. Should he have spied the US Government that poor ethiopian would have been charged as a spy, and would enjoy a long and fruitful stay in Guantanamo Bay. Next to the room they have prepared for Julian Assange, just in case they can get him.
But as the guy spied a nobody, then nobody will wage a war for him.
A pity.
For a while lots of telemarketing scams were located in Texas. Multiple people around the U.S. had tried to sue them for fraud, but the Attorney General of the victim's state would say they had no jurisdiction, and the Texas AG would say that his mandate was to defend citizens of Texas.
So as long as you made the call from Texas into another state, no one would take the case.
Note that yes, there were clearly interstate commerce laws being broken, but no one would prosecute.
Nope, no sig
Isn't this considered an act of war?
If he was Jewish, and suing a Swiss bank, then he could get some justice.
So does this mean that if Hilary Clinton's 'private' server was "hacked" by the Russians it was 100% legal and totally fine?
Just throwing that out there ;P
The Supreme Court holds jurisdiction where the case is between a US citizen and a foreign government.
It is legal for the US government to hack non-US residents inside the USA (and likely elsewhere), so why would it not be "just" for other governments to hack americans inside their countries _and_ elsewhere (which includes the USA)?
Note that I'd rather it were illegal for governments to hack anyone, anywhere, except for counter-intelligence (note: *not* for regular spying or dissident-hunting).
Governments including the United States government should not be able to go after people for "crimes" that aren't physically in the United States. And vice versa a foreign government shouldn't be held to account for US laws. That said governments should be focused on finding and fixing vulnerabilities- not hacking. Security comes not from attacking others- but from being able to properly defend oneself and withholding vulnerabilities, promoting proprietary solutions, and similar is doing a disinterest to everybody.
Take it up with the GP poster who blamed the entire US system, devised by Washington, Jefferson etc on liberals.
I thought I was being obvious enough but perhaps I should have put liberals in quotes.