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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.
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 goes both ways. We are currently using the principle behind this law to shield drone pilots from repercussions. There's also this case where the US says a border guard was within his rights to shoot a man in Mexico.
Given what we have to lose, it's unlikely that the US government will change its position on this issue.
There actually is a precedent allowing American citizens to sue other countries that support terrorism under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, but I assume the court decided Ethiopia's hacking was not an act of terrorism.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Flatow v. Iran case details: http://www.leagle.com/decision...
I only point this out because the degree of legislation or judicial interpretation might be much less than people assume.
If anyone is interested in the Flatow v. Iran case and it's aftermath NPR's Planet Money did a great podcast on it: http://www.npr.org/2017/01/12/... (I swear it's not left or right leaning story)
There's a case winding its way through courts right now where a US agent, inside one of these border airlock areas, controlled by the US but partially on Mexican soil, shot at a someone and the bullet accidentally killed a Mexican on the Mexican side inside. Can his estate sue the US?
You'd be surprised what a mess the case is.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.