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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.
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
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)
Different country, different laws, different crime (civil vs. criminal).
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
What if they allowed this, and then massive numbers of people sued the US government in their own courts
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
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!)
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 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.
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
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.