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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
Exactly the reason they know they can't allow it.
I - as an EU citizen - would be perfectly entitled to sure the US government if there was any hint they were accessing my data (e.g. Facebook, Microsoft, etc.) - as they have requested of a number of multinational tech companies.
That would be a can of worms that they would not won't opened.
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.
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.