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Should British Hacker Lauri Love Be Tried In America? (theguardian.com)
A 31-year-old autistic man in the U.K. is suspected of hacking U.S. government computer systems in 2013 -- and he has one final chance to appeal his extradition. An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian
Even if Love is guilty, however, there are important legal and moral questions about whether he should be extradited to the US -- a nation that has prosecuted hackers with unrivalled severity, and one where Love could be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison... His remaining hope for mercy is a final appeal against extradition in the high court in November. Love's hope is for a full and fair trial in Britain.
Even if he is found guilty in a British court of the most serious crimes in the US government's indictment, his legal team estimate that he faces just a few months in prison. Failure means Love will be flown to a holding facility in New York, placed on suicide watch and probably forced to take antidepressants, prior to a trial. If he refuses to accept a plea deal and is convicted, he will face $9m (£6.8m) in fines and, experts estimate, a prison term of up to 99 years, a punishment illustrative of the US's aggressive sentencing against hackers under the controversial Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Naomi Colvin, from the human rights group the Courage Foundation, tells the Guardian that "Lauri's case is critically important in determining the reach of America's unusually harsh punitive sanctions for computer crimes."
Even if he is found guilty in a British court of the most serious crimes in the US government's indictment, his legal team estimate that he faces just a few months in prison. Failure means Love will be flown to a holding facility in New York, placed on suicide watch and probably forced to take antidepressants, prior to a trial. If he refuses to accept a plea deal and is convicted, he will face $9m (£6.8m) in fines and, experts estimate, a prison term of up to 99 years, a punishment illustrative of the US's aggressive sentencing against hackers under the controversial Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Naomi Colvin, from the human rights group the Courage Foundation, tells the Guardian that "Lauri's case is critically important in determining the reach of America's unusually harsh punitive sanctions for computer crimes."
Of course not.
Why does the summary mention that he's an autist? Is it trying to suggest that autists shouldn't be held responsible for their actions?
What does this mean for people like creimer and AmiMoJo? Are they not responsible for their actions?
No-one should ever be extradited to some shithole they never set foot in. If he broke Britsh law, let him be tried in the UK by an applicable court. If the Americans claim he violated US law, give them a lecture about jurisdiction and be done with it.
No "ordinary" citizen can possibly afford the cost of invoking the american legal system. It is ruinously expensive and the entire prosecution system knows and relies on that fact.
As a consequence hardly any but the richest can even get as far as a "presumption of innocence" as that requires going to trial and the phenominal financial burn-rate that entails. So ordinary citizens simply have to take whatever sentence the prosecutors offer them. No trial, no evidence, no judgement - just "sign here" and then wait for your prison uniform.
And for foreigners the cost of mounting a defence is even higher. For crimes that weren't even committed on american soil the defence has to bear the added cost of transporting and accommodating any witnesses or experts they need to call. Even british millionaires have been broken by this system.
So in a country where "to be accused is to be guilty", there is no possibility that this guy would ever see justice. Either with or without being able to submit his autism as a defence or mitigation
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
No crime was committed on US soil. Consider that if China made a law saying no-one could access certain websites, should an American who never left their country be tried in China for violating that law?
On top of that, the US has a dreadful record of human rights abuses when it comes to the incarcerated and a legal system that funnels people into private prisons with the emphasis being on revenue generation, not rehabilitation. Their record in such cases is one of extreme and disproportionate punitive measurements enacted out of embarrassment caused to their institutions, not response to the crime committed. That alone makes the case for extradition indefensible, and Britain should refuse.
Of course: he committed the crimes against US computers, the crime happened there, so he should be extradited if the extradition treaty between UK and US provides for this.
A politician war criminal like for example, german nazis, have committed their crimes basically all over Europe and Asia, never set foot into the countries they attacked, the extermination camps were not in the German Reich either but in occupied areas, etc.. In the Nuremberg trials they still were sentenced to the harshest sentenced possible for these kind of crimes, even when they never set foot at the place where the crime happened. So there really is a lot of legal precedent for this.
If the US laws are too harsh, then this is a different problem. The defendant can't decide where to get sentenced based on the most lenient laws he can choose from. This is not what "in dubio pro reo" means...
Answer: look in the extradition treaty.
If you don't like "America's unusually harsh punitive sanctions for computer crimes", get your government to renegotiate the treaty.
He did not commit any crime while in the US jurisdiction so no. He was in the UK at the time and subject to UK law so he should only be tried in the UK. To do otherwise means that the UK has lost all sovereignty because then while in the UK you don't just have to follow UK law but also US law over which the UK has no control.
Extradition is intended to prevent someone committing a crime while in a country's jurisdiction and then running away to a foreign country to escape answering for it. If the US does not think that UK law is strict enough to prevent hacking attacks like this the solution is to block all internet connections from the UK not try to enforce US law on someone who has probably never even visited the US.
According to the FBI, Lauri Love and his co-conspirators caused in excess of $5,000,000 in damages in the U.S.. Even allowing for likely exaggeration, that's more than several average people combined would earn in a lifetime.
Had Love acted with government sanction, what he did would be considered an act of war. It is not reasonable to have him protected from the consequences of his actions.
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The article gets wrong the priority of the U.S. Constitution and the statute he would be sentenced under. It is unconstitutional to give a cruel and unusual punishment. No U.S. law can permit it. If the sentencing guidelines would calculate a cruel and unusual punishment, it is illegal as being unconstitutional.
Given that the hack he is accused of carrying out for was defacing the U.S. Commission for sentencing guidelines, and protesting sentences against hackers as being too harsh, if he is convicted it is hard to say that he didn't know he had it coming. He would have actually studied up on the punishment before doing the crime.
U.S. Prosecutors will probably offer a deal: turn on your compatriots for a reduced sentence. Prosecution in Great Britain will have little leverage to force that.
If you commit a crime you need to face judgement for that crime. The issue usually comes down to where the crime was committed. When someone walks into a bank and robs , it's very clear where the crime was committed and where the accused will potentially face a trial.
The question of whether one should face judgement in one location or another isn't new. Mail fraud, telephone scams and other crimes have faced these same questions for generations. If it is determined based on historical precedent that the crime was committed in the US, he should face his accusers in a US court.
... for its crap security. This is not the first time that some mentally disabled idiot from abroad has been wandering around inside important systems. Last time it was 100% because the installation passwords were still in place. That is not hacking, it is incompetence. It is security that should be on trial not some idiot from abroad.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
for breaking, sabotaging, and spying on European citizens, politicians, and banking and industry executives. Short of explosive weapons, it's literally an act of war.
For the UK to be bending over on this just shows what a bitch of the US they actually are.
Any government with any actual balls would defend their sovereignty.
When someone from country A commits wire fraud to steal from someone in country B, where should they be able to be tried? If both countries have signed an extradition treaty, then they certainly ought to be eligible to be tried in country B for country B has an obligation to protect its citizens.
This is quite different from what was commonplace for many years where U.K. courts would punish foreign citizens (including Americans) for content they published *only* in foreign countries that was legal to publish in those foreign countries.
In any event, if this individual is extradited and sent to the U.S. and incarcerated there, a free name change should defintely be provided to him.
He isn't going to do well in the US Prison System as a male with a name like "Lauri Love".
There are cultural differences, and sensitivity needs to be applied.
1) Donate lavishly to politicians.
2) Maintain a network of political contacts.
3) Have a team of highly capable, highly paid attorneys.
4) Be wealthy.
A primer on how to avoid prosecution.
But he wasn't in US jurisdiction, so it is possible no crime was committed.
No, war crimes exist because the whole point of war is to change the boundaries of jurisdiction. Jurisdiction can always be determined.
today diagnosis of many of these disorders is almost a crime in of its self. If there is reasonable evidence that he was involved then he should stand trial in the USA just as if an American was hacking UK computers. This is really a non event except for the fact he is saying he is Autistic and shouldn't be held accountable. American courts will take that into consideration too.
And the odd thing is that I've seen a recent outpouring of people in highly competent positions come forward and say that something isn't right.
He didn't destroy anything. How is this an attack. They are attempting to punish him for trespassing which they say is horrible because it happened with a computer. You know they can't give him a jury of his peers in a foreign country, so why bother.
The game is already completely rigged so that the common man makes little difference. How do you think such bad choices for president got put into place in the first place. Powerful people want powerless people holding the reins of government, the easier to get their way. That is the current status quo.
You should have registered. Slashdot has this feature where you can mark other users as friends and after you made that analysis, it would have been nice to mark you up.
Not even close. US has been too harsh (Far too harsh) in prosecuting hacking but there have literally been people executed for hacking. To my knowledge, we as Americans have yet to match that.
To my ignorant, flat world, black and white, American eyes at least.
The crime was committed in the US regardless of where Lauri was. I don't know what you're smoking to think otherwise.
No, you're wrong and GP is right. You argue with "no single jurisdiction" with jurisdiction can always be determined. You don't fucking get it and should stay out of the conversation.
That's about Trump.
"Sir Scott Baker Review Of Extradition Treaty Find UK-US Treaty Not Biased Against Britons"
Thing is, he wasn't in the US, so UK laws take precedence.
If he hacked a US server without breaking UK law then he didn't break the law and it's unconscionable that he should be extradited.
If he hacked a US server and broke UK law then he should be prosecuted in the UK for breaking the UK law.
Otherwise you're basically stating that we should all be shipped over to Syria and tortured for failing to support ISIS.
Seriously, are we not supposed to convict criminals that claim to be autistic?
Failure means Love will be flown to a holding facility in New York, placed on suicide watch and probably forced to take antidepressants, prior to a trial.
And in the U.K., wouldn't they take similar precautions to keep a high-risk prisoner safe? Would they deny him needed medication? Turn a blind eye to his suicide attempts?
Come on, these days it seems like nearly half of all school-age children are considered to be 'on the autism spectrum'... (in truth it's more like 2%)
Ken
He caused, through his direct actions, crimes to be committed on US soil.
If he put a bomb in a box and mailed to someone in the US from England, and that bomb exploded on US soil, killing someone, should he be convicted in the US for murder or be subject only to lying on the U.K. Postal forms about the contents of his package?
Ken
Of course he should.
According to treaty, it would be a crime in the UK as well as in the USA, so: Yes he should be extradited to face justice in the country to which he gave offense.
As for the argument of the potential punishment being too harsh... I doubt he would receive a slap on the wrist if he had hacked the UK government. Her Majesty does not take kindly to being fucked with, why should hacking her closest ally be forgiven?
If you can't do the time don't do the crime. It's that simple.
{^_^}
I may have this wrong but I believe that extradition by the USA has been requested because they won't try him in the UK, and if he were tried in the UK he could not be tried for the same offense in the US
He must be very high functioning
Autism is a very wide spectrum of personality disroders, from the barely noticeable, slightly eccentric to the severely disabling. We aren't all drooling and rocking in a corner, you know, but what we all have in common is diminished ability to take part in social interactions, and perhaps as a way of compensating for this, an ability to concentrate more deeply than most people. Many of us are able to learn how to handle social situations, although I personally have never learned to fully enjoy being around a lot of people. Somewhat counterintuitively, perhaps, I think many with ASD like being the centre of attention when they are in a crowd - it gives you the feeling of being in control of your situation.
About this guy - I can understand easily enough how he can have hacked his way into something sensitive without quite understanding the implications; I have been there myself, in a sense: you do something that shuts out the world and gives you peace, and you know that you have no intentions of causing harm or mischief in any way. And to many autists, it is very hard to see things from somebody else's perspective - I have learned to do it, but some simply don't. My grandson is more severely affected than me, and he fails the following test:
You play with two dolls, who each have a box for keeping things in. One of them has a thing - say, a coin - which they put into their box; they that dolls leaves. The other doll takes the coin out and puts in their own box, and then the first doll comes back. Then you ask the child - where will the first doll look for the coin? An autistic child will tend to point to the box where they have just seen the coin being placed - they have real difficulty understanding that first doll hasn't seen what happened while they were away. It can be learned, but it just doesn't come natural.
I can't see how it makes sense to prosecute or punish a guy like Lauri Love - Firstly, although he can probably understand why it is regarded as a serious transgression, after it has been explained to him with some care, he is unlikely to have realised it in the situation; in that respect he is not dissimilar to those that commit crime while insane, and punishment is not appropriate. Secondly, punishment is meant to be a manifestation of society's "righteous retribution" - we punish the people who commit crime, because we assume they understand what they are doing; they choose to do what they do for selfish reasons and can be justifiably regarded as enemies of common society. In this case, it can't be regarded as righteous, or certainly not by most people, I think, and thus it would bring the law into disrepute.