Hacker Lauri Love Wins Extradition Appeal; Won't Be Shipped Off To The US

from the phew dept

Tue, Feb 6th 2018 10:41am — Mike Masnick

We've been writing about the saga of Lauri Love for almost four years now. If you don't recall, he's the British student who was accused of hacking into various US government systems, and who has been fighting a battle against being extradited to the US for all these years. For those of you old timers, the situation was quite similar to the story of Gary McKinnon, another UK citizen accused of hacking into US government computers, and who fought extradition for years. In McKinnon's case, he lost his court appeals, but the extradition was eventually blocked by the UK's Home Secretary... Theresa May.

In the Lauri Love case, the situation went somewhat differently. A court said Love could be extradited and current Home Secretary Amber Rudd was happy to go along with it. But, somewhat surprisingly, an appeals court has overruled the lower court and said Love should not be extradited:

Lawyers for the 32-year-old, who lives in Suffolk, had argued that he should be tried for his alleged crimes in the UK and that he would be at risk of killing himself if sent to the US.

The court accepted both of the main arguments advanced by Love’s lawyers that there was no reason he could not be tried in England and that he might suffer serious damage to his health if he were extradited.

Love may now face a trial in the UK -- but that is considered a much better option than being shipped overseas. After the ruling, Love noted that this could impact future cases of individuals in similar circumstances, and the link above quotes some lawyers suggesting that it's going to be much more difficult for the US to extradite people for computer crimes going forward. Given the ridiculousness of the CFAA and the way that the US treats computer crimes, this is clearly a good thing.

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Filed Under: cfaa, computer crimes, extradition, hacking, lauri love, uk, us

26 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2018 @ 10:50am

OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
You can never see a downside, Mr Optimist.

By the way, more comments of mine for you to censor, I mean "hide", back at the Nunes story.

Five tries, but since can't block them, and are entirely okay under common law, WHAT is your authority for and point of playing whack-a-mole?
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2018 @ 11:08am

Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
There are already hordes of foreign hackers. The US already has the highest first world prison population. Don't need to add foreigners to the count.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2018 @ 11:09am

Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
You do realize that it's us ACs and regular users clicking that red flag that hides your posts?

And what even does common law have to do with...no, I'm not going to get a reasonable answer out of you.

You don't have a right to force somebody to broadcast your speech.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2018 @ 11:09am

Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
The Techdirt logo doesn't have a gold border. Under the Banana Republic Second Circuit Court of Captain Kangaroo, I hereby place you on time out from your silly postings.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2018 @ 11:16am

Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
if you are going to claim a common law right, you will be able to cite the case where the judgment gave you the right.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2018 @ 11:17am

Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
I told you aleady. I’m the goddamn Batman!
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wereisjessicahyde (profile), 6 Feb 2018 @ 11:17am

Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
Bit rich for an 'Anonymous Coward' to talk about hiding.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2018 @ 11:27am

Re: Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
He will never realize. His perception is his reality and that is unchangeable.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 6 Feb 2018 @ 11:42am

Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.

WHAT is your authority for and point of playing whack-a-mole?

If I had to hazard a guess: They own the platform and you don’t.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2018 @ 12:05pm

Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.

WHAT is your authority for and point of playing whack-a-mole?

Red! No, Green!
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2018 @ 12:20pm

One more sad Aaron's legacy?!
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discordian_eris (profile), 6 Feb 2018 @ 2:32pm

The subtext in all of this is that the court found that the way the US treats prisoners is inhumane. Which is of course correct.
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Captain Cook, 6 Feb 2018 @ 2:45pm

Maybe he'll get 14 years "transportation"
to Australia, like the good old days.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2018 @ 2:57pm

While I understand not wanting to be extradited to the US, being on the spectrum should not become the gold standard for not being held responsible for what you have done and I hope the British courts do that. I am around people with these issues every day and every one of them knows what they are doing. They are not stupid, they do not have the minds of children, and they know when they are doing something they shouldn't.
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Gorshkov (profile), 6 Feb 2018 @ 3:21pm

Re: Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
/man/shit/
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Gorshkov (profile), 6 Feb 2018 @ 3:22pm

Re:
But he's not getting away with anything - the judge said he could be tried in England, under British law. Next step is up to the prosecutors
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2018 @ 3:31pm

Re: Re:
But will the US prosecutors present real evidence in a jurisdiction where they cannot bully somebody into a plea bargain?
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2018 @ 4:21pm

Re: Re: Re: evidence, we don't need no stinking evidence
they will just throw the crapatchya (like a captcha), but they just make up a whole bunch of crap that looks like machine input and then claim that the user violated the CFAA and now they have to survive the crapatchya and explain any of the crap that seems to have stuck to them...

I think monkeys are involved in the process as well since they are so good at throwing crapatchya's (either as judge, jury, or prosecutor... or all 3)
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2018 @ 5:39pm

Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
The US already has its own team of hackers backed by your precious NSA. For the rest of the world, the US is a horde of foreign hackers. Nice try, dumbass.
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That One Guy (profile), 6 Feb 2018 @ 9:26pm

Extradition to the US: Now confirmed as a threat to prisoners
The court accepted both of the main arguments advanced by Love’s lawyers that there was no reason he could not be tried in England and that he might suffer serious damage to his health if he were extradited.

So the court accepted the argument that the US legal/prison system is so bad that extraditing someone to the US would pose a serious risk to the one being extradited, to the point that doing so would be unjust and/or excessive punishment of the accused.

Oh yeah, you know your country's rep is bad when courts in other countries consider extradition to you a bad idea.
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PaulT (profile), 7 Feb 2018 @ 1:08am

Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
"OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer."

Go on, I'll bite. Why would a person not being extradited to a foreign country, but still prosecuted under the laws they broke in their own country, promote others to hack you? nI know you're just being an obnoxious twat, as usual, but I'd intrigued as to how your broken mind connects the dots here. It it that you ignore inconvenient facts, or is it that you buy into a fantasy that people will stop doing bad things if only the US has domination over the world's laws?

"entirely okay under common law"

This is a private, not government site. Common law doesn't apply here. If the community tell you you're not welcome, you have no right to post. This is the community exercising their free speech, not yours violated.
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PaulT (profile), 7 Feb 2018 @ 1:33am

Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
"back at the Nunes story"

Wow, I've just caught up on the comments there too. Seek help. Seriously.
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PaulT (profile), 7 Feb 2018 @ 1:41am

Re: Re: Re:
If they don't, then it's on them. It would also support the idea that he was being railroaded into an unfair trial by the extradition attempt, and support the decision here not to extradite him.
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The Wanderer (profile), 7 Feb 2018 @ 5:59am

Re: Maybe he'll get 14 years "transportation"
"Transportation for life," was the sentence it gave,
"And *then* to be fined forty pound."
The jury all cheered, though the judge said he feared
That the phrase was not legally sound.
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Wendy Cockcroft, 8 Feb 2018 @ 7:13am

Re: Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
I hid your comment, Blue. I actually do it on prinicple because you're such a jerk. I did it by clicking on the red button to the right of your post. If enough of us do this, your post gets hidden.

Please feel free to return the favour.

I'm not sure whether any of my posts have ever been hidden but then again I don't spend my life being obnoxious then complaining that the other readers don't like what I have to say.
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PaulT (profile), 8 Feb 2018 @ 7:23am

Re: Re: Re: OR it could promote hordes of foreign hackers to hijack YOUR computer.
"I'm not sure whether any of my posts have ever been hidden"

Me neither, actually. I comment, tick the box to get an email if someone else posts then move on to something else. I'll generally not return to a thread unless there's a response or I follow a link to it at a later point. So, I don't know how many, if any, are reported (nor for that matter marked as funny or insightful, unless they turn up on one of the weekly posts).

But, you know what? I really don't care. If our resident moron wanted to go through however many IPs are necessary for him to report every one of my comments and have them all hidden, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. I state my honest opinion, and if they were considered worthy of hiding for whatever reason then so be it. People who wished to view my comment could still do so.

I would be rather disappointed that people hiding the posts chose to do so rather than engage with me and discuss why they thought my words were unacceptable. But, I suppose that's what separates the vain fool above who clearly keeps checking back unprompted for whatever reason, and the more intelligent among us who honestly wish to engage conversation.
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