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British lad to be extradited to US for hacking, this is so wrong!

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Original post by Studentus-anonymous

TBH It's the UK's fault. The country should know when to say no to the often unfair and one-way extradition treaty with America, and say we'll deal with the guy ourselves.


I don't see why it's unfair or one-way. Both countries make use of the treaty. In fact, the only party to the treaty to refuse a request is the UK. The US has responded positively to all of our requests.
Original post by leakyroof
Congrats on being uninformed.


I'm sure that sounded better in your head.

Don't worry little buddy.


Original post by InnerTemple
I don't see why it's unfair or one-way. Both countries make use of the treaty. In fact, the only party to the treaty to refuse a request is the UK. The US has responded positively to all of our requests.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK%E2%80%93US_extradition_treaty_of_2003
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Luke7456
Have you read "the Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins? have you read his other books or seen his presentations? this guy is undoubtedly a genius.
Or are you saying he is in fact autistic? I have not seen anything to suggest that perhaps you have something you could provide?

or are we talking about Neil DeGrasse Tyson, same applies again.


I have yes. I'm not saying that either Dawkins or Tyson aren't intelligent, they are, but I haven't seen anything of them that would suggest to me that either could be considered a genius.
Original post by limetang
I have yes. I'm not saying that either Dawkins or Tyson aren't intelligent, they are, but I haven't seen anything of them that would suggest to me that either could be considered a genius.


Depends on how you define Genius technically an IQ above 140 is considered genius according to IQ classifications. I would be surprised if either of them had an IQ below 140.

other people identify the term Genius to mean something that is incredibly rare and pops up maybe once a century or etc.

for the point I was making about Genius hackers they would fit in the former category not often the latter.

I don't think Tyson would make the grade for the second category Richard Dawkins maybe the Selfish Gene was a brilliant master piece. Although in all honesty I think Jake Barnett is the Genius of this era. Yep I think we can expect great things from that boy in the coming decades.
Original post by Studentus-anonymous
I'm sure that sounded better in your head.

From your uninformed comments it seems nothing rattles around in yours.

Don't worry little buddy.

Okay kid - I'm not only old enough to be your dad I probably have you by 10 inches in height and 10 stone in weight. Keep the fantasy going petal.
Original post by joecphillips
So criminal activity is acceptable as long as you do it in a country you are not a resident of.


Lol, if this was the EU, you'd be slavering about it being undemocratic, against British traditions, etc, etc, ad nauseum.
Original post by Plagioclase
It's nothing short of an absolute disgrace. The US has been embarrassed because of their shameful security and this is their pitiful way of trying to get revenge.


It's really outrageous that we are sticking with this treaty, which was 'negotiated' by Blair when he was in full submissive crawling mode to Bush. It's utterly one-sided in favour of the US and treats the UK as if it is a branch post office of the US Mail. Add to that the terrible American 'justice' system which is riddled with corruption and their ghastly prisons that make North Korea look mainstream and you have a total picture.
Original post by Studentus-anonymous


You have linked to a Wikipedia article that has effectively been dead since 2012.

Of the people named in the article:-

McKinnon was not extradited; O'Dwyer agreed to pay a financial penalty and was not extradited, Norris and Hamza were convicted after trial and all the others, apart from Stone pleaded guilty and served sentences in excess of the extradition minimum. You can only extradite for crimes where the maximum sentence exceeds 12 months in gaol and all of the defendants were sentenced to more than 12 months in gaol.

The one case which went badly wrong was that of Alex Stone. It is from the early days of the treaty and few have heard of it. There was an absence of evidence linking Stone to the crime and the case was eventually dropped after extradition.

There was then a breach of specialty in that Stone pleaded guilty to a minor offence of leaving the country whilst under investigation which suggests that the FCO were not providing him with proper consular support after extradition. The US Federal government would have stopped that extra prosecution straight-away, if they had become aware of it because it imperilled the entire extradition system.

Stone should never have been extradited because in reality he wasn't being extradited because the prosecution thought him guilty but because they thought him a suspect.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Fullofsurprises
It's really outrageous that we are sticking with this treaty, which was 'negotiated' by Blair when he was in full submissive crawling mode to Bush. It's utterly one-sided in favour of the US and treats the UK as if it is a branch post office of the US Mail. Add to that the terrible American 'justice' system which is riddled with corruption and their ghastly prisons that make North Korea look mainstream and you have a total picture.


Please point out to me any imbalance in the treaty. The Scott Baker report shot the fox that there was any effective difference in the evidential standard required to be produced to the extraditing court.

Your complaints about the US justice system (do you really think the Scrubs is better than US prisons?) effectively mean that you oppose extradition to the US in toto. Do you think the child murderer who flees to the UK will have a better time in the US prison system than this alleged hacker? If you don't, how can you justify sending the child murderer back and not extraditing this alleged hacker? How do you justify sending anyone back to any prison system that is worse than the US one, and most of them are?
Reply 109
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miser
20
It's remarkable how disproportionate the punishments for these crimes tend to be. "Up to 99 years" they say - even if that's an exaggeration, the actual figure can't be anything but excessive. These policies are so wrong-headed they're unbelievable. The US shouldn't get to publicly whine about how it's been "embarrassed" and use that as justification for destroying a man's life - that's a far worse crime than anything this poor chap did.

A proportionate punishment might be to be to reveal what means were used, to assist in fixing the problem (if wanted), and to do some community service. Merely hacking something is barely a crime at all, and consequentially there have been only benefits: the US has been able to discover and fix a serious security hole before it was hacked by someone who didn't mean well, like the Chinese. They should thank this guy. Man, the US really likes to screw people over.
Original post by miser
Merely hacking something is barely a crime at all


That is why we made hacking that causes a serious risk of serious damage to the national security of any country punishable by life imprisonment last year.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/9/section/41
Reply 111
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Original post by nulli tertius
That is why we made hacking that causes a serious risk of serious damage to the national security of any country punishable by life imprisonment last year.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/9/section/41

It's not "merely hacking" if it causes serious risk of damage to the national security of a country. What I meant was "merely gaining access" to a system. In order to achieve serious risk of damage or national security threats you need to bundle access with other things - importantly the intent to do harm, or to sell (or by other means disseminate) the means and methods you used, etc.
In the UK the maximum sentence for those crimes are 2 years 8 months. In America it's 99 years. Jesus.
Original post by miser
It's not "merely hacking" if it causes serious risk of damage to the national security of a country. What I meant was "merely gaining access" to a system. In order to achieve serious risk of damage or national security threats you need to bundle access with other things - importantly the intent to do harm, or to sell (or by other means disseminate) the means and methods you used, etc.


You do not need intent to do serious harm. Recklessness will do. A hacker that leaves a backdoor to a critical system or leaves a backdoor wider than before and disseminates information about this in a way where it may get to people who would do damage, would be sufficient.
Original post by Twinpeaks
In the UK the maximum sentence for those crimes are 2 years 8 months. In America it's 99 years. Jesus.


We have a series of offences with maximum sentences of 2 years, 30 months, 14 years and life. The US has a single offence with a 99 year maximum.
Original post by nulli tertius
Please point out to me any imbalance in the treaty. The Scott Baker report shot the fox that there was any effective difference in the evidential standard required to be produced to the extraditing court.

Your complaints about the US justice system (do you really think the Scrubs is better than US prisons?) effectively mean that you oppose extradition to the US in toto. Do you think the child murderer who flees to the UK will have a better time in the US prison system than this alleged hacker? If you don't, how can you justify sending the child murderer back and not extraditing this alleged hacker? How do you justify sending anyone back to any prison system that is worse than the US one, and most of them are?


The imbalance is that the US take their laws to apply everywhere, but disregard ours and everyone else's.

As for the prisons, I'm not recommending we all go and spend time in our marvellous British prisons, but the US system is like a modern gulag with actually probably worse levels of mistreatment and psychological brutality than the ones depicted in Solzhenitsyn.
Original post by miser
It's not "merely hacking" if it causes serious risk of damage to the national security of a country. What I meant was "merely gaining access" to a system. In order to achieve serious risk of damage or national security threats you need to bundle access with other things - importantly the intent to do harm, or to sell (or by other means disseminate) the means and methods you used, etc.


They have a track record of wildly exaggerating the actual damage done in these cases, as they did with Gary McKinnon, in order to secure the extradition and to make an example of a foreigner. I don't doubt that hacking can be a serious crime, but let's examine the actual facts because all too often it turns out that the real damage in these government hacking cases is that they are embarrassing.
Reply 117
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Original post by nulli tertius
You do not need intent to do serious harm. Recklessness will do. A hacker that leaves a backdoor to a critical system or leaves a backdoor wider than before and disseminates information about this in a way where it may get to people who would do damage, would be sufficient.

I agree. However, it's admittedly difficult to accidentally disseminate information about something which requires very specific technical details and techniques, and without evidence of doing so it shouldn't be suggested that one is likely to do so.
How dare we honor our international obligations and extradite a criminal to the county where he committed the crime in so he can be tried in appropriate jurisdiction! Clearly we'd never want someone who committed an offence in UK but was located US to be extradited to us :rolleyes:
Reply 119
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Original post by Fullofsurprises
They have a track record of wildly exaggerating the actual damage done in these cases, as they did with Gary McKinnon, in order to secure the extradition and to make an example of a foreigner. I don't doubt that hacking can be a serious crime, but let's examine the actual facts because all too often it turns out that the real damage in these government hacking cases is that they are embarrassing.

I agree very much so. It's so unfortunate to see pettiness destroy people's lives this way. They balloon their national ego showcasing themselves as all-powerful and invulnerable, but then at every opportunity reveal themselves as fragile enough to be seemingly imperiled by a single guy working alone without malice from his bedroom thousands of miles away. One would think they'd benefit from a new PR coordinator.
(edited 7 years ago)

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