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Comment by CiPHPerCoder | Hacker News Reader

No word on who was arrested or who their victims were.

All we have to confirm the story is political posturing from two global superpowers over an arrest in a third country. This sounds like the opening act of a cold war era political struggle. War by proxy, etc.

Can we please not repeat that chapter in history?

Or, if we're going to do so, at least not use hackers as the pawns in this sick game? I'd appreciate at least that much.

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Which part do you consider an opening act of a cold war? Launching a cyber attack in a foreign country - or arresting someone who launched a cyber attack?

All of the above, really. I meant act in a literary sense, not as in "one specified unit of verb".

to be truly accurate, it is _allegedly_ launching a cyber attack.

I read it as "opening act of a political struggle", where the struggle is of "cold war era" style.

Opening act? I think we're well past act 1 scene 1, there's a literal proxy war happening right now in Syria.

Probably that hacker shouldn't have worked for Russian intelligence while living in a NATO country. I'd expect the same for an NSA hacker working out of Turkmenistan or something.

Is there any benefit to a Russian hacker not working from Russia?

The EU has a higher standard of living.

So maybe he just prefers living in Czech Rep.?

All I'm saying is I don't like where this is going, and I think it's eerily similar to a path both countries have traveled before.

If history must repeat, I'd rather not have the world's hackers get dragged into the struggle. I hate politics in my technology, dammit.

I'm still not clear on where you think this is going. He was arrested by the FBI, not rendered by the CIA. He's being charged with a crime. It's a crime that both the Czech Republic and the US have recognized as a crime for a long time.

> I'm still not clear on where you think this is going.

Further political strife and possibly even all-out war, especially if warmer heads get elected.

> He was arrested by the FBI, not rendered by the CIA. He's being charged with a crime. It's a crime that both the Czech Republic and the US have recognized as a crime for a long time.

Is he going to be prosecuted in the Czech Republic and (if the prosecution is successful) sentenced to a prison term in the Czech Republic, guaranteed, without any possibility of extradition to US or Russia?

No, he's going to be extradited to the US and tried for crimes in the US.

OK, and that is exactly the point at which it becomes an international politics issue.

I'm not following. Extradition has been an international norm since before the US even existed. We signed our first extradition treaty in the 1700s.

Extradition to a country the defendant never went to seems like a new thing, no?

No, that is also not a new thing. Marcel Lazăr Lahel, for instance, was arrested in and extradited from Romania. I'm sure we can find more examples.

What might be new-ish (last 30 years) are crimes you can commit against a foreign state without setting foot on their soil. But I doubt computer crimes set the precedent there; I'm guessing if we look, we'll find some financial crime, or some organized crime, that took place in the middle of the 20th century and created the same fact pattern.

Remember as well that the US isn't the only country that extradites people, so we'll probably have a lot of data to look through for examples!

Russia and the US are going to bicker over who gets this person, as the article makes clear and you've alluded to. This is just one of many conflicts between both nations that could have far-reaching political consequences.

I'm not sure what's more difficult to follow here? I'm not predicting a specific outcome (or worse, detailing some conspiracy theory); I'm just stating that there's a significant potential for bad things to follow this news and expressing my dislike for the general theme of it all.

Russia has no basis for bickering. No norm of international law suggests Russia has the right to shield its citizens from foreign prosecution. US citizens are routinely tried abroad, as well.

That was the point of the checklist I provided upthread.

OK, that makes a lot more sense now. The confusion was on my end.

> US citizens are routinely tried abroad, as well.

Unless treaties give jurisdiction to laughable U.S. military courts, which is often the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalese_cable_car_disaster_(1... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Okinawa_rape_incident

There's going to be no bickering. Russia is going to insist as loudly as they can that this is illegitimate, and everyone else is going to largely ignore an extradition in line with international norms.

If the world is entering a new cold war based on cybersecurity threats instead of existential WMD threats (and I believe it likely is), entire national populations are going to be dragged into the struggle, let alone a few hackers.

To all countries involved in this hypothetical scenario (or others like it), I have the following to say: Sod off and fight your own battles.

To be fair, due to Russian non-extradition rules this is generally how Russian hackers are arrested. Whether they are state sponsored or general black hats (e.g carders) the US authorities wait for then to take a trip into the EU or some other friendly (to the US) location and then arrest them. The guy who sent Brian Krebs heroin was a Russian hacker arrested in Italy and many other shave been arrested on their holidays to EU states.

Hackers aren't, generally, being "dragged into the struggle", they are voluntary active participants, for patriotic, ideological, or mercenary reasons.

It's the new frontier of warfare and espionage. Like it or not these tactics are here to stay.

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