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Does this mean anything for the legal protections of Belgian citizens who research security vulnerabilities in foreign, rather than domestic, systems?

• janosdebugs 4y ago
  No: > The new Belgian whistleblower law only applies in Belgium. If a cybersecurity vulnerability concerns an IT system outside of Belgium, hacking might be covered by the rules of the country where the system is located.
  • bmacho 4y ago
    That part is obvious, if you commit a crime somewhere else, then you commit it somewhere else. The question is whether Belgium protects you as their citizen, or doesn't.
    • sgjohnson 4y ago
      Typically extradition requires dual criminality. i.e. you can’t be extradited for something that is a crime in a foreign country but isn’t in yours.
  • nomercy400 4y ago
    Any cloud datacenters in Belgium?
    • andruby 4y ago
      Google has a large datacenter there. (europe-west1)
      • IMTDb 4y ago
        eu-west-1 is in Ireland. There are no currently open availability zone in Belgium. Source: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-regions-availability-zones.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-re...
        • andruby 4y ago
          That’s AWS you’re linking to. Google cloud europe-west1 is in St Ghislain, Belgium. https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/ https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/
    • yvdriess 4y ago
      Interesting to point out that Euroclear and Euronext are based in Belgium.
      • fvdessen 4y ago
        also SWIFT, the NATO HQ, the SHAPE, and most EU institutions
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • kuroguro 4y ago
    So if a Belgian hacker is researching a Belgian company and a single server happens to be outside of Belgium territory, they're suddenly breaking the law?
    • andruby 4y ago
      Well, unfortunately, yes. Belgium can’t give you a license to commit a crime in another country.
      • kachnuv_ocasek 4y ago
        Why not? The US does this regularly.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
        • hutzlibu 4y ago
          So do other intelligence services, but that doesn't mean regular citizens are allowed to so this as well. (and whether secret services are "allowed" to do so, is a seperate question)
      • sureglymop 4y ago
        Surely the law here should be pedantic here, no? Does the location where a server is physically located or the location where a company is registered count?
        • WirelessGigabit 4y ago
          Or what if a company buys a set of previously-used-in-Belgium IP addresses and now uses them in France? Something like this happened on the cloud when they were running low on IPv4 addresses.
          • sgjohnson 4y ago