14 ms·

Latvia blocking extradition of Gozi writer due to disproportionate US sentencing

167 points by Libertatea 13y ago

sandis 13y ago
While this has indeed been the case so far, it's important to point out that the final decision is scheduled to be made by the Cabinet of Ministers tomorrow (Tuesday).
Smrchy 13y ago
If only the US would not have such disproportionate blind eyes towards the Wall Street bankers.
chmike 13y ago
The problems will be solved through education and giving people a second chance. I mean a real second chance. US Justice has turned into a self promotion race through populism by exagerating charges and sentenses. Trials and jailing has turned into a business. Education loans has led to restore slavery. US once considered the example of liberty, free speach and enterpreneurship is now subject to the consequences of extremas in all fields. Thanks to lobbying and subversion of regulating institutions. Russia has crumbled under the weight of it's central administrative policy, US starts to crumble under the pressure of people's greediness and disabling of regulating structures as well as loss of sense of morale.
- torkins 13y ago
  "Education loans has led to restore[sic] slavery" is one of the most hyperbolic comments I have read on HN. I don't agree that giving students credit secured by future income is equivalent to forcibly converting a free human into the property of another.
  - TsiCClawOfLight 13y ago
    From a generalised european education point of view, I agree with the general sentiment of his comment. It's an hyperbola, but not by that much...
  - reginaldjcooper 13y ago
    Yeah, it's going to take a lot more than debt to come anywhere near equalling slavery. But in fairness, let's note that declaring bankruptcy does not nullify student loans, so it is somewhat like an indentured servitude once you've got them.
  - speeder 13y ago
    I am someone with student debts. For the past 4 years, I mostly worked on what I could, not what I really wanted... Happily, sometimes there was a overlap, but how it is not slavery? I cannot quit. I cannot choose what I will work with (mostly, every time I was without a job, I had to accept whatever offer came by, the few times I tried to be picky I ended even more indebted to buy food). I cannot live where I want... And so on. With some employers, I did feel owned, because even if they did not knew I was in deep debt, they could push me to do whatever they wanted, just with a small treat of dismissal, because I CANNOT afford be dismissed, my debt payment is way above the country average wage, and for the last years I've been living reaching the end of each month slighly indebted or with a zero balance in the bank. I dread the day I suffer some accident, near my home people ignore the red light a lot, and I think if I ever get hit by a car, I don't have money to pay medical expenses. (my parents are also in debt, partly by their incredible education expense they had with me, sometimes taking loans they knew they could not pay just to pay for my schooling). Right now I am co-founder in a startup, and every time our cash starts to run low, conflicts flare up quickly, because the pressure becomes immense, it generates lots of instability, and I already lost two relationships over this (ie: not over having a startup, but having those debts and financial instability and extreme dependance on employers).
    - joseflavio 13y ago
      I believe we are really heading for a de facto Wage slavery (mainly now that you can't declare bankruptcy from students debts) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
PeterisP 13y ago
It's widely covered here in Latvian local media - the general message is that there are grounds to charge (and likely convict) him with a bunch of crimes locally; but - 1) local prosecution claims that there aren't any grounds to prosecute on ~half of claims that USA wants to charge; 2) defense lawyers claim and popular sentiment (including politicians) believe that USA doesn't have a just/fair court system for computer related crimes; 3) there is a strong position for local jurisdiction in crimes in "cyberspace" - if some action is legal locally, then people shouldn't care if it's illegal in USA; if some crime carries max penalty of 5 years, as is here for computer fraud; then extraditing him for charges of the USA requested 67 years - essentially life sentence - is unacceptable.
- walshemj 13y ago
  If they had robed a bank physically would they still not be extradited? And given their neighbors experience with cyber war I woudl have expected Latvia to take this a lot more seriously
  - uchi 13y ago
    Robbing a bank physically is different than online fraud. For one, you're not holding people at gunpoint with the threat of violence.
    - walshemj 13y ago
      yes its worse instead of one large institution that can support the loss you are robbing a million members of Joe public who probably wont be able to suffer that loss as easily. Bonnie an Clyde became folk heroes for striking it to the man they wound not have if they had robbed lots of poor farmers.
      - xyzzyz 13y ago
        Just create a law that forces bank to refund defrauded customers. Now you're robbing one large institution that can support the loss once again, problem solved.
reginaldjcooper 13y ago
This is truly great. Maybe Latvia will be able to offer asylum to the next kid charged for downloading with intent to share.
kybernetikos 13y ago
As far as I'm concerned, the US's cultural acceptance of prison rape should be enough to stop any extradition to the US for any crime that would garner prison time.
- octo_t 13y ago
  Not just prison rape, but the very idea of "prison should be as harsh as possible" is absolutely awful.
  - sigzero 13y ago
    Hmmm...I do not know anyone with the mentality of "prison should be as harsh as possible". Prison shouldn't be a "cake walk" either.
    - chongli 13y ago
      Personally, I'd go even further. The very idea that prison is primarily about punishment (revenge by proxy?) instead of rehabilitation is wrongheaded. The goal of any policy should be the betterment of society. We have plenty of evidence to show that prisons designed for rehabilitation have lower incidences of recidivism than harsh, punitive ones.
      - Zariel 13y ago
        See Norway and Denmark's prison system and much of Europe in general.
        rayiner 13y ago
        Homogenous countries with low levels of social dysfunction and high social cohesion have an easier time dealing with prisoners: news at 11.
        kybernetikos 13y ago
gst 13y ago
Even though it seems that in this particular there is no extradition, it's somewhat concerning that there are so many countries that would extradit their citizens to a foreign country, although those citizens might have never visited this country (Gary McKinnon is another example). My home country has a policy to never extradit its own citizens and up until now I assumed that this is the norm for most countries. ("never extradit" means that you can still go to jail if you're doing something that's illegal in the foreign country and in your home country. But in that case you are sentenced by a local judge and put into a local jail.)
- elnate 13y ago
  Which country?
  - joseflavio 13y ago
    In my country too, Brazil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition "Own nationals: Some countries, such as Brazil,[6] the Czech Republic,[7] France,[8][9] Germany,[10] Japan,[11] the People's Republic of China,[12] the Republic of China (Taiwan)[13] forbid extradition of their own nationals. These countries often have laws in place that give them jurisdiction over crimes committed abroad by or against citizens. By virtue of such jurisdiction, they prosecute and try citizens accused of crimes committed abroad as if the crime had occurred within the country's borders (see e.g. trial of Xiao Zhen)."
andmarios 13y ago
This is one of the few times I am with the US point of view. Stealing thousand of bank accounts isn't a small crime. If anyone here found his bank account empty, would he be ok with a top of 5 years of jail time for the culprit? If one person commited suicide, or lost his house, etc due to a theft caused by these guys, is it ok? He isn't a teenager who downloaded a song, he isn't a security researcher who was just playing around, he isn't a whistleblower who wanted to protect our privacy by informing us, they didn't ran a service to help oppressed people reach out; they are bank robbers, top notch bank robbers if they compromised so many accounts.
- scotty79 13y ago
  How many bank officials that were responsible for even more losses are serving their 67 years in prison? Money is just money. It's just means of deciding who gets to use the stuff our machines produced. Serious crimes are those that do actual damage, like killing someone, destroying his life or destroying serious amount of some resource. Making money change hands unfairly doesn't warrant life of inprisonment.
  - andmarios 13y ago
    I am totally for jail time for bankers. But saying money is just money, isn't true. Money buy the food, pay the rent, pay the doctor. In today's world, stripping someone from his money may be equal stripping him from his dignity. In Greece for example we had hundred of suicides in the last years due to the austerity measures. People who worked all their life lost their jobs, hit rock bottom and between ending up homeless or imposing on their relatives, they chose to end their life. Are you sure that none of the 45.000 or so victims of the defendants didn't have their life ruined or commit suicide?
    - scotty79 13y ago
      I'm not saying theft is not at all harmful. Only that it's not so serious as killing. When you have money stolen form your bank account case is usually more complicated. This is a failure of bank security and sometimes banks take or are forced to take responsibility. So often the victims of theft don't suffer more than a bit of inconvenience and the real victim left is the bank or insurance companies, and they are only victims of risk that is inherent to their business. Of course they pass cost of this risk to all of their customers so you might argue that they are harmed. But they could pick bank that deals better with the risks. But the banks that deal better with the risk could also have higher prices just because their competition has higher prices, so, some win, some loose. Money unfairly changes hands, but nothing was actually lost apart from effects of emotional turmoil. Just some money was transferd to people that have larger tolerance for risk than typical worker/consumer. Almost all people recover even after actually loosing all of their savings, and I don't know if those particular criminals wiped the accounts clean. I sincerly hope that noone commited suicide because of this but among 45000 people there bound to be some unstable ones. I'm not sure if criminals can be responsible for such cases. At least not much more than a singer who recorded sad song that nudged some poor bloke to commit suicide when he heard in on the radio. I am very sad about what's happened in Greece but I see it more as a sytem failure than result of criminal activity. I'm not sure why someone would kill himself to not be a burden to his family after loosing a job. I'd personally just pack up and walk towards border without saying goodbye. It's same act of cowardience but without much of accompaning waste.
scotty79 13y ago
Too bad that UK didn't have such good jugment as Latvia in case of Richard O'Dwyer.
scotty79 13y ago
Extraditing people to US for computer crime is like extraditing to Iran for insulting Allah.
- mmphosis 13y ago
  Praise to the Mighty Dollah.
znowi 13y ago
What a pleasant surprise. Tiny Latvia said no to the mighty US. My compliments.
Fuxy 13y ago
Anybody thinking this is the new slave labor or is it just me? Need more workers? Introduce stricter laws. Given the mess the American legal system is just about anybody can be sentenced for something so the only question is how many slaves/criminals do we need?
tomaac 13y ago
Today it was decided to extradite him to USA.

167 points by Libertatea 13y ago

While this has indeed been the case so far, it's important to point out that the final decision is scheduled to be made by the Cabinet of Ministers tomorrow (Tuesday).

Smrchy 13y ago

If only the US would not have such disproportionate blind eyes towards the Wall Street bankers.

chmike 13y ago

The problems will be solved through education and giving people a second chance. I mean a real second chance. US Justice has turned into a self promotion race through populism by exagerating charges and sentenses. Trials and jailing has turned into a business. Education loans has led to restore slavery. US once considered the example of liberty, free speach and enterpreneurship is now subject to the consequences of extremas in all fields. Thanks to lobbying and subversion of regulating institutions. Russia has crumbled under the weight of it's central administrative policy, US starts to crumble under the pressure of people's greediness and disabling of regulating structures as well as loss of sense of morale.

torkins 13y ago
"Education loans has led to restore[sic] slavery" is one of the most hyperbolic comments I have read on HN. I don't agree that giving students credit secured by future income is equivalent to forcibly converting a free human into the property of another.
- TsiCClawOfLight 13y ago
  From a generalised european education point of view, I agree with the general sentiment of his comment. It's an hyperbola, but not by that much...
- reginaldjcooper 13y ago
  Yeah, it's going to take a lot more than debt to come anywhere near equalling slavery. But in fairness, let's note that declaring bankruptcy does not nullify student loans, so it is somewhat like an indentured servitude once you've got them.
- speeder 13y ago
  I am someone with student debts. For the past 4 years, I mostly worked on what I could, not what I really wanted... Happily, sometimes there was a overlap, but how it is not slavery? I cannot quit. I cannot choose what I will work with (mostly, every time I was without a job, I had to accept whatever offer came by, the few times I tried to be picky I ended even more indebted to buy food). I cannot live where I want... And so on. With some employers, I did feel owned, because even if they did not knew I was in deep debt, they could push me to do whatever they wanted, just with a small treat of dismissal, because I CANNOT afford be dismissed, my debt payment is way above the country average wage, and for the last years I've been living reaching the end of each month slighly indebted or with a zero balance in the bank. I dread the day I suffer some accident, near my home people ignore the red light a lot, and I think if I ever get hit by a car, I don't have money to pay medical expenses. (my parents are also in debt, partly by their incredible education expense they had with me, sometimes taking loans they knew they could not pay just to pay for my schooling). Right now I am co-founder in a startup, and every time our cash starts to run low, conflicts flare up quickly, because the pressure becomes immense, it generates lots of instability, and I already lost two relationships over this (ie: not over having a startup, but having those debts and financial instability and extreme dependance on employers).
  - joseflavio 13y ago
    I believe we are really heading for a de facto Wage slavery (mainly now that you can't declare bankruptcy from students debts) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

PeterisP 13y ago

It's widely covered here in Latvian local media - the general message is that there are grounds to charge (and likely convict) him with a bunch of crimes locally; but - 1) local prosecution claims that there aren't any grounds to prosecute on ~half of claims that USA wants to charge; 2) defense lawyers claim and popular sentiment (including politicians) believe that USA doesn't have a just/fair court system for computer related crimes; 3) there is a strong position for local jurisdiction in crimes in "cyberspace" - if some action is legal locally, then people shouldn't care if it's illegal in USA; if some crime carries max penalty of 5 years, as is here for computer fraud; then extraditing him for charges of the USA requested 67 years - essentially life sentence - is unacceptable.

walshemj 13y ago
If they had robed a bank physically would they still not be extradited? And given their neighbors experience with cyber war I woudl have expected Latvia to take this a lot more seriously
- uchi 13y ago
  Robbing a bank physically is different than online fraud. For one, you're not holding people at gunpoint with the threat of violence.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    yes its worse instead of one large institution that can support the loss you are robbing a million members of Joe public who probably wont be able to suffer that loss as easily. Bonnie an Clyde became folk heroes for striking it to the man they wound not have if they had robbed lots of poor farmers.
    - xyzzyz 13y ago
      Just create a law that forces bank to refund defrauded customers. Now you're robbing one large institution that can support the loss once again, problem solved.

reginaldjcooper 13y ago

This is truly great. Maybe Latvia will be able to offer asylum to the next kid charged for downloading with intent to share.

kybernetikos 13y ago

As far as I'm concerned, the US's cultural acceptance of prison rape should be enough to stop any extradition to the US for any crime that would garner prison time.

octo_t 13y ago
Not just prison rape, but the very idea of "prison should be as harsh as possible" is absolutely awful.
- sigzero 13y ago
  Hmmm...I do not know anyone with the mentality of "prison should be as harsh as possible". Prison shouldn't be a "cake walk" either.
  - chongli 13y ago
    Personally, I'd go even further. The very idea that prison is primarily about punishment (revenge by proxy?) instead of rehabilitation is wrongheaded. The goal of any policy should be the betterment of society. We have plenty of evidence to show that prisons designed for rehabilitation have lower incidences of recidivism than harsh, punitive ones.
    - Zariel 13y ago
      See Norway and Denmark's prison system and much of Europe in general.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        Homogenous countries with low levels of social dysfunction and high social cohesion have an easier time dealing with prisoners: news at 11.
        kybernetikos 13y ago

gst 13y ago

Even though it seems that in this particular there is no extradition, it's somewhat concerning that there are so many countries that would extradit their citizens to a foreign country, although those citizens might have never visited this country (Gary McKinnon is another example). My home country has a policy to never extradit its own citizens and up until now I assumed that this is the norm for most countries. ("never extradit" means that you can still go to jail if you're doing something that's illegal in the foreign country and in your home country. But in that case you are sentenced by a local judge and put into a local jail.)

elnate 13y ago
Which country?
- joseflavio 13y ago
  In my country too, Brazil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition "Own nationals: Some countries, such as Brazil,[6] the Czech Republic,[7] France,[8][9] Germany,[10] Japan,[11] the People's Republic of China,[12] the Republic of China (Taiwan)[13] forbid extradition of their own nationals. These countries often have laws in place that give them jurisdiction over crimes committed abroad by or against citizens. By virtue of such jurisdiction, they prosecute and try citizens accused of crimes committed abroad as if the crime had occurred within the country's borders (see e.g. trial of Xiao Zhen)."

andmarios 13y ago

This is one of the few times I am with the US point of view. Stealing thousand of bank accounts isn't a small crime. If anyone here found his bank account empty, would he be ok with a top of 5 years of jail time for the culprit? If one person commited suicide, or lost his house, etc due to a theft caused by these guys, is it ok? He isn't a teenager who downloaded a song, he isn't a security researcher who was just playing around, he isn't a whistleblower who wanted to protect our privacy by informing us, they didn't ran a service to help oppressed people reach out; they are bank robbers, top notch bank robbers if they compromised so many accounts.

scotty79 13y ago
How many bank officials that were responsible for even more losses are serving their 67 years in prison? Money is just money. It's just means of deciding who gets to use the stuff our machines produced. Serious crimes are those that do actual damage, like killing someone, destroying his life or destroying serious amount of some resource. Making money change hands unfairly doesn't warrant life of inprisonment.
- andmarios 13y ago
  I am totally for jail time for bankers. But saying money is just money, isn't true. Money buy the food, pay the rent, pay the doctor. In today's world, stripping someone from his money may be equal stripping him from his dignity. In Greece for example we had hundred of suicides in the last years due to the austerity measures. People who worked all their life lost their jobs, hit rock bottom and between ending up homeless or imposing on their relatives, they chose to end their life. Are you sure that none of the 45.000 or so victims of the defendants didn't have their life ruined or commit suicide?
  - scotty79 13y ago
    I'm not saying theft is not at all harmful. Only that it's not so serious as killing. When you have money stolen form your bank account case is usually more complicated. This is a failure of bank security and sometimes banks take or are forced to take responsibility. So often the victims of theft don't suffer more than a bit of inconvenience and the real victim left is the bank or insurance companies, and they are only victims of risk that is inherent to their business. Of course they pass cost of this risk to all of their customers so you might argue that they are harmed. But they could pick bank that deals better with the risks. But the banks that deal better with the risk could also have higher prices just because their competition has higher prices, so, some win, some loose. Money unfairly changes hands, but nothing was actually lost apart from effects of emotional turmoil. Just some money was transferd to people that have larger tolerance for risk than typical worker/consumer. Almost all people recover even after actually loosing all of their savings, and I don't know if those particular criminals wiped the accounts clean. I sincerly hope that noone commited suicide because of this but among 45000 people there bound to be some unstable ones. I'm not sure if criminals can be responsible for such cases. At least not much more than a singer who recorded sad song that nudged some poor bloke to commit suicide when he heard in on the radio. I am very sad about what's happened in Greece but I see it more as a sytem failure than result of criminal activity. I'm not sure why someone would kill himself to not be a burden to his family after loosing a job. I'd personally just pack up and walk towards border without saying goodbye. It's same act of cowardience but without much of accompaning waste.

scotty79 13y ago

Too bad that UK didn't have such good jugment as Latvia in case of Richard O'Dwyer.

scotty79 13y ago

Extraditing people to US for computer crime is like extraditing to Iran for insulting Allah.

mmphosis 13y ago
Praise to the Mighty Dollah.

znowi 13y ago

What a pleasant surprise. Tiny Latvia said no to the mighty US. My compliments.

Fuxy 13y ago

Anybody thinking this is the new slave labor or is it just me? Need more workers? Introduce stricter laws. Given the mess the American legal system is just about anybody can be sentenced for something so the only question is how many slaves/criminals do we need?

tomaac 13y ago

Today it was decided to extradite him to USA.