back to article Alleged Brit hacker Lauri Love bailed amid US extradition battle lull

Alleged Brit hacker Lauri Love, who is accused of compromising US government servers and faces extradition to America, has been bailed by a UK court. US prosecutors want the 31-year-old university student shipped across the Pond for questioning after he allegedly infiltrated systems used by the US Federal Reserve, the Missile …

  1. Baldy50
    WTF?

    31 and still a student,FFS Nothing more to say on this subject.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Your merkin Christian compassion (read psychotic vindictiveness) is the reason Aaron Swartz was left with no choice but to kill himself, and why I don't see this ending well for Lauri.

      1. Eddy Ito

        @AC, I don't see how any of that pertains to the original comment. It appears to have been an observation that he is still a student at the age of 31 and an assumption that Love has a bit of Peter Pan syndrome.

        Perhaps the OP isn't aware of the particular circumstances that led to Love's current circumstance such as serving in the Finnish army. Certainly it does give one pause why someone of his age would still be a student without knowing much of the background.

        Indeed as youth unemployment is becoming a problem all over and students often opting to stay longer in university it may certainly seem like some are merely taking advantage of the system instead of becoming good little taxpayers as most expect. Then again that may make the OP from a place where education is somewhat less expensive than it is in the U.S.

        P.S. would now be a bad time to point out the logical disconnect of "Christian compassion (read psychotic vindictiveness)" and Lauri's father Alexander being a prison chaplin? Or is it only the merkin christians you oppose and european christians are ok?

    2. edge_e
      Boffin

      31 and ,still a student

      Maybe he spent ten or so years working before university

      You're never to old to learn

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        There were loads of mature students living on my corridor at uni. I don't see why this is in any way unusual.

        American anti-intellectualism maybe?

        "Hey bhoy! Why you goin back to skool? Learnin at your age is fer pufters"

        1. Geoffrey W

          RE: "Learnin at your age is fer pufters"

          I think "Pufters" is a British phrase rather than an American one, and nicely illustrates my experience that British anti intellectualism is easily the equal of the American, if not worse. Intellectuals seem to have gone out of favour in the West, sadly.

          Full disclosure: I too was a mature student though had finished before age 30, and no one ever knew I was mature unless I told them. Certainly my behaviour didn't betray me. Before that I was a draughtsman and went back to school when I grew fed up of mechanical engineering and fancied a few wilder years. I'd recommend returning to education to anyone, if the grants weren't so crap these days. If you can go back to school and want to then don't let all these boring, dull witted conformists talk you out of it. Fuck em all.

          Note, my comment isn't aimed at the pufters comment its tagged on to, but all the other comments suggesting there's something wrong with being a student at 30. Dull lifeless creatures all.

        2. Aodhhan

          Really you want to mock the USA's educational system?

          What am I saying... This is a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

          1. Trigonoceps occipitalis

            Re: Really you want to mock the USA's educational system?

            “Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.”

            ― George Carlin

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        You're never to old to learn

        "You're never to old to learn" how to correctly use the words: to, too and two. A split infinitive is fine nowadays.

      3. rh587

        Maybe he spent ten or so years working before university

        Or did a Bachelors, went to work and came back to do a Masters or PhD.

        In this case I think he's still on a bachelor's having dropped out before a stint in the (Finnish) Army and doing "stuff" before signing back up into academia.

        As you say, there are lots of reasons why people might be a "student" at 31, both Under-grad and post-grad.

    3. asdf

      reminds me

      >31 and still a student,

      Tommy: Did you hear I finally graduated?

      Richard Hayden: Yeah, and just a shade under a decade too. All right.

      Tommy: You know a lot of people go to college for seven years.

      Richard Hayden: I know, they're called doctors.

    4. Triggerfish

      I've known a fair few students at that age, people go to work and then decide they want to learn something. They're often better students because they really know why they have chosen their subject.

    5. Bloakey1

      "31 and still a student,FFS Nothing more to say on this subject"

      I went to University at the age of 29, I also did a masters at the age of 35 so went back again. All of this I did whilst holding down a full time job.

      I would have gone earlier but military service, travel and life intervened.

      You are never too old to be a student.

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I finished my BSc when I was 23, did a few jobs, went back to Uni and finished my PhD when I was 32. It's pretty normal.

    7. Intractable Potsherd

      @Baldy50

      I graduated from my first degree when I was 40, after having a completely different career - what's your point, Baldy?

  2. a_yank_lurker

    Looking for a scapegoat

    This smells. The ferals seem to be looking for a scapegoat for their incompetence. So indict someone who looks like someone you can ludicrous charges against.

    If he did hack the systems as charged this points to a very severe intelligence flaw. If any bloke can do it so has every foreign spookhaus.

    1. NotBob

      Re: Looking for a scapegoat

      Then again, he claimed to have done it. Maybe he should #OpManUp

      1. Geoffrey W

        Re: Looking for a scapegoat

        I cannot well enough describe my loathing for the phrase "Man Up" so will just hold my nose and walk swiftly by to the point. They aren't attempting to evade justice, just attempting to be subject to justice in Britain; (as an aside, I first wrote UK but these days there is very little United about any of it). They don't want a vulnerable son being thrown into a notoriously dreadful American penal system, (though Britain has its own notoriety in this too). And even more, they don't want a vulnerable son being thrown into such a penal system while being thousands of miles from any family or support. Cant say I blame them. He didn't hurt anyone except maybe the pride (and jobs?) of a few techies who let him in. Good luck to the poor kid and his family.

  3. AustinTX

    It's a mystery to me

    I don't know why my country makes a policy of setting out poorly-defended honeypots to catch British Aspies.... Perhaps they're transplanting their brains into drones?

  4. MacroRodent

    Crime and punishment

    A Finnish paper noted yesterday that in the U.S, Lauri Love could face 99 years in jail, whereas in Finland he would face 5 years at the worst, but probably less. U.S prison sentences are completely out of proportion.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Crime and punishment

      It seems to me that the US prison system is based on punishment and revenge and not so much on reform.

      I've not looked into the numbers, but at least most western nations seem to at least have an ideal of aiming for reform, The US and their privately run prison system seems to be geared towards revenge and profit. It'd be nice to be proven wrong.

      1. AustinTX
        Holmes

        Re: Crime and punishment

        If I'm not mistaken, you can be dragged off to prison and beaten for saying a thing like that. Let's hope you have some money to pay back your prison room & board fees.

        Could be a connection, but I'm being watched and can't speculate out loud.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cool there ARE specifics

    Reading the indictment it seems there are specific allegations and not the bullshit "Secret Informant told us" which is clearly cover for mass logging of an IRC server.

    "Love and his conspirators took steps to conceal their identities and illegal hacking activities. To mask their IP addresses, the conspirators used “proxy” and “tor” servers to launch the attacks. They also frequently changed their nicknames in online chat rooms, using multiple identities to communicate with each other."

    i.e. Tor is backdoored, Proxy servers are logged, and (IRC) Chat Rooms are also logged on mass. Watch what you say.

    "To gain entry to the government victims’ computer servers, Love and conspirators often deployed what is known as a “SQL injection attack.” Structured Query Language is a type of programing language designed to manage data held in particular types of databases; the hackers identified vulnerabilities in SQL databases and used those vulnerabilities to infiltrate a computer network."

    No, an SQL Injection attack is where the website hands text directly to a database including any query and commands it contains, so anyone can send commands via the webpage directly to the back end database.... aka "Bobby Drop Tables".

    https://xkcd.com/327/

    I can see you're aiming for "infiltrate computer network" which I assume is needed for the hacking charge? So the misleading explanation in the indictment.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hail Mary Pass!

    Barrister: "But your honour, you can't allow the American authorities to extradite my client on charges of rape!"

    Judge: "Why"?

    Barrister: "Because, his Penis has Asperger's!"

    Judge: "Eh........er......case dismissed!"

  7. John70

    You can be in your 30s, 40s, 50s, etc and be a student like with the Open University

  8. Pen-y-gors

    Legal in the UK?

    If what he did is legal in the UK, there's no case for extradition

    If what he did is illegal under UK law, prosecute him in the UK, again no case for extradition.

    If the Merkins won't provide the evidence to prosecute here, then throw the case out.

    It's not a difficult concept, surely?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Are there any technical details available ..

    "Alleged Brit hacker Lauri Love, who is accused of compromising US government servers"

    Do you mean he logged into 'computers' all using the same default password.

  10. T I M B O

    Hacking? is that like snooping in other peoples business & watching what they do? Is that hacking?

    With Windows 10 you get watched, snooped, spied on & anything else you can imagine, and all for free.

    If the American army & any other top secret BS the yanks have, if they all used windows 10, then would Lauri Love be in the same shit as the FBI, CIA, NSA & any other BS you can think of?

    I think the yanks can PISS OFF!!

  11. JaitcH
    WTF?

    Why is it the UK always seems surrender it's citizems whereas France just says, ...

    to quote the late Pierre Trudeau, Mange Là Merde!

    Why is it if a crime is allegedly committed within the 12-mile (19.312128 kilometres) limit of Blighty, and the alleged victim is in the USA, Mad MAY ships them off instead of putting them on trial in the UK?

    France has the trial in France!

    Of course it was that allegedly pair of philanderers - Blunkett and bLIAR - who signed the deal deportation deal with the USA.

  12. JustNiz

    Its just basic common sense that In order for the UK to even begin to consider deporting anyone, the US should be required to come up with some proof/actual evidence first, not just unsubstantiated allegations. Anything else is a blatant abuse of basic human rights. That said, if this idiot did actually hack into the US gov or anyone elses computer without permission then he should be punished.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Curious - we ever extradited an American to the UK to stand against some trumped up fantasy charges?

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      That's the imbalance in the treaty with the USA. The US only has to make the accusations and claim they have the evidence. The UK has to make the accusations and send the US a copy of the evidence where they will then decide and contest it directly from the safety of their home shores.

      This is more an indictment of British negotiating skills and the sheer power of the US to enforce their will on others.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nothing new here

    The UK is a haven for digital crims. The UK judicial system is a hundred years behind the crims and UK politicians protect the crims from being punished for their crimes.

    1. Intractable Potsherd

      Re: Nothing new here

      Do you have evidence for that statement? Are you just another AC troll?

  15. Paul

    But a judge in Virginia said that if you connect a computer to the internet, you have no expectation of privacy,

    http://www.eweek.com/security/home-computers-connected-to-the-internet-arent-private-court-rules.html

    so Lauri L can't have done anything wrong!

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