US Arrests Son of Russian MP In Maldives For Hacking 176
First time accepted submitter ugen (93902) writes "The son of a Russian lawmaker has been arrested by the U.S. on charges of selling credit card information he stole by hacking into the computers of American retailers. Roman Seleznev, 30, was arrested overseas by the U.S. Secret Service on July 5 and was ordered detained today during a hearing in federal court in Guam, the Justice Department said in a statement."
Hm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Imperial Police (Score:5, Insightful)
What in the hell are the US police doing arresting anyone in a foreign country? Is the Maldives part of the empire now?
And, yes, the Russians are totally correct in calling this kidnapping. Look for some poor American tourist or businessman to be nabbed in a tit-for-tat.
Obama desperate to get Snowden (Score:0, Insightful)
As more and more Snowden leaks are coming to surface, Obama is getting desperate. He grounded presidential planes to get Snowden before and he's not beyond kidnapping people to exchange them for ransom (Snowden).
If Obama doesn't release the kid, I hope Russia will start "arresting" US citizens in the same matter.
Re:Kidnapping. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to break it to you ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to break it to you, but the phrase above remains true if you replace "Russians" with any country powerful enough to get away with this kind of behavior.
Re:Guam is in the Maldives now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Replying to myself - as it turns out, the plot thickens:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
Right, the US has gone completely off the rails in recent years. "oh, this guy stole some credit card numbers... Let's kidnap him, fly him out of the country and try him in some random court outside the country! Yea! Go USA!"
Seriously? It'd be one thing if he blew something up... but credit card fraud?
Re:Secret Service job description (Score:4, Insightful)
The US Secret Service is chartered with two utterly unrelated duties:
1) Investigation of financial crimes such as counterfeiting and fraud.
2) Protection of the US protected class of untouchable leaders, as well as visiting foreign dignitaries.
I don't see violation of the rights of third party nationals in foreign lands anywhere in their charter. Surely there are normal cooperative channels to bring the case to the attention of the law enforcement agencies of the foreign lands and also the third party governments.
Violation of the sovereignty of the US by attacking it or its citizens does not seem to be a part of this case.
1. This falls clearly under #1, investigation of financial crimes.
2. He was indicted in 2011. If he were, say, a UK citizen (for example), the US would have put in an extradition request, and the UK would have (following a hearing, assuming there was credible evidence) extradited him. Same if the alleged crime had taken place in the UK, and he were a US citizen in the US.
3. Russia doesn't extradite their citizens, period, and, even if they did, there's no extradition treaty between the US and Russia. Therefore, no, there aren't any "normal cooperative channels" involved.
4. If the Maldives government (and I have to assume he was arrested there, otherwise he'd be a complete idiot, knowing that he had been indicted in the US, to visit Guam) consented to his arrest and transfer to the US, that's entirely kosher. The Maldives doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US (they don't have one with anyone, as far as I know, which might have been a reason that Mr. Seleznev decided to vacation there), but that doesn't mean that they're not allowed to extradite people, just that they're not obliged to.