>A court has ruled (PDF) that an American citizen born in Ethiopia can’t sue his birth country for hacking his computer and monitoring him with spyware.
..
>Kidane sued the Ethiopian government for the FinSpy infection, for allegedly wiretapping his private Skype calls, and for allegedly monitoring his entire family’s use of the computer over the course of months.
..
>The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday ruled that foreign states are immune from lawsuits in a US court unless an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) applies.
>Kidane had alleged that the wrongdoing was transnational. The court rejected that as an exception to the FSIA, saying that Ethiopia would still have immunity unless the wrongful act – the “tort” – took place entirely in the US.
>From the ruling:
>"Ethiopia’s placement of the FinSpy virus on Kidane’s computer, although completed in the United States when Kidane opened the infected e-mail attachment, began outside the United States. It thus cannot be said that the entire tort occurred in the United States."
>The EFF says it’s mulling a challenge to the ruling. But as it now stands, US citizens have no legal recourse if foreign states hack their devices remotely, as long as they do most of that hacking abroad instead of on US soil.
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/03/16/court-blocks-ame...