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Comment by mrsuprawsm | Hacker News Reader

US law is neither a universal law nor an international one.

Accessing computer systems owned by a US company based in the US might constitute a violation of US law, but the hacker is based in Switzerland - where US law does not apply.

As you can see in the linked Wikipedia article, accessing these systems is probably not illegal in Switzerland, thus, for all intents and purposes, no crime was committed.

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Here's an indictment from 2019 for similar activities. It's a crime in the U.S., thus prosecutable in the U.S. The question is whether Swiss authorities cooperate, not the jurisdiction.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/swiss-hacker-indicted-c...

The jurisdiction is quite questionable. If someone in north Korea would decide I'm guilty of breaking some bizarre law, I couldn't care less. Why would a Swiss citizen care about what the united states think is a crime?

It's easier to get extradited to the US than to North Korea

In fact I don't think any countries will extradite you to North Korea. There's plenty (including many in the neighborhood of Switzerland) that extradite to the US for at least some crimes.

Switzerland has assisted the USA in going after them, unless I'm missing something.

(I am open to missing something here)

According to its Wikipedia page [1], Switzerland doesn't extradite their nationals (including maia) without consent. maia might be trapped in Switzerland, but as long as it stays there the US can't get to it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maia_arson_crimew

And also it's been confined to Switzerland for at least a couple years now; committing US federal crimes isn't a new circumstance for it.

Legalities aside, it's morally wrong to hack a server, disregard reasonable disclosure, and publish (even to a selected group) an in-depth list of personal information; all for political reasons! (at least going off what their Wikipedia page describes as their motivations).

>- where US law does not apply.

Us law applies wherever they want. Very, very few governments will refuse a request....it's too expensive in the long run.

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