What kind of action would you propose?
What will you demand to be done when they whack us back?
Framing ransomeware attacks on hospitals as a "facet of life" is a deeply ridiculous statement. You can oppose drone strikes without saying absurd things.
What'd we do with people who committed those crimes during WWII in the name of an expansionist, ultra-nationalist regime?
[0]https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/crimes-against-huma...
It would certainly serve their strategic interests and would align with the Russian Federation’s status as a mafia state. Use criminals to hack opposing countries’ computers, degrading their society. Then, use a cut of the ransom paid to ease the blow of sanctions. In exchange the government gives you more resources to continue your work and provides cover against international law enforcement efforts to stop you.
If those “civilians” would like to avoid Western reprisals for attacking digital infrastructure (particularly the infrastructure that innocent patients need to receive treatment at hospitals), they should cease immediately. Otherwise I have absolutely no problem with handling them like we did Nazis after WWII: hunting them down wherever they are and punishing them for their crimes.
The American Heritage dictionary defines terrorism as:
> The use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.
The FBI has two definitions:
> International terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored).
> Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
Where's the pursuit of an ideological goal? These guys are ransomwaring whoever has money and bad security, right? Seems like equal opportunity extortion, rather than terrorism to me.
Terrorism isn't just things I don't like. If a group is ransoming whatever IT systems they can, for the purposes of gaining money, it just doesn't feel like terrorism to me. Unless there's some evidence otherwise, it's just extortion.
I don't like extortion, and if I suffered acute harm due to extortion, I'd be more upset, but I still wouldn't try to claim extortion is terrorism.
It's different if the ransomers are demanding that the invasion of Musicland by Bookland be stopped, and targeting infrastructure as way to get their message out, and using ransoms to help the plight of the Musicians.
That makes you an outlier.
IANAL, but in a number of jurisdictions under common law (including the United States), when a person is killed - in this example, a patient dying because of EMR corruption/unavailability - in the commission of another crime - extortion - it is considered murder under the felony murder doctrine[0].
Now, again, IANAL and the minds of judges and jurors are fickle, but it seems to me if you could prove a relationship between "Guy in Russia locks a Cerner Millennium or Epic Systems database" and "Patient who was in the hospital died because information in database could not be accessed", you could possibly convict them of murder even though they only wanted money out of it, because you could potentially convince the court that as a hacker, the person in Russia should have known that this would necessarily bring about the risk of patient harm. After all, isn't that what makes the EMR worth encrypting to them?
It's also worth noting that terrorist organizations routinely take people hostage to extract ransoms that then get used to finance their operations. The fact that the terrorist organization in this case is likely to be the Russian SVR is immaterial. They are a government under a ton of sanctions and are looking to replenish funds however they can. Cryptocurrency is incredibly useful if you're looking to evade international sanctions.
[0]https://www.justia.com/criminal/offenses/homicide/felony-mur...
Offtopic, I also kind of wonder when it becomes murder for the health systems to not protect their IT, but I'm not trying to deflect; that's a question for some other thread.
It's not international terrorism (1), because it meets clause A, but not B or C.
It's not domestic terrorism (5), because it meets clause A and C, but not B.
Clause B is the same for both
> B) appear to be intended— (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping;
Ransomware doesn't appear to be intended to do any of those things to me.
Do you have a reference that says this is terrorism?
But if you whack him what the international public would see is an american missile in a smouldering crater in some civilian suburb. That is an act of war. And not the shadowy kind which is already happening. That forces the Russians to also react in kind (otherwise they look weak.)
The Russians would also work hard to spread misinformation about what you did. They would say you got the wrong person, or that you got innocent bystanders. Probably both. They would also say it was an extrajudicial killing where the executive played judge, jurry, and executioner in one. And you know what? They would be right.
And even if everyone agrees that you got the right person, and he was a bad one, and there was no collateral damage in your initial attack it can still lead to innocent deaths. Let me tell you about Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 [1]. What happened is that the US assasinated Major General Qasem Soleimani. Undeniably a military target. Arguably a bad one. Iran in retaliation lobbed some ballistic missiles to a US base. Due to luck nobody died there. All is well, isn’t it? No, not really. The iranian air defence following their retaliation was understandably on full alert. Somebody panicked and mistook a civilian airliner for an incoming american cruise missile and shot them down. 176 innocent civilians are now dead. It is a tragedy.
Did the US killed those 176 civilians? No they didn’t. The proximal fault lies with the panicking Iranian air defences. But these are the kind of forces you are playing when you are talking about drone assasinating randoms.
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlin...
But please feel free to snark on the US military; I know that's cheap karma around here.
I assume the triumphant press release would be something like 'a number of confirmed enemy fighters killed'.
It's always interesting to see warhawks (who have never been the victims of war) do their best to expand the list of who they consider acceptable enemy targets are, with no regard to what this means to them, domestically.
Or is it one of those 'we make the rules, but we aren't bound by them' things?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
> The Act authorizes the president of the United States to use "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court".
> This authorization led to the act being colloquially nicknamed "The Hague Invasion Act", as the act allows the president to order U.S. military action, such as an invasion of the Netherlands, where The Hague is located, to protect American officials and military personnel from prosecution or rescue them from custody.
The fact that there is a US law to prevent US service members specifically from being detained by the ICC specifically, has little bearing on the statement that "The US generally will extradite".
If that's acceptable and civilized behavior, I don't see why you can complain that Russia won't extradite a politically useful[1] criminal.
[1] In the sense that their crimes are furthering the state's geopolitical agenda.
No, because it violates "Proportionality". In this definition, even the very anti-war ICRC admits that it is sometimes necessary to kill civilians to achieve military objectives. https://casebook.icrc.org/highlight/targeting-under-internat... - The law they cite is "expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated".
Where you draw the line is to be litigated. Is destroying the entire apartment block to get a single hacker justified? Probably not. A single-residence home, even if his wife and kids are there? If they're an important enough military target, for sure.
Yes, I mean "you clearly did not think about this and your idea is very, very, very bad."
(Also, what about when we act like brutes? Why do other countries tolerate us? Should they not, like, get together and push back, or something?)
But I'm glad that you mentioned the proxy war that is being fought right now, that's one example of how you can respond to a country's bad behavior without actually starting a war with it. There are many others.
Do better.