I would have advised him to stay quiet about this. Not out of fear of the North Koreans, but out of fear of our own security agencies seeing the activity as interfering in international relations. Also the vagueness of our hacking laws probably make what he did a crime.
But I also am immensely proud that we have people willing to take things into their own hands when needed.
Also, I feel like the 2nd amendment should be interpreted to include the right to bear digital arms (strong encryption for a start). This will probably take another decade to figure out what that would really mean.
We’ll it’s interesting in this case, because technically speaking a peace treaty was never signed and North Korea is in the state of war with the United States. So is it really a crime to attack a hostile state?
> North Korea is in the state of war with the United States
I'm not sure where this comes from, but you're now the second person I see on HN to say this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29896969). Is this "common knowledge" in the US or something?
Here is what I said the last time:
>> The US and KP are technically still at war (the Korean war stopped with a cease fire, not a treaty) and the US and its allies levy sanctions on them that hurt.
> Technically, I don't think the US and North Korea ever been at war. South Korea and North Korea are technically still at war though, as they signed the treaty with each other, not the US.
None of the US wars since WWII have been formally declared wars. They're still wars.
The conflict with North Korea ended with an armistice, not a formal treaty. The armistice intended for peace treaty discussions to start 3 months later... and they never really did.
The US, UN Command, and North Korea are still operating under a temporary cease-fire that's now basically 70 years old. (I don't think South Korea even signed the armistice).
If you're technically not at war then you can't at the same time be technically still at war. Neither side declared war against the other or is currently acting like they are at war, thus they aren't at war.
I would add to the “at war” column: the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) grants membership to any US service members who have been stationed in South Korea.
Looks like every man and his dog is an expert on North Koreans. Did it occur to you that most citizen there are hostages of the own state and may be fighting hard to get a piece of bread on the table? I highly doubt they give a shit to the US, or the internet or the hacker wars of any kind.
> I highly doubt they give a shit to the US, or the internet or the hacker wars of any kind.
somehow, I don't think that those are the people that are being targeted. it's the "elite" who actually have internet access, and can also eat.
those who make the decisions, and those who are friends of those who make the decisions would be the ones affected by the internet being down, not those who can barely eat and obviously don't have internet access.
> The United States rejected a North Korean proposal to discuss a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War because it did not address denuclearization on the peninsula, the State Department said on Sunday.
> Then they signed the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification on the Korean Peninsula, which commits the two countries to denuclearization and talks to bring a formal end to conflict. It was a startling conclusion to the first meeting between leaders of the two countries in 10 years.
> "I once again urge the community of nations to mobilize its strengths for the end-of-war declaration on the Korean Peninsula," Moon said in a speech to the annual gathering of the world body.
Technically speaking, there hasn't been a peace treaty between Russia and Japan, either. That doesn't mean we've spent the past 77 years waiting with bated breath for yet another conflict over the Kuril islands to break out.
It was not that long ago that whether to formally end the Korean War or not was the subject of spirited debate. Like, a few years ago. You guys telling me the War is actually over should have told them they didn't need to waste their time.
“So is it really a crime to attack a hostile state?”
I don’t know if it’s illegal per se but it’s definitely a dangerous game. If there are any misunderstandings things like this could lead to retaliation and ultimately armed conflict.
Yes, like that accidental pipeline hack. That group that shut down a good chunk of the national oil supply didn't have a letter of marque, so they were dealt with.
> technically speaking a peace treaty was never signed and North Korea is in the state of war with the United States. So is it really a crime to attack a hostile state?
that seems to be standard US foreign policy. it's probably actually worse in reality; where the US even 'intervenes' even if it does have a peace treaty with them. [1]
We signed an extradition treaty in 2003 with the UK:
The Parties agree to extradite to each other, pursuant to the provisions of this
Treaty, persons sought by the authorities in the Requesting State for trial or
punishment for extraditable offenses.
There's also the factor of the word "hacker" having multiple meanings, with the most currently common meaning being equivalent to "people who break into computer systems/networks" (thanks a bunch Hollywood /s), where originally the same word "hacker" meant "person who comes up with creative solutions to technical problems" (among the community of actual original hackers). Both meanings are still in widespread use today but most "normal" people instantly jump to the criminal meaning in their brains thanks to popular media (Hollywood) helping the "black hat" hackers steal the label for themselves.
The 2nd Amendment says the government can’t infringe your right to possess arms. It does not say that it’s legal for you to use your arms against others to make a point.
“Digital arms” are legal to possess in the U.S. as far as I know. Again, that is not the same thing as legalizing any use of them.
Not being able to use arms absolutely is an infringement of the right to bear them. I mean, how would it be different if we claimed that you can own a gun but not shoot it?
One point that gets lost about the 2nd Amendment is that it should be considered an inalienable right. Meaning, it cannot be diminished by any law of man. Consequently, most of the gun laws can be viewed as fundamentally unconstitutional, and any attempts to enforce them are illegal.
Of course, this is a highly unpopular opinion, as most of the population has surrendered itself to creeping authoritarianism.
> Not being able to use arms absolutely is an infringement of the right to bear them.
That doesn't follow. The right to own something does not imply the right to use it.
> One point that gets lost about the 2nd Amendment is that it should be considered an inalienable right. Meaning, it cannot be diminished by any law of man. Consequently, most of the gun laws can be viewed as fundamentally unconstitutional, and any attempts to enforce them are illegal.
The Constitution does not and cannot bestow inalienable rights.
>"The Constitution does not and cannot bestow inalienable rights."
The Bill of Rights was never supposed to bestow rights, just protect them, as per the preface:
>"The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution."
> That doesn't follow. The right to own something does not imply the right to use it.
That's like saying "The right to own a pair of pants does not mean you have the right to wear them." or "The right to own that Rembrandt doesn't mean you have the right to look at it". What, if not to use or consume an item, is the purpose of ownership at the fundamental level?
> The Constitution does not and cannot bestow inalienable rights.
You'll be happy to hear it does neither. It recognizes rights that are inherent to human beings and (presumably) limits the ability of the government to infringe on them.
Or like saying that "The right to own a car does not mean that you have the right to drive it".
Or even "The right to own a car does not mean that you have the right to drive through red lights".
The fact that you can own something does not mean that you have the right to use it indiscriminately. In this case (if we consider them "digital arms") I don't see how using it for retribution (rather then self defense) would be considered ok.
And even if you don't have a drivers license it can be perfectly legal to drive your car on your own property (hack your own computers) but not to drive on public roads / private property where the owner has not consented to you driving (hacking someone elses computer without their ok), but if they are ok with it it's perfectly legal (like for instance pentesting). Context matters.
> Not being able to use arms absolutely is an infringement of the right to bear them. I mean, how would it be different if we claimed that you can own a gun but not shoot it?
Do you have the right to shoot at someone's house? Do you have the right to fire in a crowded theater? Do you have the right to fire your weapon right next to someone's ear?
Just because you own a gun does mean your use of that gun cannot be restricted by law, indeed severely so. The only issue is to what degree your usage may be curtailed. This is not black and white.
The crimes that you listed are destruction of property, disturbing the peace, and intentionally causing bodily harm. Using a gun is incidental to the actual crime. The same arguments can be made about knives, baseball bats, or other things. Consequently, this is not a legitimate basis for restricting their availability or usage of guns themselves, any more than such potential crimes limit the use of those other objects.
Of course, prosecutors love to double dip with charges, tacking on a weapons charge or two. These extra charges usually result in a far more severe sentence. Again, hard to see the legality of such practices, but this is the status quo that we have today.
Obviously there are limits on what you can shoot your guns at or crimes like murder, for example, would be legal as long as it was accomplished with a gun.
In most jurisdictions, homicide is entirely justifiable when it is committed in the act of defending oneself or others from potentially lethal forces, where a reasonable person would conclude that committing murder was necessary to preserve those lives.
Sure but is it legal if you’re not in the act of defending yourself? If you just walk up to someone who made you mad, and shoot them? No. Which means there are legal limits on how you can use your guns.
Yes, murder would be illegal without just cause, but then it doesn't matter what weapon is used, does it? In which case, you're trying to blame the weapon, rather than the person. I agree there should be legal limits on what you can do to someone else's person, but that policy does not require placing unconstitutional limits on gun use.
Important to note that "digital arms" are not a real thing as far as anyone's rights are concerned. God given rights probably but as far as encoded in law, not the case.
Also, don't engage in cyber warfare against other nations because the feds will come down on you harder than your target could hope to[1]. Obviously because it's stupid to put your country at risk.
[1] Unless you live in the US and that country is Israel.
Seems like an imperfect analogy. If you find malware running on your computing systems, it is legal to disable and delete it. But it’s not like the bad guys are physically present within your computer, like in a real life home invasion.
Encryption, at least, is a purely defensive weapon. In the historical context of 2A, protecting yourself from your government would closely align with the original intent of militias protecting locals from a federal king.
Yeah. After an expensive legal defense, maybe with a bunch of expensive appeals, you'd be either wrong, poor, and in jail or right, poor, and not in jail.
Do bear in mind that the way this interpreted under US law is considered by most non-Americans to be completely bonkers, and is only sustained by strong, uncompromising activist pressure.
I doubt the NRA would organize a picket to defend your right to run PGP.
Well, it's an American law, so its validity has no relation to how non Americans see it. Also, the activist pressure is much stronger and much, much better financed on the anti gun side, so that does not make much sense. You can go read the recent SCOTUS decisions related to the 2nd amendment; their interpretation of the constitution is very, very well justified. You can disagree with it, but it's ludicrous to say it's all because of extreme activist pressure. The 2nd Amendment is pretty clear on its intent, and that's wildly agreed on by constitutional experts. Americans usually support the right to bear arms too.
I'm not American but if I was and I wanted to limit access to guns, I don't think arguing that the courts should decide the 2nd amendment doesn't actually give the right to bear arms would be the way to go. If you think Americans agree with you and don't actually want that part of the constitution, judicial activism wouldn't be needed.
No offense but why would I care at all what a non-American thinks? They are not governed by this law and so have 0 say in what it should be since it is not a rights violation. I am only sorry you all live with such a lack of a basic right and find it normal.
From the other perspective: gun rights are under constant attack from fearmongering media and I find that bonkers. All it takes is one (1) psycho POS shooting up a school for the media to run a month of coverage claiming that everybody should now lose a fundamental right. Ffs most people agree that criminal activity doesn't justify violating everybodys rights (like police state measures), why is this specifically different? Because the media machine works for a political class that wants a disarmed and castrated electorate.
Theres been a creeping advance against these rights since the 1930s with the NFA passing and gun grabbers have been constantly demanding more for these 100 years with small concessions then larger infringements, racheting toward less gun rights, slowly but surely hellbent on taking away our weapons. Most of this is enabled by bullshit judicial activism that twists 2a for matters of convenience and political ends.
I hate that pro gun propaganda is seeping in to our country and gun access is getting more relaxed allowing psychos to get armed.
I want my right not to get shot to be intact. The police isn't also assuming you are armed during routine stops so they aren't so trigger happy.
> I hate that pro gun propaganda is seeping in to our country and gun access is getting more relaxed allowing psychos to get armed.
What "pro gun propaganda" is this exactly? Gun access is not getting more relaxed - talk about propaganda. The Federal form you are required to fill out at any gun shop in the country asks you to declare whether you have ever been adjudicated as mentally defective or have ever been confined in a mental institution. Answering Yes will result in your firearm purchase being denied.
We can't know ahead of time that someone is going to go off the deep end and go on a shooting spree. You can't legislate this risk away short of banning guns completely and confiscating all of them, which is unrealistic/impossible. Let's ban alcohol as well because it kills twice as many people as guns do (half of which are suicides) annually.
I'm an independent that shares plenty of the Democrat party's positions, but gun control isn't one of them. Guns are tools than can be used and misused like any other tool.
The 2nd amendment already has interpretation questions around the first half -- the "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," clause. It could go in any number of directions, from expanding "arms" to include "digital arms" to reducing the right only to "as part of a well regulated militia." See: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/second_amendment
But I wouldn't bet money on the right expanding beyond firearms any time soon, given the glacial pace of constitutional law review.
It could be interpreted that it'd be ok to ban eggs in other circumstances, certainly. The problem is that it's meaning is so ambiguous that you can't properly tell, especially when considering the arms they had at the time of writing were completely different from what we consider arms these days. If the founders said the right to eat eggs is not to be infringes, would that mean the government would be unable to regulate genetically modified eggs? I don't think so.
The Supreme Court does not make policy, at most it stops other branches from making certain kind of policies, when presented an opportunity to do so when resolving an actual case or controversy.
Our current Supreme Court is creating policy from whole cloth while entirely ignoring precedent, and the text of law as a flagrant act of partisan pandering in their recent vax || test ruling.
> I would have advised him to stay quiet about this. Not out of fear of the North Koreans
Both reasons seem pretty compelling. "Keeping your mouth shut" is such a fundamental rule of opsec that it's hard to take this persons skill/expertise seriously. Why put yourself in a place where you (and your family) have to look over their shoulder for the rest of your life.
I applaud the guy for his civil courage, but seriously this just painted a huge target on his back and probably changed his life forever. Hope he is OK and even more so hope he has no family or friends who sure didn't sign up for it.
You can't own a firearm if you consume marijuana, so using the 2nd amendment for things like encryption might get interesting. The 2nd amendment allows for heavy regulation of arms.
> You can't own a firearm if you consume marijuana [...]
While BATF Form 4473 and the Gun Control Act may lead some to conclude that you cannot be "addicted to marijuana" and simultaneously legally possess a firearm, consider that many laws are on the books that would likely be adjudicated unconstitutional. The second amendment concludes with "shall not be infringed", and denying somebody their right to possess a firearm (for any reason) appears to be an infringement of that right, according to the second amendment.
> The 2nd amendment allows for heavy regulation of arms.
I'd be curious to hear what leads you to believe this. The language of the second amendment is clear, and the founder's intentions even more so. If you're developing your view based on the term "well-regulated", go do a bit of research on what that term meant when the Bill of Rights was authored (hint: it's different than what "regulated" is often interpreted to mean in 2022).
The federal application for a Federal Firearms License, the license needed to be a firearm vendor, not the (as far as I can tell) non-existent federal license to own one?
It isn't just FFLs. The Gun Control Act (GCA) defines a list of people who aren't allowed to ship, transport, receive, or possess firearms of ammo. This includes any person "who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act, codified at 21 U.S.C. § 802);" [1]. Since cannabis is federally illegal still if you use it you can't legally even possess (not just own) a firearm or ammo.
I think it is a stupid law though. Imagine if we applied that logic to other constitutionally protected rights. "Anyone who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance shall not have the right to vote" or "Anyone who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance shall not have the right to due process".
Admittedly, it's hard to kill another person by voting, or receiving due process. And we do restrict speech when it verges on violence (imminent lawless action, fighting words).
> "Anyone who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance shall not have the right to vote" or "Anyone who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance shall not have the right to due process".
Not the same thing at all, because a firearm is directly and irrevocably more dangerous while under the influence of drugs.
You can debate the tradeoff of "right to bear arms" vs "right to regulate arms" (just as voting has gone through lots of regulations, some terrible (black people, women), some OK or debatable (showing proof residence or citizenship somewhere in the process), but it's not obvious simply by analogy to other rights.
The other day I read a (possibly wrong, fictional, or dramatized) account of some private group hacking Belorussian railways to impede Russian military logistics.
I'm sure this is not new, but to me it is a fascinating concept: the modern era equivalent of Partisan soldiers, conducting cyber warfare in their jammies.
It's a real thing, live and ongoing. They have a Telegram channel https://t.me/cpartisans and also a promotional video on YouTube for how to defeat Lukashenko, the only dictator in Europe: https://youtu.be/UldT78OjlvE
They did manage to induce mess on Belarus railways transporting Russian military equipment to Ukrainian border. It probably stalled, but still didn't prevent Russian military reaching the Ukrainian border through Belarus.
Remember: the US Constitution includes "letters of marque" clause, empowering Congress to grant citizens' requests to wage private warfare against foreign entities. Wish people would exercise this option more.
Yea I was wondering about the legality of this cyber self-defence, but like many crimes, if the victim (deserving or not) does not report it, you’ll probably get away scot free.
In the case of NK, they could probably even register a complaint and have it ignored, assuming the effort needed to locate the perp was greater than the fucks given by the appropriate authorities.
Hats off to the author but I would also caution them against broadcasting it publicly. The people who would appreciate this the most probably use secure channels anyway ;)
But doesn't love Osama Bin Laden, although Afghanistan certainly suffered more from US involvement than the US has suffered from North Korea, whose people it killed millions of.
OBL bombed more than just infrastructure. I wonder how the US/world would have felt about him if he decided to take out the Statue of Liberty or something like that (while it was closed for repairs).
I'm hopeful that the new originalist makeup of the SCOTUS means no longer unconstitutionally limiting what's meant by "arms". ICBMs for billionaires! /s
> Also the vagueness of our hacking laws probably make what he did a crime.
I think it is likely North Korea could charge him with a number of crimes that may be extraditable, like cyber "terrorism" (the quotes are necessary, right?) The US has extradited at least one Russian hacker [1] P4X is also likely now featured in intelligence summaries in countries with security treaties with North Korea, like China and Russia. Also, it's possible P4X has violated the Logan Act.
>Also, I feel like the 2nd amendment should be interpreted to include the right to bear digital arms
The case presented in the article is not at all what the 2nd amendment or any self defense laws are about. This guy was seeking revenge and punishment for an act, not attempting to prevent damage from a imminent threat. The court systems are for dealing with those types of situations. Granted, the court systems wouldn't have helped in this situation, but it's important to make the distinction that this was an attack, not self defense.
It's not about "vagueness" - intentionally messing up somebody else's computer or network (without owner's permission) is a crime, and it's not vague in any computer crime statute worth its name. Granted, if somebody had it coming and deserves this and much more, it's North Korea, but that doesn't change the nature of the deed. I don't think US authorities will be eager to prosecute, but that doesn't change the nature of it.
Right to bear digital arm to fight foreign digital empire … seems fit the spirit. Not sure about the law and 3 letter people. Best of luck. Brave soul to fight N Korea. How about China.
A North Korean law was probably broken. North Korea could ask the US to send him over to stand trial and the US could agree or ignore the request. No legal framework exists between the two countries so the US isn't forced to send them.
Things don't start becoming a crime until laws exist.
Sorry for being pedantic but the State of North Korea does not claim to be communist but rather "socialist Juche" which is very different from Marxism-Leninism and other "communisms".
I think we definitely need some additional rights listed to account for digital. GDPR seems like a good start to give people more ownership of their data, but in the US we still have basically no data rights or protection against searches of digital content that you don't physically host.
But I also am immensely proud that we have people willing to take things into their own hands when needed.
Also, I feel like the 2nd amendment should be interpreted to include the right to bear digital arms (strong encryption for a start). This will probably take another decade to figure out what that would really mean.