Roses are red, Kaspersky is blue: 'That ban's unconstitutional!' Boo hoo hoo Kaspersky Lab, the antivirus house, now claims that the US government's ban on its products amounts to punishment without trial. In court filings made late last year Kaspersky said it was intending to use the US Administrative Procedure Act to get the ban declared unconstitutional. Now, according to local reports, the Russian …
> ""The government will trot out the usual "National Security" line"
counting on it.
consider this: a foreign company sues your government over NOT buying its product
that pretty much sums it up."
Given that one of the aspects of the TPP that US businesses were pushing for was the ability to sue governments for instituting laws which unduly affected their profit margin, then I say more power to Kapersky for using the same tactic the US was pushing for, against the US.
How exactly does "the usual National Security line" allow them to ignore the constitution?
I mean, I get how it might be used to justify withholding evidence, but that's not the issue in this case. A bill of attainder is just flat-out unconstitutional, no matter how much evidence there is behind it.
@DougS, there are undoubtedly a lot of scum in Russia. Like the one whose email I was scrutinising just half an hour ago, in the vain hopes of finding someone I could plausibly report it to, trying to extract bitcoin from me. Since they claimed to be Ukrainian, I'm assuming they were at least patriotic Russians and quite possibly employed, indirectly, by the thug-in-chief himself.
But that doesn't mean every allegation against Russians should be considered "true". Particularly when the allegation takes the form of a law that would still be unconstitutional even if the claims were all 100% proven.
There are ways of dealing with rogue companies, but "passing a law against doing business with that particular company" is not a legitimate one.
"I'm continually surprised at the number of people who dismiss the possibility that Russia is interfering in US elections, hacking emails, etc. Russia is basically run by gangsters but somehow a lot of people seem to think they are squeaky clean!"
Well the first part is easy, as in the US election "interference". Twitter came out with the numbers, along with Facebook, and the number of "Russian" created bots were somewhere in the region of 0.5% of the total tweets/posts sent regarding the election during the election campaign. The effect was tiny, if there was any effect at all.
Also, we've had the release of the memo's that point to the Obama administration getting FISA warrants based on discredited information from that Steel chap. You know, the guy who came out saying Trump paid prostitutes to piss on a bed slept in by Obama? That story came from 4Chan, and Mr.Steel himself was paid to investigate these claims by the DNC. It's been said that the FISA warrants wouldn't have been issued if his evidence hadn't been given during the FISA hearings.
The hacking of the DNC emails, the Podesta emails, came from Podesta getting an email looking like it was from Google asking him to change his password. He forwarded it to his IT guy, who said it was "legitimate" - when in fact he meant to say "illegitimate". So the sophisticated email hacking Russia did was nothing more than what everyone gets these days - the equivalent of throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks. But the NSA, as well, have come out and said the download of internal DNC emails was localised, meaning someone inside the DNC leaked the emails. The transmission rates just wouldn't have been possible to get from a remote server.
Yeah, Russia is ran by gangsters. But you'd be a complete fool to believe America isn't being run by equally as bad - and inept in cases - gangsters.
Oh looky here, we have another one who gets all their news from only Trump approved sources.
Sorry, the FBI probe was started BEFORE the Steele dossier came out. That's been proven in open congressional testimony, not that Fox News is going to tell their viewers that because it conflicts with the storyline lie that the right wing is trying to spread that blames everything on Steele.
"Oh looky here, we have another one who gets all their news from only Trump approved sources."
Trump only likes Fox News. I've never, ever, listened to or seen Fox. What I've read has come from all over the place. Interviews on CNN, articles from The Guardian for example.
"Sorry, the FBI probe was started BEFORE the Steele dossier came out. That's been proven in open congressional testimony, not that Fox News is going to tell their viewers that because it conflicts with the storyline lie that the right wing is trying to spread that blames everything on Steele."
I never said the FBI probe was started after the Steele dossier came out. I said that the dossier helped the FBI with their FISA application. Those are two very different things.
But don't let your own bigotry get in the way of understanding plain English.
@phuzz: "violet" refers to any of a dozen or so species of flower which come in multiple varieties, and cover a wide variety of colours, including violet, darkish purples, blue, cream, and even some fairly raucous shades of orange and yellow.
So while they aren't *all* blue, some of them are, and a bunch of others are neither violet nor blue.
Overall, it's not really very informative.
Wild violets come in many colours - white, pink, dark blue, pale blue, lavender, violet.....
try going out into the countryside and actually looking at what you're seeing
or try reading a book, such as this page
http://paintdrawer.co.uk/naturebooks/wild-flowers-the-wild-flowers-of-britain-and-northern-europe-by-marjory-blamey-fitter-fitter-9780006364573.jpg
"Wild violets come in many colours - white, pink, dark blue, pale blue, lavender, violet.....
try going out into the countryside and actually looking at what you're seeing"
You're right of course, but the only ones I see flowering at this time of year near me are purple (they're dog violets).
Specifically, they have the right to prepare the way for an enemy cyber attack on the US by deploying enemy enabled infrastructure.
If you ask me, Kaspersky might even end up in jail, if he insists of these rights.
Kaspersky cannot work on special projects for the FSB, be a personal friend to Putin and expect to be treated as not a risk Security is about reducing risks and getting rid of Kaspersky makes sense, from a risk management perspective. After all, if there is a cyber attack, and Kaspersky is involved, all those ignoring the warnings should go to jail.
A Russian spy who is within the jurisdiction of any US court has exactly the same rights as any other person within the jurisdiction of that court, including the protection of the constitution. Go read the 14th amendment.
By all means "treat Kaspersky as a risk". There are plenty of ways to do that. If the government sees fit it can declare Kaspersky Labs a proscribed organization, freeze its assets, deport or arrest any representatives it finds in the US, prevent them from entering the country (or leaving it, or travelling within it for that matter)...
But the government hasn't done any of those things. Instead it's passed a bill of attainder - a form of law explicitly forbidden by the constitution - not even the bill of rights, but the main text of the constitution itself. The politicians who drafted and voted for that law, and the president who signed it, should all be recalled/impeached for perjury, because they all took an oath to uphold the constitution, and they've all broken it.
But the government hasn't done any of those things. Instead it's passed a bill of attainder ...
No it hasn't. A bill of attainder is legislation which declares someone guilty of a crime without a trial.
The action by DHS is not legislation but an operational decision on which software to use, and justifies the decision by claiming Kaspersky's software is an information security risk. If publishing software which is an information security risk were a crime, Bill Gates would be serving several life sentences.
The National Defense Authorization Act also does not claim any criminal act on Kaspersky's part.
The worst they may say is that Kaspersky's software is not fit for purpose or does not meet government standards. Neither of those two is a crime; hence the bill of attainder argument is complete fallacy.
Is it better dead than red day?
If you had read the original report then you would know that the same content was leaked to china first but I guess the US worries that if they annoy them the way they do the Russians they will call in the debt and bankrupt them.
Personally I cannot fault Kaspersky for how they dealt with the NSA letting their contractors take their malware home with them, Kaspersky dealt with it exactly how an AV company is supposed to after a advanced user agreed to upload suspicious content for analysis it did just that and found they had the US malware arsenel.
There is no doubt in my mind that this ban is purely because they are associated with Russia and is an anticompetative slur.
I presume that Kaspersky will now just add all the US malware to their databases and then the only people who the NSA will be using them on will be their own, perhaps a bid to improve inter-agency communication?
If company X decides not to buy products from company Y, for any reason at all, is that unconstitutional?
So if government X decides not to buy products from company Y, is that unconstitutional?
This 'ban' doesn't apply to anyone apart from the US government itself. Crucially, it is not imposing the ban on anyone else.
...So if government X decides not to buy products from company Y, is that unconstitutional?...
Governments are a bit special - they run off taxpayer's money, so they have a duty to be fair.
However, they also have a duty to support the country that they run, so if they determine that a particular firm would be bad for the country in some way they should refuse to trade with it. Cruicially, they should have evidence for that - and it's probably no good enough to say that 'We politicians are trying to scare the country into war with Russia, and so a knee-jerk reaction against anything Russian is a good political move..."
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