Suspected cracker detained in Estonia

Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 0:26 | Posted in crime, Estonia, internet, russia | Leave a comment
Tags: hacking

Due to the ongoing resistant cyber attacks against Estonia orchestrated by the Russian government, I am unable to access the Estonian daily Postimees through the web. No new headlines of the paper have appeared in my RSS reader in three days. Ironically, I was able to read in Postimees today via a proxy site that the Estonian police have taken into custody a person suspected to have actively participated in the attacks and also encouraged others to join the activity, thereby mediating detailed instructions to attack Estonian servers and web sites.

The suspect is called Dmitri, a 19 year old Estonian citizen living in Tallinn. According to a press statement of the prosecutor’s office, Dmitri has been useful in orchestrating the attacks, since as a local resident he is well oriented in the Estonian web. The prosecutors say that Dmitri encouraged others to crack web sites of the Estonian government and political parties.

What bothers me most with this Dmitri character is that he allegedly did this against the country he is a citizen of. Does his citizenship not have any importance above possessing an Estonian passport which provides him access to all EU countries and many other countries? Disagreeing with one’s own government is a civil right of great importance but I am old fashioned enough to think that a citizen is supposed to have some loyalty against their own government. At least enough loyalty not to participate in a cyber war against it.

Dmitri is naturally by definition innocent as long as he has not been found guilty by a court of law. If the evidence against him is strong enough for a guilty verdict, he will serve his sentence in an Estonian jail rather than a Russian one. That is of course nice for him, maybe even worth having an Estonian passport.

Is that the main reason for choice of citizenship these sad days?