Lauri Love: The Fight Against Extradition to the U.S.

The man at the door of the vicarage in Stradishall, Suffolk, wore dungarees and said he was from UPS. He needed Lauri himself to sign for the parcel.

Lauri Love came to the porch in his dressing gown and pyjamas, confirmed his name, and was handcuffed by an officer of the National Crime Agency. It was the evening of October 25, 2013, and over the next five hours 14 more officers arrived to carry away every computer in the house.

Three days later a federal grand jury in New Jersey indicted him for hacking the United States Army. Love would spend the next five years fighting to stay in Britain, in a case that reached the Lord Chief Justice and changed how the country extradites its citizens.

Lauri Love at a Glance

• Love grew up in Stradishall, Suffolk, the son of a prison chaplain and a Finnish mother, and holds both British and Finnish citizenship. He started degrees in physics and electrical engineering but finished neither.
• US prosecutors accused him of joining an Anonymous campaign that, between October 2012 and October 2013, broke into the Army, the Missile Defense Agency, NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Energy and other agencies.
• The NCA arrested him in October 2013 and tried to force him to hand over his encryption keys. A judge refused the agency's application in May 2016.
• Three US indictments followed, in New Jersey, New York and Virginia. Love said the combined exposure was up to 99 years in prison.
• In September 2016 a district judge ordered his extradition, finding US prisons could safeguard a man with Asperger's syndrome and depression. The Home Secretary signed the order that November.
• On February 5, 2018, the High Court allowed his appeal on both grounds: the "forum bar," because the alleged conduct happened in Britain, and oppression, because of his mental and physical health.
• The US lost its final attempt to appeal in March 2018. British prosecutors never charged him.
• In 2019 he lost a bid to get his seized computers back when a judge ruled he couldn't show the data on them was his.

The Life of Lauri Love

Love's Early Years

Lauri Love was born in 1984 and raised in Stradishall, a village in Suffolk where his father, the Reverend Alexander Love, worked as a chaplain at the nearby prison. His mother is Finnish, and the family's two passports would later matter in court.

Love was bright and restless. He started a physics degree and later an electrical engineering degree, and left both unfinished. He was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and suffered from depression and physical health problems, conditions that'd become the center of his legal case.

In 2013, the year everything changed, he was 28 and living with his parents.

Operation Last Resort

In January 2013, the activist and programmer Aaron Swartz killed himself while facing federal computer-crime charges. Anonymous responded with a campaign against the US government, and American investigators came to believe Love was part of it.

The charge sheet, as the High Court later summarized it, was long: the Army, the Department of Defense, the Missile Defense Agency, NASA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Sentencing Commission, an FBI forensics lab, the Department of Energy and the Federal Reserve, plus two private firms.

The New Jersey indictment, unsealed on October 28, 2013, said the hackers planted backdoors in compromised networks so they could return and steal data, including military data and the personal information of service members. In one chat quoted by prosecutors, dated October 7, 2012, Love allegedly discussed an Army database that might yield 400,000 email addresses and asked a co-conspirator to "grab one email for curiosity."

"Such conduct endangers the security of our country and is an affront to those who serve," said Paul Fishman, the US Attorney for New Jersey. A Department of Energy audit later put the number of identities taken from its systems at 105,000.

The Courier at the Door

The NCA's ruse at the porch was justified, the agency said, by intelligence that Love's equipment could be encrypted "at the press of a button." Officers seized the devices anyway, and found them encrypted anyway.

Love was questioned and released without charge the next afternoon, with his passport surrendered. On the Monday he lay on his bed listening to Radio 4 report that a Suffolk vicar's son had been charged with computer offenses, which was wrong, and within a week reporters from Britain, America and Finland were on the doorstep.

Then the NCA tried a different lever. Under section 49 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, it served Love with a notice demanding his passwords and encryption keys. He refused, facing up to five years in prison for doing so.

In February 2014 a second American indictment was unsealed in New York, accusing him of using a SQL injection flaw to get into the Federal Reserve. A third followed in Virginia. The US formally requested his extradition, and he was arrested again on the extradition warrant, this time while preparing to visit family in Finland.

The Encryption Fight

The key-disclosure battle came first. In 2015 Love applied to get his property back, and the NCA responded by asking Westminster Magistrates' Court to order him to decrypt it. On May 10, 2016, District Judge Nina Tempia declined, a decision privacy campaigners treated as a landmark.

Judge Tempia also heard the extradition case, over two days that June. Love's barrister argued for the "forum bar," a provision added to the Extradition Act after Gary McKinnon, another British hacker with Asperger's, was spared extradition in 2012. If the alleged conduct happened in Britain, the argument went, Britain should try it.

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge's Autism Research Centre told the court there was "absolutely no question" Love had Asperger's, and that extradition carried a serious risk of suicide.

Losing at Westminster

On September 16, 2016, Judge Tempia ordered Love extradited. The conduct occurred in the United States, she found; all the victims were there; and American prisons had adequate protections for vulnerable prisoners.

The Home Secretary signed the extradition order in November. Love, who'd said a US sentence could reach 99 years, was now one appeal away from a flight to New Jersey.

Supporters organized under the banner Free Lauri, parliamentarians wrote to President Obama asking him to withdraw the request, and the High Court granted permission to appeal in April 2017. The hearing ran for two days at the end of November, with the Lord Chief Justice himself presiding.

"Silence! This Is a Court of Law."

Judgment came on February 5, 2018. Around 50 supporters packed Court 4 of the Royal Courts of Justice, and when Lord Burnett of Maldon read the words "the extradition will not go ahead," the rest of the ruling was drowned out by cheering.

"Silence!" the judge barked. "This is a court of law."

Lord Burnett and Mr Justice Ouseley allowed the appeal on both grounds. The forum bar applied, because the alleged acts had been committed in Britain and because Love's medical needs tied him to his family and home. And extradition "would be oppressive by reason of his physical and mental condition."

Love would later call it the forum bar's first successful test. His father, who'd sat through every hearing, was close to tears; Love grinned and shook every hand offered to him.

The court added a pointed note: prosecuting Love in Britain wouldn't be oppressive. On March 20, 2018, the High Court refused to certify a point of law for the Supreme Court, and the US government was out of options.

The Computers

The Crown Prosecution Service never brought a case. But the NCA still had Love's computers, and in 2019 he went to court, representing himself, to get them back.

He lost. On February 19, 2019, District Judge Margot Coleman ruled that while the hardware might be his, the data on it wasn't, and that his refusal to answer questions about its contents meant he couldn't prove otherwise.

"Mr Love, you're not the victim in this," she told him. "You brought this on yourself."

The judge found him evasive and declined his offer to promise never to decrypt the drives. She spared him costs after he told the court he lived on £120 a week.

Love Today

Love has stayed largely out of the headlines since. In 2020 he spoke to the BBC World Service about living with autism and depression, and gave a series of interviews about the extradition fight of his friend Julian Assange.

He's never been convicted of anything, in either country.

Lauri Love: The Test Case

Love's case was never really tried on the facts. The United States says he helped loot a dozen federal networks; he's never answered the charges in court, and after 2018 he never will.

What the case decided instead was where a British citizen accused of hacking America should face justice. Fifteen years after Gary McKinnon, the answer finally became: here, or nowhere.

The courier in dungarees got his signature. The Americans never got his extradition, and Love never got his computers back.