The US has decided not to appeal the decision by a British court to oppose the extradition of British security researcher Lauri Love to the US to face charges of allegedly breaching the computer networks of a number of federal government agencies.
The UK court delivered its ruling on 5 February and the US authorities had two weeks to appeal.
Love's lawyer Ben Cooper told a magistrate's court that the US had decided not to appeal the decision, the news agency Bloomberg reported.
The British hacker, who has Asperger syndrome, earned the right to appeal in April 2017. He would have faced 99 years in jail if he was tried in three separate trials in the US, and a fine of up to US$9 million.
{loadposition sam08}He was ordered to be extradited by British Home Secretary Amber Rudd in November last year after he was unable to persuade a judge that he should be tried in the UK.
yup, our prisons suck
— Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) 17 February 2018
But on 5 February, the appeal judges told the Crown Prosecution Service to try Love in England.
Another British hacker, Gary McKinnon, was not extradited for accessing US Government computers in 2012, after a 10-year legal battle, because he was considered to be “seriously ill”.
Current British Prime Minister Theresa May, who was home secretary at the time, made the decision not to extradite McKinnon.
And a third British security researcher, Marcus Hutchins, is awaiting trial in the US, on charges of having allegedly writing and helping to distribute a banking trojan named Kronos along with an unnamed co-conspirator.
Hutchins was arrested in Las Vegas in August last year after he had boarded a plane to leave the US following the annual DEFCON security conference which he attended.