Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

Paying a Hacker’s Ransom Shouldn’t Be a Crime

A federal law outlawing the practice would be a very bad idea.

June 25, 2019 at 1:00 PM UTC

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

It’s OK sometimes to give in to ransomware.
Photographer: AFP Contributor/AFP

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I recently suggested that Baltimore might perhaps consider giving in to ransomware demands by unknown hackers who so cleverly froze the city’s computer network last month that much of it remains inaccessible. Then came last week’s news that the much smaller city of Riviera Beach, Florida, agreed to pay $600,000 to get its own computer services unlocked. This entirely rational act has led to considerable online criticism — including an editorial in the Washington Post demanding “a federal law banning ransomware payments.”

Well.