Judge dismisses Kaspersky lawsuits over government ban

Last year, the US government made moves to ban the use of Kaspersky security software in federal agencies, claiming the company's ties to the Russian government represented a security risk. In September, the Department of Homeland Security issued an order that required federal departments and agencies to remove the company's software from their systems. Then, Congress passed and President Trump approved a bill -- the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) -- that al so banned Kaspersky software from federal government use. Kaspersky subsequently filed two lawsuits combatting both bans, but a judge has now dismissed them.

CyberScoop reports that Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, US District Judge for the District of Columbia, rejected Kaspersky's claims that the bans were unconstitutional. Kaspersky argued that the NDAA inflicted an unconstitutional "punishment," but Judge Kollar-Kotelly disagreed. She said the act wasn't a punishment but instead, "eliminates a perceived risk to the nation's cybersecurity and, in so doing, has the secondary effect of foreclosing one small source of revenue for a large multinational corporation."

Further, because she dismissed the lawsuit against the NDAA, the suit against the Department of Homeland Security's order was rendered moot since the act would supercede any change to the order. "These defensive actions may very well have adverse consequences for some third-parties," she said in her opinion. "But that does not make them unconstitutional."

The NDAA's Kaspersky ban goes into effect on October 1st.

Via: CyberScoop



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