1 Vote
Vulnerability to foreign laws.
Can the USA make laws that bind non Americans living in other countries?
Julian Assange, an Australian living in London, and founder of Wikileaks, greatly embarrassed and offended the USA by publishing sensitive dioplomatic documents that had been given to him (and other media) by a US serviceman.
Clearly the serviceman broke a US law, making him liable to prosecution. Call him well meaning, whistleblower. naive, or a fool, but he was a sergeant and so should have known better than to breach the trust placed in him by his country.
Can anyone explain to me how Assange can be held accountable to US law. As a non citizen of the USA, he had no representation in the legislature that made publishing that information an offence for Americans in its jurisdiction. How can that domestic censorship law now be applied to a non citizen who at the time of the alleged crime was living in another country far outside of the jurisdiction of the USA?
Clearly it can’t, and that is probably why he has not yet been charged. Nevertheless, a Grand Jury has been appointed to hear an indictment, and the USA has requested extradition. On what basis does it intend to try him. Remember that this is a publishing offence, so censorship of another country is involved: how arrogant can we get? Indignation has been allowed to triumph over reason.
Whatever you think about the alleged publishing crime, there is, quite separate from that, a huge principle at stake here about libailty to the laws of foreign countries.
Would the USA sit still if one of its citizens were to be dragged to another country to account for an alleged offence for an action that is not a crime in the USA? (In Saudi it is against the law for a woman to drive a car alone) The same kind of thinking is allowing American music and film producers to pursue DRM and copyright offences which they allege have been committed by foreigners. At best these should be commercial disputes, but Australian Raymond Griffiths has already been extradited to the USA and is now in prison here for such a crime committed while he was living in New South Wales.
Of course the USA would not have accepted that for one of its own. At the time, the Australian PM, John Howard, was a sycophant crony of George W Bush: so eager to please that he would not stand up for the rights of his citizen. The Aussies should have simply told us to get fucked!
I think that we should return to the principle that (regardless of any treaties) if a person breaks a valid law of the jurisdiction that he is in at the time of the offence then he is accountable to that country only – and for an American, it does not matter if it is not an offence in the USA. The difficulty with this is that the internet makes it so easy to break the laws of other countries. Well, I say too bad, what a pity, never mind! The victim will just have to sue for commercial damages.
What do the nerds think?
Similarly tagged OmniNerd content:
- Bottom-Up Tax Model, by Brandon 3 months ago
This article was edited after publication by the author on 20 Aug 2012.
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When In Rome by VnutZ
Soooo – Americans are okay to go into Russia and perform all sorts of cybercrime against anyone I want? Or go to lawless countries and perform sexual, criminal atrocities like rape and murder? All because “When in Rome” is the rule.
Can't touch this! by GreatWhiteDork
As much as I dislike his actions, if he is not a U.S. Citizen and not on US soil, you can’t do anything to him.
I would not stand for U.N. Law if it ran counter to U.S law, so I cannot think that U.S. law should apply in other countries.
The serviceman is screwed.
Retrospective justice by Occams
Today the US Supreme court decided that the terror support law passed in 2006 could not be applied retrospectively. On a related case, the USA military commission had charged Australian David Hicks with this crime after holding him for five years in Gitmo. Thrill seeker youth David tried to join the Taliban, in 2001. But, after training, had spent only one night with them guarding a tank before he was betrayed and arrested by the US Army while at a bus stop trying to leave the country. The US Army had arrived in the country after David, attacking the Taliban, an irregular force that had originally been created by the CIA to fight the Rusians.
Of course David was a misguided young fool, but how was he to know at the time that he was breaking an American law that would be passed in five years time. As an Australian in Afghanistan, should he have been concerned if a time traveller had told him that this would happen.
Eventually David accepted an offer of a release to return home if he pleaded guilty. To not accept would have been stupid. Now they can say: so what? He was guilty. What duress? Torture? We don’t do that!
Throughout all this ordeal. David was represented by USMC Jag major, who tried valiantly to point out the injustice, but was ignored, except by the Australian media.
Australian Judge slams US extradiction practices by Occams
There is a relevant discussion of this on /. today. The Chief Justice of New South Wales appears to have reached the same position on this that I have.
Lawyer Kellie Tranter writes, ‘the long arm of the Government is using criminal enforcement powers to enforce commercial interests at the behest of corporations and their lobbyists.’ A former NSW Chief Judge said it was bizarre ‘that people are being extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges when they have never been to the U.S. and the alleged act occurred wholly outside the U.S.’ He said although copyright violations are a great problem, a country ‘must protect its nationals from being removed from their homeland to a foreign country merely because the commercial interests of that foreign country.’ Australia recently ‘streamlined’ its laws to make extradition to the U.S. even easier."
This is really only an Australian problem because they should be simply telling our IP corporates to get fucked in the time-honored Australian tradition. I presume that our old ally takes its treaty obligations very seriously. A reason given for this ion /. is that the Australian government wants the country to succeed in the information age.
Can anyone see the US Government allowing its citizens to be treated in this way by a foreign government? Could it even do that: for example, allow, Billy Joe, a Texan who has never been to Europe to be sent to jail in France for copying the Mona Lisa and calling himself Leonardo. The Board of the Lourve is annoyed, and wants to prosecute him for fraud.
What if Bubba from Alabama did go to France to try real wine for the first time and, after he came home, he was identified by a witness while for pissing on the floor of a TGV. Now SNCF wants to prosecute him.
I hope our government would have the nerve to respond to those French companies in the way that the Australians should have responded to us.