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Comment by junto | Hacker News Reader

  Perhaps there is something significant in the fact that    
  Assange is in the Ecuadorian Embassy

There is no secret in that. It's an embassy and sovereign territory of the Ecuadorians. No government in their right mind would trespass.

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> No government in their right mind would trespass.

What about forcing down a presidential plane (of a nearby country)? Would a government in their right mind do that?

Once a hegemonic country's closest-held secrets are involved, all bets seem to be off.

I'm actually a bit surprised that Britain didn't stage some kind of covert snatch from the Ecuadorian embassy after all these years (at the behest of the US).

I'm actually a bit surprised that Britain didn't raid the Ecuadorian embassy after all these years (at the behest of the US).

While we're speculating: Could this mean that the US doesn't want Assange anymore?

It's not a binary thing. The US will put a certain value on getting Assange and that will determine the extent to which they'd be willing to expend resources (including diplomatic capital) on doing so.

I think the value of catching Assange probably dropped a lot post-Snowden though. He's probably more famous, and more importantly he proves that Assange isn't a one-off.

Having Assange holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy and letting the Swedish thing stew and continue to tarnish his reputation is probably just as good for them.

Don't be fooled. Both Assange and Snowden would endure the worst treatment a human being can endure if the US had their way. Just because they don't appear to be willing to do everything to get at them does not mean that if these people fell in their lap that they wouldn't commit unspeakable atrocities.

If the US weren't the global hegemon then our actions would resemble those of a rogue state. However, if we weren't a global hegemon, it would be unlikely that the US would be in a position to take these same actions.

Not in the UK. Under the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987, diplomatic status can be revoked and the police could enter the embassy. (Doing so would be pretty foolish, since it would make UK embassies around the world unsafe, but the law is there). It is certainly not "sovereign territory" .. that's a myth.

Diplomatic status can be revoked in probably every country.

Generally that involves declaring them a persona non grata and expelling them.

Under the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987

Note that Part 1(1)(4) states[0]:

"The Secretary of State shall only give or withdraw consent or withdraw acceptance if he is satisfied that to do so is permissible under international law."

So it's not like they can do this willy-nilly. Under that act, there has to be a reason permissible under international law to revoke the consulate land, and it's a complete revocation of the land rights, requiring a new application by the foreign state to re-establish the consulate.

[0] - http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1987/46

Very true, but the UK wrote a letter to Ecuador claiming (maybe not correctly) that keeping Assange was not in the spirit of the Vienna Convention. Source: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/aug/15/uk-arrest-julia...

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