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Comment by jimrandomh | Hacker News Reader

What does the bill actually, you know, do? The article has neither a link to its text nor an identifying number, and the name, "9/11 bill", is not a good enough search term to be able to easily find it. It's kind of absurd to try to discuss the bill, or political machinations surrounding it, without getting that basic information down first.

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It appears to be the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism act:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/204...

Vice mentioned it in their article:

https://news.vice.com/article/this-bill-would-allow-a-lawsui...

The vice article is way better than all the other coverage.

As a bit of additional background context, the historical rule has been that foreign nations cannot be sued in each others' courts. In the US, that rule is subject to the whim of Congress, and Congress is allowed to create exceptions.

This is also true as a practical matter - there's no real mechanism for forcing officials of another country to provide information. Congress cannot change this.

People in Saudi who are dissidents end up jailed. This is particularly acute about the Shia/Sunni axis.

The Saudis may well have a legitimate complaint here - the result would possibly be a historical fiction made up for political gain.

Interestingly, I would think that Congress commissioning a rigorous investigative nonfiction film - of the sort Errol Morris does - would be a better solution. "Frontline" already has a start on the subject. The hard part would be defending the design of that from accusations of it being propaganda.

There is the International Court of Justice, but US has never recognized its jurisdiction.

> the historical rule has been that foreign nations cannot be sued in each others' courts

You mean, most countries abide by this?

Why is that? Is it possible this type of behavior is viewed as a gateway to sanctions at best, or stifled communications and war at worst?

I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the proposed law. I'm just curious what the consequences might be when one developed country (Saudi Arabia) inevitably rebuffs another country's (USA's) judgement of it. I mean, that's point of separate countries right? Sovereignty.

It's a separation of powers idea, even in countries that don't have a formal separation of powers like in the U.S. In nearly every country, the President (or Prime Minister or King) is invested with foreign policy powers, so that the country can speak with one voice in international affairs. That power is undermined by domestic courts passing judgment on the actions of foreign sovereigns.

Nations don't have to respect each other's court judgments. On the other hand, domestic courts can decide the disposition of assets within their jurisdiction. For a country like Saudi Arabia, that has a ton of U.S. assets, a U.S. court judgment can be a big risk even if it has no intention of recognizing the validity of that judgment.

The idea is that if citizens could sue foreign countries, then those countries' assets in US jurisdiction could be seized.

In the case of SA, there are the treasury bonds that they are talking about selling. Considering the all-encompasing dollar-based banking system, the US in particular would be very skilled at getting foreign nation assets in rulings.

I think the reasoning behind it historically is about maintaining proper diplomatic relations. The executive is in charge of foreign relations, not the judicial system. There's probably some arguments about standing too, and jurisdiction. But I think it's mainly the diplomatic angle.

> The idea is that if citizens could sue foreign countries, then those countries' assets in US jurisdiction could be seized.

Oh I see. So SA would want to sell off US assets before doors open in the US to seize those assets via lawsuits. That makes sense.

I should've read the whole article before commenting. Thanks!!

By the way your last paragraph is indented like a code block and kind of hard to read because of the side scrolling...

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth funds hold many billions (I would guess hundreds of billions) dollars worth of US assets that US courts could seize for damage compensations.

"$750 billion in treasury securities and other assets" according to the article.

It amends the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to allow the bringing of suits against foreign states for terrorist-related claims where the entirety of the alleged activity did not take place on American soil. Basically, KSA had gotten some civil cases tossed based on FSIA immunity, so this is a bill to remove that bar.

It allows victims of 911 to sue the Saudi regime.

It may also allow victims of US drone strikes, civilian casualties in Iraq etc. to sue the US government?

Nope, wrong direction; the defendant has to be a non-US sovereign, and the conduct has to cause loss of life or property to a US resident or on US soil. On the other hand, it may open the door for suits against Israel by US-resident Palestinians.

"in cases where nations are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill Americans on United States soil"

If I read it right, the Act actually establishes a cause of action in any act of "international terrorism" in which "any national of the United States suffers injury in his or her person, property, or business." While there are at least half a dozen reasons a suit against Israel (in my hypothetical example) would fail, the Act is pretty expansive in where the acts can take place, and what kind of damage they do.

But doesn't it set a precedent?

Say an innocent Afghan family gets hit by a US drone on their own home soil. Wouldn't their family want to sue the US government?

Well, the bilateral US-Afghan security treaty would bar filing in an Afghan court; in the US realm, you would have standing problems, the Baker bar, and sovereign immunity. If I recall -- and IANAL, let alone a nat-sec attorney -- there's some Fourth Circuit precedent that could justify stripping sovereign immunity from individual officials in jus cogens violations, but I don't think anyone else takes that seriously.

The bitter truth is that there's not much you can do in those circumstances. To paraphrase the Melian Dialogues, the strong do what they will and the weak take what they're given.

If that's the case, why wouldn't the ex-post-facto clause in the constitution (Article 1 Section 9) nevertheless protect anybody this bill is meant to open to liability?

Good question! Calder v Bull held that the ex post facto prohibition does not apply in the civil context, so this can apply retroactively. But you can see why in some legal philosophy quarters Calder is controversial.

That seems totally dopey. Isn't the point of ex post facto that if you make a legally-informed decision with understood consequences, those consequences shouldn't be able to change (because you might have made a different decision)? What was the court's logic for differentiating civil and criminal contexts?

The opinion in Calder v. Bull is a little opaque, but the academic work I've read on the subject explains that the differentiation was based on the definition of the term "ex post facto law." Calder v. Bull relied on how the term was defined by William Blackstone, an influential English jurist, as well as by various state constitutions.

Civil suits are torts, where there is not much specific, just guidelines for how torts are resolved. A tort is still a tort even if no specific law makes it actionable.

By analogy, burglary is illegal, with a statute of limitations. If the statute of limitations change, you can't say "don't prosecute me, when I robbed the guy the law said I would be clear if I hid for 7 years"

That was not my understanding of statute of limitations. Suppose I committed a burglary 10 years ago, and I am out of jeopardy because the statute of limitations has kicked in. Now legislation extends the statute of limitations to 50 years. I am again at risk of indictment? Or the new statute of limitations only binds to burglaries that happen after the law extending to 50 years is enacted?

It's not like the US is a Rechtsstaat.

>The article has neither a link to its text nor an identifying number,

This is so very typical of "old-school" news organizations that do not "get" the internet, nor do they understand the power of connections (HTML links in this case). Of course, the lack of "getting it" is somewhat understandable given that these old-school orgs. are coming in to this "new-fangled" internet tech. with a mindset grounded in 100 years worth of creating paper for dissemination of information. Since paper ca not directly connect a reader to a base source, they never saw any reason to provide the information necessary for a reader to obtain the base sources for themselves. And they continue this practice onto the web, which from their mindset is just another "paper printing press" to disseminate information across.

Additionally, there's the somewhat conspiracy theorist viewpoint that hiding the base source information is overtly purposeful on their part, because that way they can have a better effect in influencing opinion (because the only data you get is that which they deem you suitable to receive) and without any ability to get to the base sources, you are much less likely to form any independent opinions that might diverge from what they want you to believe.

> somewhat conspiracy theorist viewpoint

...that is held by many professors of journalism at universities around the world.

There's also the whole SEO argument.

We trained these websites to link internally as much as possible to increase their page rank and ad revenue.

Technologists criticizing websites for not linking to external primary sources is a little bit like the pot calling the kettle black.

I won't say we take the whole blame or even most but we do have a hand in it.

> Technologists criticizing websites for not linking to external primary sources is a little bit like the pot calling the kettle black.

Unless you are a technologist that believes the best SEO is not gaming your internal links but being a good Web-citizen (i.e. providing external links to primary sources). ;)

For sure I do. I'm just trying to further theorize why many websites do not link externally. Short-sightedness is the best I can come up with.

Is it fair to say that most popular news websites tend to link more often to themselves than external sites? Recently I've noticed more are linking to primary sources, but it wasn't so common as recent as 2 years ago, in my recollection.

> I'm just trying to further theorize why many websites do not link externally. Short-sightedness is the best I can come up with.

Surely some sort of short-sightedness I think mostly related to the paper-printing philosophy presented by the ultimate-parent comment.

From an SEO angle, I'm guessing it has less to do with internal vs external links, but an attempt to generate more backlinks to the secondary source (boosting SEO of the secondary source) instead of providing an easier path to create backlinks to the primary source.

> Recently I've noticed more are linking to primary sources, but it wasn't so common as recent as 2 years ago, in my recollection.

I'm glad this does seem to be the trend recently for a lot of sites; I don't remember so clearly the state a few years ago.

> This is so very typical of "old-school" news organizations that do not "get" the internet, nor do they understand the power of connections (HTML links in this case).

It's also typical of "new-school" news organizations and bloggers.

Less outgoing links means users stay on the page longer meaning better retention metrics meaning more magic funny money ad cash.

I wonder if this is being kept hush-hush by even certain quarters here in America, although others are equally trying to give it as much exposure as humanly possible, especially in this frenetic election cycle.

This could add some context to the whole thing:

(From my comment below, near the bottom, in this same discussion)

Here's the recent 60 Minutes piece on the White House's potential declassification of the "28 pages" of the 9/11 Commission Report.

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/28-pages

[ Warning : Auto play video ]

That's what we get with a system of pretend journalists shooting for sensation with no information.

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