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Comment by sangnoir | Hacker News Reader

> I'm American [...] I may be missing context.

You are missing context: look up "Parliamentary Privilege" and "Parliamentary Sovereignty" which do not have US equivalents. The "invitation" was effectively a subpoena.

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But is the legal ramification for ignoring the invitation anything they can think of? If a British citizen did the same, could they claim that they were investigating them, barge into their home unannounced and seize all devices, and then later publish any nude photos found under the justification of “hey, you should have come when we invited you?”

Why not just prosecute for whatever law was broken?

Didn't the fact that is not a UK citizen also basically safe him from being dragged to Parliament by the police?

Im pretty sure, if you are an UK citizen and they summon you, they will eventually just grab you and put yourself in front of Parliament.

No, since the person who's documents were seized was in the UK on a trip. Except for special cases where immunity is granted, physical presence in a country means that one is subject to the laws and jurisdiction of the country. In this case, the UK Parliament had the authority to compel the production of the documents in question, by threat of imprisonment if necessary.

A question for any legal scholars out there: the seizure of the documents would be contempt of court in the US, could it not? The person who was threatened with arrest has the defense of duress, so could the US court charge the MPs who ordered the seizure? I don't think the UK would extradite, but if the MPs were to visit the US without immunity, could they be arrested for violating US law (even though their actions are apparently within their rights under UK law)?

Again, the seizure isn’t the problem, the public disclosure is.

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