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Comment by _8j50 | Hacker News Reader

Downvote all you want but this is not good. Mozilla is not above the law. A government has sovreign (!!) rights which lets me spy on their users if they so choose.

You can disagree with it. You can refuse to do business in that country. But to actively work in hostility ti a foreign government is criminal.

I am surprised there are no US laws that would adversley affect Mozilla.

Your views and opinions,however well intended ,they do not supersede a government's legitimate right to govern its citizens.

The only exceptions are human rights violations or crimes against humanity. TLS intetception hardly counts as such. If it does,please prosecute US corporations that intercept TLS before you meddle with a foreign country's practices.

I think people forget that the internet does not supersede geographic boundaries and legitimate (as in accepted as such by other nations) governments.

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To amplify what vinceguidry said:

A government has sovereign rights... within that country. Not outside, though. Why should Mozilla (which is not a Kazakhstan entity) be subject to the laws of Kazakhstan? Should it not be subject to the laws of the US (presuming it is a US entity)?

> I am surprised there are no US laws that would adversley affect Mozilla.

Why should US law be subject to the law of Kazakhstan? That would kind of be a limit on US sovereignty, wouldn't it?

> But to actively work in hostility ti a foreign government is criminal.

No, it's only criminal within that country. If it's a foreign country, then you're not within that country - that's kind of what "foreign" means. I do what I do, paying attention to the laws of my country. I don't pay attention to the laws of other countries, because I'm not subject to them. They can pass all the laws they want. I don't care. I'm not following them, because I'm not there.

(Kazakhstan can, of course, freely prohibit Mozilla within its borders. It certainly has the right to do so.)

> A government has sovereign rights... within that country.

Sovereignty doesn't have bounds on scope, only on applicability. That is, it applies to actions anywhere, by only to things brought within the practical power (which isn’t the same thing as territorial boundaries) of the sovereign.

> Why should Mozilla (which is not a Kazakhstan entity) be subject to the laws of Kazakhstan?

Because there is no superior sovereign over Kazakhstan to say no. That's what sovereignty is ultimately about.

> That would kind of be a limit on US sovereignty, wouldn't it?

That sovereign entities are in a state of perpetual conflict, and hat this conflict is the only limit on the power of sovereigns, is a very old and well-known observation about sovereignty.

> No, it's only criminal within that country.

Very few, if any, countries actually only criminalize conduct within their own territory. Most criminalize some conduct whether or not it's within their own territory, and some (including the US) criminalize certain conduct only if it is outside their own territory. In fact, in some cases there is broad international consensus that nations should criminalize certain conduct even when committed by foreigners in foreign lands.

> > Why should Mozilla (which is not a Kazakhstan entity) be subject to the laws of Kazakhstan?

> Because there is no superior sovereign over Kazakhstan to say no. That's what sovereignty is ultimately about.

But Mozilla doesn't reside in Kazakhstan. So what are you saying? That Kazakhstan can make a rule that has zero real-world effect because they can't enforce it, and because nobody can make them change their rule, they are therefore sovereign?

> But Mozilla doesn't reside in Kazakhstan

Which would be relevant if there were a global sovereign and the government of Kazakhstan merely the regional administration beneath it of a particular territory, and if that sovereign made it relevant. Foreign residency alone doesn't immunize one from the rules of a sovereign either in theory or with a sufficiently capable and motivated one, in practice.

> That Kazakhstan can make a rule that has zero real-world effect because they can't enforce it, and because nobody can make them change their rule, they are therefore sovereign?

Close, but not quite. Rather, Kazakhstan, being sovereign, can make whatever rules it wants and is limited in applying them only by practical constraints, mostly those applied by other sovereigns. It may or may not be able to effectively apply it's laws to some conduct beyond it's borders; certainly other sovereign entities have done quite a bit of that.

This is why the US gets to invade random countries as a pre-emptive measure (e.g.:iraq)

> Close, but not quite. Rather, Kazakhstan, being sovereign, can make whatever rules it wants and is limited in applying them only by practical constraints, mostly those applied by other sovereigns.

And absent any practical way for them to enforce their rules, no one has any good reason to respect them. Nor does their claim to "sovereignty" give them any kind of moral imperative over the actions of people who do not reside in that country on any philosophical theory of law that I am aware of. So without a practical reason (the threat of force) or a moral imperative (patently non-existent), why should Mozilla comply with their wishes?

If the smallest sovereign state in the world passed a law that said that marriages in the United States were invalid if they were between two people of the same gender, would anyone care? Should they?

What gives a government sovereign rights? Is it the will of it's people? Clearly not, as numerous countries are democracies only in name.

No, it is the power of coercion (tanks and jail cells). De facto, an area where some entity projects uncontested force is a state. And the will of that entity is the law. And anyone who disobeys that will in that area is a criminal (according to the state).

Someone using a position of power to do things to others that are powerless to resist is bullying, plain and simple. Do bullies have a "sovereign right"? Should bullying not be resisted? What is the difference with dictatorships but in scale? Data collected from mass surveillance can be used for many ends far from benign.

Everyone is above the law, if the law is wrong.

A government has sovreign rights only because other countries agree that government is legitimate and independent of all othet governments.

If you disagree maybe you should start countries and refuse to ackllnowledge legitimacy of governments you dislike?

Kazakhstan's government is free to exercise their sovereignty and ban people from downloading Firefox there, if they want. Sovereignty does not entail being able to force foreign software developers to help you be totalitarian.

If they have the ability,they can invade the US and force mozilla to trust the CA.

This applies to mozilla because it explicitly interfered against the legitimate practices of the Kazakhistan government. Their reasoning and intent is not simply a violation of rules but rather to protect citizens of Kazakhistan against their own govenment. For that reason,this is a violation and interference against a sovreign nation's internal affairs.

Not sure what counts as human rights in your book, but to me freedom of speech and a right to privacy are among them. I’m glad some companies stepped up to protect their users from their authoritarian government as a matter if principle. It shows that corporate values can do good.

None of those are rights inherent to a human being. As can be showcased by almost every non-democratic government of every civilization in history.

If you invented it,it's a right you're enforcing on your own initiative. Human rights are self-evident and widely accepted across cultural boundaries. Which why they are universally accepted as human rights.

The criteria here is ability for the majority of humans to agree that after obsetvation if historical practices against modern context something can be considered a right a person enjoys just for being human.

Freedom of speech is a right you enjoy for living in a country that allows it. It's not a right you attained for being a human but because some people signed the bill of rights (for americans).

Sorry, you are plain wrong.

Article 12 and 19 of the UN Human Rights Charter [1]:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Just because some countries happen do have "historical practices" of violating human rights doesn't mean they have a right to keep violating them.

[1] https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

You are wrong in your understanding as well. The human rights charter is not legally binding and it was signed by only 48 of the initial UN members.

It merely reflects the beleiefs of some UN memebers at the time. I think in the end,if national sovreignity means anything at all then human rights is defined by each nation's laws.

For example, if Germany invaded the US to liberate americans from lack of universal healthcare which they as a nation consider to be a human right for americans are they justified?

If you believe so then yes what mozilla did is alright. My argument is,for it to be a human right,you need historical precedence and universal (not a mere majority) acceptance. It is a right you attain simply for being human and nothing more.

Let me take it a step further,if a prisoner's privacy is taken away (which is the case in every prison) then is that person's human right beinf violated every day? If so,please let's talk about that because you lose privacy for being arrested even without a trial or conviction!

Uhm... Since when is it bad for an entity in one country to stop working in another country because of ethical worries? Mozilla's ethics do not approve of how a given CA entity uses their power and so they are saying they will not trust their certificates. I certainly applaud them for that.

Even if they have the right ti revoke a certificate,their reason cannot be to protect citizens of a country against their own government. That is insulting the citizens of the country,they get to decide if their government is violating their rights.

The reasoning and argument is what I disagree with,not Mozilla's rights as a US company.

Mozilla is not bound by Kazakhstan's sovereignty. It does not have to answer to anyone's laws but the laws of the state it is incorporated in.

I agree, and Kazakhistan can and should prosecute mozilla and attempt to extradite its CEO.

Non-zero amount of work, negative benefit. Even wholly illegitimate states, such as Kazakhstan's, investigate legitimate crimes from time to time, and such an attempt would zero out any chance that government would otherwise have of extraditing someone who committed one.

Benefit is to set an international precedent where random citizens or corporations hostility can be accounted for or ignored. The benefit is political.

Don't comment about downvotes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sure thing.

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