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Comment by ailun | Hacker News Reader

Guess what? I don’t agree with many of the recent infringements on constitutional rights in the US either. I can criticize my country because I’m not a blind nationalist. And the US doing something wrong doesn’t excuse what China is doing to a formerly free society.

Further, it’s impossible for anything to be more vague than the HK national security law - there must be some level of maximum vagueness and China has achieved it with this law.

Edit: I see you’ve linked Nathan Rich - what a horrible source. Why don’t you link the actual law you’re talking about?

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Reply to your last point first, you are right, I should quote easy-to-read material. I quote Nathan Rich because I first saw this law in his video. I extracted the link so that others can read it:

> 18 U.S. Code § 2385.Advocating overthrow of Government https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385

In fact, China has learned a lot from the United States. Before the Hong Kong National Security Law was released, some people joked that it would be better to copy the laws of the United States directly, so that many disputes can be avoided.

I think no one wants his rights to be restricted until his right to life is threatened. If a group of people say they will destroy everything until the government compromises, then the streets are destroyed, the unemployment rate rises, and relatives hate each other. Someone will accept that all this must be legally bound.

That's great, you linked something specific to talk about. Interestingly, the actual application of that law demonstrates how rights are protected in the US. You may know that Chairman Xi thinks there should never be an independent judiciary in China. So the vague national security law there ends up as nothing but a tool of the state to arrest those it doesn't like.

In the US, the Supreme Court balances that law against our constitutional rights, rendering it almost unenforceable. In fact, the way that law is applied is very specific, not vague at all.

Please read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yates_v._United_States

Nathan Rich and people like him may be fun for you to watch because they confirm your worldview and reinforce your biases, but I suggest you read some real legal scholars if you're interested in actually educating yourself.

Edit: Also, getting back to the origin of this thread, nothing in US law prohibits what Jimmy Lai did. And nothing prohibited it when he did it in Hong Kong. Even besides how disgusting this law is, applying it retroactively is truly appalling.

We live in different legal systems. Sometimes I also have a lot of questions about the laws of the United States, because Trump has signed a lot of executive orders to ban Huawei and TikTok, without going through the court or Congress, and they are effective.

Back to Hong Kong, the Hong Kong National Security Law is not retroactive:

> Article 39 This Law shall apply to acts committed after its entry into force for the purpose of conviction and imposition of punishment.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AHong_Kong_National_Sec...

The police found evidence that he violated the law after the National Security Act was released, so they arrested him. I wait for the Hong Kong police to release more information.

YouTuber is just one of my information channels, and I also go to the websites or forums of protesters.

> Trump has signed a lot of executive orders to ban Huawei and TikTok, without going through the court or Congress, and they are effective.

The President has emergency powers in existing law to regulate foreign trade in this general way, for the purpose of rapidly responding to action by hostile foreign nations executed through trade including through notionally private firms.

Well, I live in China, so technically we don't. You can say we were born under different legal systems. In China, law is often a tool to punish those the state doesn't like.

Trump hasn't banned TikTok yet, and the powers he is trying to use for that were given to him by Congress. It hasn't gone through courts yet, though, so you need to read more about it before making claims. This seems to be a pattern with you.

They claim it is not retroactive - but I highly doubt it. And you yourself said he was being punished for things that happened before it was in place.

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