This instilled a sense of fear in every person even if they are innocent because you can still be targeted and your career ruined.
If this scientist was just stating out, rather than already established, he would likely have had to quit science.
There should be some penalty for false accusations that can compensate for these people.
>" As my team of lawyers argued, Bonavolonta and his agents ignored basic exculpatory evidence, failed to interview critical witnesses until after I was arrested, and dramatically embellished facts in various official documents. Exculpatory information that, under the Constitution, the prosecution was required to turn over — such as a witness saying that I never was in a talent program, a Chinese government initiative to provide funding to researchers and scientists, which was one of the government’s key allegations — was withheld for months until demanded by my lawyers. While I am relieved that my case has been dropped “in the interests of justice,” I respectfully request a thorough review of this matter by Congress and the US Department of Justice to hold individuals accountable for this glaring misconduct."
[0] https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/01/21/opinion/i-was-arreste...
You want change? Make a 4th branch of government who's only power and purpose is to arrest members of the other three branches when they break the law.
Of course it ain't that simple. How do you keep them from getting corrupted and arresting people they don't like? Food for thought.
I accept the US is having a power struggle with China at the moment, but this is not the way to win it. People who aren't actually in favor of freedom will welcome this "record who associates with China" thing, but it goes against the high ideals of the US and makes it look like many unsavory countries.
Witch hunt begins when allegation holds more weight then the verdict, and when it becomes the verdict, you can say goodbye to all semblance of rule of law, which surprisingly many here will condone depending on the subject.
Now, it's not exactly affordable for him to do so. But that's a separate problem we should solve.
“However, the Supreme Court has held that prosecutors do not enjoy absolute immunity when they act as investigators by engaging in activities associated more closely with police functions.”
If you value doing science and inventing things and mentoring students and the prestige that comes along with it, simply getting a payday isn't anything like justice. Of course, such lawsuits serve more than simply attempting to actually get justice (which is usually impossible) but to dissuade the state from doing it again to others.
Which is cold comfort when all you wanted to do was play with heat transfer. He said he doesn't even want to apply for grant funding anymore, and I can't blame him. You don't become a professor studying heat transport because you're psyched to go toe to toe with the department of justice over made up nonsense that already wasted a year of your career directly and screwed up decades of accumulated talent and reputation.
Now I just view not having money as a waste of time, its literally so time consuming and expensive
When in the opposite scenario nobody cares. you’re either in the club or you’re not, on a pool or in a yacht, at the villa or not, on the shareholder list or not.
> “We are all losers, right?” Dr. Chen said. “My reputation got ruined. My students, my post-docs, they changed their career. They changed to other groups. M.I.T., the country, the U.S., we lose. I can’t calculate the loss. That loss cannot be calculated.”
How would you solve this?
Typically, the first part of the equation is wildly overestimated because by stopping spies in 1 area, they just find another way to do what they want to do and the impact happens anyways. Or the threat evolves over time but the policies do not resulting in negative side-effects and very little benefit anymore (e.g. the TSA)
Now, I think policing espionage is more valuable than policing drugs, and the dynamics certainly all aren't the same. But I think the bar for making espionage accusations -- just the accusations themselves -- needs to be much higher than it is.
This what overt nationalism and fear of losing supremacy can lead to.
But we know that this didn’t work before so that’s why America has become the place where talents from all over the world come. If we go back to how it was in 1920s then why shouldn’t go back even further and start burning witches again?
Clearly they conducted a background check and disagreed with the expert whether their findings were valid (fun fact, valid translates German valide or gültig, the latter somehow akin to guilty).
This may be well within their rights, eg. if they tried to impose harder interpretation of regulations. It can be criminal if they basicly ignored the expert for wanting to win, or it could be at least negligent if they have fundamentally misinterpreted the law. This is not strictly decidable and rests on the shoulders of the arbiters of truth.
(Another fun fact, gain say could be akin to German Gegenrede, as in against, or to French gagner as in win, German Gewinn. See also: Einrede, a legal terminus; sich etwas einreden "to ellude oneself"; -say in that sense must be akin to sake, forsaken, compare Widersacher "antagonist", akin to adv. wither, "contra")
Could you explain this a bit more to a non-native speaker like me? I'm assuming it's not a past tense for certain. From the second definition in [1] (used in auxiliary function to express obligation, propriety, or expediency) and the examples, it seems to me "shouldn't" here could mean that "be subject to government scrutiny" is the opposite of "obligation, propriety, or expediency". I understand the sentence as: if someone is not spying, subjecting their personal beliefs and political affiliations to government scrutiny is not the correct thing to do. Then why would it
> implies that someone should not be "spying"?