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Comment by pempem | Hacker News Reader

To me, the real question is in the last sentence of the post: "the question is, however, whether they are enterprise-ready, secure, and fully sovereign"

The ICC is incredibly important, incredibly young and global. Shifting this to europe would not solve the problem.

If the ICC was able to have a contract with a fully sovereign supplier, that would be a whole new can of worms. It would be a matter of time (hours? days?) until a fully sovereign corporation put its profits above its negative impact on people.

More than that, how does an organization funded by a group of nations avoid the budget becoming politicized?

The issue is complex and the silver bullet is hard to find.

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> The ICC is incredibly important, incredibly young and global. Shifting this to europe would not solve the problem.

Well it’s incredibly young, but it is neither incredibly important seeing as how the premise of the court is suspect nor global seeing as how substantial portions of the globe have either not signed, not ratified, or withdrew their signature before ratification. I’ll give you “international”.

You’re right though: any possible software vendor is theoretically subject to someone’s sanctions regime. If they want to uphold the independence of their institution, that’s probably more work for an internal IT department.

Is signing up to the ICC a bit like getting a bunch of CEOs and asking them to sign up to a fair tax on CEOs treaty.

Pretty much.

It requires a given state to allow it to operate and have jurisdiction. That's a political act through and through.

The US doesn't recognize it anymore so it's baffling why they didn't move to non US equipment.

actually they completed migration to Azure in order to streamline "things" only year ago or so

edit. i believe the migration was initiated and implemented by the current icc prosecutor. amazing absence of a foresight.

Lack of wisdom and judgment. Ironic.

speaking of "lack of wisdom and judgment". this is the prosecutor: https://www.timesofisrael.com/icc-prosecutor-khan-on-leave-a...

Please don't cite highly biased sources. The paper you linked is run by the people the ICC issued arrest warrants for. Thanks.

it's just complete aggregation of prosecutor adventures. feel free to point out something that is described wrong there.

allegation?

I will assign a non-zero (but not-one) probability to this being a frame, for obvious reasons. Motive, means, opportunity.

You're saying Netanyahu runs The Times of Israel..?

Well, I’m not a fan of analogies, but kind of, but in addition to asking them to sign up, all the biggest companies with the highest valuations got to sit it out, but retained powers to impose it on smaller companies that aren’t friends of theirs, and to step in and protect their friends from being subject to your hypothetical fair tax treaty.

Not really. The ICC mostly doesn't prosecute heads of states. Recent events are kind of unusual relative to the historical role. Historically ICC mostly went after rebel groups.

Think of the treaty as more of an extradition scheme. Its also a bit of an insurance policy - its an incentive not to commit international crimes against/on territory of member states, because it becomes much harder to evade justice.

There is also an element of symbolism to it, of what type of country you want to be.

The head of the ICC, Karim Khan issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023[1], so of course, Russia has issued an arrest warrant for him.

A year goes by, and the government of the world's other large rogue state responded thusly, to the ICC's consideration of arrest warrants for both Netanyahu and Hamas leaders:

> On 24 April 2024, Khan was sent a letter signed by 12 Republican U.S. senators[c] threatening him and other UN jurists and their families with personal consequences if the ICC were to seek an international arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu or other members of the Israeli government. The letter cited the American Service-Members' Protection Act – known informally as "The Hague Invasion Act"[42] – which specifically includes "all means".[43][44] The signatories said they would view any arrest warrant as "a threat not only to Israel's sovereignty, but also to the sovereignty of the United States". They threatened: "Target Israel and we will target you", and that any further action would "end all American support for the ICC" and "exclude [Khan and his associates and employees] and their families from the United States". The letter ended: "You have been warned."[45]

I'm not exactly sure what your point is. The Israel & Russia situation are somewhat exceptional in the history of people the ICC has issued warrants for. The majority of the work the ICC has done in the past has not been about holding the leaders of regional powers accountable. They have largely in the past concentrated on much smaller fish.

Whether that is good or bad is debatable, but i think it gives the wrong impression of the icc to assume that this type of situation is the primary thing the icc does (or did historically)

Karim Khan is not the head of the ICC.

Most people in the world are not citizens of ICC signatories. It's "global" the way the Eurovision contest is.

You’ve made this argument before and I don’t see how it is relevant especially to your parent.

The Rome Statute is an international treaty by every definition of that term. It is available to every sovereign state, and has been signed and ratified by a majority of the UN member states on all six habitable continents. The ICC is as global as the WHO, UNICEF or the International Atomic Energy Agency.

It's a treaty; that's all it is. It doesn't bind non-signatories.

Still, I don‘t know why that is relevant. Signatories have all agreed to establish a global court and grant jurisdiction accordingly. If the court has jurisdiction, it doesn’t matter whether a perpetrator is from a non-signatory country or not.

In this case, the signatory is the state of Palestine, jurisdiction has been established, and it affects anyone who commits specific crimes within that jurisdiction.

Just shifting the trust problem somewhere else

It's certainly not incredibly important. It is, however, incredibly undemocratic

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