Comment by seanhunter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanhunter | Hacker News Reader

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You already need to care depending on what you are serving, and this has been the case for at least 20 years to my knowledge.

The most obvious example of this is websites from the UK or Europe which operate any kind of gambling. [1] This may well be legal (based on licensing) in their jurisdiction, but they still need to restrict access to prevent US people from accessing the service or they will be breaching the US's gambling laws.

Likewise many US firm geofence access for EU residents out of fear of GDPR.

People hosting news sites have often had to geofence to prevent UK residents from accessing their site if they are hosting any kind of reporting of UK court cases that are under embargo or matters that are subject to one of the UK's famous "Super injunctions" [2]

[1] eg this guy was on the board of a listed UK company operating as far as they were concerned entirely legally who was arrested in NYC https://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/sep/14/gambling.mo...

[2] eg In the "Ryan Giggs" super injunction case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_British_privacy_injunctio...

> People hosting news sites have often had to geofence to prevent UK residents from accessing their site if they are hosting any kind of reporting of UK court cases that are under embargo or matters that are subject to one of the UK's famous "Super injunctions" [2]

…and if the site has no UK assets, how enforceable is the injunction?

I mean, in the case of the US, you board a plane in country X going to country Z, it flies over country Y which is friends with the US. The US has country Y land the plane and has the plane boarded by armed men that drag you off kicking and screaming where you are put in a cage and then shipped to the US.

Iirc this happened to a Russian man who operated an online gambling site when he went on vacation to the Caribbean. The plane he was on had an unscheduled landing in Florida for a mechanical issue and surprise, surprise, the FBI were waiting there to arrest him!

countries do it all the time

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair_Flight_4978

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incide...

Or worse, shipped to Guantanamo Bay/Bagram Prison, where the US can do whatever they want even to US citizens because they're no longer in US jurisdiction.

> but they still need to restrict access to prevent US people from accessing the service or they will be breaching the US's gambling laws.

Why not just avoid travel to the US?

The US has a huge reach in the western (and global) world and can impact you in a lot of creative and legal ways (e.g. prevent Google / Apple / Microsoft from offering services to you).

I remember this was an issue for The Pirate Bay but so far as I remember they were forced to go through the Swedish court system. It’s been ages since I read about it though so I might be missing something.

There is a huge number of countries that will comply with the US. All of Western Europe, a good portion of Asia and the Pacific and plenty of other places that I've forgotten about.

If you are wanted in the Western world and the US wants you, you are likely to be got.

Yes, you can do that. The thing is, that'll apply to all your employees, no matter how junior.

And it also extends to countries with extradition treaties to the US; holiday in the the Dominican Republic? You can be arrested and extradited to the US (Gary Kaplan). And of course if you change planes in the US (David Carruthers)? Arrested. Only broke the laws of one US state, and you change planes in another? Arrested (Peter Dicks).

Although perhaps the real lesson there is to be better at avoiding the US.

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