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Comment by mcny | Hacker News Reader

First of all, I anal and also this is more of a question than a statement but

a us person could travel to a country x and that x could send this us person to a UK prison? I don't know if doing so would be legal but when the rubber hits the road, each country x is technically sovereign and does not have to honor the first amendment of the US constitution.

So even if it might be frowned upon to extradite foreign (US) nationals in country X (such as Canada or India) to the UK, they could do it anyway to send a message?

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I traveled to a lot of countries during my time in the military. I was also a legal officer that had to deal with legal issues in foreign countries.

Traveling is no joke. Americans often act like the world is their playground, but you are subject to the laws of the jurisdiction you're standing in. Traveller beware.

Your First Amendment rights only apply within the United States, this should be obvious. Nonetheless, extradition treaties generally require that a crime be considered a crime within both jurisdictions.

Most of Europe does have similar thought-crime and censorship laws as the UK now have. Also, the crime of "hindering an official investigation" could be interpreted into this, and this exists practically anywhere.

The only further question would be if the country is friendly enough with the UK to extradite.

Can you show me the "most of the Europe"? This seems as a false statement. It seems incomparable to the UK for me.

Extradition of a foreign citizen to a third country is not a simple matter, diplomatically speaking. The US might not have the hegemony it enjoyed 20-30 years ago, but it certainly has plenty of sway.

When it's a matter of drug charges or other obviously criminal activity, the US embassy and diplomats don't normally raise a fuss, but for something like this where the person made first amendment protected speech in the US? That'd definitely raise all kinds of hell.

Why would it?

Plenty of US citizens would actively cheer the notion of having a foreign government arrest their political opponents as an end-run around the fact they're not allowed to do it at home.

After all, 1A/"freeze peach" laws should only protect you from your government, right?

> Plenty of US citizens would actively cheer the notion of having a foreign government arrest their political opponents as an end-run around the fact they're not allowed to do it at home.

I'm not convinced that plenty of US citizens would celebrate a foreign government arresting an American for what would be protected by the 1A in the US. There will always be trolls, of course.

> After all, 1A/"freeze peach" laws should only protect you from your government, right?

If my government has the longest dick of all governments in the world, and knows how to swing it, I'm not so sure.

Plenty of US citizens openly celebrated the murder of an American for what was protected by the 1A in the US.

So no, I don't think that the people who celebrated that would care, and said people would actively support an administration that actively encouraged the UK in this manner for the same reason.

Nope. US law is international law (because we have all the guns). The UK government would never defy us; they know their place.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the US administration being very selective about which "first amendment protected speech" they actually cared about. I can even imagine them rapidly extraditing somebody who's speech they didn't like, such as pro-abortion or anti-fascist.

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