Comment by verandaguy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by verandaguy | Hacker News Reader

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    > The second is that it violates the first amendment of the US's own constitution, which uses universal language, not discriminating between citizens and non-citizens, nor between inside and outside US territories, nor between nationals and foreigners.

I'll push back against this interpretation since no matter what any country's constitution says, no national constitution can ever really apply to foreign nationals on foreign soil doing their own thing (diplomatic missions being a notable, narrow carve-out for that).

If you take this universalist interpretation, that would mean it's fine for US citizens to truck guns into Canada (which they can't, but they still occasionally do, largely for much more boring reasons than believing there's a constitutional justification) with no restrictions because the implication is that the US constitution supersedes other laws in other countries.

It is, however, against the spirit of the document, and it's arguably an abuse of the existing framework of sanctioning organizations which take part in terrorist efforts. It's another case of the US legal system falling short because of an assumption of good faith by those in power.

Every country believes its laws apply universally. They understand that in practical terms they cannot enforce those laws overseas, but if the opportunity for enforcement arises, typically with agreements but also via other means, they all tend to go for it regardless of any consideration for territorial limits, unless a specific law says it's restricted to this or that area.

This is why, for example, the US gives itself the right to tax people in other countries. If those people happen to be Americans, the US enforces that by threatening them with this or that the moment they step back anywhere the US has enforcement means. This is also why the UK tries to enforce its censorship laws on US companies, why my country tries to enforce our censorship laws on SpaceX, and so on.

Hence, if the US considers itself capable and allowed to enforce this and that law internationally, it follows that the supreme law that governs all those more limited laws also applies internationally unless a specific point in it says otherwise (and several do, so this delimitation is in fact meaningful and coherent).

    > Every country believes its laws apply universally

This is simply untrue and absurd at face value.

Canada has the Canada Health Act, which describes the specifics of what provinces and territories must provide in terms of public health services, and how, and how those health services are funded, how the money gets disbursed, and how the money gets reimbursed by various parties within the system. It would be absurd to think that the expectation of anyone in the Canadian government is that this should apply worldwide.

The UK has the Highway Code, which describes a number of driving laws, restrictions, conventions, and requirements of drivers, among them, their (at this point rare) left-hand drive rule. Do they expect that to be enforced universally? Do they have some kind of plan to power-project onto the rest of the world with that by having agents of their government travel abroad to, say, France, Mexico, or South Korea, and ticket people for driving on the right?

Your first example fits what I said. Notice it specifies what Canadian provinces should do. That's a clear geographic restriction, isn't it? But yes, the moment Canada were to become able to enforce it upon some other territory, it'd do so. The only limitation is that it cannot, not that it wouldn't. We'd then say those territories came under Canadian jurisdiction.

The same goes, I suppose, for the UK code you refer to. I imagine the British legislators specified clearly what roads are under its control. If not, then yes, that's the expectation, exactly like is happening right now with their censorship laws.

To learn more on this Google for the quite famous phrase "Parliament can criminalize smoking on the streets of Paris”. You're going to either double facepalm, or be horrified, if not both.

The constitution doesn't apply to the foreign nationals on foreign soil; it applies to the people working for the US government who are doing something to those foreign nationals.

That's not what your Constitution says. It has plenty of articles and amendments that cover people in general regardless of any other consideration. Or can you point to any part of it stating and making into law the delimitations you described?

No. Laws bind the people under the jurisdiction of the US, but the Constitution binds the US government in what it may do to anyone.

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