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Comment by josteink | Hacker News Reader

That's to be expected. They have no jurisdiction there.

Edit: There's been numerous news reports all over the world about FBI/CIA agents doing police-work without reporting to local authorities in countries which are not the US, where they have no rights and no jurisdiction, as if it was their own turf.

CIA operatives have been charged in numerous European countries for kidnapping and abducting people not guilty on anything by local laws. Because the US wanted them silenced, because of "terror" or whatever.

I'm going to pressume this is what happened here as well.

I can assure you that if anyone had done the same in the US, they wouldn't merely be kicked out, they would be jailed for being in violation of the law.

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> CIA operatives have been charged in numerous European countries for kidnapping and abducting people not guilty on anything by local laws. Because the US wanted them silenced, because of "terror" or whatever.

As a European, I'll bet you whatever you want they were doing this with the full knowledge of the government and intelligence departments of the aforementionned countries.

Indeed, relevant people in Italy were roasted for it.

Just because you are the secret service, it doesn't mean you can ignore the law.

Unless you do warrantless wiretapping in the US.

It does pretty much. It means you can abduct people and torture them, that's pretty much everything a secret service would ever want to do.

Google Murat Kurnaz. There was a whole network of CIA prisons with torture in Europe.

Nope. That's why pretty much everywhere, in civilized countries, foreign and domestic spying are done by separate entities: the laws they have to follow are different, and there is (usually) a different degree of oversight.

Secret services are hardly all about "abducting people and torturing them", that's actually an aberration of their role. Most of what they do is signal-intelligence of various sorts, and the most silently they can do it, the better. "Abducting and torturing" are all but silent activities; you are basically shouting at your enemy to go fuck himself, the intelligence equivalent of yokels shooting in the air. Abducting and torturing is what a secret police does, the sort of stuff you see in clueless dictatorial countries. Albeit it might be considered effective in the short term, it makes you powerless in the long run, when you've abducted/tortured/killed all the enemies you knew but you don't know anything about the new enemies.

I don't know, the effectiveness of torture as an interrogation tool is for understandable reasons difficult to assess. However, the fact that it's a constant whenever a state is confronted to assymetrical warfare (think of the infamous Battle of Algiers, or how torture used to be legal in Israel until 1999) is an indication that it is difficult to work without in some contexts, dictatorship or not.

Of course, the fact that it's perfectly unethical entails a heavy cost in terms of image, especially for modern democracies.

I don't know, the effectiveness of torture as an interrogation tool is for understandable reasons difficult to assess.

Not so. It is remarkably easy to assess, and everyone who cares to know already knows the answer.

After you break under torture, the victim will tell the torturer anything they think the torturer wants to hear, and has very little sense of what is or is not true. "Beating" torture is simple - pretend break early and tell interesting lies. When you really break you'll no longer know truth from fiction - nor can a questioner who has no idea which leads are true and false. Once you've hit that point then absolutely no method of getting information can work.

We have much, much more reliable interrogation techniques. Ones that we can use without giving propaganda benefits to our enemies. Admittedly no other technique gives the same visceral satisfaction of making someone pay. But once you've gone the torture route, you can't undo that choice.

Nope to what? One of the biggest problems with the CIA is that they are intelligence, secret world police and paramilitary all at the same time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Chapman_attack

etc.

Yes, but that doesn't mean this is what it should be. In fact, most other secret services are not like that.

I can assure you that if anyone had done the same in the US, they wouldn't merely be kicked out, they would be jailed for being in violation of the law.

Can you assure us that based on an actual law with a citation, or an actual case reported in the news with a link to the news report? The most usual disposition, all over the world, for an overt government operative of a foreign government operating on your territory in a way your country doesn't like is for the operative to be expelled as persona non grata. That's all. Most foreign intelligence operatives in most countries operate in a half-overt way, with "diplomatic cover," and many others operate under liaison agreements built into international treaties. It's fine for each country to decide which foreign nationals get to stay on their territory (I had to deal with that during the years when I lived as an American overseas), but it's exceedingly uncommon for people to be put into jail simply for activities inconsistent with their visa status of that nature.

(I had to deal with that during the years when I lived as an American overseas)

As in, you had to get an employment/education/whatever visa? I'm snickering at this: I've found that we Americans have a really easy time getting whatever visas we want whenever we want. Some nations will issue a month (or longer) visa just from the airline informing them, "we have an American on board this flight". Some will issue a visa at the immigration gate. For a many-year work visa you'll typically have to go through an embassy or consulate, but as long as you don't get stuck in the same line as the Indians (this is not a statement about Indians, but about how I've seen them treated in embassies!) you're not going to have much trouble.

...it's exceedingly uncommon for people to be put into jail simply for activities inconsistent with their visa status...

Which visa is it that allows a foreign national to harass, detain, and kidnap citizens without the due process of law? Does 007 have that visa? I could actually understand it if there were a more involved process for obtaining that one.

I'm snickering at this: I've found that we Americans have a really easy time getting whatever visas we want whenever we want. Some nations will issue a month (or longer) visa just from the airline informing them, "we have an American on board this flight".

Can you please tell us the name of one nation out of those? In my understanding, the Visa rules followed by country X in issuing Visa to US citizens is similar to the rules followed by US while issuing Visa to citizens of country X.

E.g., if US issues 10 year visitor visas to Indians, then India also issues 10 year visitor via to Americans. I haven't done extensive research on this so this may not hold in some instances.

Off the top of my head, I think it was New Zealand that had that airline notification thing, and I think that got you a 90 day business visa. That was ten years ago, and I lived in Singapore at the time, so perhaps I'm misremembering or they've changed the policy since then.

I think in general the reciprocity policy you mention is a good rule of thumb, although I'm sure there are exceptions.

You are perhaps thinking of the Visa Waiver Program (http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html), though that is specifically NOT for business purposes.

As advice for newbie travelers: make sure you have the relevant visas well before you enter a country, it can be a huge hassle in the event that you didn't luck out with something like "we have an American on board".

They were doing even worse things. And behind the curtains:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

Please read carefully, this is gold mine for all interested in work of US/UK puppet masters. Also it has nothing to do with communism and other ideologies, it has to do with destabilize EU over decades and even now.

Yes, the Marshall Plan had a fine print.

> doing police-work

... and allegedly doing worst things, sadly.

A lot of people are very upset with the idea of having black sites without any respect for the law in your own country.

> FBI/CIA agents doing police-work without reporting to local authorities

That's not "police work"! That's criminal activity. But I can tell I'm preaching to the choir.

um the CIA are not police and neither are the FBI in there internal security role nor sould they - note that the only time MI5 had an ex copper as a boss as a disaster

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