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Comment by kiba | Hacker News Reader

We should give foreigners rights that Americans enjoy. If American enjoys 4th amendment protection, so can foreigners. That mean you can't spy on foreigner without getting a warrant from an open court, rather than secret courts with secret ruling.

Edit:

I am not arguing that foreigners should receive welfare check and benefit from social programs. I am arguing that if they are targeted by the US government, they should be subjected to the same protection. There should be no special exception for anybody, because the special exception was used to justified the NSA spying program.

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From the declaration of independence:

> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

All men. Rights endowed by their creator - not the government. The way I read that, regardless of government or location of their birth, the basic rights enumerated in the constitution are the birthright of every single human.

My favorite way to battle the stupid bullshit neocon xenophobia is to leverage their own anti-state agenda (which, to be fair, I generally agree with) against them, by pointing out that the false dichotomy of us/them is based upon them labeling someone as "American"/"foreign", which is in turn based upon whether or not they are born within or without an imaginary line drawn by the state.

PS: inb4 "but slaves are people too"

>PS: inb4 "but slaves are people too" Slaves were considered property like cattle, I'm sure there are higher ups who view non-natural born citizens and/or immigrants that way.

The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document, though.

I completely agree. Our constitution represents the best thinking (at the time it was written, and it's if it still applies) of the best set of rules by which to treat people fairly.

Unfortunately, there are people that venerate the constitution that ignore its precursor document which states that we believe all men are created equal.

If all men are created equal, then they should be treated as such, unless we want to repeat the "some are more equal than others" line.

Are you surprised that the Constitution is venerated more than the Declaration of Independence? The former is the supreme law of the land (or rather would be if it were not ignored without consequence so frequently), and the latter is rhetoric. It is lofty and high-minded rhetoric (or rather would be if its authors had actually meant that all persons should be equal) but rhetoric nonetheless, void of legal value.

That "rhetoric" serves as a justification for why the "supreme law of the land" should be respected and upheld in the first place.

Instead people have replaced that justification with circular justifications, blind patriotism, and apathy.

The Constitution follows the flag.

I think in the sense that the rights are human rights, then all humans should get them. But the civil rights in the US Constitution and amendments are, for the most part, meant to protect citizens from the government becoming too powerful and abusing its power. The framers of the constitution, being in the novel position of actually getting to decide what the powers of their own government were to be, were very fearful that it would be too powerful. A fear soon validated by the French Revolution's problems. (The idea that civil rights are somehow "earned" as mentioned in this comment thread is odd... the rights are not a "reward" to be earned, they were put in place as a precursor to any government: no American starts off without them and you do not need to be a taxpayer or even a citizen to enjoy them, you just need to be in US-ruled territory.)

It does not make sense for anyone not residing in the US to be given freedom of speech or the right to bear arms by the US government. These rights are allowed (or not) by whoever governs the place where you are. If the US government is spying on you on your territory, it is up to your government to protect you. Note how the US government reacts when another country is spying on our citizens (well, corporates anyway.)

The fourth amendment was not put in place because "gentlemen do not read each others' mail" but because the Brits used to bust in with general warrants to try and collect taxes and it pissed off the colonists. It was not the principal of the thing, really, but the consequences that got the colonists' goat. Since the US government can't really do anything to people not within the US except as an act of war, their search of your property--while reprehensible--is not meant to have been protected under the 4th.

It does, unfortunately, make perfect sense for any non-American to want their Internet traffic kept from traversing US soil if by so doing it places that communication under US scrutiny. I suspect it would not be hard to set up routing tables that keeps traffic from entering the US unless that's the destination (but I'm talking out of my armpit, I'm not a network engineer.)

Is there a precedent for that?

I don't mean to agree or disagree (though I am inclined to disagree, I admit, which is why I ask the question). By asking, though, I hope to see the advantages and disadvantages in a real-world situation.

Universal jurisdiction[1] is a fairly new concept, and there definitely precedents. The Nuremburg trials are notably the first major application of jurisdiction over a distinctly separate, foreign and sovereign nation.

Most things that qualify as precedents are predominantly rulings on genocide, crimes against humanity, extrajudicial executions, war crimes, torture and forced disappearances.

The impact of universal jurisdiction is not simple, in fact it flies in the face of Westphalian soverignty[2] in the sense that it destroys it utterly, potentially disrupting over four centuries of precedent and denying nations' inherent right to self-determination.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_jurisdiction

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty

Great post. I think that there is a distinction to be drawn here, though.

Nuremberg essentially applied penalties for rights violations to people of a foreign, sovereign nation.

The proposal in the GP comment is for new rights–not new responsibilities–to be granted to people of a foreign, sovereign nation.

So I appreciate the background you have provided, and I want to springboard from there to draw a distinction, and to see if there is any precedent for something even more similar.

The simplest and most direct springboard would be "There is no taxation without representation" however that is a whole different (and more volatile) debate.

The UN Human Rights Council[1] would probably be the highest authority to appeal to, considering they have enshrined many rights as natural human rights that are inviolable and universally applicable -- for example freedom of association and assembly, freedom of expression, freedom of belief, Women's rights, and so forth. Many nations don't recognize these rights (and quite a few don't recognize the UN's authority) and the UN's ability to enforce respect of these rights is quite non-existent, but it's a good place to start.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Cou...

> We should give foreigners rights that Americans enjoy.

Uhhh no. I pay taxes and uphold my civic responsibilities (jury duty, selective service, etc.).

I earn those rights.

Unless those foreigners decide to become US citizens and take on the same responsibilities, no, those rights do not extend to them.

Those foreigners usually have those responsibilities in their own countries.

The same works the other way around.

Wouldn't it make sense to have reciprocity so it ends up being a game of citizen collaboration, rather than of competition (as in many other areas of international diplomacy and law)?

> Wouldn't it make sense to have reciprocity so it ends up being a game of citizen collaboration

Yes, I'd be perfectly happy with that. In fact, I'd be thrilled to have the same protections when travelling abroad. Unfortunately, most countries don't provide such protections for even their own citizens.

Say you use some service based in Europe or Asia, and you visited a bunch of countries in Europe or Asia. would you be okay if those governments accessed your data, without any reason, without any warrant? It is not about Americans vs foreigners, or paying taxes or jury duty - it is about having a valid reason for anyone to access anybody's data, and doing it the proper way (warrant etc). Not just in the US, but anywhere in the world.

May be other governments in other countries are doing the same, we don't know. If that's the case, this is very depressing - pretty soon, everyone will be spying on everyone else (if that is not already happening), and this wouldn't be a nice way to live

No offense but I already assume that any information that would run across e.g. Iran or China is intercepted and extracted for absolutely everything it's worth.

Mostly I avoid the issue by not visiting Weibo, etc., but I realize that's not very helpful for those not in the U.S. since there's really only the one Facebook, Google, etc.

Perhaps this kind of thing would lead to either increased federation of website (e.g. there's be a U.S. Google and a E.U. Google and swapping amongst them would not be completely frictionless).

Either that or reciprocal agreements between different nations to increase the privacy rights of their citizens (in fact I thought these already existed). But I don't see a solution that involves not having all these nations intelligence agencies simply skipping out on the collection of intelligence part.

I wasn't saying they should skip intelligence collection, please re-read my comment above. The intelligence agencies exist and are needed for a reason, and they should collect/process information etc - that is their job, isn't it?. No-one is disagreeing with that. However, they should do it via proper legal channels, and do it with valid reason - not just collect all information on everyone en-masse. And the laws governing these should be transparent.

Well whatever else it is, PRISM is "valid legal channels" (even for foreign citizens). There's no generic authority to simply extract information on any desired foreign citizen even now. The law itself is transparent, though the court system actually implementing it is not, nor is the proceedings by which the law is drafted and debated.

But with that in mind I'm not sure how much you're really asking to be different.

You earned the right to not be spied on? What, specifically, did you do that exclusively grants you that privilege?

The fourth amendment, and Map v. Ohio; upholding civic duties are the end of the deal that civilians are to be responsible for, ceding tyrannous behavior that is disallowed by legislation is the government's. Obviously barring the fact that the Constitution seems to just be a long-standing joke to the government, or so it seems as of late. Also, to be clear I'm not defending the point of whom you responded, I'm just outlining the support for it.

And yet your government asserts rights of control over them without your granting them any legal recourse. Tell me, how do you think that's gong to play out, ultimately?

He who lives by the sword...

You pay to receive protection from the people that you pay? How is that not a protection racket?

A protection racket is when the people you pay will actually injure you if you don't pay them.

There are many non-racket variants of this, including an actor or famous athlete hiring a bodyguard.

maratd's idea is that in order to not be violated by a government, one must pay that government. The people you pay will violate you if you don't pay them. It is a textbook protection racket.

Of course it is not accurate to state that the government is running a protection racket because his initial premise from which that follows is stunningly idiotic in the first place. Rights are not given in return for tax money, not even in America. Non-taxpaying non-citizens enjoy basic protection under the law if they happen to be physically located in America; they don't have to "buy" that.

That "physically located" qualification is what needs to be changed. "They don't pay taxes to us" is not an excuse.

Good luck with that.

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