From: Razer <ray...@riseup.net
>"“Federal law prohibits us from answering your question, and we’re >currently suing the Justice Department for the ability to disclose more >information about government requests,” Twitter spokesman Nu Wexler said >in a statement." Generally speaking, American Federal laws are not applicable outside the United States (and its territories) unless the law explicitly says so. The term is called "extraterritorial jurisdiction" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdiction I am not aware of anything that would prohibit a person in one of these companies to visit Canada, or Mexico, or perhaps even a foreign embassy, or some other nation, and then publicly announcing the existence of this secret surveillance, immune from the reach of the law. While it is conceivable that Congress could re-write the relevant law to prohibit somebody from travelling for the purpose of such a disclosure, I think it's unlikely that the current law anticipated this. (In part, because American law doesn't usually pretend to be able to prohibit freedom of speech, and less so, the freedom of speech of people in foreign lands.)Somebody should tell this corporate fools that they should have their high-priced attorneys investigation this, and figure out a way to disclose the information LEGALLY, possibly outside America. Jim Bell >From the Wikipedia article cited above:"Generally, the U.S. founding fathers >and early courts believed that American laws could not have jurisdiction over >sovereign countries. In a 1909 Supreme Court case, Justice Oliver Wendel >Holmes introduced what came to be known as the "presumption against >extraterritoriality," making explicit this judicial preference that U.S. laws >not be applied to other countries. American thought about extraterritoriality >has changed over the years, however. For example, the Alien Tort Statute of >1789 allows foreign citizens in the United States to bring cases before >federal courts against foreign defendants for violations of the "law of >nations" in foreign countries. Although this statute was ignored for many >years, U.S. courts since the 1980s have interpreted it to allow foreigners to >seek justice in cases of human-rights violations in foreign lands, such as >inSosa v. Alvarez-Machain.[22] In Morrison v. National Australia Bank, 2010, >the Supreme Court held that in interpreting a statute, the "presumption >against extraterritoriality" is absolute unless the text of the statute >explicitly says otherwise.Extraterritorial jurisdiction - Wikipedia, the free >encyclopedia" | | | | | | | | | | | Extraterritorial jurisdiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | | | | ×
