On Thursday, December 12, 2002, at 09:19 AM, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
Secret trials are on the rise. Inasmuch as the U.S. is now throwing its full weight behind secret evidence, secret prosecutions, secret trials, secret appeals courts, suspension of habeas corpus, detention of Evil Ones without charge at concentration camps in Cuba, suspension of the Fourth and Fifth and Sixth Amendments, and elevation to guilt by association to a central principle....with all of these atrocities, imagine what nations with a long history of statism must be doing?Quoth Steve:Under this logic a retailer in one country, selling a controversial book to someone in another country,couldinvolve publishers in yet a third country to litigation in the second country. Bizarre.The real question is whether any judgement is enforceable.Depends if the Dow Jones CEOs ever go to Australia. Ask Mr. Skylarov about enforceability. Better yet, ask his wife or newborn.
One of the several reasons I no longer leave the U.S. is not because the U.S. is so free, but because I figure I _may_ have some warning the goons are coming for me...and I have my guns. These days, I'd be concerned about getting off a plane in Amsterdam or Munich and being asked to "Step aside, Herr May."
"You are being charged for a so-called "Usenet post" you wrote in 1997 in which you claimed that perhaps the Holocaust was being exaggerated. This is a crime under Reich law. We are extraditing you to Deutschland for trial."
or
"Msr. May, we French have made encryption very difficult for our citizen-units to misuse in the ways you have advocated. After your last trip through our country, on your way to discuss money-laundering at a conference in Monte Carlo, we charged and convicted you under laws very similar to what your own President has adopted. You will be transferred to Rochefort Prison where you will serve out the 20-year sentence for your crimes."
Hey, if the U.S. is now holding secret trials, secret appeals, and is snatching foreigners from their countries (rubber-stamped by the courts), why wouldn't Germany, France, and other such countries being doing exactly the same thing?
I also figure there's some chance that quid pro quo deals have been struck with the U.S. If a noted dissident is too difficult to prosecute in the U.S. (too difficult at this time, that is), then why not have a compliant regime in the U.K. snatch him when he gets off the plane at Heathrow? Charge him with some violation of the Official Secrets Act, throw in some chaff about how one of his recipients of his PGP key was a member of the Real IRA freedom fighters group, and then throw away the key.
America used to disdain the secret trials, the Star Chamber proceedings so endemic in other parts of the world. Now we have them.
We will reap what we sow.
--Tim May
"As my father told me long ago, the objective is not to convince someone
with your arguments but to provide the arguments with which he later
convinces himself." -- David Friedman
