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From: dee@cca.UUCP (Donald Eastlake)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.politics,net.legal
Subject: Re: Towards making hosts and their admin free from a criminal offence
Message-ID: <8113@cca.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-May-86 13:59:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: cca.8113
Posted: Thu May 29 13:59:46 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Jun-86 00:03:57 EDT
References: <611@bu-cs.UUCP> <164@comp.lancs.ac.uk> <20663@styx.UUCP> <1259@mulga.OZ> <2026@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: dee@cca.UUCP (Donald Eastlake)
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It seems to me that a lot of this is oversimplified.  A sovereign nation
can make anything it wants illegal, including acts outside its borders.
If a US citizen commited espionage by traveling to a foreign country and
while in that foreign country originating a message that revelead
certain information to a foreign government with the intent of injuring
the United States, they would be committing a crime.  For example, if I
went to Japan (which has no law against espionage as far as I know) and
while there electronically commnicated secrets to the Tokyo embassy of
the USSR I would clearly be inviolation of US law and might even be
extraditable depending on the treaties between US&Japan.  Most people
would think this was a reasonable extra-territorial application of
criminal law.  One can think of lots of other examples.  What if I sit
in country A and send and receive lots of messages for the purpose of
managing an organized crime syndicate in country B?  How much difference
should it make what country I am a citizen or national of?  What if
country A is the United States and country B is Canada and the Canadian
crime is the distribution in Canada of hate material that I know is
false which urges the extermination of all X (Jews, blacks, ...
whatever), something which would be allowed in the United States?
Anyway, my point is that real situations can be complicated and I think
that the claim that you can arbitrarily disseminate communications in
one country ignoring all other country's laws is ridiculous.
-- 
	+1 617-492-8860		Donald E. Eastlake, III
	ARPA:  dee@CCA-UNIX	usenet:	{decvax,linus}!cca!dee