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Australian Extradited For Breaking US Law At Home
An anonymous reader sends us a link to a report in The Age about an Australian resident, who had never set foot in the US and broke US intellectual-property laws in Australia, being extradited to the US to face trial. Hew Raymond Griffiths pleaded guilty in Virginia to overseeing all aspects of the operation of the group Drink Or Die, which cracked copy-protected software and media products and distributed them for free. He faces up to 10 years in a US jail and half a million dollars in fines.
Can someone point out a few cases where the news was somewhere along the lines of "American Extradited For Breaking [fill in foreign country] Law At Home" or does this business only work one way?
The Aus government is working it's way to being a U.S. state.
We are making our military hardware compatible with theirs, we are fighting in stupid profit based wars that go against the international community with them.
They don't hand over their war criminals for international trial, and now they expect everyone around the world to respect their laws.
Americas international standing is reducing every day. And judging by the media driven fear of the outside they are cultivating and the laughable democratic system and a retard for a president, they are well on the way to being the worst totalitarian state out there.
We have the names of U.S states and capitals rammed down our necks by countless TV shows and movies and they don't even know we have states.
I hope Iran/China/N. Korea gets some US citizens extradited too as part of this new high in international cooperation.
Not exactly, you signed up to the EU Extradited extradition which permits extradition for crimes including computer crimes (e.g. breaking DRM, no kidding). However that only applies to within the EU. But if the US can get a puppet government (e.g. Blairville) to issue a warrant for anyone in Europe, they can then extradite using the UK to US expedited extradition treaty.
o n_hacker/
There's no limits on re-extradition.
Worse, there is no judicial check in the UK, that the reasons given for the extradition, really complies with the requirements for extraditing. This is why a McKinnon (who broke US PCs into had a look around and left) is being accused of doing $5000 damage to each PC, in order for it to be a Federal crime and hence extraditable. The extradition mechanism doesn't let a UK judge check it.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/25/extraditi
In theory they could make any allegation against any UK citizen and get them extradited (kidnapped in effect) and the court could do nothing.
[rant]F***ing Blair. We elected a leader, and he became a Bush follower and sold us out. I'll piss on his grave when he dies for the damage he's done to the UK sovereignty. [/rant]
"Well the US is not the World Police".
Many Americans believe that it is. But only in the sense that anyone, living anywhere in the world, should be subject to US justice for breaking US laws. Lesser breeds are welcome to cheat, rob, assault, murder, and torture one another - indeed, this is often positively encouraged - as long as no American loses out in the process.
There are two logically distinct and incompatible positions being confused here.
1. The USA is the world's most progressive nation, in the sense that it is the first and best democracy, the country in which the rule of law is most clearly supreme, and generally the most virtuous. Therefore it has a moral right, or even an obligation, to lead others towards the light (at least, those of them who survive the trip).
2. The USA is the world's most powerful nation, armed with weapons that could easily destroy any other nation utterly within less than a day. It can also launch bombs, missiles, or just thousands of heavily-armed soldiers, anywhere in the world. It even lays claim to military supremacy in space. Therefore, as the world's biggest gorilla, what it says goes; and it uses this dominance to further its own interests (including those of US corporations and citizens).
Either of these can be readily supported by various logical arguments. Unfortunately, they cannot both be true, as (2) gives the USA licence to disregard the supposed rights of other individuals, corporations, and nations where they clash with its own. However, many Americans tend to transpose deftly from one to the other in the same context - sometimes even within the same sentence. It would be nice to know which is the official position.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
' If I, while in the US, create a website that defames the King of Thailand do you expect the US would send me there to do my time? '
In Germany, the rules for extradition (from Germany to another country) are:
1. It must have been a crime according to German law, but committed in the country that asks for extradition. As it is relevant in this case, the location where a crime is committed is the place where it takes effect, so it would be _possible_ for someone being physically in Australia to commit a crime in the USA.
2. The person to be extradited must be able to expect a fair trial.
3. There is no "cruel or unusual" punishment for that crime. This prevents death sentence for anyone extradited from Germany to the USA.
And a few minor points, like the country asking for extradition must show enough proof that German prosecution in the same situation would put the case to a court, and you can't get extradited for anything minor, where the extradition itself would be more punishment than the crime is worth.
So for defacing a picture of the Thai king, you wouldn't be extradited. (Note that insulting foreign heads of state might get you into trouble in Germany. Obviously you can't get extradited for that, because Thailand cannot claim that you are insulting a foreign head of state. )
It would be like the US trying to extradite someone from Amsterdam for smoking pot.
The Netherlands does actually get dozens of US extradition requests a year for drugs related crimes, and regularly does extradite Dutch citizens for engaging in drugs transactions with Americans and in some cases even with DEA agents operating on Dutch soil. It's a major political issue here, but the major (conservative) government coalition parties apparently basically tolerate this kind of activity because it creates a possibility to use forms of entrapment that would otherwise be illegal here, and it is easier to get people in jail in the US, particularly through plea bargaining, which is also illegal here. Just smoking pot is safe, though.
This "New World Order" goes back at LEAST 60 years
I will say, however, that this is the first time I've heard of anything involving extradition for violating US law when the person involved has never set foot in the US, and the crimes never took place on US soil.
I think Iran would gladly love to get the criminal G. W. Bush... and put him into jail or maybe execute him.
Now think about it. How many stupid laws from stupid countries have you broken in your peaceful life in the US. Want an example: ever had sex without being married? That's a serious crime in Iran, Saudi, UAE and many other countries... You can get serious fines and jail time for it.
Either the law is the same in the two countries, which is the case here, and thus it is unfair to extradate the person because he would be more able to defend itself in is home country, he would be able to have support from his family... visits during his jail time. etc... So there should be no extradition.
Either the law is different but the crime for the "foreign" country was committed in the home country. In that case what he did is not a crime so there's no extradition.
Extradition should be only reserved for cases where the crime occured in a foreign country.
In this case, the extradition is unfair. The crime happened only in Australia. There was no hacking into US computers or anything alike.
I honestly can't think of any reason why someone should be extradited in this way.
At first glance, it's difficult to imagine why country A would send a person to country B for prosecution, when the person did something that is also illegal in country A. The answer relates to everything behind that single word: prosecution.
In this case, the United States has all the evidence and has conducted the investigation and is the entity making the accusation.
This is part of the reason extradition agreements are so complex. The Australian government has reviewed the United States' case against the accused and believes it has merit. That combined with the other standard rules of extradition treaties (such as a guarantee to a fair trial, protection from cruel and unusual treatment, etc) are the reasons governments will extradite their own citizens.
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What happens to the innocent people there who eventually go home? There are many held at Gitmo who have already proven to be innocent who are stuck there because their home countries won't allow them back.
No matter how bad these people are, we should not stoop to their level and must respect human rights, otherwise we are little better than they are. This country was founded on certain principals, and if we throw them out because of terrorists, then the terrorists have won.
I agree we should throw the book at those responsible for terrorism, but I also believe in habeus corpus. If they're guilty, lock them up forever or in some cases death, but make sure they're guilty first. Our current behavior has robbed the US of the moral high ground in the eyes of many outside this country.
After all, would you fully trust the word of Pakistan about who is innocent and who is guilty? After all, they were one of the Taliban's biggest supporters up until 9/11 and still support them through numerous warlords.
As for blaming Carter, you also should blame Ronald Reagan for quietly cowing to the terrorists in Lebanon and illegally supplying weapons to Iran or supporting WMDs in Iraq and Saddam. Carter was a wimp and screwed up, but so did Ronald Reagan. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Interventions _of_the_Reagan_AdministrationWikipedia.
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