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INTERPOL Granted Diplomatic Immunity In the US
ShakaUVM writes "A couple of weeks ago without any fanfare or notice in the media, President Obama granted INTERPOL full diplomatic immunity while conducting investigations on American soil. While INTERPOL has been allowed to operate in the US in the past, under an executive order by President Reagan, they've had to follow the same rules as the FBI, CIA, etc., while on American soil. This means, among other things, the new executive order makes INTERPOL immune to Freedom of Information Act requests and that INTERPOL agents cannot be punished for most any crimes they may commit. Hopefully the worst we'll see from this is INTERPOL agents ignoring their speeding tickets." Update: 01/05 02:57 GMT by KD : Reader davecb pointed out an ABC News blog that comes to pretty much the opposite conclusion as to the import of the executive order.
But the question on everyone's mind is, can RadioHead expect the same deal?
the headline says:
INTERPOL Granted Diplomatic Immunity In the US
The actual article says: "these privileges are not the same as the rights afforded under "diplomatic immunity," they are considerably less. "Diplomatic immunity" comes from the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which states that a "diplomatic agent shall enjoy immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving State." That is NOT what the International Organizations Immunities Act is.
The headline seems to be wrong.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Come on, you're telling me that INTERPOL now has the same protection as the "International Pacific Halibut Commission and Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission".
Yeapsireee, gotta watch out for those rouge Halbut operatives. Goodness me.
More seriously, remember INTERPOL actually has very little power - they're a coordination agency. They have no powers of arrest. They don't even DO investigations. What they DO is if a cop in Australia is tracking down a criminal who's fled to Los Angeles and therefore needs the LAPD assistance, INTERPOL is the agency that makes that inter-police-force connection happen. There are no "INTERPOL" officers in L.A. that do the arrest - that's for the LAPD (or FBI).
Indeed, and the reason that diplomatic immunity is not a "do whatever you want" license is that any laws you break result in embarrassing complaints to your home country, who will recall you and punish you in their own system.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
This is not diplomatic immunity. This is just protection against searches, IRS, etc. This basically allows a law enforcement officer to carry out his duties. It is identical to when the FBI comes to a local town to investigate, they can not be hindered or stopped by the local law enforcement. This is obvious and should not raise any issues.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
This is really a change of a default assumption than freedom to do anything without penalty. If INTERPOL starts going crazy, it only takes a presidential signature to take this exception back.
No one is taking this exception back, it was granted in the first place.
The question might be why was this ever granted in the first place? Easy - the government wants to make it easier to hunt terrorists on U.S. soil or any other citizen not following the rules. This basically allows to the U.S. government to go and ask interpol to conduct unconstitutional activities on U.S. soil and report their findings. Clap, fail.
The title and summary are pretty misleading, it appears the only thing Obama did was exempt INTERPOL from certain taxes and provided them with immunity from search and seizure. The article explicitly states that it is not the same thing as diplomatic immunity.
By "this" i think you mean the US of A.
What about the 'sovereignty' of other countries? Our founding tribes would run amok if they knew their ancestors would bow for the pressure of the US.
There's no such thing as an interpol agent. They delegate to national agencies (ie the DoJ) who do /not/ get immunity. What they do have is a bunch of committees and advisors, and a (shared) database of people 'of interest'.
Somebody's been watching the man from UNCLE a few too many times
Political party X screwed us, vote Y!
Seems like we've only got two valid choices here. Which is the one we hate and the one we like again?
And this is why you should not pretend to be a lawyer. Ready?
Interpol has no police force. It conducts no investigations. It doesn't arrest anyone. As an international organization it was not subject to FOIA requests anyway, because it's not a department of the federal government.
As a previous poster noted, this is NOT DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY. This is immunity from attachment of any property that Interpol may have in the USA. Any employees of Interpol, if any, stationed in the USA can and would still be arrested for crimes they commit. In summary, both the original submitter and basically every comment I've seen so far are not just wrong, they are comically wrong.
You are ignorant. Interpol has no agents; it's a clearinghouse for information sharing, and it has a bunch of committees. It has never been subject to FOIA requests. Legal authorities working on behalf of Interpol are subject to the same restrictions they always have been. The RIAA has nothing to do with Interpol.
This move by the Obama administration puts Interpol on the same footing as the International Pacific Halibut Commission. Oooh, scary!
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
These are the additional privileges granted to Interpol:
Section 2(c), which provided officials immunity from their property and assets being searched and confiscated; including their archives;
the portions of Section 2(d) and Section 3 relating to customs duties and federal internal-revenue importation taxes;
Section 4, dealing with federal taxes;
Section 5, dealing with Social Security; and
Section 6, dealing with property taxes.
That's it. How exactly does that make you less sovereign?
Here are the sections that were addressed by the order, according to the linked article:
Section 2(c), which provided officials immunity from their property and assets being searched and confiscated; including their archives;
the portions of Section 2(d) and Section 3 relating to customs duties and federal internal-revenue importation taxes;
Section 4, dealing with federal taxes;
Section 5, dealing with Social Security; and
Section 6, dealing with property taxes.
Whether or not they have criminal immunity (don't know offhand), there doesn't seem to be ANYTHING in the above executive order addressing such matters. Might have FOIA implications, but doesn't seem to have anything to do with punishment of crimes committed by agents. Summary is wrong.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Why are you linking to this "article"? It contains no information, only the Obama-bashing expected from your American right-wingers and unsupported hypotheses.
If you care about facts, you can find them, a few seconds of searching revealed this for instance.
Quote:
In other words there appears to be nothing to get worked up about. Even if you believe whatever republicans do is right. Because they would have done the same.
You Americans are crazy.
They had diplomatic immunity since Reagan's executive order. The statement in the original post that "the new executive order makes INTERPOL immune to Freedom of Information Act requests and that INTERPOL agents cannot be punished for most any crimes they may commit." is factually wrong. The infallible mr. Reagan's executive order did that ... it and not the new executive order gave Interpol the following :
"(b) International organizations, their property and their assets, wherever located, and by whomsoever held, shall enjoy the same immunity from suit and every form of judicial process as is enjoyed by foreign governments, except to the extent that such organizations may expressly waive their immunity for the purpose of any proceedings or by the terms of any contract."
AND
" (a) Persons designated by foreign governments to serve as their representatives in or to international organizations and the officers and employees of such organizations, and members of the immediate families of such representatives, officers, and employees residing with them, other than nationals of the United States, shall, insofar as concerns laws regulating entry into and departure from the United States, alien registration and fingerprinting, and the registration of foreign agents, be entitled to the same privileges, exemptions, and immunities as are accorded under similar circumstances to officers and employees, respectively, of foreign governments, and members of their families.
(b) Representatives of foreign governments in or to international organizations and officers and employees of such organizations shall be immune from suit and legal process relating to acts performed by them in their official capacity and falling within their functions as such representatives, officers, or employees except insofar as such immunity may be waived by the foreign government or international organization concerned."
Reagan gave Interpol diplomatic immunity, Obama removed their duty to pay taxes and extended their immunity to an immunity to searches.
This summary is flat out WRONG. It's phrased to start a flamewar. Click the news link, and see what it says. He did not grant full diplomatic immunity to INTERPOL. I quote from the article: "Basically, recognizing a group under the International Organizations Immunities Act means officials from those organizations are exempt from some taxes and customs fees, and that their records cannot be seized." FOIA might be affected, but they are not immune to crimes.
There you go again, ruining a perfectly good flamewar with your fancy schmancy facts and logic and whatnot. We don't take kindly to your kind around here..
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
If George Bush would have signed the exact same executive order, this post would be modded +5, insightful, and with that said, the very people who are heading for the hills because Obama signed it would be trying to defend Bush in that onslaught.
So really, all that is changed is that we substituted one guy for another, but the erosion of liberty continues at pretty much the same or even accelerated pace.
This is my sig.
How fucking classic is it that the submitter linked the words "granted INTERPOL full diplomatic immunity" to an article that explicitly states in caps and everything that this is NOT a granting of diplomatic immunity?
According to the article titled "Just What Did President Obama's Executive Order regarding INTERPOL Do?", what it didn't do is grant diplomatic immunity, and what it did do is grant a limited amount of immunity mostly related to taxes and document seizure. The idea seems to be to to allow international organizations like Red Cross, IAEA, IMF, and now INTERPOL to do their work without participating nations worrying that the U.S. will spy on them by reading these organization's records.
Now I'm not sure I like granting a police force any more immunity of any kind, but that's a hell of a lot less than diplomatic immunity and not as hard to revoke. Maybe other countries were getting concerned about the U.S.'s nosiness and this will enhance international cooperation. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I do know the summary was classic bullshit.
The enemies of Democracy are
That sure sounds pretty cut and dried to me.
The immunity belongs to the organization, not the people (even when sometimes they attach to people because of their relationship to the organization.) Like much stronger diplomatic or consular immunities, they are not individual rights; particularly, the institution to whom they are granted may waive them, whether or not the individual affected wishes them to. The rights exist to protect the operation of the institution (particularly, for the protections granted to international institutions, they exist principally to get other countries to cooperate fully with the institution by assuring them that the host country of the institution's facilities won't either use them to seize property acquired by other nation's funding of the organization or to seize sensitive information shared with the organization outside of the scope of the information sharing carried out under the procedures of the organization.)
The immunities at issue that INTERPOL was previously specifically excluded from that apply to international organizations are:
* Immunity to search and confiscation of the organizations premises, property, and archives
* Freedom of customs duties for baggage of staff
* Immunity from various taxes (Social Security, property taxes, federal income taxes)
(Note, all of this is laid out in TFA)
The personal immunities that apply to international organization staff (exemption from immigration controls, and immunity to suit based on official acts) already applied to INTERPOL, because the Reagan Administration order that added INTERPOL to the list of organizations getting the standard set of protections set out for such organizations in US law didn't exclude those personal protections, just some of the institutional protections. All the Obama order did is remove the special limitations that were applied to INTERPOL (and which were irrelevant at the time of the Reagan order, since INTERPOL didn't have offices in the US at the time.) No special privileges beyond those usually granted to international organizations that the United States participates in (and some that it doesn't!) have been granted to INTERPOL.
It doesn't give them universal immunity to do as they will within our borders. Interpol has no police force. It's just an administrative organization that basically acts as a go-between between countries.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/interpol.asp
This modification specifically allows INTERPOL the ability to enter into contracts, own and dispose property and has some ancillary language regarding taxes and immigration.
The real provision that is possibly dangerous is Section 7. (b) Representatives of foreign governments in or to international organizations and officers and employees of such organizations shall be immune from suit and legal process relating to acts performed by them in their official capacity ... http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/International_Organizations_Immunities_Act#Title_I
If an agent of INTERPOL is "just doing his job" then he can do whatever he wants. Fortunately for us INTERPOL is very limited in what it can do.
INTERPOL's constitution is very clear as Article 3 states: It is strictly forbidden for the Organization to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character. http://www.interpol.int/public/icpo/legalmaterials/constitution/constitutiongenreg/constitution.asp
Thus, we are safe from the administration asking INTERPOL to conduct operations on US soil. If that charter were to change though... it would be a different story.
Also, Obama's actions have had no change on their status in this regard. They have always had this status.
What? I'm a whackjob that believes in the Illuminati as a secret, nefarious society because I can read and quote the act?
They don't have any of those things, still...they have immunity from search and seizure, meaning they can now send things to and from the USA via diplomatic packages, something they can do in almost every other county in the world, now. The FOI immunity is retarded, because you've never been able to, and it certainly wasn't anywhere in the executive order. The reason you've never been able to, is that INTERPOL isn't part of the US government. You can't send FOI requests to the Canadian Consulate in NYC, either. Well, I'm sure you can send them one, but don't expect an answer. Additionally, this is INTERPOL itself. This means, yes, official documents sent by them can't be searched at the border, and their offices can't be searched, either. It doesn't mean a person who happens to work for INTERPOL can't be searched if they're suspected of a crime, unlike a diplomat. They can be searched, and they can be arrested. I imagine they could say "That suspicious package is property of INTERPOL, not me, you can't search it." Which is true, but if somebody else at INTERPOL says "No it isn't" they can go ahead and search it. No diplomatic plates for their car, either, they can still get a ticket. Further, they don't even actually have their own office, they use desks at the DoJ, so there's no real reason the DoJ would ever need to be trying to search their stuff, anyways! So if it doesn't matter, why make an executive order of it? Like I said, now they can use diplomatic pouches for sensitive information, so it does matter. Finally, as you've already been told, INTERPOL isn't a police agency. Only in "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" do they have actual powers to arrest people. They're just a agency responsible for forwarading information on international criminals from one nations police to others who might need to know about it. An INTERPOL "agent" can't arrest you, he can tell the FBI that there's an outstanding arrest warrant for you in France, and then the FBI goes and arrests you, while the INTERPOL "agent" stays at his desk at the DoJ.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
>>This summary is flat out WRONG. It's phrased to start a flamewar. Click the news link, and see what it says
I'm the submitter, and I'd recommend not clicking on the news link. Not only is it wrong, but the Slashdot editors added it in to my submission, which just had a link to the Executive Order and to the UN Parking Ticket Scandal.
>>FOIA might be affected, but they are not immune to crimes.
Incorrect. They are immune (technically, they were already immune - this extends their immunities further). ABCNews is further wrong when it says INTERPOL does not have full diplomatic immunity. If you look at all the categories of possible immunities here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_immunity#Diplomatic_immunity_in_the_United_States, INTERPOL agents (and their families to a certain extent) have them all now. There's more kinds of diplomatic immunity than the immunities diplomats have.
They're immune to search, seizure, suit, legal proceedings, taxes, and their families too. Just what I want from a law enforcement agency, eh?
If you don't believe me, read the law yourself. All the source is here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-amending-executive-order-12425
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12425
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/International_Organizations_Immunities_Act
As for FOIA, they were never bound by the FOIA, since they are not a part of the US Government. If you tried to sue them and use discovery to gain access to their records, that was not possible since they were already covered by Section 2(b), which protects them from judicial processes.
Cause you can't get a tan from an amber monitor. If you do, there is something horribly wrong.
Technically they were already immune? That's a rather important technicality ... because you explicitly blamed Obama for giving them immunity from prosecution. In actuality 12425 is the executive order which gave them that ... the one with Ronald Reagan's signature below it.
If these agents work for INTERPOL, doesn't this order (and it doesn't really matter whether it was Reagan or Obama who authorized it) give those INTERPOL members immunity?
Because the Slashdot editors mangled my entry. There was no link to the ABC News article in what I submitted, but I did have a link to the story on unpaid UN parking tickets.
Ah, so a slashdot editor actually managed to improve a submission by linking to accurate information? I'm honestly shocked.
What really irks me is that this actually is a granting of full diplomatic immunity. If you go through the list of all the possible options for diplomatic immunity (it comes in different kinds), INTERPOL now has them all. So, yeah, I called it full diplomatic immunity.
No, it isn't, as your own links state.
Either you don't understand the difference between "immune to prosecution" and "immune to prosecution for official acts", or you don't understand what INTERPOL's official business is in the U.S. Or you somehow think "immunity for some actions" is the same as "full" immunity.
FULL diplomatic immunity means free from prosecution for any and all acts.
Let me spell it out for you.
If I was the French Ambassador to the U.S., and I was caught in L.A. snorting cocaine from from the ass crack of a dead 12 year old boy who I'd just raped and killed (not necessarily in that order), then the worst that the U.S. or local governments could do to to me would be to kick me out of the country -- unless of course France revoked my immunity, which you can certainly imagine happening in this case, but you get my point.
Now if I were an employee of INTERPOL, I would be prosecutable under U.S. and local law. As in NOT full immunity.
Unless you can explain how rape, murder, and drug use are official actions,
And you know what INTERPOL's official business is in the U.S.? Handing information provided by other nations' police forces over to U.S. police forces. That's it. That doesn't cover a very wide variety of actions, thus doesn't provide immunity for a very wide variety of actions, and thus only someone either completely foolish or deliberately stirring shit would call that "full immunity".
If you weren't wrong, I'd agree with you.
If you were any judge of right and wrong, you wouldn't have written such a shitty summary to begin with.
The enemies of Democracy are
Interpol is an organisation whose member are nations and their police. They coordinate information sharing between member states. They don't do police work themselves. The only Interpol employees stricto sensu are administrative staff. That's it. The only "agents" are those of the FBI in the US, or the RMCP in Canada, and so on and so forth for other members. Nobody's going to show up at your door with an Interpol badge -- ever. Or maybe as a joke or a fraud.
That slashdot falls for this right wing scaremongering bullshit is disheartening. Goddamn it, it's not that hard to look shit up on Wikipedia, morons.
sudo release me
rewriting history since 2109
No, I was correct, and you're the moron.
No, they're not. You may have been thinking of Europol, or you may be lost in your own delusional fantasy. Either way, you're wrong. Interpol has a staff of around 600 people, and a budget of $60 million; the FBI has 32,700+ employees, and a $7 billion budget.
This is, in fact, correct. They are national law enforcement police who are subject to national laws. An FBI agent on loan to Interpol's office in New York receives no immunities or privileges he didn't have as an FBI agent. Obama's order is regarding the organization itself, the Interpol General Secretariat.
From the Wikipedia page on Interpol:
Read that closely: When two police agencies need to co-operate across borders, they go through Interpol. Interpol doesn't investigate and arrest them; national law enforcement does, with Interpol acting as the co-ordinating agency. They don't originate investigations, and they don't make arrests on their own authority--that's the whole point of each country setting up an NCB staffed by locals with the authority to be police officers.
And to be perfectly clear, a national law enforcement officer in the NCB receives no benefit from the order Obama signed, which doesn't confer diplomatic immunity anyway--it's a lesser form of organizational immunity granted to international organizations that applies to Interpol's records and bureaucratic operations, not to their personnel.
Got that? Interpol doesn't have diplomatic immunity, they have International Organizations Immunity:
In other words, if someone from the general secretariat works in the NY office, they don't have to pay NY taxes and their paperwork can't be searched. If they jerk off on the subway, they can still be arrested for indecent exposure.
Thanks for playing, though.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
As WP and the law itself clearly states, agents of International Organizations are immune from prosecution for official acts only.
That is nothing like "full diplomatic immunity", which is immunity from all prosecution.
INTERPOL's official business in the U.S. is one of information coordinator between the police forces of various nations, NOT anything related to actual investigation or law enforcement. They do not arrest. They do not investigate.
So to answer the salient question raised by the summary: Can INTERPOL agents now violate due process or other Constitutional protections within the United States with impunity, is a big fucking NO because any such action would not be an official act and thus not protected.
The enemies of Democracy are
Yep, and that immunity isn't going to impede on your rights in any substantial way anyway. No matter what the whitehouse does, you've still got the full protections of the courts in a manner that the constitution guarantees. If stuff is used against you in a trial, you CAN challenge how it was obtained, if wiretaps happen, you CAN assert your constitutional rights to privacy, and if one of these suits tries and grabs you (They can't) you can damn well have them charged on deprivation of liberty if they havent gone through all the due processes to get a judge to agree on terms compatible with American justice.
Generally its pretty unlikely an American will ever face an international court for stuff done at home, the US govt has been adamant on that, but even if you did, the european courts have a very modern set of evidence laws that make the US ones look draconian. (Ie afaik, American courts seem to permit entrapment by undercover agents for some reason)
I'd not be too worried about this, its just the right blowing fear trumpets again. Where where these people when Bush was rolling out the patriot act anyway?
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
That does not exist. Just like the Universal Postal Union will not deliver letters to your home, nor will you ever be able to lease a phone line from the ITU.
Goddamnit, you people are so fucking stupid, it's unconscionable.
If you read the supplied Snopes link, it will tell you that the local governments have the right to decide upon the legality of warrants passed on by Interpol, meaning they are allowed only as much latitude as the states deign to grant. The local governments decide on the legality, the local governments send law enforcement if needed, etc. Interpol does not of those things. Interpol doesn't even issue warrants, it requires one of the member countries to do so. They simply pass them on to the necessary recipient.
Interpol does NOT have a police force, it does not conduct criminal investigations, and it does not make arrests. It acts as a data manager of sorts, for any member nations, coordinating information, passing warrants as needed from one member country to another, etc. They are basically an administration/secretarial service on an international scale. Whatever odd idea of Interpol people may have gotten from the Bond flicks or whatnot, are not quite accurate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpol
For those that don't want to read through all of the Snopes/NYTimes information:
These are the same standard rights that are granted to some 70+ other international organizations. These additional rights were not granted to Interpol because it did not have a local office on US soil at the time. This was submitted prior to Bush leaving office and the State Department suggested approving it so that Interpol had the same legal status as other international organizations. It was not completed before Bush left office however. This is a bit of house cleaning to complete the request.
This is major tinfoilhatism on your part.
Exactly what 'unconstitutional' things do you think INTERPOL can/will do? They provide information. They don't investigate, issue warrants, or arrest. They have no 'agents'. They are as threatening as the other organizations with this status, such as the International Red Cross.
That section doesn't pertain to anything we're discussing here. Congrats for being part of the FUD.
I know it's a little complicated, but basically in 1983 Reagan signed an executive order granting Interpol international organization status, which just means they get certain (mostly tax- and customs-related) protections and privileges. Section 2(b) of the act defining those privileges is what you quoted above, and is what Reagan gave them. Now, Reagan excepted Interpol from certain protections, viz Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6. These exceptions are what Obama has just withdrawn. Go ahead and read them, they pertain partly to taxes and social security, and also protect the property of international organizations (all of them, not just Interpol) from seizure and search.
So either you don't really understand what's going on or you're just fearmongering. As to the whoever started this, well, that was pure FUD.
What? I'm a whackjob that believes in the Illuminati as a secret, nefarious society because I can read and quote the act?
You apparently failed to read beyond the part you emphasized, as the next words show how silly this whole affair is: "as is enjoyed by foreign governments." All your quote says is, INTERPOL is to be treated the same as every foreign government that has an embassy in the US. There is literally nothing to get excited about here.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
"Hopefully the worst we'll see from this is INTERPOL agents ignoring their speeding tickets" Good.. I hope they don't.. at least until the American Embassy in London gets round to clearing the > £200,000 they owe the city for their unpaid congestion charge.