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Facebook Rant Lands US Man In UAE Jail
blindbat writes While back home in the U.S., a man working in the United Arab Emirates posted negative comments about the company he worked for. Upon returning to the country to resign, he was arrested and now faces up to a year in prison under their strict "cyber slander" laws designed to protect reputation.
Ignorance is no excuse from the law.
It's an old-school feudal state mixing in a little bit of a hot modern idea, corporate oligarchy. The businessmen and sheikhs (many of whom are related) run the place, and jailing foreign workers if they get inconvenient is one of their main tools to retain control. Usually you don't hear about it because most of the workers aren't from the USA.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Corporations don't wield too much power. They're timid little butterflies.
Throw you in jail because you're ticked off at your employer. This is the fate of US as well.
1) Going to another country simply to resign is not the sanest action.
2) We really need a clear International consensu that governments do NOT have extra-territorial jurisdiction. Actions taken in one country should abide by the laws of that country, not any other country - even if it affects the other country. Any country that refuses to abide by this simple rule (I'm including my own beloved United States which routinely violates this simple legal concept.), should have punitive trade restrictions placed on them.
When I'm in New York state, I have to abide by NYS laws, not New Jerseys. Similarly, when I am in the US, I should abide by the US laws, not any other countries.
Sounds like a good idea, but how does that work when the internet is involved? Does Facebook count as everywhere? What about phone calls? Mail?
It's a tricky system to get right.
Nothing important should go on facebook!
love is just extroverted narcissism
When you do something like, say, post on Facebook, when does that post stop being "active"? At what point are you no longer making the statement therein, even though it is still publicly "out there?" Remember, the written word is different than the spoken word: it exists long after the action of putting pen to paper.
Say I am in a country that has no law against threatening to kill someone, anyone. I say aloud, "I am going to kill gurps_npc." Okay, great, that country doesn't care, no harm done.
Now say I post the same thing to Twitter, while I am still in my original "safe" country. Okay, still great. Then I travel to a country that DOES have a problem with such threats, in particular gurps_npc's country. Does my statement not count because I didn't actually type it from within the offended country? Or is it in fact still "happening" and I should be held responsible for it? Here I am in the offended country, and if someone looks at my twitter feed, which I am accepted as responsible for, it clearly says, "I am going to kill gurps_npc." Am I not responsible for that? Am I not, in fact, continuing to take the action of making that statement now that I am in the offended country?
The point is, the written word endures long after its creation, in an actual, active way, that is no less active than the moment at which is was created, and if one is going to violate a law by way of written word, one has to deal with the consequences when stepping into the jurisdiction in question.
That is not to say that the law in the article is not absurd, there's no doubt that it certainly is. And that's also not to argue for extradition. But when the act you commit continues to endure and you enter a jurisdiction in which that act is unlawful, you should expect to deal with the consequences.
I live in Luxembourg, Europe and last month we jailed a guy for 9 months for a Facebook rant.
http://www.wort.lu/en/luxembou...
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(CS/mth) Two Luxembourg nationals on Thursday were found guilty of sending death threats to immigrant rights activists Serge Kollwelter and Laura Zuccoli, with one of the men sentenced to nine months in prison.
The pair were found guilty by a Luxembourg City court of publishing xenophobic comments and threats in a discussion feed on Facebook on March 31 last year.
A 54-year-old defendant was sentenced to nine months in prison, while his 45-year-old co-defendant was served a nine-month suspended sentence, under the condition that he will not be caught for a similar offence over the next five years. ...
When I get on the phone in California and call Russia, I abide by the laws of California, not Russia. Same for mail.
This is straightforward, simple concept.
Facebook (and the rest of the internet) means you abide by the laws of the country you are in when you post. That part is NOT tricky.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Its called slavery. Yes, it is old fashioned.