Just like it did in this case. By arresting the person hired.
So, your notion is that an employee of the US government should be able to act freely in Cuba, and the Cubans have no right to stop him? Just because the "planning" took part outside of Cuba?
You're still over-simplifying my position. I said they were unreasonable to convict him and sentence him to 15 years. There's a whole panapoly of actions they could have taken short of that, starting with a 14 year sentence. The Russian 10 were stopped from violating US Law perfectly well after spending about a month and a half in US Prison.
If merely stopping him is the standard you're trying to apply even an arrest was unnecessary. You simply tell Gross "we know you're CIA, your flight back has been changed, you're leaving in 5 minutes." and he is stopped.
But of course, you're going to read that and start back on the ridiculous "but you said we had to let him go" BS because you're not thinking clearly enough to read the first clause: "if stopping him is the standard."
So he can be arrested for plotting against the Cuban government when all the actual plotting happened in the US?
Offtopic, again! He was arrested for trying to overthrow the Cuban government as an agent of the US government. Where he did his planning is irrelevant!
If that's true you've just claimed Cuba has every legal right to send a battalion to DC and arrest the entire US State Department because the entire US State Department is legally required to be attempting regime change in Cuba. Since all sovereigns have the same rights, and Cuba's entire legal basis is that it's at the vanguard of a revolution that will wipe out all non-Communist states, that in turn gives every non-Communist state in the world (including the US) a perfect legal justification to invade the island.
And if we have that right, the Cuban government really should stop whining about the embargo.
Cuba can charge him for the actual actions of his plot (ie: smuggling equipment in), or expel before he gets around to implementing his plot, but it can't say "you planned plans in DC that were hostile to us" and charge him with that.
You'll note the guy you found wasn't charged with plotting against the US Government (altho he did that).
WTF? I can't... why would Cuba charge an US employee of plotting against the US Government?
Talking about Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher was your idea.
And he chose to do them in Cuba, where US law doesn't apply, and, *gasp*, Cuban law applies.
[...] Which means that, by your own admission, Cuba has less respect for foreign nation's sovereignty then even we do in America.
Sigh. Let's see. The US sends an agent (among many) to overthrow the Cuban government, the Cubans arrest the agent, and the Cubans are the ones not respecting "foreign nation's sovereignty"? That's the stereotypical arrogant attitude that one hopes doesn't really exist in america. You are actually claiming that Cuba doesn't respect US sovereignty because they don't follow US law in Cuba.
So the US has to follow Cuban law in Havana (by not importing computer equipment), but US Agents who follow US Law in DC (by plotting against Cuba) can go to prison for 15 years? How is that not a double-standard?
I HAVE NEVER SAID THEY HAD TO RELEASE HIM PRIOR TO NEGOTIATIONS.
GOOD. THEN WE AGREE. So, what's your point then? You believe that "Raul wants the embargo to continue" because... Obama has refused to negotiate? (Also, you are arguing that he shouldn't have been arrested in the first place, therefore, you *are* arguing that he should be released). I dare you to point out any attempt at meaningful negotiation in this case th
Your last sentence is (again) the problem with your argument. Whether anyone else can pass a law is totally irrelevant because warrants aren't laws. They aren't governed by laws. They are governed by the Fourth Amendment and Case Law. I've never said they can't pass this law. Congress can pass any law it wants. I'm only arguing that it is roughly as relevant as say; a law requiring Eisenhower to trade trade Omaha Beach for with the Canadians for Juno Beach. This is not a law that works because you have high-level authority to set laws, it's a law that works because you can order individual DEA Agents around. And Congress just does not have that power.
What's going to happen is quite simple: The president has the power to execute laws using law enforcement officials he appoints. He will tell his officials to ignore the law, so they will. They will continue to ask for European data. The Courts are not subject to Congressional whims at all, so they will continue to grant warrants allowed by the Fourth Amendment.
Congress can pass all the laws restricting Presidential power it wants. It can pass all the laws restricting the Courts it wants. It just can't do it and expect either the President or the Courts to give a flying fuck.
Any case involving the powers of search and seizure is a Fourth Amendment case, so you just illustrated your problem: Congress can make a law governing the granting of warrants, but it will be totally ignored because "Fourth Amendment cases don't talk about statutes." The DoJ will ask for the warrant, and the Judge won;t even read the Congressional rulebook.
The power you mention is a much better fit then the scope of the Courts one, but it's also a bit of a stretch. A warrant is a very low-level operational decision of the Executive and Judicial branches, not a high-level policy decision. That clause is pretty clearly intended to give them high-level abilities to set policies not explicitly granted by their other powers.
Here's the thing you have to keep in mind: I agree with you on the substance of this issue. I want the embargo to end. I just don't think the Cuban government wants it to end. And rather then convince me I've misunderstood them (which might actually work), you're arguing their actions are completely normal. Moreover, you're not only arguing against me, you're insisting on making shit up completely (note the all caps when I point it out), and using said completely made-up shit as the core of your case.
If you want the embargo to end, venting at the Americans who agree with you is probably not a wise choice. Particularly if you're so emotional about the issue you cannot even bother to understand their position. The Embargo will never be the number one issue for America because we have interests in every country on the globe. As long as somebody somewhere is dying in their thousands due to some random rebel group, or brutal government, or being Arab and looking at Bibi funny; there will be a higher priority in the US then the Cuban people. Which means we'll only bother to try and fix this particular problem if either a) it looks like it will be really easy to do, or b) the entire fucking rest of the world stops shooting at each-other for a few years in a row.
So your argument is that Cuba can make it illegal for the US Government to hire people?
Not at all. I haven't seen the "US government" jailed for hiring people. Therefore, whether the Cubans have the right to outlaw certain actions of the US government or not is irrelevant. In this case, they didn't even try. How do you imagine that would work?
Just like it did in this case. By arresting the person hired.
He chose to do things while in the US that are completely legal under US Law. In fact most of them are actually required by US Law.
And he chose to do them in Cuba, where US law doesn't apply, and, *gasp*, Cuban law applies.
So he can be arrested for plotting against the Cuban government when all the actual plotting happened in the US?
You'll note the guy you found wasn't charged with plotting against the US Government (altho he did that). Which means that, by your own admission, Cuba has less respect for foreign nation's sovereignty then even we do in America.
That takes some fucking doing. I mean we have turned rationalizing bullying into a high art form.
And again, you're bringing up the strawman of unconditional release. I have never argued that Cuba's only choice was unconditional release.
So, what conditions is Cuba allowed to request before the release? Because you insist on releasing him even before negotiations have taken place. Do you want them to demand conditions after they release him? If that is not unconditional, I don't know what it is.
Dude,
This sentence is the reason I am quite frankly wondering whether you've taken your crazy pills. In all-caps so I know you'll read it.
I HAVE NEVER SAID THEY HAD TO RELEASE HIM PRIOR TO NEGOTIATIONS.
As I said before, if they wanted to release him the time for negotiations would have been back in early 2010.
Because NicBenjamin says so? I gave you an example of a guy who wasn't released by the US until around five years after the arrest. And as you said earlier, very eloquently, there are not a lot of comunications channels between Cuba and the US. I really doubt Cuba turned down any oportunity for (meaningful) negotiation.
Press releases would have been the ideal channel. There's no way man-in-the-middle problems can appear with those, and (more importantly) you reduce the chance Obama can claim there were no negotiations to zero. But third parties work too.
the objective standard used is "what did those other guys do when they ha
And where does Congress get the power to limit warrants further? None of the Fourth Amendment cases I've seen talk about statutes. And you'd think one of them would mention a statute governing warrants if statutes governed warrants.
Another guy said something that seemed to reference Congress right to "constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;" which allows them to limit the scope of lower Courts. That's a bit of a stretch, but it's a lot more plausible then "Of course a statute is valid. Congress is blessed by God himself with unlimited power to do anything it wants," which seems to be the entirety of your argument.
I'm not asking you for the world here. I just want to know which clause of the Constitution you're talking about. If it exists it must be implicit in some other power Congress is granted in Article I because the word "warrant" never appears.
The Congress had to step in and use their power of the purse, and their control of the nominations process, to force the president to act. Their power to force the President to take a fairly basic administrative action (investigate wrongdoing in his department) was so limited they had to hack their way around the problem by refusing to let any officer in the Navy be promoted (all military officers are confirmed by the Senate, and have to be confirmed again if they get promoted) until something changed.
Congress has power, but it's not the power to run things on a day-to-day basis. They can tell the DEA there is a law against heroin, and you have $X to enforce that law; but the people who actually enforce the law do so on the basis of Presidential orders.
Your logic sucks. It's so bad I'm going to declare you a troll, and a particularly shitty one because my aspy ass does not pick up on them quickly.
How is it possible that you can appoint all the officers (look up the Tail Hook scandal if you don't believe me), have the unilateral right to remove all the highest ranking officers, and not run things? Indeed, how stupid would the Founders have had to be to create an Executive Branch whose Chief Executive couldn't make Executive decisions?
The Constitution grants CONGRESS the power to coin regulate money, not the executive. The exact wording is "Congress shall have the power..." The executive has only those powers that Congress grants it, except for a very, very few granted directly by the Constitution.
One of those Executive Powers is to actually run the government. The President is the boss of every Federal cop, prosecutor, or other law enforcement official. Congress can tell the President what the law is, but it simply doesn't have the power to tell him (or the Judicial branch) how to enforce said laws.
> that the government had the power to make unreasonable ones before.
The Constitution is the founding document that CREATED the federal government. It didn't exist "before". Before the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, we had only a loose coalition of states, with the confederation itself having virtually no power - not even the power to tax.
The Constitution was ratified in September of 1788. The Bill of rights wasn't ratified until December of 1791. Which means for three years the Feds had every right to unreasonable searches without a warrant.
enter as a tourist while (not so) secretly being an american agent [Status as an American Agent is determined by the American government, and is therefore something "the US decided to do"]
No, it isn't, unless your claim is that Gross was a slave of the US government. He had a choice. He chose to accept several millions in exchange for the risk. And now he is paying for his choice.
So your argument is that Cuba can make it illegal for the US Government to hire people?
He chose to do things while in the US that are completely legal under US Law. In fact most of them are actually required by US Law.
If your conclusion that Cuba clearly had jurisdiction for every charge you mention was in any way valid, don't you think you could come up with a single example of a non-citizen being sent to prison for years for being a foreign agent?
How other countries choose to deal with the threats is irrelevant to what makes sense for Cuba to do, and ignoring the particular context of Cuba's actions is naive at best. Most, if not all of those you claim to have been released, have been released after negotiations have taken place, not unconditionally. Every single case that ended with an agent swap necessarily serves as the example you ask for (the agents arrested by the first country are held until the second country has something to offer in return). So far, that's also the case with Gross, only that, because the US refuses to negotiate, the negotiations have not yet taken place.
And again, you're bringing up the strawman of unconditional release. I have never argued that Cuba's only choice was unconditional release. As I said before, if they wanted to release him the time for negotiations would have been back in early 2010.
In international relations pretty much the only thing that matters is what other countries in similar situations have done because these relationships are complex, and iterative. ie: if Canada and Denmark have a spat on Hans Island that has to affect their next set of interactions, and everyone else has to judge their actions by some objective standard. Since the actual international legal system allows you to nuke their capital when one of their planes gets lost and flies into your air-space (both are technically Acts of War), the objective standard used is "what did those other guys do when they had a similar spat four years ago?"
Also, Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher, russian agent captured by the US, tried, convicted, sentenced to 30 years, served several years in prison before he was exchanged. Yu Xin Kang, Chinese, convicted by the US to 18 months. I suppose that now you are going to move the goalposts and demand some other conditions. It will be very easy to demand a condition that I cannot satisfy, after all, non-citizens don't make very good spies, and it is even rarer for a country to outright refuse to negotiate for the release of their agents. I'm curious to see what new demands you come up with.
Read the charges against him. He got 30 years for transmitting classified information, and five for failing to register as a foreign agent.
Given that I've already admitted the US Foreign Agent laws are
The Constitution grants CONGRESS the power to coin regulate money, not the executive. The exact wording is "Congress shall have the power..." The executive has only those powers that Congress grants it, except for a very, very few granted directly by the Constitution.
One of those Executive Powers is to actually run the government. The President is the boss of every Federal cop, prosecutor, or other law enforcement official. Congress can tell the President what the law is, but it simply doesn't have the power to tell him (or the Judicial branch) how to enforce said laws.
> that the government had the power to make unreasonable ones before.
The Constitution is the founding document that CREATED the federal government. It didn't exist "before". Before the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, we had only a loose coalition of states, with the confederation itself having virtually no power - not even the power to tax.
The Constitution was ratified in September of 1788. The Bill of rights wasn't ratified until December of 1791. Which means for three years the Feds had every right to unreasonable searches without a warrant.
Talk about ridiculous pro-American propaganda. The entire point of the Constitution is to restrict your rights by creating another level of government that can arrest your ass. That's all the preamble talks about. The specific powers you're speaking of are "search and seizure," and they aren't explicitly mentioned because it would be stupid to create a government that could ban counterfeit coinage, but could not a) search the places of business of suspected counterfeiters, b) seize counterfeit money, and c) arrest said counterfeiters. The Courts tend to frown on any lawyer whose entire argument is "clearly the founders were fucking idiots who didn't realize they needed to include a clause letting them arrest people." The Bill of Rights protects your freedom, but it only does so because it limits the actions of an entire level of government that simply did not exist in 1788.
Moreover please learn logic. If your country specifically has to pass an Amendment to restrict "unreasonable searches and seizures" that means that a) reasonable searches and seizures are perfectly ok even after the Amendment is law, and b) that the government had the power to make unreasonable ones before.
Currently the US Government can get a warrant for anyone's data, and US-Based companies must comply or the Courts will seriously fuck them over. The NSA actually has warrants issued by the FISA Court covering all non-US Citizens (yes, I know lots of people thing the warrant is BS, but the simple fact is the Courts disagree with you, and in the US being right when the Courts are wrong doesn't get you jack-squat. Just ask Dredd Scott). Which means that if you're a German, and you're concerned about the NSA, you probably ain't gonna use Yahoo for jack-shit.
This rule would make it impossible for the Courts to order Yahoo to turn over data on that German, as long as the data is stored on Yahoo servers outside the US.
I'm kind of curious as to how this is supposed to work legally. The Fourth Amendment is controlling in the granting of warrants, and it only includes roles for the Executive (asking for a warrant) and the Judicial (granting the warrant). If Obama has probable cause that Yahoo used timd977 is shipping Heroin in from Russia, then the Courts are gonna grant the warrant. Then when Yahoo says "Fuck you, we've got this statute," it's totally irrelevant. The Warrant is valid under the Fourth Amendment,which means Yahoo is by definition in contempt of Court if it refuses to hand the government the data.
I'm not a lawyer, or a specialist in criminal law, so it's possible the Courts have to look at statutes governing probable cause before granting warrants, or can't hold people in contempt unless a statute specifically gives them permission, or something like that. But it just seems to me that if the US Constitution's Separation of Powers mean anything it's that a) Congress can't just pass a law saying the Executive Branch has fewer powers then it is granted by the Constitution, and b) no statute can stop the Courts from penalizing people who disobey them.
It's factually true in the sense that the US wasn't able to make the Cubans pay for doing it, it's clearly not true in the sense that Cuba actually had the right to do it.
As for what the US government decided to do, let me respond this way: enter as a tourist while (not so) secretly being an american agent [Status as an American Agent is determined by the American government, and is therefore something "the US decided to do"] acting on plans to overthrow/destabilize the government [the plans were made by the US Government, which means they were also things the US decided to do].
If your conclusion that Cuba clearly had jurisdiction for every charge you mention was in any way valid, don't you think you could come up with a single example of a non-citizen being sent to prison for years for being a foreign agent?
Has it ever occurred to you that it's possible Cuban Law is simply wrong on this point?
Has it ever occurred to you that the Cubans have the right to defend themselves? Because that's the right you are denying them. When the US interest are attacked, you don't ask for justification to invade your attacker. Yet when Cuba is, you claim that Cuban law is "wrong" for wanting to defend themselves.
Terrible straw-man. I mentioned some pretty drastic steps they could have taken to defend themselves that would not have convinced me they want the embargo to go away.
My argument has always been that their method of defending themselves was so extreme that they had to know it would guarantee the embargo continued until Obama left office.
In a world with nuclear weapons proportionality has to be a very important part of determining whether one state was overly-aggressive in defending itself. Otherwise the Russians get to nuke Kiev over Crimea.
Since you're talking about practice the actual letter of the law is irrelevant. What matters is convictions. Name one whose been convicted. Seriously. Name a single person convicted of being an unregistered foreign agent who was not a citizen of the US.
The Cuban Five. Notice how I ignore the "not a citizen of the US part". Being a citizen of the US had nothing to do with the convictions: they were convicted for failing to register as agents, for "conspiracy to commit espionage" (even though the prosecution couldn't prove that any secret document was leaked) and "conspiracy to commit murder" (even though they had no way of knowing the outcome).
You set up arbitrary rules that effectively stop Cuba from defending themselves (like being free to enter the US without registering and being citizens). You asked earlier, that's what I meant by arbitrary. The Cubans don't play by those rules, because those "rules", besides made up, imply "just sit there and do nothing while we invade you." You cannot unilaterally make up a rule that benefits you and then claim foul when the other party unilaterally decides to ignore it.
It's so convenient for you to ignore essence of my argument. At least you admit this one is a straw man.
For the record, when they accepted US Citizenship the Cuban Five swore to obey our laws, and give up all foreign allegiances.
You realize you;re talking about thought crimes. He didn't have to do anything, but those thought he thought while he was in Washington DC were anti-Cuban, so he can be charged with thinking them while he was in Havana.
Sigh. Again. He acted in Cuba. And it's rich that you speak about thought crimes, given that the "conspiracy" charges are essentially thought crimes too, and you don't seem to have any problem with those, as long as they are not directed against your agents. But again, irrelevant, he wasn't convicted for sitting in DC thinking about what he was going to do. He was convicted for going to Cuba and doing his part in the conspiracy.
You do realize I've already conceded that the things he actually did in Cuba were crimes under Cuban jurisdiction? So your argument so far consists of straw men and repeating a point I'd already agreed with.
Your problem is most of the things you charge him with happened outside of Cuba. He didn't plan to overthrow the Cuban government from his hotel. The plan was already in place. He didn't go to Havana and then volunteer to be a spy.
In international relations when something pisses you off you don't bitch about in press releases for 25 flights, and then go straight for the jugular.
Read some history. They didn't "bitch about it in press releases for 25 flights", they denounced it, repeatedly, to the US authorities, only to be ignor
I think the core of our disagreement rests on your conception that it is legal for countries to ban hostile agents. This is not the case.
And there you go again, denying Cuba's sovereignty. You may not like it, but it is Cuba's law. If you are a foreign agent acting in Cuba with the purpose of overthrowing the government, you can be convicted in Cuba. Even if the US, and even if no other country, has a law prohibiting crimes against the state (which I doubt!), Cuba can still have that law. It is not "my conception". Cuba has that law. You don't like it? You deal with Cuba, rather than just cover your ears and shout "lalala I can't hear you you have no such law".
Has it ever occurred to you that it's possible Cuban Law is simply wrong on this point? It's not like the Cubans have earned a reputation as a country that religiously complies with international norms. We actually do a lot better then Cuba on that point (in part because we wrote the norms back in '48) and I can name one example of US Law being blatantly (and needlessly) wrong in terms of international law.
To an extent they have the right to be wrong, because they are sovereign, but that doesn't mean the rest of us can;t call them on it. It just means that (again, lacking a Starfleet) we can't do much more then call them on it.
We require foreign agents of all powers, even Canada, to register with the authorities, so they can be charged for not registering
So, in practice, your law bans covert agents like Gross. You convict them for failing to register, the Cubans convict them for being covert agents.
Since you're talking about practice the actual letter of the law is irrelevant. What matters is convictions. Name one whose been convicted.
Seriously. Name a single person convicted of being an unregistered foreign agent who was not a citizen of the US.
But if we banned agents of a "hostile power" we'd be de facto banning other countries from being hostile powers, which even we acknowledge can't be done.
That is nonsensical. Banning hostile agents in your territory has no influence whatsoever over anyone who is not in your territory. And, as you said earlier, you already outlaw being a covert agent of a foreign country.
You realize you;re talking about thought crimes. He didn't have to do anything, but those thought he thought while he was in Washington DC were anti-Cuban, so he can be charged with thinking them while he was in Havana.
The logical extension of this is you can't convict foreign agents to multi-year jail terms simply for being part of a plan to oppose your government.
Again, it was not only for planning. It was for acting on those plans. If he had taken violent action (say, murder or bombings), would you agree with the attacked's sovereignty to convict him? If so, what's so different with a non-violent, but also illegal action, with respect to the attacked's sovereignty?
What are you actually saying in this paragraph?
Under my argument, if he'd killed somebody Cuba could charge him with murder.
If he was merely planning to kill somebody the Cubans could arrest him, and then detain him while they negotiated with the US.
The remedy for such plans in international law isn't that the agent gets nabbed, it's that the attacked country gets lots of sympathy for it's retaliation against the attacker's government.
Cuba retaliating against the US. That's rich. The closest thing Cuba can do in retaliation to the US is... arrest the agent.
Nobody said the international system was fair. It's specifically designed to be unfair to anyone who wasn't in the Big Five in '48. It's not America's fault that the other 190-odd nations seem to prefer being minnows in a five-power-se
I love lawyers. They are so busy looking at the trees that they can never find the fucking forest.
For example, as a civilian my locker at work is my space. Nobody can open it except me. If my manager thought somebody on-premises was smoking weed she couldn't just have the security guy snap all the locks off, and then detain whomever had weed in the break room until the cops came. A cop walking in and saying "hey these guys really look like potheads," couldn't get a warrant. !Either my boss of the cop could search a specific locker, but going through all 100 or so would be no. In the military your Sergeant can orders a full inspection of every locker at any time. He can then order you detained if you have weed.
To a lawyer the fact that he ordered you "detained," and then had to get paperwork to call it an "arrest," means your Constitutional rights were the same as a civilians. To any sane human being, who lives in the actual real world, the whole line of argument you're making is a distinction without a difference. Everybody got searched with no warrant, and then Bill got arrested, also with no warrant.
The JAG System, etc. has some relevance when talking about searches in service member's homes, or even their cars, but even there it's limited because it's all in the military. Let's say we're talking about an Air Base commanded by a guy named Colonel Kerpinski. Who commands the Security Force cops? Colonel Kerpinski. Who commands the JAGs? Kerpinski. The suspect? Kerpinski. There's a reason "Command Influence" is a really good defense at military trials.
I think the core of our disagreement rests on your conception that it is legal for countries to ban hostile agents. This is not the case. Even the US, which is notoriously arrogant in international criminal law; doesn't have a law on the books based on being an agent of a hostile power. We require foreign agents of all powers, even Canada, to register with the authorities, so they can be charged for not registering, but this law is only used very rarely, and then it's applied to US Citizens or to foreign agents who get freed as a deal before trial. You will note the latter is exactly what I was expecting Cuba to do for Gross. But if we banned agents of a "hostile power" we'd be de facto banning other countries from being hostile powers, which even we acknowledge can't be done.
The logical extension of this is you can't convict foreign agents to multi-year jail terms simply for being part of a plan to oppose your government. The remedy for such plans in international law isn't that the agent gets nabbed, it's that the attacked country gets lots of sympathy for it's retaliation against the attacker's government.
As for our talk of ending the embargo, Obama was easing up on it. There was chatter about ending it. Given our form of government, which requires Congressional action for lifting an embargo, and the power of the Anti-Castro Lobby that's all you'll see in the first months of the administration of a President who actually ends the damn embargo. The only way to find out whether Obama is serious/Congress would let him get away with it/etc. is to let the process play out. And by sentencing Gross to years in prison they lost an opportunity to let the process play out. It's likely they won't get another one until the next President takes office. And he's much less likely to try because ending the embargo doesn't actually help the US, and the Cubans have a history of being very passive and easy to get along with until you ease up on the embargo. Then they blow a plane out of the sky or sentence one of your guys to 15 years hard labor, or whatever.
As for our attempt to impose the DMCA on Russians, you will note it failed miserably. And we actually had a somewhat decent chance of success, given that some Americans were using the tool in a way that was arguably illegal. You'll also note that we got our asses handed to us in Court.
Investigating his fellow Navy personnel he doesn't need warrants,....
You don't know what you are talking about. It is common for military investigators to need a warrant to search the property of service members. It isn't rare at all.
Spoken like a true lawyer. True on every factual point, but still completely misleading.
None of that comes from the Constitution proper. It comes from statutes. And the rights granted under the statute are much more limited. For example, an Officer commanding a base can both authorize investigations of his base's personnel AND sign the warrant. The same goes for an arrest.
The Check that keeps this power from being abused isn't that some third party with unique legal knowledge (ie: the Courts) safeguards the people's rights, it's that there's a paper trail and any officer who has a habit of arresting people for no damn good reason is gonna have to explain himself to his superiors.
But you should be clear there isn't a universal requirement for warrants to search civilians even for civilian police. There are a number of exceptions in fact.
This is true as well. If the police reasonably believe you are hiding something from them then the search they do on you is not "unreasonable," and they don't need a warrant because the Fourth only applies to "unreasonable searches." This particular fact is rife for abuse, because as far as the Courts are concerned it's very hard to be unsuspicious and black at the same time.
Google "hide itunes." The first result is instructions in getting U2's album to go away from your purchased screen. The only place it will remain is a list of shit you've hidden, accessible from your account screen.
You could also simply download it, and then delete it from your iTunes music list.
Note: this worked even before Apple implemented it's workaround. Apparently music geeks are capable of copious, and creative, bitching on the internet but totally incapable of figuring out the feature-set of a program they claim to love so much that the addition of one album destroyed their lives
If it downloads automatically because you specifically told iTunes to download things automatically, hit the "delete" key. This is on your keyboard.
If it didn't download automatically, and you don't like it in your purchases window hit the little 'x' button that appears when you hover your mouse over it to hide it.
But lets be honest here. If you actually used an Apple products you would have known about the delete button. You don't. You're basing your entire case on music geeks bitching about an album they don't like, and when music geeks bitch about albums they don't like they do it artistically. This is a fancy way of saying they exaggerate, ignore all the positives ("I don't care that he's got a great voice, she's not authentic, and no I can't define that word for you;" "Artist X's work is clearly a sensitive tribute to Artist Y, but Artist Z is derivative trash of Artist Y, and no I don't have a rigorous definition of any of those terms, including 'artist;'"), and basically turn bitching and moaning into an elaborate art performance.
So you have a 500 MB data limit on your device, you're using a service that sells 500 MB+ files, and you've got auto-download over your cell phone network enabled? That's not a very smart choice. Your Mom could send a present. You could buy a movie yourself on your Mac or PC, which then auto-downloads to your phone because you're a moron who has auto-download turned on despite his data cap, etc.
It's very hard for me to seriously believe that anyone whose got his settings fucked up that badly is interested enough in technology to have a slashdot account.
It's even harder for me to believe, given the sheer amount of posts describing the album as crap/shit/etc. that the vast majority of complainers would be complaining if Apple had sent them a copy of a new album by their favorite band.
That guy is not claiming to be grandma with a computer her favoritist grandson set up for her. He's claiming to be the guy in charge of maintaining a network of Mac Minis. As in he's claiming someone pays him to support a specific computing platform: the Mac Mini, He's also claiming that his networked machines had so little free space that 109 MB made a difference in their stability. That is ridiculous BS.
Which means one of two things is true: his network's stability sucked ass, and he's just blaming U2 for it because his boss hates Bono, or he's making the whole thing up.
Keep in mind that the OP isn't claiming to be a grandma with no clue, he's claiming that a) he has a network of Mac Minis, and b) it is his job to fix them when something goes wrong. Knowing you need more then 109 MB of swap space is something my everyone who uses Macs seriously for work finds out, because when OS X doesn't have GB after GB of swap space stability collapses.
This dumbass isn't claiming he's some end-user who is not familiar with how his computer works. He's claiming he's got a fucking network full of Mac Minis and fixing them is his job. If true, and if his Minis truly have so little swap space that 109.8 MB will fuck them up, they are already fucked up.
Seriously. I have had startup disks with 5-6 GB in free space, and it caused serious stability issues. That's how I found out you need lots of free space.
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Just like it did in this case. By arresting the person hired.
So, your notion is that an employee of the US government should be able to act freely in Cuba, and the Cubans have no right to stop him? Just because the "planning" took part outside of Cuba?
You're still over-simplifying my position. I said they were unreasonable to convict him and sentence him to 15 years. There's a whole panapoly of actions they could have taken short of that, starting with a 14 year sentence. The Russian 10 were stopped from violating US Law perfectly well after spending about a month and a half in US Prison.
If merely stopping him is the standard you're trying to apply even an arrest was unnecessary. You simply tell Gross "we know you're CIA, your flight back has been changed, you're leaving in 5 minutes." and he is stopped.
But of course, you're going to read that and start back on the ridiculous "but you said we had to let him go" BS because you're not thinking clearly enough to read the first clause: "if stopping him is the standard."
So he can be arrested for plotting against the Cuban government when all the actual plotting happened in the US?
Offtopic, again! He was arrested for trying to overthrow the Cuban government as an agent of the US government. Where he did his planning is irrelevant!
If that's true you've just claimed Cuba has every legal right to send a battalion to DC and arrest the entire US State Department because the entire US State Department is legally required to be attempting regime change in Cuba. Since all sovereigns have the same rights, and Cuba's entire legal basis is that it's at the vanguard of a revolution that will wipe out all non-Communist states, that in turn gives every non-Communist state in the world (including the US) a perfect legal justification to invade the island.
And if we have that right, the Cuban government really should stop whining about the embargo.
Cuba can charge him for the actual actions of his plot (ie: smuggling equipment in), or expel before he gets around to implementing his plot, but it can't say "you planned plans in DC that were hostile to us" and charge him with that.
You'll note the guy you found wasn't charged with plotting against the US Government (altho he did that).
WTF? I can't... why would Cuba charge an US employee of plotting against the US Government?
Talking about Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher was your idea.
And he chose to do them in Cuba, where US law doesn't apply, and, *gasp*, Cuban law applies.
[...]
Which means that, by your own admission, Cuba has less respect for foreign nation's sovereignty then even we do in America.
Sigh. Let's see. The US sends an agent (among many) to overthrow the Cuban government, the Cubans arrest the agent, and the Cubans are the ones not respecting "foreign nation's sovereignty"? That's the stereotypical arrogant attitude that one hopes doesn't really exist in america. You are actually claiming that Cuba doesn't respect US sovereignty because they don't follow US law in Cuba.
So the US has to follow Cuban law in Havana (by not importing computer equipment), but US Agents who follow US Law in DC (by plotting against Cuba) can go to prison for 15 years? How is that not a double-standard?
I HAVE NEVER SAID THEY HAD TO RELEASE HIM PRIOR TO NEGOTIATIONS.
GOOD. THEN WE AGREE.
So, what's your point then? You believe that "Raul wants the embargo to continue" because... Obama has refused to negotiate?
(Also, you are arguing that he shouldn't have been arrested in the first place, therefore, you *are* arguing that he should be released). I dare you to point out any attempt at meaningful negotiation in this case th
Your last sentence is (again) the problem with your argument. Whether anyone else can pass a law is totally irrelevant because warrants aren't laws. They aren't governed by laws. They are governed by the Fourth Amendment and Case Law. I've never said they can't pass this law. Congress can pass any law it wants. I'm only arguing that it is roughly as relevant as say; a law requiring Eisenhower to trade trade Omaha Beach for with the Canadians for Juno Beach. This is not a law that works because you have high-level authority to set laws, it's a law that works because you can order individual DEA Agents around. And Congress just does not have that power.
What's going to happen is quite simple: The president has the power to execute laws using law enforcement officials he appoints. He will tell his officials to ignore the law, so they will. They will continue to ask for European data. The Courts are not subject to Congressional whims at all, so they will continue to grant warrants allowed by the Fourth Amendment.
Congress can pass all the laws restricting Presidential power it wants. It can pass all the laws restricting the Courts it wants. It just can't do it and expect either the President or the Courts to give a flying fuck.
Any case involving the powers of search and seizure is a Fourth Amendment case, so you just illustrated your problem: Congress can make a law governing the granting of warrants, but it will be totally ignored because "Fourth Amendment cases don't talk about statutes." The DoJ will ask for the warrant, and the Judge won;t even read the Congressional rulebook.
The power you mention is a much better fit then the scope of the Courts one, but it's also a bit of a stretch. A warrant is a very low-level operational decision of the Executive and Judicial branches, not a high-level policy decision. That clause is pretty clearly intended to give them high-level abilities to set policies not explicitly granted by their other powers.
Here's the thing you have to keep in mind:
I agree with you on the substance of this issue. I want the embargo to end. I just don't think the Cuban government wants it to end. And rather then convince me I've misunderstood them (which might actually work), you're arguing their actions are completely normal. Moreover, you're not only arguing against me, you're insisting on making shit up completely (note the all caps when I point it out), and using said completely made-up shit as the core of your case.
If you want the embargo to end, venting at the Americans who agree with you is probably not a wise choice. Particularly if you're so emotional about the issue you cannot even bother to understand their position. The Embargo will never be the number one issue for America because we have interests in every country on the globe. As long as somebody somewhere is dying in their thousands due to some random rebel group, or brutal government, or being Arab and looking at Bibi funny; there will be a higher priority in the US then the Cuban people. Which means we'll only bother to try and fix this particular problem if either a) it looks like it will be really easy to do, or b) the entire fucking rest of the world stops shooting at each-other for a few years in a row.
So your argument is that Cuba can make it illegal for the US Government to hire people?
Not at all. I haven't seen the "US government" jailed for hiring people. Therefore, whether the Cubans have the right to outlaw certain actions of the US government or not is irrelevant. In this case, they didn't even try. How do you imagine that would work?
Just like it did in this case. By arresting the person hired.
He chose to do things while in the US that are completely legal under US Law. In fact most of them are actually required by US Law.
And he chose to do them in Cuba, where US law doesn't apply, and, *gasp*, Cuban law applies.
So he can be arrested for plotting against the Cuban government when all the actual plotting happened in the US?
You'll note the guy you found wasn't charged with plotting against the US Government (altho he did that). Which means that, by your own admission, Cuba has less respect for foreign nation's sovereignty then even we do in America.
That takes some fucking doing. I mean we have turned rationalizing bullying into a high art form.
And again, you're bringing up the strawman of unconditional release. I have never argued that Cuba's only choice was unconditional release.
So, what conditions is Cuba allowed to request before the release? Because you insist on releasing him even before negotiations have taken place. Do you want them to demand conditions after they release him? If that is not unconditional, I don't know what it is.
Dude,
This sentence is the reason I am quite frankly wondering whether you've taken your crazy pills. In all-caps so I know you'll read it.
I HAVE NEVER SAID THEY HAD TO RELEASE HIM PRIOR TO NEGOTIATIONS.
As I said before, if they wanted to release him the time for negotiations would have been back in early 2010.
Because NicBenjamin says so? I gave you an example of a guy who wasn't released by the US until around five years after the arrest. And as you said earlier, very eloquently, there are not a lot of comunications channels between Cuba and the US. I really doubt Cuba turned down any oportunity for (meaningful) negotiation.
Press releases would have been the ideal channel. There's no way man-in-the-middle problems can appear with those, and (more importantly) you reduce the chance Obama can claim there were no negotiations to zero. But third parties work too.
the objective standard used is "what did those other guys do when they ha
And where does Congress get the power to limit warrants further? None of the Fourth Amendment cases I've seen talk about statutes. And you'd think one of them would mention a statute governing warrants if statutes governed warrants.
Another guy said something that seemed to reference Congress right to "constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;" which allows them to limit the scope of lower Courts. That's a bit of a stretch, but it's a lot more plausible then "Of course a statute is valid. Congress is blessed by God himself with unlimited power to do anything it wants," which seems to be the entirety of your argument.
I'm not asking you for the world here. I just want to know which clause of the Constitution you're talking about. If it exists it must be implicit in some other power Congress is granted in Article I because the word "warrant" never appears.
The President did nothing. That was the scandal.
The Congress had to step in and use their power of the purse, and their control of the nominations process, to force the president to act. Their power to force the President to take a fairly basic administrative action (investigate wrongdoing in his department) was so limited they had to hack their way around the problem by refusing to let any officer in the Navy be promoted (all military officers are confirmed by the Senate, and have to be confirmed again if they get promoted) until something changed.
Congress has power, but it's not the power to run things on a day-to-day basis. They can tell the DEA there is a law against heroin, and you have $X to enforce that law; but the people who actually enforce the law do so on the basis of Presidential orders.
Your logic sucks. It's so bad I'm going to declare you a troll, and a particularly shitty one because my aspy ass does not pick up on them quickly.
How is it possible that you can appoint all the officers (look up the Tail Hook scandal if you don't believe me), have the unilateral right to remove all the highest ranking officers, and not run things? Indeed, how stupid would the Founders have had to be to create an Executive Branch whose Chief Executive couldn't make Executive decisions?
Let's see if I get the quotes right this time:
The Constitution grants CONGRESS the power to coin regulate money, not the executive. The exact wording is "Congress shall have the power..." The executive has only those powers that Congress grants it, except for a very, very few granted directly by the Constitution.
One of those Executive Powers is to actually run the government. The President is the boss of every Federal cop, prosecutor, or other law enforcement official. Congress can tell the President what the law is, but it simply doesn't have the power to tell him (or the Judicial branch) how to enforce said laws.
> that the government had the power to make unreasonable ones before.
The Constitution is the founding document that CREATED the federal government. It didn't exist "before". Before the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, we had only a loose coalition of states, with the confederation itself having virtually no power - not even the power to tax.
The Constitution was ratified in September of 1788. The Bill of rights wasn't ratified until December of 1791. Which means for three years the Feds had every right to unreasonable searches without a warrant.
enter as a tourist while (not so) secretly being an american agent [Status as an American Agent is determined by the American government, and is therefore something "the US decided to do"]
No, it isn't, unless your claim is that Gross was a slave of the US government. He had a choice. He chose to accept several millions in exchange for the risk. And now he is paying for his choice.
So your argument is that Cuba can make it illegal for the US Government to hire people?
He chose to do things while in the US that are completely legal under US Law. In fact most of them are actually required by US Law.
If your conclusion that Cuba clearly had jurisdiction for every charge you mention was in any way valid, don't you think you could come up with a single example of a non-citizen being sent to prison for years for being a foreign agent?
How other countries choose to deal with the threats is irrelevant to what makes sense for Cuba to do, and ignoring the particular context of Cuba's actions is naive at best. Most, if not all of those you claim to have been released, have been released after negotiations have taken place, not unconditionally. Every single case that ended with an agent swap necessarily serves as the example you ask for (the agents arrested by the first country are held until the second country has something to offer in return). So far, that's also the case with Gross, only that, because the US refuses to negotiate, the negotiations have not yet taken place.
And again, you're bringing up the strawman of unconditional release. I have never argued that Cuba's only choice was unconditional release. As I said before, if they wanted to release him the time for negotiations would have been back in early 2010.
In international relations pretty much the only thing that matters is what other countries in similar situations have done because these relationships are complex, and iterative. ie: if Canada and Denmark have a spat on Hans Island that has to affect their next set of interactions, and everyone else has to judge their actions by some objective standard. Since the actual international legal system allows you to nuke their capital when one of their planes gets lost and flies into your air-space (both are technically Acts of War), the objective standard used is "what did those other guys do when they had a similar spat four years ago?"
Also, Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher, russian agent captured by the US, tried, convicted, sentenced to 30 years, served several years in prison before he was exchanged. Yu Xin Kang, Chinese, convicted by the US to 18 months. I suppose that now you are going to move the goalposts and demand some other conditions. It will be very easy to demand a condition that I cannot satisfy, after all, non-citizens don't make very good spies, and it is even rarer for a country to outright refuse to negotiate for the release of their agents. I'm curious to see what new demands you come up with.
Read the charges against him. He got 30 years for transmitting classified information, and five for failing to register as a foreign agent.
Given that I've already admitted the US Foreign Agent laws are
The Constitution grants CONGRESS the power to coin regulate money, not the executive. The exact wording is "Congress shall have the power..." The executive has only those powers that Congress grants it, except for a very, very few granted directly by the Constitution.
One of those Executive Powers is to actually run the government. The President is the boss of every Federal cop, prosecutor, or other law enforcement official. Congress can tell the President what the law is, but it simply doesn't have the power to tell him (or the Judicial branch) how to enforce said laws.
> that the government had the power to make unreasonable ones before.
The Constitution is the founding document that CREATED the federal government. It didn't exist "before". Before the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, we had only a loose coalition of states, with the confederation itself having virtually no power - not even the power to tax.
The Constitution was ratified in September of 1788. The Bill of rights wasn't ratified until December of 1791. Which means for three years the Feds had every right to unreasonable searches without a warrant.
Talk about ridiculous pro-American propaganda. The entire point of the Constitution is to restrict your rights by creating another level of government that can arrest your ass. That's all the preamble talks about. The specific powers you're speaking of are "search and seizure," and they aren't explicitly mentioned because it would be stupid to create a government that could ban counterfeit coinage, but could not a) search the places of business of suspected counterfeiters, b) seize counterfeit money, and c) arrest said counterfeiters. The Courts tend to frown on any lawyer whose entire argument is "clearly the founders were fucking idiots who didn't realize they needed to include a clause letting them arrest people." The Bill of Rights protects your freedom, but it only does so because it limits the actions of an entire level of government that simply did not exist in 1788.
Moreover please learn logic. If your country specifically has to pass an Amendment to restrict "unreasonable searches and seizures" that means that a) reasonable searches and seizures are perfectly ok even after the Amendment is law, and b) that the government had the power to make unreasonable ones before.
You're reading it wrong.
Currently the US Government can get a warrant for anyone's data, and US-Based companies must comply or the Courts will seriously fuck them over. The NSA actually has warrants issued by the FISA Court covering all non-US Citizens (yes, I know lots of people thing the warrant is BS, but the simple fact is the Courts disagree with you, and in the US being right when the Courts are wrong doesn't get you jack-squat. Just ask Dredd Scott). Which means that if you're a German, and you're concerned about the NSA, you probably ain't gonna use Yahoo for jack-shit.
This rule would make it impossible for the Courts to order Yahoo to turn over data on that German, as long as the data is stored on Yahoo servers outside the US.
I'm kind of curious as to how this is supposed to work legally. The Fourth Amendment is controlling in the granting of warrants, and it only includes roles for the Executive (asking for a warrant) and the Judicial (granting the warrant). If Obama has probable cause that Yahoo used timd977 is shipping Heroin in from Russia, then the Courts are gonna grant the warrant. Then when Yahoo says "Fuck you, we've got this statute," it's totally irrelevant. The Warrant is valid under the Fourth Amendment,which means Yahoo is by definition in contempt of Court if it refuses to hand the government the data.
I'm not a lawyer, or a specialist in criminal law, so it's possible the Courts have to look at statutes governing probable cause before granting warrants, or can't hold people in contempt unless a statute specifically gives them permission, or something like that. But it just seems to me that if the US Constitution's Separation of Powers mean anything it's that a) Congress can't just pass a law saying the Executive Branch has fewer powers then it is granted by the Constitution, and b) no statute can stop the Courts from penalizing people who disobey them.
It's factually true in the sense that the US wasn't able to make the Cubans pay for doing it, it's clearly not true in the sense that Cuba actually had the right to do it.
As for what the US government decided to do, let me respond this way:
enter as a tourist while (not so) secretly being an american agent [Status as an American Agent is determined by the American government, and is therefore something "the US decided to do"] acting on plans to overthrow/destabilize the government [the plans were made by the US Government, which means they were also things the US decided to do].
If your conclusion that Cuba clearly had jurisdiction for every charge you mention was in any way valid, don't you think you could come up with a single example of a non-citizen being sent to prison for years for being a foreign agent?
Has it ever occurred to you that it's possible Cuban Law is simply wrong on this point?
Has it ever occurred to you that the Cubans have the right to defend themselves? Because that's the right you are denying them. When the US interest are attacked, you don't ask for justification to invade your attacker. Yet when Cuba is, you claim that Cuban law is "wrong" for wanting to defend themselves.
Terrible straw-man. I mentioned some pretty drastic steps they could have taken to defend themselves that would not have convinced me they want the embargo to go away.
My argument has always been that their method of defending themselves was so extreme that they had to know it would guarantee the embargo continued until Obama left office.
In a world with nuclear weapons proportionality has to be a very important part of determining whether one state was overly-aggressive in defending itself. Otherwise the Russians get to nuke Kiev over Crimea.
Since you're talking about practice the actual letter of the law is irrelevant. What matters is convictions. Name one whose been convicted.
Seriously. Name a single person convicted of being an unregistered foreign agent who was not a citizen of the US.
The Cuban Five. Notice how I ignore the "not a citizen of the US part". Being a citizen of the US had nothing to do with the convictions: they were convicted for failing to register as agents, for "conspiracy to commit espionage" (even though the prosecution couldn't prove that any secret document was leaked) and "conspiracy to commit murder" (even though they had no way of knowing the outcome).
You set up arbitrary rules that effectively stop Cuba from defending themselves (like being free to enter the US without registering and being citizens). You asked earlier, that's what I meant by arbitrary. The Cubans don't play by those rules, because those "rules", besides made up, imply "just sit there and do nothing while we invade you." You cannot unilaterally make up a rule that benefits you and then claim foul when the other party unilaterally decides to ignore it.
It's so convenient for you to ignore essence of my argument. At least you admit this one is a straw man.
For the record, when they accepted US Citizenship the Cuban Five swore to obey our laws, and give up all foreign allegiances.
You realize you;re talking about thought crimes. He didn't have to do anything, but those thought he thought while he was in Washington DC were anti-Cuban, so he can be charged with thinking them while he was in Havana.
Sigh. Again. He acted in Cuba. And it's rich that you speak about thought crimes, given that the "conspiracy" charges are essentially thought crimes too, and you don't seem to have any problem with those, as long as they are not directed against your agents. But again, irrelevant, he wasn't convicted for sitting in DC thinking about what he was going to do. He was convicted for going to Cuba and doing his part in the conspiracy.
You do realize I've already conceded that the things he actually did in Cuba were crimes under Cuban jurisdiction? So your argument so far consists of straw men and repeating a point I'd already agreed with.
Your problem is most of the things you charge him with happened outside of Cuba. He didn't plan to overthrow the Cuban government from his hotel. The plan was already in place. He didn't go to Havana and then volunteer to be a spy.
In international relations when something pisses you off you don't bitch about in press releases for 25 flights, and then go straight for the jugular.
Read some history. They didn't "bitch about it in press releases for 25 flights", they denounced it, repeatedly, to the US authorities, only to be ignor
I think the core of our disagreement rests on your conception that it is legal for countries to ban hostile agents. This is not the case.
And there you go again, denying Cuba's sovereignty. You may not like it, but it is Cuba's law. If you are a foreign agent acting in Cuba with the purpose of overthrowing the government, you can be convicted in Cuba. Even if the US, and even if no other country, has a law prohibiting crimes against the state (which I doubt!), Cuba can still have that law. It is not "my conception". Cuba has that law. You don't like it? You deal with Cuba, rather than just cover your ears and shout "lalala I can't hear you you have no such law".
Has it ever occurred to you that it's possible Cuban Law is simply wrong on this point? It's not like the Cubans have earned a reputation as a country that religiously complies with international norms. We actually do a lot better then Cuba on that point (in part because we wrote the norms back in '48) and I can name one example of US Law being blatantly (and needlessly) wrong in terms of international law.
To an extent they have the right to be wrong, because they are sovereign, but that doesn't mean the rest of us can;t call them on it. It just means that (again, lacking a Starfleet) we can't do much more then call them on it.
We require foreign agents of all powers, even Canada, to register with the authorities, so they can be charged for not registering
So, in practice, your law bans covert agents like Gross. You convict them for failing to register, the Cubans convict them for being covert agents.
Since you're talking about practice the actual letter of the law is irrelevant. What matters is convictions. Name one whose been convicted.
Seriously. Name a single person convicted of being an unregistered foreign agent who was not a citizen of the US.
But if we banned agents of a "hostile power" we'd be de facto banning other countries from being hostile powers, which even we acknowledge can't be done.
That is nonsensical. Banning hostile agents in your territory has no influence whatsoever over anyone who is not in your territory. And, as you said earlier, you already outlaw being a covert agent of a foreign country.
You realize you;re talking about thought crimes. He didn't have to do anything, but those thought he thought while he was in Washington DC were anti-Cuban, so he can be charged with thinking them while he was in Havana.
The logical extension of this is you can't convict foreign agents to multi-year jail terms simply for being part of a plan to oppose your government.
Again, it was not only for planning. It was for acting on those plans. If he had taken violent action (say, murder or bombings), would you agree with the attacked's sovereignty to convict him? If so, what's so different with a non-violent, but also illegal action, with respect to the attacked's sovereignty?
What are you actually saying in this paragraph?
Under my argument, if he'd killed somebody Cuba could charge him with murder.
If he was merely planning to kill somebody the Cubans could arrest him, and then detain him while they negotiated with the US.
The remedy for such plans in international law isn't that the agent gets nabbed, it's that the attacked country gets lots of sympathy for it's retaliation against the attacker's government.
Cuba retaliating against the US. That's rich. The closest thing Cuba can do in retaliation to the US is... arrest the agent.
Nobody said the international system was fair. It's specifically designed to be unfair to anyone who wasn't in the Big Five in '48. It's not America's fault that the other 190-odd nations seem to prefer being minnows in a five-power-se
I love lawyers. They are so busy looking at the trees that they can never find the fucking forest.
For example, as a civilian my locker at work is my space. Nobody can open it except me. If my manager thought somebody on-premises was smoking weed she couldn't just have the security guy snap all the locks off, and then detain whomever had weed in the break room until the cops came. A cop walking in and saying "hey these guys really look like potheads," couldn't get a warrant. !Either my boss of the cop could search a specific locker, but going through all 100 or so would be no. In the military your Sergeant can orders a full inspection of every locker at any time. He can then order you detained if you have weed.
To a lawyer the fact that he ordered you "detained," and then had to get paperwork to call it an "arrest," means your Constitutional rights were the same as a civilians. To any sane human being, who lives in the actual real world, the whole line of argument you're making is a distinction without a difference. Everybody got searched with no warrant, and then Bill got arrested, also with no warrant.
The JAG System, etc. has some relevance when talking about searches in service member's homes, or even their cars, but even there it's limited because it's all in the military. Let's say we're talking about an Air Base commanded by a guy named Colonel Kerpinski. Who commands the Security Force cops? Colonel Kerpinski. Who commands the JAGs? Kerpinski. The suspect? Kerpinski. There's a reason "Command Influence" is a really good defense at military trials.
I think the core of our disagreement rests on your conception that it is legal for countries to ban hostile agents. This is not the case. Even the US, which is notoriously arrogant in international criminal law; doesn't have a law on the books based on being an agent of a hostile power. We require foreign agents of all powers, even Canada, to register with the authorities, so they can be charged for not registering, but this law is only used very rarely, and then it's applied to US Citizens or to foreign agents who get freed as a deal before trial. You will note the latter is exactly what I was expecting Cuba to do for Gross. But if we banned agents of a "hostile power" we'd be de facto banning other countries from being hostile powers, which even we acknowledge can't be done.
The logical extension of this is you can't convict foreign agents to multi-year jail terms simply for being part of a plan to oppose your government. The remedy for such plans in international law isn't that the agent gets nabbed, it's that the attacked country gets lots of sympathy for it's retaliation against the attacker's government.
As for our talk of ending the embargo, Obama was easing up on it. There was chatter about ending it. Given our form of government, which requires Congressional action for lifting an embargo, and the power of the Anti-Castro Lobby that's all you'll see in the first months of the administration of a President who actually ends the damn embargo. The only way to find out whether Obama is serious/Congress would let him get away with it/etc. is to let the process play out. And by sentencing Gross to years in prison they lost an opportunity to let the process play out. It's likely they won't get another one until the next President takes office. And he's much less likely to try because ending the embargo doesn't actually help the US, and the Cubans have a history of being very passive and easy to get along with until you ease up on the embargo. Then they blow a plane out of the sky or sentence one of your guys to 15 years hard labor, or whatever.
As for our attempt to impose the DMCA on Russians, you will note it failed miserably. And we actually had a somewhat decent chance of success, given that some Americans were using the tool in a way that was arguably illegal. You'll also note that we got our asses handed to us in Court.
Investigating his fellow Navy personnel he doesn't need warrants,....
You don't know what you are talking about. It is common for military investigators to need a warrant to search the property of service members. It isn't rare at all.
Spoken like a true lawyer. True on every factual point, but still completely misleading.
None of that comes from the Constitution proper. It comes from statutes. And the rights granted under the statute are much more limited. For example, an Officer commanding a base can both authorize investigations of his base's personnel AND sign the warrant. The same goes for an arrest.
The Check that keeps this power from being abused isn't that some third party with unique legal knowledge (ie: the Courts) safeguards the people's rights, it's that there's a paper trail and any officer who has a habit of arresting people for no damn good reason is gonna have to explain himself to his superiors.
But you should be clear there isn't a universal requirement for warrants to search civilians even for civilian police. There are a number of exceptions in fact.
This is true as well. If the police reasonably believe you are hiding something from them then the search they do on you is not "unreasonable," and they don't need a warrant because the Fourth only applies to "unreasonable searches." This particular fact is rife for abuse, because as far as the Courts are concerned it's very hard to be unsuspicious and black at the same time.
Google "hide itunes." The first result is instructions in getting U2's album to go away from your purchased screen. The only place it will remain is a list of shit you've hidden, accessible from your account screen.
You could also simply download it, and then delete it from your iTunes music list.
Note: this worked even before Apple implemented it's workaround. Apparently music geeks are capable of copious, and creative, bitching on the internet but totally incapable of figuring out the feature-set of a program they claim to love so much that the addition of one album destroyed their lives
Google "hide itunes."
Google "delete itunes."
Getting this album to a place where you can't see it is trivial. If you actually use iTunes enough to know what the feature set is.
Then don't download it.
If it downloads automatically because you specifically told iTunes to download things automatically, hit the "delete" key. This is on your keyboard.
If it didn't download automatically, and you don't like it in your purchases window hit the little 'x' button that appears when you hover your mouse over it to hide it.
But lets be honest here. If you actually used an Apple products you would have known about the delete button. You don't. You're basing your entire case on music geeks bitching about an album they don't like, and when music geeks bitch about albums they don't like they do it artistically. This is a fancy way of saying they exaggerate, ignore all the positives ("I don't care that he's got a great voice, she's not authentic, and no I can't define that word for you;" "Artist X's work is clearly a sensitive tribute to Artist Y, but Artist Z is derivative trash of Artist Y, and no I don't have a rigorous definition of any of those terms, including 'artist;'"), and basically turn bitching and moaning into an elaborate art performance.
So you have a 500 MB data limit on your device, you're using a service that sells 500 MB+ files, and you've got auto-download over your cell phone network enabled? That's not a very smart choice. Your Mom could send a present. You could buy a movie yourself on your Mac or PC, which then auto-downloads to your phone because you're a moron who has auto-download turned on despite his data cap, etc.
It's very hard for me to seriously believe that anyone whose got his settings fucked up that badly is interested enough in technology to have a slashdot account.
It's even harder for me to believe, given the sheer amount of posts describing the album as crap/shit/etc. that the vast majority of complainers would be complaining if Apple had sent them a copy of a new album by their favorite band.
Read the post I was responding to.
That guy is not claiming to be grandma with a computer her favoritist grandson set up for her. He's claiming to be the guy in charge of maintaining a network of Mac Minis. As in he's claiming someone pays him to support a specific computing platform: the Mac Mini, He's also claiming that his networked machines had so little free space that 109 MB made a difference in their stability. That is ridiculous BS.
Which means one of two things is true: his network's stability sucked ass, and he's just blaming U2 for it because his boss hates Bono, or he's making the whole thing up.
Keep in mind that the OP isn't claiming to be a grandma with no clue, he's claiming that a) he has a network of Mac Minis, and b) it is his job to fix them when something goes wrong. Knowing you need more then 109 MB of swap space is something my everyone who uses Macs seriously for work finds out, because when OS X doesn't have GB after GB of swap space stability collapses.
Dude,
This dumbass isn't claiming he's some end-user who is not familiar with how his computer works. He's claiming he's got a fucking network full of Mac Minis and fixing them is his job. If true, and if his Minis truly have so little swap space that 109.8 MB will fuck them up, they are already fucked up.
Seriously. I have had startup disks with 5-6 GB in free space, and it caused serious stability issues. That's how I found out you need lots of free space.