The story is this, to the extent of my understanding: US citizens are free to sell such manuals within the US. The seller refused to send the manual to Oleg on his russian address, so some american guy on a game forum agreed to buy it and resend it to Russia. And in doing so the US espionage law was broken. Dura lex, etc. Had he just scanned the manual and put it anonymously online, all would be ok, I guess.
The Arms Export Control Act is a US law, and his friend was neither American nor in America. As a non-American myself, I don't like it one bit when I see US law reach into what should be sovereign countries. And then have that dismissed as "there's nothing stopping Georgia from doing a favor for the US", when that favor involves taking away the freedom of one of their citizens. A US citizen getting extradited to Russia as a favor would not be treated so casually.
I think most people are unaware of details of international law and agreements. The down voted sibling poster has a great clarifying example - if you are citizen of country A, living in A, but robbed a bank in B, which has extradition agreement and good relationships with A, do you feel you have some magic get out of jail free card? That the crime doesn't count? That you are immune because your crime was international in nature?
I'm in Canada and resenting Americans is our national past time :-), but still most comments here about evil tendrils of American empire are besides the point. Interpol, extradition, etc are a thing outside of America.
The key difference with the bank robbing example is that that is a crime in both countries A and B, and it didn't take any pressure of country B onto A to make it a crime in A as well.
Do you think/know Georgian law doesn't recognize the concept of secrecy requirements/trade-restrictions around material relating to military equipment?
Very theoretically example. Bank robberies are illegal virtually everywhere. At least that's my assumption.
But in principle you're correct.
If Bob commits a crime in country Ypso and flies home to country Zorg then Zorg will only extradite him if the crime he committed is also a crime in Zorg.
As a more practical example: Switzerland makes a distinction between tax evasion (which is not a crime, but a misdemeanor) and tax fraud, which is a crime. The difference is that when you "forget" to declare income this is tax evasion (to a degree), while if you cook the books that's tax fraud. Most countries don't make this distinction.
Switzerland got a lot of heat for neither providing information, nor extraditing people accused of tax evasion to another country. The reason being that it's not a crime in Switzerland.
Practically, that doesn't really matter much any more due to the whole information exchange on tax issues, which the country is also part of.
There are other reasons for not extraditing a person. For example if such a person is a citizen in a country that doesn't extradite its citizens then any extradition request from another country will be denied.
I don't understand where this bizarre notion comes from that if you commit a crime while not physically being in the country and not being that country's citizen, this somehow nullifies the crime and means you shouldn't be extradited.
People often have irrational emotions about teh evil Amerika, so forget them. Say you're an Argentinian in Argentina and commit a ransomware attack against an Irish bank, but somehow give yourself away. Do you not expect trouble upon landing in a country with which they have an extradition treaty, merely because your crime was committed from Buenos Aires?
> I don't understand where this bizarre notion comes from that if you commit a crime while not physically being in the country and not being that country's citizen, this somehow nullifies the crime and means you shouldn't be extradited
Well when it concerns their own citizens, this bizarre notion comes at least from the USA who even threaten judges working at the International Court of Justice, and their families... So maybe sometimes the emotions about "evil" USA are not completely irrational.
> I don't understand where this bizarre notion comes from that if you commit a crime while not physically being in the country and not being that country's citizen, this somehow nullifies the crime and means you shouldn't be extradited.
Should we extradite Americans living in America to China if they mock Xi or dishonor Chinese heroes?
Every nation decides which charges are included in the extradition treaties, and which aren't. So no, we should not.
However, in this scenario, depending on your importance/visibility, you should absolutely read up on extradition treaties when visiting China-friendly nations.
Any American who visibly supported the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests should definitely think twice about ever visiting China and (again depending on visibility/importance) any friendly nations with extradition treaties and the numerous countries around the world without rule of law.
First to correct some factual errors. The importer was a Russian citizen, who happened to be visiting Georgia. His conspirator was an American citizen living in Texas, that being a critical element to him being able to purchase the manuals and forward them to Russia.
Furthermore, it wasn’t that long ago when Russia invaded Georgia and essentially annexed portions of its territory. It’s clearly in their national interest to cooperate with laws that seek to prevent technology transfers to Russia.
However, if you defraud a little old lady living in England of her money over the internet, you may very well be extradited to the UK despite being from the US. Would that be the UK riding rough shot over US sovereignty?
The American legal system (for all its faults) is independent and has strong safe guards for the rights of defendants. The Russian legal system is not independent and routinely uses as a tool to suppress descent and prevent potential challengers from standing for election as observed in the many cases against Navalny.
So what happened to the Texan guy? Was this the outcome of some legal construction shifting all blame to the absentee, a legal construction that was entirely well-meant because on paper they'd have treat him like some cold war area spy but didn't find that appropriate wrt the documents in question? With nobody expecting that construction to affect the absentee like it eventually did?
Imagine some US citizen had bought "can't leave the country" documents about some British military things via a London middle-man (very hypothetical because I'd assume secrecy to work very differently in the UK). Would one expect the UK to skip that middle-man wrt consequences?
>The Texas man was indicted along with Tishchenko, but District Judge Dale Kimball in 2017 signed an 18-month deferral-of-prosecution agreement. Then, on Wednesday, all charges against the Texan were dismissed.
> However, if you defraud a little old lady living in England of her money over the internet, you may very well be extradited to the UK despite being from the US.
You reckon? It's only crimes that happen on the USA's side of the road that don't count?
>> I don't like it one bit when I see US law reach into what should be sovereign countries.
The US govt also does not like it when people attempt to use US arms to kill US people, military or civilian.
So, yes, your nationality or location are irrelevant. If you are actively exporting US military goods or information without a license, you should expect that the US will do whatever it can, including asking favors of other nations, to find and imprison you.
In Other Words - do not f'n do that - or get a proper license and do it right (or make sure your smuggling is sufficiently profitable and you are sufficiently clever that you can live the rest of your live always positioned out of their reach - good luck).
It is not that hard to avoid shipping US Arms information & goods without a license.
