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Comment by gweinberg | Hacker News Reader

"The three young men had no idea whether their antics were against the law, he said."

That's not even remotely plausible.

How isn't it remotely plausible?

Shipping regulations were an awful lot more lax 55 years ago, and I wouldn't expect more than a handful of teenagers today to be able to give you details on shipping regulations related to shipping live animals (which, absent specific regulations on shipping humans that may or may not have been in place, seem the most relevant).

I would expect some specific regulations on shipping humans today, based on cases like this, but that's a case of "... OK, this is pretty vague in the regulations, let's make it exceedingly clear."

Indeed, when I was a kid around 1960, it was perfectly normal to see someone off on a flight by getting on the plane with them and looking around, then going to the cockpit to sit in the pilot's seat and "fly" the airplane for a minute before climbing back down the stairs to watch it take off.

I suppose the charitable interpretation is that it's a short way of saying, "We figured it was probably against some kind of law, but we didn't know enough to understand what specifically or how bad the consequences would be."

What laws did they break?

They probably broke some, but I don't know which ones they would be, so it seems plausible to not be sure they broke any laws.

That's absurd logic. You don't need to know the specific laws to know there are laws. Sneaking into a country is clearly illegal. Sneaking out of a country to break your contract has to be illegal. Sending a person by freight is pretty definitely specifically illegal, and even if it isn't nailing someone up and mailing him has to be breaking some sort of reckless endangerment law.

It’s illegal to cross the border outside of official border crossings, see 8 U.S. Code § 1325 - Improper entry by alien. Of course in this case it seems like the crossing was unintentional, and I’m unsure if the UK has similar laws.

If I’m reading it correctly, the law you cited only applies to non-citizens of the US, so if a citizen posted themselves to return home they wouldn’t be in violation. This was a case of a UK citizen (attempting) returning to the UK, so the equivalent law wouldn’t apply.

So it sounds like... you are unsure if they broke any laws

Also remember there was no internet in 1965, they couldn’t exactly google for a law.

I'm not sure how to track the history of US code, but it looks like that law didn't exist until 2012.

I'm certain there are human trafficking laws that it would have violated.

That's not what human trafficking means.

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