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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

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Similar clauses in other countries' laws haven't prevented extradition the other way.

Good grief. It's the first sentence in the Bill of Rights, not merely a "clause in a law". And I don't know the specifics to which you are referring, but the UK does not have such a guarantee of speech rights. There are occasional flame wars to that effect in our share social circle.

So no: there is no way in hell that any US court will order an extradition for a prosecution of a pure act of speech. They occasionally break that rule internally, of course. But no way would any politician allow a foreign court to do it.

The UK is a signatory of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), Article 10 of which guarantees freedom of expression. This became law in the UK with the 1998 Human Rights Act.

The text of the ECHR does explicitly mention "duties and responsibilities" and so is perhaps not as strong as the Bill of Rights in this regard, but it is wrong to say there is no guarantee to free speech in British law.

And the predicted argument about "does the UK have free speech?" has begun. I didn't say there is no guarantee to free speech in British law. I said the UK doesn't have a guarantee of the same form of the first amendment, as witnessed by the linked article where someone went to jail for tweets.

Yes, it's the first clause of the US Bill Of Rights. So? Still a clause in law.

And that's the point; the gp was, I _believe_, complaining about the perceived lack of equity in a relationship that has the US extraditing citizens of the UK for actions that are crimes in their jurisdiction but not in the UK, when it would never be considered to be allowed the other way.

But it's not even remotely symmetric. In one direction it's just a crime being prosecuted, and the UK has similar laws that could conceivably apply. In the other it's a prima facie violation of (stated without hyperbole) the single most important law of the nation.

See the difference?

And the "never be considered to be allowed the other way" bit is silly. The US has extradition treaties with most of the industrialized world, and extradites criminals routinely (although perhaps not necessarily fairly or symmetrically). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_the_United_S...

But they won't extradite anyone for this crime, for reasons of fundamental constitutional law. That's not going to change no matter how many downvotes the first amendment receives above.

The UK has no criminal law about copyright. Whatsoever. The US is attempting to extradite this guy for the crime of linking to copyrighted material: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/jun/17/student-file-shari...

I've been trying to find a case where the US extradited someone to a jurisdiction where they were accused of committing a crime not on US books. I can't.

No. The 2003 Extradition treaty certainly is a UK law. But (and for the record: I think that extradition is unjust too) this has nothing to do what our discussion at all.

You want the US to extradite people for hate speech. I pointed out that no, that will never happen because of the clear text of the first amendment to the constitution. And you started flaming away, I guess because I'm American and therefore The Enemy.

But the point remains that no matter how symmetric and just and wonderful its extradition policy might come to be, US law would never allow such an extradition. It will not happen. So stop flaming and find another shibboleth.

No I do not want to extradite anyone for hate speech; see, this is what's known as an _example_. What I would like is for the US to stop being quite so bullying in their dealings with the rest of the world.

And you're not The Enemy; I don't have any enemies. I'm Irish and therefore neutral and too small for anyone to care about. ",)

Except hate speech is not covered under that amendment, neither is incitement of violence. These restrictions come from Supreme Court rulings interpreting the Constitution.

No, that's flatly incorrect. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States for more references than either of us can reasonably read in the time alloted to this silly flame war. Hate speech is "legal" in the US.

And even if it were not, and this was an edge case where the first amendment might not apply: there is no way a US court would order an extradition to a another country and let a foreign court (!) interpret the US constitution. None.

Did you miss this?

outside of obscenity, defamation, incitement to riot, and fighting words.

No, but you misinterpreted it. The first two aren't crimes, they're torts. You can't extradite someone to sue them in civil court.

I never claimed they were planning to extradite someone, just that even in the US, free speech has its limits. Check out this post I wrote at roughly the same time to someone else:

Even in the US, you can be sued civilly for hateful comments and jailed for comments that could be construed as inviting or inciting violence. I don't know the full story, the tweets are gone and the BBC didn't reproduce them.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3762691

It really seems like everyone here (including in the other thread) is trying to read more than what I wrote. Both you and the other person I was talking to used the word "crime", when I never remotely hinted at calling it a crime.

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