Russian arrested in Italy for violating U.S. worldwide sanctions

Apathy is the strongest of human emotions.

No one cares until it happens to them.

 

It seems like an odd "crime" though.

First, he never went to the U.S.
He was involved in a deal that got a company in the U.S. to sell technology to a company in Germany. So far, that part alone was not illegal.
The part that allegedly was illegal was that this technology was sold to Russia.

If you stop and give it some thought, it is a very bizarre form of law, that something that involves the U.S. and information can be legal, but it depends what ultimately ends up happening to that information, which combined can make the first act illegal.
Even though the second act, that the illegality hinges on, does not involve the U.S.

You do not think the U.S. should have the right to claim control over technology information outside its borders, do you?

 

Well, first of all it seems as if he grabbed US tech whether or not he went there or reverse engineered it. Regardless, there seems no denying he sold it to the Russians.

And yeah, I do think the US should maintain exclusivity on US tech, regardless of where it is geographically.

Or do you think proprietary info is limited also by geography?

 

I very much agree with that, but the question here is does the means justify the ends. The issue is about arresting and sending people to prison for crimes that involved information. And not just in the U.S. either, but enforcing that onto other people in the world.

I think you'd have to have your head in the sand not to see some huge slippery slope issues here.

Are you at all worried that the U.S. will probably not be the only country in the world to implement these policies? If the U.S. sets this precedent, other countries will follow it, and it will be another excuse for other countries to arrest U.S. citizens.
Those countries will say that the U.S. does it, so why should there be a problem if they arrest U.S. citizens even though those U.S. citizens were never even in their country?

There are always reasons for more laws, and those laws will apply to people from other countries. It might be hard for you to keep up with all the laws that every country in the world is passing.

I guess you don't have a problem with being arrested in one country and sent against your will to another country and imprisoned, even though the crime you are accused of doing is not an obvious type of crime, and is not the type of thing that would have been illegal in your country or the country you were visiting.