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Iceland Kicked Out FBI Agents Who Flew in Unannounced to Investigate WikiLeaks
- andrewcooke 14y agois this because it's illegal to work without a permit [edit: no, not needed for 90 days for americans]? or is it just detectives that cannot work there? or is it that they claimed to be local policemen? if i were a market analyst who flew to iceland (private plane or not - what has that got to do with it?) to study local opinions on some new product, say, would that get a similar reaction? would it be ok as long as i didn't ask to speak to govt officials? is there some kind of international convention / agreement that says that policemen don't work abroad? is it that the request for cooperation was at too low a level? [edit: ok, i added this just as it was suggested in a reply; thanks] i'm having a hard time understanding what the problem was here from the article, which seems to assume that something was obviously wrong. [oh noes - someone asking questions! better downvote! sigh...]
- Xylakant 14y agoIn general it's a problem in pretty much every country when official investigators fly in and start investigating without prior notice. The US administration would do the same if the german police sent an investigation team over to collect evidence in a german case. The official procedure is to request help or permission from the local government and only send investigators if granted. Such requests get denied in some cases, for example if the alleged crime is not a crime in the country that you're trying to investigate in.
- toyg 14y agoNote that this is not arbitrary, it actually makes sense: while in a different country, any police force would be expected to follow that country's own laws, including things like what you are allowed to ask, how you can ask, what evidence you can collect or take out of the country, etc etc. A bit of oversight is required, hence they need to ask for permission, and be assisted on the ground. This, incidentally, is one of the outrageous elements in the raid of Kim Dotcom's house: US authorities pretty much disregarded all local New Zealand laws on the matter (and somebody in NZ let it happen, they were only slammed in court during subsequent appeals). So you have a pattern: federal US authorities investigating copyright "crimes" will blatantly ignore traditional jurisdiction rules. The Hollywood Empire does not recognise any equal power, so to speak.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jbri 14y agoIf you tried to go to Iceland (or any other nation in the world) without having first received permission, then yes you could expect to be given the boot. That's what a "visa" is. If you're only staying for a short period and your own nation is on friendly terms with the place you're visiting, you can often expect to get a (limited) visa automatically. If you try and sneak in without one, that's called "illegal immigration".
- andrewcooke 14y agoamericans don't need a visa for up to 90 days - business or tourist. basic googling would tell you that. [ooh more downvotes for posting facts. because that's what hn is all about.]
- jbri 14y agoBeing granted an automatic visa that allows you to be in the country is not the same as sneaking in while avoiding customs and immigration.
- dalke 14y agoAn "automatic visa" is what I get when I visit South Africa. The officials at the airport when I arrive put a paper in my passport which says "temporary visa." Iceland does not have a visa, automatic or otherwise, for Americans on a short visit. Quoting from the Icelandic Útlendingastofnun at http://utl.is/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55&Itemid=57&lang=en http://utl.is/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&... : "Who does not need a visa to enter Iceland?" ... "Nationals of the following countries are exempted from the obligation to carry a visa on arrival in Iceland for a stay of up to three months in all within the Schengen area." ... "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA." So no, US citizens visiting Iceland do not need a visa to enter Iceland.
- raverbashing 14y agoTry saying to a USCBP official that you're going to work for 90 days in the US "Business travel" precludes several things, including work. (of course, several duties in a business travel can be considered work, but they're usually spelled out). Basically you can't be compensated by your activities directly by someone in the receiving country. But I'm sure doing an investigating in another country under government orders does not count as business.
- popee 14y agoNo, everything is ok. You can go in any country in the world and do whatever you want.
- andrewcooke 14y agoyeah, that's exactly the level of detail in my question. thanks for the helpful answer.
- halviti 14y agoMy guess is that they probably "snuck" into the country, mostly due to lack of proper procedure. The Reykjavík airport is a domestic airport. International flights are done at Keflavík. They probably landed, and didn't go through customs or anything.
- Nursie 14y agoThe problem is that the FBI sent law enforcement officers into another, sovereign country without prior permission. This could have turned into a major diplomatic incident, it is not something you do no matter how upset you are about people leaking your stuff over the internet. Basic common courtesy - you ask first.
- DrJokepu 14y agoSovereign states do whatever they want. Most countries (if not all) have a legal framework for expelling foreign citizens on grounds of national security or foreign policy (and it's up to them to decide what constitutes that). This is accepted as a perfectly valid thing to do and this is what has happened here. In this particular case, it is bad manners for a state to send its agents to another sovereign state in any capacity without getting some sort of a permission from the latter.
- perlgeek 14y agoIf somebody is gathering data for a foreign government without the permission of the local government, that's called spying, and most (or all?) countries have laws against that.
- WayneDB 14y agoThe context clues in the first paragraph should have given it away - "...their plan was interupted when Home Secretary Ögmundur Jónasson learned about the FBI's visit and sent them packing. The Icelandic government then issued a formal protest to United States authorities." Do you really think that a top government official would have been notified of a market analyst arriving in the country?
- dhimes 14y agoBut GP's question was, what did the FBI actually do that pissed off Iceland? Just being there? Asking questions? Locking Icelanders in rooms and conducting interrogations? I think the question is a good one. It sounds like the consensus of the responders here is that it is the fact that they are an arm of the US gov't. So, for example, if the FDA sent somebody to inquire about food processing, say regarding Mad Cow disease, we could also expect that the Icelandic government would be pissed if they weren't in the loop.
- Xylakant 14y agoBeing there and asking questions without prior approval is enough if you're a government employee, even more so if you're an official investigator (part of any police force). You're intruding on foreign jurisdiction and trying to apply your own laws.
- betterunix 14y ago"what did the FBI actually do that pissed off Iceland? Just being there?" Just being there at a time that a member of Iceland's parliament is afraid to step outside Icelandic borders because she might be arrested by the United States seems like a pretty good reason...
- walshemj 14y agoGiven the way that the Icelandic government has written off the bank accounts of the pensioners who had money there leaving the UK and I presume US governments. You will have to forgive me as a uk taxpayer who is having to cover icleands debts - I personally don't give a fuck that the wheels came of there ponzie scheme.
- saevarom 14y agoAn Icelander here The Reykjavik airport is quite popular for private jets since it's right in the middle of the city whereas the KEF international airport is about 1 hour drive from the city. Security there is also almost non-existent, but customs authorities are notified and dispatched when international flights are expected. If the agents would have used a regular scheduled flight there would probably have been much more security and scrutiny regarding their arrival.
- praptak 14y ago> s there some kind of international convention / agreement that says that policemen don't work abroad? I think you have got it backwards. There is no agreement saying that they can. Staying in a foreign country is a privilege not a right. You are only permitted to do whatever your visa says you can do. In case of visa-waiver agreements, you can only do what the agreement states you can do, on top of that the government can pretty much kick you out at its own discretion citing vague reasons like national security.
- alan_cx 14y agoA market analyst is comparable to a covert FBI operation on foreigh spoil? Really? Does the US allow foreign agents to arrive quietly unannounced by private plane to disappear in to the US for unknown reasons? I do hope not. This really is the sort of thing that destroys good will to the US, and feeds the international bully,arrogance and hypocrisy monster. If any one dared to try to pull this on US soil, all hell would break loose. Why then does the US think its allowed to do it? Why even try? Although, as I type this, in the back of my mind is how the US authorities bully their own citizens in to suicide. So.... <shrug>
- walshemj 14y agoI would imagine that SIS officers work in the US under cover as diplomats - and what does the USA broken system for electing electing Law officials have to do with how intelligence agencys are run ?
- Trobee 14y agoI'd say the main problem is that the FBI do not have jurisdiction in Iceland
- LiveTheDream 14y ago> Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. > Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- nwzpaperman 14y agoWhat is the difference between: CIA, US Postal Inspector, Marshall, FBI, ATF, State Trooper, Sheriff, Police Man and a Security guard? A: Jurisdiction
- walshemj 14y agoum if I where a CIA operator id be highly pissed of if you compered me to a sheriff billy bob elected in some rotten borough) let alone some minimum wage security guard
- jlgreco 14y agoThe nature of reality considers no man's ego.
- walshemj 14y agoGood luck with that should or do you not understand the class/status system - society defiantly thinks that there is a difference between a minimum wage security guard and say a FBI,CIA,SIS,SS officer who will have an directly equivalent rank to his or her counterpart in the milatery?
- andrewcooke 14y ago[parent poster continues...] in case anyone is interested in facts, rather than opinion, this document http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/l_to_o/obtaining_evidence_and_information_from_abroad/ http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/l_to_o/obtaining_evidence_and_in... is a readable summary of some of the legal issues from a uk perspective. [edit: argument removed; Nursie is correct, in that it only allows indirect access. sorry.]
- Nursie 14y agoWell, Sweden's kind of irrelevant to whether this is permitted in Iceland, and I think it was more the going there and snooping around. Also please read the options for contact with a witness - - Travel to the United Kingdom to make a statement - Statement at a British embassy - Statement by telephone or email The entire page you linked there was about formal and informal ways to make requests to law enforcement in other countries, and 'direct' contact still doesn't involve the cops actually going to the other country, just speaking to people who are in another country via one of these methods. --edit-- thanks for the link, that was informative reading --edit2-- All that said, even Brit cops do go to other countries for their investigations from time to time, just this week I heard about some going to Libya for continuing investigation into the Lockerbie bombing - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-21281173 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-2128117... Presumably this is with the full knowledge and cooperation of the (new) Libyan government though. I wonder what use it can possibly be after so long.
- josteink 14y agoThat's to be expected. They have no jurisdiction there. Edit: There's been numerous news reports all over the world about FBI/CIA agents doing police-work without reporting to local authorities in countries which are not the US, where they have no rights and no jurisdiction, as if it was their own turf. CIA operatives have been charged in numerous European countries for kidnapping and abducting people not guilty on anything by local laws. Because the US wanted them silenced, because of "terror" or whatever. I'm going to pressume this is what happened here as well. I can assure you that if anyone had done the same in the US, they wouldn't merely be kicked out, they would be jailed for being in violation of the law.
- pvaldes 14y ago> doing police-work ... and allegedly doing worst things, sadly. A lot of people are very upset with the idea of having black sites without any respect for the law in your own country.
- mercurial 14y ago> CIA operatives have been charged in numerous European countries for kidnapping and abducting people not guilty on anything by local laws. Because the US wanted them silenced, because of "terror" or whatever. As a European, I'll bet you whatever you want they were doing this with the full knowledge of the government and intelligence departments of the aforementionned countries.
- toyg 14y agoIndeed, relevant people in Italy were roasted for it. Just because you are the secret service, it doesn't mean you can ignore the law.
- mercurial 14y agoUnless you do warrantless wiretapping in the US.
- fosap 14y agoIt does pretty much. It means you can abduct people and torture them, that's pretty much everything a secret service would ever want to do. Google Murat Kurnaz. There was a whole network of CIA prisons with torture in Europe.
- yread 14y agoWow what a weird map. No state in Europe is labeled (except Denmark in Greenland and Russia in Asia) whereas most but not all of the others are. And Europe is divided on Europe and European Russia-Asia. Russia is labeled up there in the upper right corner. The map's scale is in Libya. Only prime meridian, arctic circle and tropic of cancer are shown. And there are some weird blobs west of Portugal. And Kosovo is still part of Serbia
- saevarom 14y agoLooks like it's the first time they ever had to produce a map of Iceland's location. It seems like the text "Iceland" and the arrow are manually added.
- morsch 14y agoTaken from http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/is.htm http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/is.htm Hilariously bad mapping for a geography web site. The weird blob west of Portugal is supposed to be a marking where north is.
- arethuza 14y agoIs that map completely missing Novaya Zemlya?
- CrLf 14y agoIt seems reality doesn't work quite like Hollywood movies, where the FBI just walks in whatever country and starts flashing their IDs, while random local citizens soil their pants.
- robotmay 14y agoHere in the UK the FBI are generally seen as a bit of a joke by people in similar lines of work. Source: relatives and friends who have had to work with them.
- jessaustin 14y agoThere's a hilarious scene in The Guard (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1540133/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1540133/) where all of the Irish Garda are trying to seem very respectful of Don Cheadle's FBI agent, except for Brendan Gleeson's Garda who mercilessly takes the piss out of him. Later he says, "Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, these men are armed and dangerous, and you being an FBI agent you're more used to shooting at unarmed women and children."
- robotmay 14y agoNot sure how I missed that film; that's going on my to-watch list!
- halvsjur 14y agoAn example where the FBI did just that in the UK: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/08/fbi_indymedia_raids/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/08/fbi_indymedia_raids/
- robotmay 14y agoWell, that's certainly dimmed my views of Rackspace UK a bit. There would appear to be a rapidly thinning list of UK cloud providers who aren't subject to US interference.
- Irishsteve 14y agoIt would be like the Malaysians going to America to investigate and arrest George Bush due to alleged war crimes. They wouldn't get particularly far unless they OK'd it all with the relevant local authorities. P.s I've no idea if the story is factually correct. I'm just using it as an example. http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/05/12/bush-convicted-of-war-crimes-in-absentia/ http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/05/12/bush-convicte...
- yaix 14y agoBut probably they would get much more applause worldwide if they did.
- darkarmani 14y agoIs that why they got kicked out? they were trying to arrest people? I'm not sure why gathering information would be a serious problem if they followed the laws.
- Irishsteve 14y agoIt's undermining a countries sovern rights. Most countries don't like this
- maeon3 14y agoWhile FBI Agents are busy flying to Iceland working on Hollywood's vision for the future of who owns the internet, data, and computers, the following is allowed to happen: 1. Guy with a court date for menacing with a weapon is allowed to keep the weapon, shoots up a bus and abducts a kid: http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/01/us/alabama-child-hostage/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/01/us/alabama-child-hostage/index... 2. No Executive anywhere on the planet has yet to do prison time for any action, decision or behavior relating to the largest manufactured Financial Crisis since 1929. Because when prosicuting the best and brightest who use the law to subvert justice, it's like trying to nail a vapor to the wall: http://www.propublica.org/article/why-no-financial-crisis-prosecutions-official-says-its-just-too-hard http://www.propublica.org/article/why-no-financial-crisis-pr... But on the plus side, there hasn't been many terrorist attacks as have been in the middle east, so they're doing an upstanding job there. Who checks the power of a dysfunctional FBI and smacks them around when they step out of line? What's the process even if it's only possible in theory? I know the FBI has to be irreproachable enough to resist the collective action of Mafias and cults/sects, which would make it a tough system to get rid of, even if it devolves into the Ministry of life/Ministry of truth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Truth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Truth)
- driverdan 14y ago> No Executive anywhere on the planet has yet to do prison time for any action, decision or behavior relating to the largest manufactured Financial Crisis since 1929. Wrong! Iceland imprisoned multiple executives, among others. http://www.icenews.is/2011/04/07/first-iceland-bank-crash-prison-sentence-handed-down/ http://www.icenews.is/2011/04/07/first-iceland-bank-crash-pr... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-07/iceland-court-sentences-ex-byr-savings-executives-to-jail.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-07/iceland-court-sente...
- cynoclast 14y agoIceland seems like the only country the banks don't rule.
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- fixed_input 14y agoWhile I have no sympathies for those at Wikileaks, and I do not support them at all, we as Americans need to stop having this grand delusion that our Government and its agents can do whatever they want whenever they want, as if all other countries' laws/governments can just be disregarded.
- toyg 14y agoIn a way, it's a mindset that, sometimes, I get to admire. It's the supreme confidence in your own right: that everyone else in the world is equal (or, more often than not, inferior) to you. The UK used to have something similar; British law specifically said that no power on Earth could be superior to (English/British) Parliament in any case. Albeit originally meant to nullify papal (and aristocratic...) claims, so to speak, that provision came to define the UK approach to foreign policy for centuries. Nowadays there are umpteen exceptions for EU, UN and whatnot, the British Empire is gone and with it the hubris, but coming from a much "weaker" country, I feel that approach can be quite beneficial in many ways.
- ludflu 14y ago> The UK used to have something similar; British imperialism didn't work well for anyone. I certainly hope America abandons its imperial pretensions. As an American, it doesn't make me proud.
- adnam 14y agoIt's not every day that the top story on reddit.com/r/conspiracy is also the top story on Hacker News.
- nir 14y agoAnd most comments are about as juvenile as the ones on Reddit.
- sliverstorm 14y agoHN: The place where redditors go, when they want to feel like they aren't on reddit?
- nir 14y agoTo be fair some subreddits have great comment threads, its just that politics & news seem to attract all the loud fanatics. Here too..
- S4M 14y agoIt seems that Iceland is a proud country that doesn't hesitate to say "No" to the US. I recall that in 2008 they gave to Bobby Fisher the Icelandic nationality to avoid him been prosecuted by the US (on the motive that he made Iceland famous for playing his world championship match there), which, as maeon3 mentions, is another very useful way to occupy the US police forces.
- jasonkolb 14y agoI have to say, between this and their big middle finger to the banks wanting their taxpayers to bail out banks' bad loans, Iceland is currently my favorite country. They are well-run organization.
- muoncf 14y agoWhile I half-agree with you, it's really not all as wonderful as you make it sound. Please take a look at this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icesave_dispute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icesave_dispute
- CountHackulus 14y agoWhile I do agree with you that Iceland is pretty cool, the fact that pornography is illegal doesn't sit well with me. Plus Icelandair has been nothing but unhelpful to me.
- znowi 14y agoI think it says a lot about the U.S. and its world police attitude. Coming without notice to another country on a private jet demanding full cooperation. That's the height of arrogance. I can only praise Iceland for such swift and duly response.
- stefantalpalaru 14y agoSounds like the plot for a "Team America: World Police" sequel.