Summary
A New York man, Chen Jinping, pleaded guilty to operating an undeclared Chinese police station in Manhattan for China’s Ministry of Public Security.
The station, part of a transnational repression scheme, aided Beijing in locating and suppressing pro-democracy activists in the U.S., violating American sovereignty.
Authorities say the station also served routine functions like renewing Chinese driving licenses but had a more sinister role, including tracking a California-based activist.
Chen faces up to five years in prison, while a co-defendant has pleaded not guilty and awaits trial.
I’m not being faecitious, but what was the “actual act”? If I was on holiday abroad and heard a fellow Brit, now a naturalised citizen of wherever, boasting about tax evasion and I snitched on them to the tax authorities in Britain, have I now done the same thing as an agent of the British government on foreign soil? Ive done an ostensibly legal act (made a phone call abroad) about something I legally came across as a private citizen, but if one wanted to, could that be cast as “colluding against a citizen on behalf of a foreign government”?
The difference in this case is this person was apparently being paid by the Chinese government. But I’m wondering what specifically about their actions was illegal? Surely if you go about your business doing legal things it doesn’t matter whether you’re on the payroll of a foreign government or not?
No, you are being facetious.
Being facetious is being not serious about something, or just to being trivial. I’m doing the opposite, trying to specifically understand how the law works. I was surprised that communicating public information elsewhere could be illegal. No-one’s cited the law so far on specifically how this guy passing information was illegal. Like I said, if he was going around bullying and intimidating like a mobster it would be perfectly understandable. I was just surprised that this is apparently a limit on the first amendment because it didn’t seem clear exactly where the line is.
Now you’re just trying to lie to everyone here. If you can’t have an honest discussion you don’t deserve an opinion 🤷
Your presumption is the death of honest discussion, try and take people at their word. Some, like myself, are here to talk out their ignorance and learn.
Great lengths are gone to, to avoid responding to direct questions. If you can accuse the other person of being in a bad group (bot, capitalist, not actually left, from an instance I don’t like, etc) then you can avoid reflecting on your own philosophies and the flaws that exist in it. Cognitive dissonance avoided and upvotes gained, pretty compelling for our brains.
This is an argument akin to “What do you mean I’m accused of fraud? All I really did was write my name on a piece of paper!”
It requires deliberate ignorance of the context, and that’s why people are unwilling to waste time explaining it to you in detail.