[HN Gopher] Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison...
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Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting
Author : doener
Score : 116 points
Date : 2022-08-17 19:54 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Any time you read a headline like this, replace the innocuous-
| sounding non-crime ("tweeting") with "upsetting people in power."
|
| Suddenly you'll realise that the same kind of thing happens
| everywhere in the world.
|
| E.g.: Julian Assange, who's main crime was _upsetting people in
| power_.
|
| Unless you think it's a crime worthy of being hounded for over a
| decade by multiple nations' security agencies for trying to --
| and failing -- to reverse an NT hash.
|
| Because that's the "crime" they're extraditing him for.
| tonmoy wrote:
| But the threshold for upsetting people in power varies. So this
| sed doesn't give us any extra insight or predictive power. For
| example I can say "The Jewish people upset the Nazi party in
| Germany during WW2"
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't understand the comparison. The Nazis weren't very
| subtle about how upset they were with Jewish people.
| siva7 wrote:
| Not really. Tweeting your opinion is legal, leaking state
| secrets not so.
| random314 wrote:
| Assange is Australian
| colordrops wrote:
| Are you talking about Assange? He is not being charged with
| leaking state secrets, because it's not against the law if
| you didn't steal them firsthand, especially for non-citizens
| outside of the country.
| nradov wrote:
| Not really. Leaking state secrets isn't a crime under US
| federal law for people who have no security clearance. Julian
| Assange is charged with conspiracy to commit computer
| intrusion.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder-
| charg...
| bena wrote:
| Yeah, I technically can't leak state secrets because I'm
| not privy to them. So if I have them, they're already
| leaked. I would be post-crime.
| croes wrote:
| Strange, the US newspapers that wrote articles based on
| WikiLeaks leaks won prices.
|
| And WikiLeaks isn't the leaker but the publisher of that
| leaks.
| edm0nd wrote:
| That's pretty arguable.
|
| Assange is in chat logs with Manning who then passed
| Assange a password hash and with Assange saying he will
| attempt to get it cracked. The password would have given
| Manning admin privileges on SIPRNet, allowing her to pull
| more files to leak and better cover her tracks.
|
| That's being pretty directly involved in leaks imo.
|
| src: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/5816949/Julian-
| Assang...
| rndgermandude wrote:
| So if I leaked Saudi state secrets, should I be extradited to
| Saudi Arabia? Or is that only if I leaked the secrets of a
| state you consider a "good guy" state?
| Bolkan wrote:
| Anyone knows what she actually tweeted?
| pasttense01 wrote:
| "Her Twitter profile showed she had 2,597 followers. Among
| tweets about Covid burnout and pictures of her young
| children, Shehab sometimes retweeted tweets by Saudi
| dissidents living in exile, which called for the release of
| political prisoners in the kingdom. She seemed to support the
| case of Loujain al-Hathloul, a prominent Saudi feminist
| activist who was previously imprisoned, is alleged to have
| been tortured for supporting driving rights for women"
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/16/saudi-woman-
| gi...
|
| A totally insignificant opponent of the regime; probably most
| of us reading this thread have made comparable comments about
| either the Democratic or Republican Presidencies.
| dm319 wrote:
| I've read it was 'finally!', in response to an official tweet
| about a launch of some public buses. This was in 2019, and it
| seems like she got some abuse from a guy in Saudi, who is
| believed to have reported her using some kind of Saudi app
| for doing this.
|
| https://theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/17/saudi-arabia-
| snitc...
| KerrAvon wrote:
| The crimes he is alleged to have committed are detailed here by
| DOJ (during the Trump administration) and do not match your
| assertions.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wikileaks-founder-julian-assa...
| colordrops wrote:
| I don't think you get the GP's point. The comment was meant
| to describe motivations. Obviously no one is literally
| charged with "upsetting people in power".
| overtonwhy wrote:
| "Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort and
| the WikiLeaks website to try to help now-U.S. President
| Donald Trump win the 2016 election, a Republican-led Senate
| committee said in its final review of the matter on Tuesday."
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-
| senate/s...
| sva_ wrote:
| Even here in Germany, a man was harassed and had his house
| raided by police for tweeting a pretty insignificant insult
| directed at a politician[0].
|
| [0]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/09/pimmelgate-g...
| yrgulation wrote:
| Not surprised. In germany its common practice for the police
| to monitor people based on ethnicity for instance,
| indiscriminately of wether they committed crime or not. A
| thing of the past one should think.
| djyaz1200 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtcaIA9SU7o
| chitowneats wrote:
| What an absolute human rights disaster Saudi Arabia is.
|
| That the U.S. government continues to engage with and support
| that regime is all the evidence you need of our hypocrisy on the
| issue.
| quantified wrote:
| If you drive a car, fly on a plane, have trucks in your supply
| chain, use plastic anywhere in your life- you support that
| engagement. Sucks but they're built in now.
| random314 wrote:
| We seem to be able to be hostile to Russia and China while
| depending om them for oil and manufacturing.
|
| Extending the same courtesy to Saudi Arabia should be
| straightforward. Except, of course, Saudis align with NATO,
| Russia and China don't.
| robotnikman wrote:
| They also contribute a lot to VC funds iirc
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Same happens in the US. We just wave it under "woke snowflake"
| if you don't like it.
| chitowneats wrote:
| We don't throw people in prison for 3 decades over social
| media posts.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| drstewart wrote:
| phpisthebest wrote:
| We do if they would contain magic words that make them run
| afoul of the plainly unconstitutional Espionage Act
| zeraynor wrote:
| It does seem difficult balancing an open and free society
| with mechanisms for protecting and maintaining government
| secrets, and punishing those who betray those secrets.
|
| Do you believe it is plainly unconstitutional simply
| because it posting to twitter involves words?
| fein wrote:
| Austria nearly does. Mr. Bond. I see little difference
| between tweets and political parody songs.
| pessimizer wrote:
| We can just refer to the social media posts as "material
| support to a terrorist organization."
| ethanbond wrote:
| Equating the US to Saudi Arabia is beyond divorced from
| reality. No, you can't "just" do that and get anywhere
| close to similar outcomes as what's happened here.
|
| Turn on your TV anywhere in America, walk into a coffee
| shop, talk to a friend. Conversations freely and
| frequently come to vigorous criticisms of those in power.
| Now go try to do that almost anywhere in the Middle East.
| You'll struggle to find someone willing to even remotely
| entertain that conversation with you.
|
| _That 's_ what oppression looks like. Not hypotheticals
| like the one you're proposing here.
| Volundr wrote:
| Any examples of this happening?
| emmab wrote:
| Which lets you know what your stance towards the United States
| should be, or you'll be complicit too.
|
| All evil regimes must fall.
|
| Transitive complicity is still complicity.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Every country on earth has diplomatic relations with Saudia
| Arabia except Belize, the Holy See, Iran, Iraq, Israel,
| Nepal, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Saint Vincent and the
| Grenadines, Taiwan, Western Sahara, and a few Pacific
| micronations. Obviously the House of Saud is evil, but it's
| largely impossible to have a modern society without their
| oil.
| kennedywm wrote:
| "It's largely impossible to have a modern society without
| their oil."
|
| Not true. They produce less oil than the US and Russia and
| were only responsible for 12% of global oil production in
| 2021.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Hypocrisy or realpolitik, depending on how nuanced your
| worldview is.
| chitowneats wrote:
| It is realpolitik. Absolutely.
|
| We ruthlessly engage in it, but whenever anyone else on Earth
| tries it, we whip out the "freedom, democracy, human rights"
| rhetoric.
|
| We shouldn't be surprised when that rings hollow elsewhere in
| the world.
| ProAm wrote:
| There is no hypocrisy there, like everything in life, including
| startup life, everything comes down to money. And money is
| power. The US created the Saudi Arabian powerhouse we see
| today. We need them to keep our economic inertia moving forward
| at a pace acceptable for the populace. Is it a travesty? 100%
| But we made this bed.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Americans like to pretend that we fight for higher ideals
| than naked self interest or national interest.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Americans fight for ideals all the time. Individual
| Americans do, and this includes individuals in government.
|
| It is true to say that much that is represented as being
| about ideals is really something else in disguise. And
| there is rampant corruption and so forth.
|
| But it takes cynicism too far to say that ideals never
| factor in. There are many principled people with ideals
| having impact in the world every day, and there is nothing
| enlightened about deriding their efforts or pretending they
| don't exist.
| random314 wrote:
| > Americans fight for ideals all the time
|
| The US government, post ww2, fights for Corporations in
| the NATO axis that benefit from a particular regime being
| in power in a particular country.
|
| Sometimes these regimes are democratic, other times they
| are not. The ideals are kool aid to sell to the public to
| garner support for war.
|
| For eg, US has toppled democracies in Haiti and Iran to
| support corporate interests. It supported dictatorship in
| Haiti, Saudi, Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran etc to promote
| the interests of NATO corporations.
| zeraynor wrote:
| It's neither all "freedom and democracy" nor all
| "ruthless greed". Your post feels like kool aid in
| "ruthless greed" direction.
|
| Government decisions are made by human beings in
| positions of power. Being in a position of power, such as
| the president of the United States, is a balancing of
| owns personal beliefs/morality and the interests of the
| United States. The composition of those components and
| the position of the pendulum in that balance varies
| depending on who you are.
|
| Your position supposes nobody with ideals becomes members
| of government or that members of government somehow
| compartmentalize American cultural ideals/identity.
| Plenty of hypocrisy abounds, no doubt, but your take is
| overly cynical.
| kodah wrote:
| I like to think of it as, collectively our ideals are a
| compass. We keep heading North but it doesn't mean we
| don't get lost walking in circles. It also doesn't
| preclude that sometimes when we think we're heading North
| we're actually heading South. Making a mockery of our
| ideals is like making fun of someone for carrying a
| compass or dating to shoot an azimuth. Unfortunately a
| good amount of people inside the US and out like to do
| that.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| I believe the thread was about the behaviour of
| governments, not individuals. Principled and idealistic
| individuals exist everywhere, including Saudi Arabia as
| the article shows.
| mjevans wrote:
| Political independence is desirable. Absolute independence is
| unlikely and possibly unwise as well in a multi party system.
| However more choices means less power consolidated by any
| small number of potentially disagreeable actors.
|
| Say Yes to all sorts of energy. Solar, Wind, even modern
| Nuclear designed to be safe and with 'waste reduction' steps
| in mind for partly spent fuel that needs to be processed
| again at carefully controlled military guarded sites (since
| these processes can also make weapons).
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Kill a man, chop into pieces and shipped away. Fine now.
|
| Jail a woman ...
|
| Do you think they think it is not good from the outside world?
| frank_bb wrote:
| jfax wrote:
| I'm reminded of how under in the UK a person was made to do
| community service after making a tweet.[1] Obviously not as steep
| of a sentencing, but a prosecution nonetheless. I only point that
| out because reading these headlines now doesn't make me feel
| protective of liberal democracy, it only makes me despair of a
| global trend.
|
| 1. https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/31/23004339/uk-twitter-
| user-...
| bmitc wrote:
| This speaks to the myth of decentralized <things>. Because the
| Internet was hailed as a great invention, with its
| decentralization bringing us to a sort of knowledge sharing and
| connectedness eutopia. But now, the Internet and associated
| technologies are the single greatest medium of centralized
| control ever.
|
| I always point to Adam Curtis' _All Watched Over by Machines of
| Ever Loving Grace_ documentary.
| toolz wrote:
| > But now, the Internet and associated technologies are the
| single greatest medium of centralized control ever.
|
| I strongly disagree with this assessment. The internet
| currently facilitates enormous amounts of black market
| trading in virtually every country in the world. The internet
| facilitates the only information exchange that can provide
| privacy guarantees between parties, again in virtually any
| part of the world. The internet has facilitated coordinating
| terrorist attacks against the most well funded military
| powers in the world alongside facilitating sharing cat memes.
| You can trade digital goods with extreme convenience
| regardless of centralized sanctions that may otherwise
| prohibit such trades.
|
| I think you're mistakenly looking at centralized powers
| utilizing the internet to further their reach to incorrectly
| surmise that people have less ability today to act outside of
| the will of centralized planners, which in my opinion, is
| undeniably, demonstrably false.
| duxup wrote:
| "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those
| other forms that have been tried"
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Turns out the white wigs they wear are actually clown wigs.
|
| I guess they're on to tweets now because they've rid the island
| of scissors, kitchen knives and pointy sticks.
| balfirevic wrote:
| In Croatia, people have been fined for writing ACAB (on Twitter
| or Facebook), as well as "1312". One journalist has been
| arrested for publishing satirical song deemed to "insult the
| nation".
|
| Many judges favorite pastime is extorting money from newspapers
| and journalists through the lawsuits on account of causing them
| "mental distress" with their articles.
|
| And police will readily punch the phone out of your hands if
| you try to record them, citing GDPR.
|
| Often times people on HN will proudly proclaim how Europe has a
| "different view on free speech" - really, you don't have to
| remind us.
| space_fountain wrote:
| Literally a 30+ year jail sentence vs fines. Like don't get
| me wrong, that seems bad, but not really on the same level
| madrox wrote:
| Looking at the tweets in question linked from that article [1],
| many of those are statements of blowing up airports or making
| death/rape threats. I, for one, appreciate the idea that making
| death threats online have consequences. Often these are the
| only signs you get before mentally ill people act on them, and
| in most cases police can do nothing until an actual crime is
| committed...usually that crime is murder.
|
| There's a difference between getting arrested for tweeting for
| social change and for, well, calling for deaths. There's
| certainly a grey area about "jokes" here, but you haven't been
| able to joke about "the bomb in your pants" in airport security
| lines for the entire history of airport security, so it's
| hardly a new global trend. It's also different when someone
| with millions of followers "jokes" about something. Before
| Twitter, this woman would've still been arrested for what she
| was advocating, and that's what makes her situation awful...not
| that she got arrested for tweeting.
|
| We should be compassionate when applying the law and continue
| to figure it out, but let's not throw the baby out with the
| bathwater.
|
| 1: https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/7/22912054/uk-grossly-
| offens...
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| A man was given a suspended jail sentence in the UK for making
| a joke video about Grenfell. To (on the whole) great and
| uncritical applause from the media and general public.
| space_fountain wrote:
| Article for those who might be interest:
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/20/man-
| admits-p....
|
| A 10 week jail sentence for a racist video making fun of a
| terrible tragedy doesn't bother me as much as locking up
| political opponents
| blfr wrote:
| Britain is famous for convicting a guy who got his dog to do
| the nazi salute. And they just don't stop, they arrested a
| tweeter the other day along with a guy who filmed the first
| arrest.
|
| https://fee.org/articles/uk-man-arrested-for-malicious-commu...
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Someone should report this guy to them https://images.thewest
| .com.au/publication/CD15E5C4C89CE4DA25...
| sgjohnson wrote:
| They exiled him to Canada, no?
|
| Kind of how they exiled King Edward VIII to the Bahamas.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| BBC government media used to have Monty Python doing
| satirical nazi salutes on prime time television. Shows how
| easily standards can change without constitutional
| protections.
| FooHentai wrote:
| The nazi dog was in Scotland, this is in England. they are
| different legal jurisdictions.
|
| Edit: England, not Britain.
| nohuck13 wrote:
| Scotland occupies the northern third of the island of Great
| Britain.
| ybaervervys wrote:
| Solid pedantry attempt, but missed the mark.
|
| Scotland is a part of Britain. Scotland is not part of
| England nor Wales, but Scotland, England, and Wales are all
| part of (Great) Britain.
| FooHentai wrote:
| Appreciate the gotcha, nearly as fun to post as pedantry.
| I only made the same mistake OP did, however.
|
| The actual point still stands. If you're going to take a
| dig at a legal system, country, or culture, don't try to
| back up your point with an example from a different one.
|
| Scotland is not England legally or culturally, and the
| scots will be the first to make that point clear.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Please explain how the difference in these legal systems
| is worth the pedantry.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Ah, poor Wales. You'd have to murder your wife to sit on
| the throne there.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| She wasn't sentenced for tweeting, she was sentenced for
| supporting overthrowing the government. Which would also be a
| crime in the US, where she'd be called a "domestic terrorist" and
| sentenced to life. This could be worse, of course, because
| foreign suspects are just imprisoned in CIA black sites forever
| without seeing the inside of a court, or murdered via drone
| strikes.
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| Coming to America as well - look up Ricky Vaughn. Trial run on a
| deplorable, your ticket will get called eventually.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| OK, I did. He told people they could legally vote by posting
| hashtags to twitter for specific candidates. That's an
| unethical thing to do even if you aren't a Nazi. Should it be
| against the law? Well, you might look up the reason these laws
| exist. Hint: probably won't make Nazis too happy.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1360816/downl...
|
| > conspired to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate persons
| in the free exercise of a right and privilege secured to them
| by the Constitution and laws of the United States, to wit, the
| right to vote, in violation of...
| fauntle wrote:
| As stupid as it is, there are legitimate legal complaints
| against him, namely advertising that votes could be texted to a
| certain phone number.
| croes wrote:
| And still Saudi Arabia is treated as an ally of the western
| world.
| lttlrck wrote:
| "ally" in this case means something like "marriage of
| convenience"...
| Invictus0 wrote:
| more like desperation
| [deleted]
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