“The First Amendment doesn’t stop at the water’s edge just because a foreign bureaucrat sends a threatening letter. If you’re in Wyoming, you speak freely. Period.”
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Samizdata quote of the day – GRANITESamizdata Illuminatus (Arkham, Massachusetts) · Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Internet · Slogans & Quotations “The First Amendment doesn’t stop at the water’s edge just because a foreign bureaucrat sends a threatening letter. If you’re in Wyoming, you speak freely. Period.” February 2nd, 2026 |
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I don’t understand
What bureaucrat?
What threatening letter?
What country is the bureaucrat from?
What does Wyoming have to do with this?
The first amendment only protects you in the US, so how does the water’s edge fit in?
Chris – the coloured text with the name “Daniel Singh” is a link (I often miss such things myself – so I am not attacking you), click on the link, and you will understand.
Today the British and French governments launched attacks on the “X” of Elon Musk – they came up with various excuses, but their real motive is that they do not like the free expression of opinions with which they disagree. Their definition of “free speech” is the same as that of Robespierre – Freedom of Speech means (to them) the right, indeed the duty, to agree with the “General Will” (they decide what this “General Will” – if most ordinary people disagree, too-bad), NOT to disagree with it.
“X” is an American company and Mr Musk is an American citizen – if other nations, Britain, France, Australia, Canada, wherever, wish to attack Freedom of Speech on this platform they should be told they forget about exporting anything to the United States (“hit our companies – and we will hit yours, your goods as well as your services”) and that they can shove any idea of a military alliance (NATO and so on) up their backside.
After all, we are told, endlessly, that these military alliances are due to “shared values” – if these “values” do not include Freedom of Speech, then they are just waffle.
The “rules based international order” is not supportive of Freedom of Speech, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, or other fundamental Civil Liberties – indeed it is fundamentally opposed to such things (under fair seeming language – it is utterly evil).
It is not the heir to the American Revolution – it is the heir to the French Revolution.
The “rules based international order” is the enemy, the enemy of both national independence and individual liberty.
To those people giggling to themselves thinking “soon the Supreme Court will end Trump’s tariffs, then we can impose Censorship, and the international Small Arms convention, and…..” – a ban on imports from nations that have shown themselves to be hostile, is NOT a tariff.
If the governments (officials and front persons such as Sir Keir Starmer and President Macron) of Britain, France, Australia and-so-on wish to impose tyranny on their own citizens (which they clearly do), that is their own affair – but their “laws” must not touch American citizens or American companies, that is the position Wyoming is taking.
There’s also the case of 4Chan v OFCOM, a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia to block Ofcom from enforcing UK regulations on US-based entities – as Ofcom’s actions violate the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments of the US Constitution.
More on the general principle here https://prestonbyrne.com/2025/09/30/lex-loci-machinae/
Melanie Dawes, the Chief Executive of Ofcom.
Although they aren’t in Wyoming, it’s in response to the threatening emails sent by Ofcom to 4chan and KiwiFarms.
The United Kingdom.
Nothing, other than it wanting to confirm its position before Ofcom, or anyone else, tries anything.
Thank goodness for America and the First Amendment!
It also upturns Westphalian Sovereignty. Countries shall not interfere with the internal workings of other countries.
Paul,
Thanks for the explanation, now I’m just confused.
My understanding is that if some country chooses to ban X because it allows “hate speech”, then that is their right. BUT it only applies to their country. If they try to apply it to other countries, it can safely be ignored and this proposed law in Wyoming is unnecessary.
What am I missing?
The UK thinks that they can pass laws that the entire world must obey?
What chutzpah!
I’ve heard of “extradition treaties”, wherein countries will agree to send fugitives from other countries back home to be prosecuted/detained.
I know little of the subject, but I assume they’d also arrange for, e.g. extraditing a mob boss who directed henchmen to commit crimes in a different country, even if he never ordered crimes in his current country. Though I expect most countries have laws about telling subordinates to break laws in other jurisdictions.
Anyway, the point being: If the First Amendment protects what you said, but you’re heard in a country that calls it illegal, Wyoming ain’t punishing you for it, or sending you back.
Unless there are other reasons, like broken immigration laws, or… But going through all the technicalities kinda ruins the poetry.
@Chris
The UK thinks that they can pass laws that the entire world must obey? What chutzpah!
I think that is called “colonialism” and I thought we were supposed to be against that?
Good for Wyoming, in both senses of the word, good as in righteous, and good as in profitable. It makes a lot of sense to move your servers there and makes sense for cloud providers to build data centers there to service people who want to leverage the law.
Most all of this hinges on the fact that people and countries have assets all over the world.
Musk and X have tens of millions of dollars or more in assets scattered around Europe.
But then, BBC and other foreign gents have assets scattered all over the USA, too.
So, the French decide to fine X for saying nasty things about frenchies. They simply confiscate some of X’s assets to pay that fine. They don’t have to chase any money in the USA.
But – the frenchies have assets all over the USA, too. Wyoming has codified the idea that frenchie enforcement of their fines against X (or any other USA entity) will now be turned around, and a like amount of french assets will be confiscated in the USA, plus some more for effect.
Wyoming has simply said, if you steal any USA corp’s money when that USA corp was acting in conformance to USA Constitutional law, that constitutes a crime or tort here. Wyoming’s jurisdiction for this is set by the amount of stuff the foreigners have left here available for confiscation. It’s the crudest sort of jurisdictional claim, but it works.
One key may be that Wyoming includes a surprising amount of assets (especially land) owned by UK-based interests.
llater,
llamas
Timely:
https://x.com/EvaVlaar/status/2018728485674479812
(Tweet about EU censorship on social media, X’s fight, france’s raid on X offices . . . )
@bobby b
So, the French decide to fine X for saying nasty things about frenchies. They simply confiscate some of X’s assets to pay that fine. They don’t have to chase any money in the USA.
FWIW it seems to me that the solution to this is to not have assets in belligerent countries like the UK. It would be perfectly possible to contract with local companies with whatever limited assets are actually required overseas. Plus it has the advantage of punishing the countries with such oppressive laws. I doubt X has too many assets in North Korea, and after the Ukraine invasion most western companies withdrew all their assets from Russia. Britain is neither North Korea or Russia, but is surely headed in that direction.
Of course Ofcom has the right to block X and 4Chan from being reachable from IP traffic reaching the British shores. They have that right same as Iran does, same as North Korea does. They have the right to ban the sale of Starlink terminals or forbid Starlink access to their radio spectrum, just as most tyrannical regimes do. But they also have the right to suffer the backlash from their population when they do so.
It is also worth saying the 4Chan has indicated that they have NO assets outside the USA. So I’m not sure how any British judgement is enforceable against them. I think you have explained in the past, but the intricacies of such international law are beyond my meagre gray matter.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it. How did Britain, mother of civil rights, birthplace of free speech, a thousand years of history, suddenly become the most oppressive censorship regime in the west? It is a tragedy of epic proportions, and shows what happens when you put the precious jewel of “the rights of an Englishman” in the hands of lying, scheming fools like Britain’s past few prime ministers.
Chris – it has been explained by others, so no need for me to explain anything.
I often get confused myself – about quite simple matters, for example today I was baffled by “folders” and putting “documents” into “folders”, to a six year old child this is all quite simple and obvious – but to me it might as well be arcane wizardry.
Fraser Orr – quite correct Sir.
Do not have assets in countries with governments that hate you. That is as foolish as having physical property in New York City – where Mayor Mamdani can tie you up with red-tape (“you have to offer this up to a non-profit – and…..”), sell up, for whatever you can get, and GET OUT.
Mr Putin had hundreds of Billions overseas – and then he-did-not-have-it-any-more. Because it was overseas – and because the “money” had no physical existence in the first place.
In the future people will start demanding payment in money they can store in their own countries – this may be BitCoin, or it may be a return to physical gold and silver (although payment would still be made electronically).
Keep the money under your physical control, in a place without a hostile government.
@bobby b
https://x.com/EvaVlaar/status/2018728485674479812
This lady, Eva Vlaardingerbroek, is a heroine for freedom lovers everywhere. Even if you don’t agree with all her politics her passion for free speech makes her a rarity in European public life.
Well, except for Britain, where she has been banned from entry as “not conducive to the public good.” Apparently a hundred thousand illegal immigrants who in many cases have no skills and a deep seated hatred of Britain and its people and values, are, apparently, conducive to the public good. But some little Dutch blonde lady who has the audacity to criticize and question the government is not.
May I try for an example:
All major western countries have design standards for their cars, headlight height, bumper strength, fuel mileage, etc, etc.
General Motors builds cars that don’t meet the standards of the UK and So the UK doesn’t allow those cars to be sold in the UK.
But it certainty doesn’t fine General Motors for every car they build that doesn’t comply with UK standards.
Why is GM safe from being fined and X is not?
@Chris – it’s not the same. X is a single global product. GM produces different vehicles for different markets.
As noted by others, the EU and UK could ban/block X if they wanted, as Iran and North Korea do, but they wish to pretend they are not like Iran and North Korea, hence the lawfare.
Fraser Orr – yes Sir, the British government action against Eva Vlaardingerbroek is terrible.
The “public good” is one of those waffle terms, such as “the public interest” or (in the United States) “the general welfare” to cover the expansion of the size and scope of government, in the old days the waffle term was “reasons of state”.
The same leftists who scream that California is “stolen land” (whilst not giving up their multi million Dollar house on this “stolen land”) and that Europeans had no right to settle North America, denounce Eva V. for trying to defend the land where her ancestors have lived for thousands-of-years.
According to the left Americans have no right to America because they “stole” it from nomadic tribes (ignoring that fact that these nomadic tribes were in a state of war and had no clear property rights), but also (at the same time) hold that it is fine (totally fine) for migrants to take the Netherlands from people who have lived there for so many centuries.
Why? Why do the “Native American” tribes have rights, but the Dutch, and the French, and the Germans, and the Spanish and (after the April elections) the Hungarians (and so on – including the English) have no rights to their countries?
Why is the genocide (and genocide, the destruction of historic peoples, is the objective) of these peoples considered morally good by the (left controlled) establishment?
And it is NOT just the cities – for example British government bodies have made it quite clear that they want rural areas as well, so it is not a matter of displacing (for example) the English from the cities to rural areas – ALL of the land is to demanded, there are to be no “reservations” for the natives, the native population, over time (NOT at once – over time) are to be removed from this world – historic Western peoples are to be eliminated.
And anyone who speaks (just speaks) too much against this will lose their job, and may be sent to prison for three years without trial by jury.
“Why is GM safe from being fined and X is not?”
Because GM makes physical items they export to countries around the world, that can be individually tailored to a specific regulatory market, so its relatively simple to make sure a car sold in the UK conforms to UK specs. And by and large no one is going to try an import a US spec Jeep when they can buy a Uk road legal one at a garage down the road.
X (or 4Chan) on the other hand is a service thats provided to everyone identically wherever you are in the world, unless a country decides to block access to it for its inhabitants. There can’t be a ‘UK X’ and a ‘French X’ and a ‘USA X’ because if there was, and the UK and French versions were censored and the US version not, then everyone in the UK and France would migrate to the US version, because the internet doesn’t do borders like car makers do. Ergo in order for Ofcom to censor UK X they have to attempt to censor X worldwide. Which they are trying to do, and its going to go spectacularly badly for them, and the Uk government. Trump has warned them, but they aren’t listening. I fully expect whoever replaces Starmer later this year (looking like its going to be sooner rather than later at the moment) will be forced to make a crawling apology tour of Washington to try and get Trump to take his boot off the UK’s neck over free speech. This will be the Left’s Suez moment – they haven’t had to accept they can’t do exactly what they want in government since the IMF bailout in the 70s, and they are going to have their noses rubbed hard in their own impotence.
Chris,
My view is that the US first amendment, as written, applies to everyone everywhere in the world. Because it says [The US] “Congress shall make no law …”. It’s textually JUST a simple restriction on the laws Congress can pass.
In reality, of course, there’s so much complexity attached to that simple statement that we end up in stupid disputes like this one with (spit…) OFCOM.
GM submits.
Agree bobby b, “GM submits”, but what if GM decided to sell cars in the UK that did not conform to UK regulations?
Leave aside that this could not happen…it would get stopped at the importation step if not the steps leading up to actual shipment (like the sales point).
But if (IF) such a sale happened, the UK government could, consistent with its laws and regulations, fine GM. You can argue about the validity of the laws and regs but that’s a separate issue from specific violations of current law.
How is X different? If X violates UK laws or regs, no matter how odious we find those laws and regs to be, isn’t the UK justified in levying fines? So, the WY response is perfect!
Or am I being thick?
How is X different?
It’s really a question about jurisdiction, which is a fancy way of saying a state has power over you. A state can have en personum jurisdiction over you – over your person – when you are present within that state. Then the state can grab you and imprison you.
Or a state can have jurisdiction en rem – over things. So, if you annoy the state, and you aren’t there in that state and they cannot exercise personal jurisdiction over you, it can instead exercise jurisdiction over whatever property you might have in the state, and confiscate it to pay fines.
GM would be shipping cars into the jurisdiction. Thus, the cars would always be available for the state to seize to pay fines.
X might have some office equipment and servers there, but there’s no huge body of valuable property for the state to seize.
Plus, even though there are international treaties that allow states to chase judgments in other countries, other countries usually won’t enforce judgements that are based on legal principles they hate. Like, speech restrictions. So, the USA isn’t going to honor any foreign judgment against X for speaking freely. (Unless they get some very woke judges.)
So, the big difference is that any state can impose fines on X, but few can collect them. So long as X owners and execs stay out of that state and don’t locate valuable stuff there, X is safe. GM, not so much.
As someone from Wyoming, I can tell you that he’s damn right. Not that we don’t have our fair share of commie weasels in our beautiful state.