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by newcomputer
2096 days ago
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Do you really think the Iranian government is going to subpoena twitter to acquire evidence that Iran committed war crimes and then prosecute themselves? Citizen outrage is the only lever we have to prevent governments from committing war crimes. If you support blocking access to the public, you're essentially saying these governments should be allowed to commit war crimes. |
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Another country's government could. War crimes can be prosecuted by any country (under universal jurisdiction), by the country on whose territory the crimes were committed (territorial jurisdiction), and also possibly if their citizens are among the victims (passive personality principle).
Even if in practice prosecution isn't feasible (such as due to inability to apprehend/extradite the defendants, a legal system which disallows trials in absentia, limited availability of evidence, etc), at least a foreign government could hold a formal investigation and publicise the results. Subpoenas aren't restricted to criminal cases, they can also be used for formal public inquiries (such as the concept of Royal Commissions found in Commonwealth countries, or the 9/11 Commission and Warren Commission in the US), for inquiries by the legislature (inquiries by committees of Congress/Parliament/etc), for intelligence collection, etc. It is also possible for a national government to subpoena data from private companies and then provide that data to an inquiry by the UN (or one of its agencies).
There is also the International Criminal Court (ICC). Iran is not a member state of the ICC, but the ICC could exercise jurisdiction over Iranian citizens in one of three ways: (1) if Iran were in the future to join the Court, or consent to its jurisdiction in a specific case; (2) if the Iranian citizens are accused of committing war crimes on the territory of an ICC member state; (3) if the UN Security Council made a referral. Now, in practice, Iran probably isn't going to join (or consent to a specific case), and China and/or Russia would probably use their Security Council veto to protect Iran, but method (2) might still work.
If some country's government, or the ICC, wants to subpoena data about Iranian war crimes from a social media platform, the social media platform is likely to comply (although there are all kinds of complex political and legal factors involved.)