Acting on behalf of adversarial governments is fine too if you register with the government. In the case linked above they didn't do that and conspired to keep the fact they took orders from Moscow hidden.
I think we would all agree on that, but don't you see a risk that this labeling could be abused pretty easily to punish dissidents or any other enemy of powerful people?
Is someone charged with drunk driving just "labeling"? What about manslaughter? First degree murder? Treason?
Someone being charged with a crime is a completely different thing to someone "being labeled" and trying to downplay the severity of the former to try and extend it to this hypothetical is telling.
When the West does it, it's called NGOs. When the East does it, it's called malign influence. Maybe it's time the West retire the free word from its world. It's two worlds at odds. And none of them is free (though in one you do definitively have a bit more rights and a semi-functional legal system).
The Espionage Act has been on the books for a century now and it was definitely used to punish dissidents. In some sense nothing new. But don’t be naive. There are plenty of countries waging various forms of attack against America at all times and there should be laws to thwart these attacks. The implementation and enforcement is key. Simply relying on abstract principles is the core danger of such a law, hence the need for a court that is itself accountable to the electorate. Either way the risks are abstract. The implementation is the key.
To confuse matters, many of these attacks aren't so much against America, as against the concept of liberal democracy.
To uphold liberal democratic values is to support the free speech that makes these attacks possible. The old 20th century style of propaganda was mostly ineffectual. The modern tactic of flooding public discourse with bullshit is much more effective. At some point people concede that maybe the shills and useful idiots working for the dictators do raise some valid points, so who knows what to believe.
As near as I can tell conducting a “malign influence campaign” isn’t an actual criminal charge that can be brought against someone in the US. The people in that article were charged with illegally acting on behalf of a foreign government without registration. Americans continue to be free to conduct malign influence campaigns to their hearts’ content so long as they aren’t doing it on behalf of a foreign government. Between politics, lobbying, social media, and general advertising, we have a massive and thriving malign influence industry here in the land of the free.
Given how willing people are to believe that [russia|china|insert other boogey man] are behind every bump in the night, that leaves you only one "person familiar with the matter" away from serious trouble.
E.g. Elliekelly's comment had all the classic earmarks of russian disinformation campaigns, said an unnamed expert familiar with the matter.
One need not "be careful". One simply need not act as an agent to a government adversarial to the U. S. I, for instance, have never "been careful" the whole time I've lived in the U. S., and no FBI agents knock on my door.
It's illegal for foreign nationals to fund domestic elections. Don't participate in a conspiracy to influence domestic US elections by funding or directing them. It's pretty simple.
It's rather hard for the government to make these charges stick, which is why there are so few prosecutions for this. So if someone's formally charged, they done goofed. Presumption of innocence aside, the government isn't going to move on this case unless there's compelling evidence it happened.
So you gonna show me where the law carves out specific countries?
(4) Foreign election interference
The term “foreign election interference” means conduct by a foreign person that—
(A)
(i) violates Federal criminal, voting rights, or campaign finance law; or
(ii) is performed by any person acting as an agent of or on behalf of, or in coordination with, a foreign government or criminal enterprise; and
(B) includes any covert, fraudulent, deceptive, or unlawful act or attempted act, or knowing use of information acquired by theft, undertaken with the specific intent to significantly influence voters, undermine public confidence in election processes or institutions, or influence, undermine confidence in, or alter the result or reported result of, a general or primary Federal, State, or local election or caucus, including—
(i) the campaign of a candidate; or
(ii) a ballot measure, including an amendment, a bond issue, an initiative, a recall, a referral, or a referendum.
> is performed by any person acting as an agent of or on behalf of, or in coordination with, a foreign government or criminal enterprise
I think the disconnect is that some orgs that people might think work on behalf of a foreign govt aren't registered as such because they don't receive funding from there, like AIPAC. This has been a contentious topic.