[jevoten]

How is "Because the NSO group handles dollars" related to "the court could order any assets the US can get their hands on seized"? Presumably, if they were getting paid in bars of gold, the US could seize those too, if they could get their hands on them, no?

On the other hand, if they were paid in US dollars, but in cash, that wouldn't establish jurisdiction, nor could it be seized, if the transfer happened outside US territory?

[vineyardmike]

How would they get paid? Almost every bank in every us-allied countries would have to comply to hand over the money. The US banking regulations apply overseas because those banks want to interact with US entities. That's the nature of the US-Dollar economy.

Are you a French wine maker that wants to sell to America? You better be using USD with a friendly bank to pay for things like import fees/tariffs (or the American company you work with better do that). Sure you can deal only in Euros if you want, but at some point there's a conversion to USD when you sell to Americans. Middle Eastern Oil Company? Same thing. German Car company? Same. Brazilian fruit farm? Same. How about importing your Coca Cola products, and iPhones? Buying ads from Google? USD and a US-friendly banks are everywhere in the global economy because the US is such a big market.

Those banks will be banned from US commerce if they work with the NSO and don't hand over the NSO's money, and will lose tons of "innocent" business (like those nice wine makers in France). Their governments probably have treaties with the US, so they don't have a legal choice anyways. The US influence is viral.

[jevoten]

But that's because they're doing business with banks that want to remain friendly with the US, not because they're doing business specifically in US dollars. If they got paid in Turkish liras, but through a bank under US influence, those liras would also get seized, wouldn't they?

On the other hand, if someone used a local bank in their country to transact with an entity in China, and China demanded their assets in that bank be seized because they defamed a revolutionary hero [1], I would expect that country to block that seizure, regardless of how the bank itself might feel. I.e. they would demand any seizures comply with their local laws, similar to how extraditions (are supposed to) work, and not let other countries essentially steal from their citizens. Or looking at it a bit different, a bank can't take from its customers on behalf of a foreign country, since locals laws, unless they explicitly allow that taking, would consider it theft.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-lawmaking-idUSKBN1H...

Edit as reply because "I'm posting too fast" (thanks HN for not telling when I can post again by the way):

> Discussion about the US dollar misses the point. They do it because they can

I'd argue it doesn't miss the point, but rather, hides the true cause - that as you say, they do it because they can (as quickly becomes obvious when no other currency has this viral jurisdictional effect).

But I'm curious if anyone has ever tried suing their bank, in a non-US court, alleging that their seizure of their assets was illegal under local law. I can understand a bank rolling over for the US government, but it would be interesting to see if and how their legal system would justify it. Especially for something that is not a crime in their country.

[qazwse_]

I think a similar situation you can look into is the sanctions on Carrie Lam. While they are sanctions instead of a lawsuit, they did result in her losing access to all banking facilities in HK and China regardless of the fact they probably didn't think she didn't anything wrong. I think for most countries, keeping their banks working trumps almost all other considerations.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/28/hong-kong-carr...

[selectodude]

There are very few FOREX currency pairs that aren’t USD to whatever. Most cross currency trades are currency A to USD and then USD to currency B. So USD is involved and thus the US Government has jurisdiction.

[silverliver]

Again, that's only for foreign orgs that want to comply with foreign US law. The involvement of USD in and of itself is not relevant to whether the US government has jurisdiction.

[jajko]

It seems you lack understanding how international banking works in general

[serial_dev]

Discussion about the US dollar misses the point.

They do it because they can, basically we all live under the influence of the US empire, they can put pressure on most banks of they really want to, and if they really want to, details like which currency was used will not stop them.

[vineyardmike]

If someone tried transacting with USD cash in a foreign country it’d probably be fine. (Who knows, some countries probably have laws that limit the validity of transactions in foreign denominationed currencies, but that’s beside the point). Banks are among the most regulated institutions in the world. I doubt there are many banks that have USD-denominated depository accounts that also don’t touch the US banking system (because what good would it be), so the pragmatic reality is that USD requires the Us government blessing. Even if, yes, the government can’t do anything about a few sheets of paper in your wallet. Banks can’t really do currency conversion to/from USD without open access to American-influenced finance markets. So any hypothetical situation that’s not real but totally an imaginable edge case could exist- but it’s not very practical.

> If they got paid in Turkish liras, but through a bank under US influence, those liras would also get seized, wouldn't they?

Yea except no one wants Liras. They want USD (and sometimes Euros). So whoever accepts those liras will want USD, and they’ll transfer them to the USD-backed banking system, and back to the original points. Because again, how do you have access to high-volume USD/lira forex markets without using a US-blessed banking system.

The reality is that international finance largely runs on USD, and orbits US banks. One of the main international influence efforts the Us considers is a stable currency. So much so that other nations use USD as a formal currency. The US exerts significant political pressure and political capital to ensure that everyone needs USD in their economy. America literally made international treaties with every oil producing nations requiring oil to be sold in USD just to ensure that every country needed to inject USD into their economy.

> I can understand a bank rolling over for the US government, but it would be interesting to see if and how their legal system would justify it.

They’d justify it by having laws that say they’d reciprocate and recognize US crimes. It’s what the international community does.

[lmm]

The overwhelming majority of dollars are not physical cash, and the overwhelming majority of dollar transactions by volume happen in a fashion which New York claims jurisdiction over (and, ultimately, has a big army that will back them on, which is what really matters in international law), even when neither party has any obvious connection to the US.

Even for physical cash, they might claim jurisdiction. Dollars are sometimes best understood as a particularly degenerate form of US government bonds.

[diego_sandoval]

And then people say that cryptocurrencies have no reason to exist. This one right here is a pretty powerful reason.

[o11c]

And yet it is exactly this that allows major criminal organizations like the NSO Group to be prosecuted. "Liberty [from powerful factions]" is explicitly the whole purpose of governments being instituted with the consent of the governed.

I for one would trend toward banning cryptocurrency even if it weren't a complete waste of energy.

[tempodox]

Of course criminal organizations would prefer a currency not controlled by an unfriendly government. “Reason to exist” alone doesn't make it a good idea.

[Andrex]

> Even for physical cash, they might claim jurisdiction. Dollars are sometimes best understood as a particularly degenerate form of US government bonds.

Never thought about it that way, well said.

[colechristensen]

If you do business in the US you're subject to jurisdiction. If you're a foreign bank, to transact with anyone in the US you have to do business in the US. The court orders the bank to fork over somebody's cash, they do because they have to and the alternative is disconnecting themselves from the rest of the financial system. Several Swiss banks got the death penalty because they failed to be quite as isolated and secretive as advertised (i.e. they had agents in the US doing business)

To seize somebody's gold you'd have to go physically get it. To seize their dollars you just go say hi to their bank. Unless you're an "enemy combatant" the US isn't going to go do extraordinary rendition on your assets, so you're pile of foreign gold is safe.

The reach of the American legal system is long, you don't have to do much as a foreign entity to put you under our umbrella.

[wyldfire]

> that wouldn't establish jurisdiction

The harm is happening in the US, to WhatsApp's customers (among other places). The US court has jurisdiction.

Whether any remedy could be applied is independent of the court's findings.

[xxpor]

The US government has jurisdiction over all US dollars. That's how sanctions work.

[netsharc]

Geez, no? Sanctions work only if the sanctioning entity has power. If the US govt sanctions you, they can tell all banks in the world that if they touch your (virtual) money they'll be sanctioned too. If some podunk dictatorship no one did business with announced "Any bank doing business with xxpor will be barred from working in our country!" then many banks will probably say "Fine, you're a tiny economy that we don't have anyone that does business with a business in your country anyway, so you can take that sanctions and shove it".

Ironically paper money is the way to "escape" sanctions, because anyone around the world knows that that 100 dollar bill can be exchanged for goods and services. And it doesn't even have to involve a bank, just another person who recognizes the value of that paper, in a chain of transactions. Depending on the hassle you may need to pay more..

[jeroenhd]

If I bring a suitcase full of dollars home with me from a trip to the US (assuming I make it through border control with that much cash), I don't see what kind of jurisdiction the USA would have over me for simply owning dollars.

These are just pieces of paper, they don't provide any kind of jurisdiction. The American banking system may refuse to serve me perhaps, but it's not the dollars that give the American government any control. Hell, several countries outdid e the USA use American dollars as an official currency, but that doesn't make them vassal states to the USA.

[colechristensen]

Your local bank won't protect you from the American judicial system. If they get a court order they'll just fork over your assets. Your bank wants to maintain it's ability to exchange funds with American banks. The American banking system will refuse to serve your bank if they refuse to comply. Or more like they'll just order JP Morgan or whomever to fork over your bank's cash because that's how banks interact with each other.

If you got a pile of dollars in the US, you did business in the US and if that business has any tenuous connection to what the courts are after you about, we have jurisdiction.

If you don't like it you have to run to China, Russia, Iran, etc.

[tempodox]

> These are just pieces of paper

I let you have one guess which entity gives those pieces of paper their value.

[jeroenhd]

> which entity gives those pieces of paper their value

The USA can print and lend dollars to control the value of the currency on the global marketplace. When trading outside of the USA, people give the bills their value.

You can substitute a suitcase with a million dollars for a suitcase full of gold or a suitcase full of diamonds, or a suitcase full of Pokémon cards. Outside the official banking system, the value of paper money is whatever the people trading perceive it to be. In some cases, that value can be larger than a million dollars (i.e. in countries where their own currency is in a free-fall, where the government is trying to limit the supply of foreign currency, but people want to exchange their local currency for something more stable; people in Argentina, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and Turkey might want to do that).

If, for whatever reason, Russia pays for North Korean drones to murder Ukrainians, there's absolutely nothing the American government can do about that.

[Kwpolska]

The US and most of the world may recognise those pieces of paper as worth some of their currency. This doesn't mean I can't recognise them as toilet paper.

[tempodox]

You're free to make your toilet paper as expensive as you like, as long as you pay for it legally.

[greenavocado]

America's primary tool in warfare is economic in nature. Anybody that does business with the United States must comply with US sanctions.