Parliament seizes cache of Facebook internal papers

Many consider these powers to be essentially spent: they have not been exercised to any significant extent in a very long time, and since then various changes (e.g. the need to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights) have put them on very shaky ground. If he had refused to go along with the Serjeant at Arms, I suspect nothing would have happened because parliament is keen to avoid a small constitutional crisis over these powers, and to avoid losing even the power of threatening to actually use them. In particular the power to compel witnesses, documents and so on in a process that is entirely separate from the courts could conceivably breach the right to freedom of expression as protected by the ECHR.

I am surprised that he actually complied with this order, especially as the article says the documents were under a US court order restricting their dissemination/publication, but maybe what happened is the Serjeant at Arms appeared with these scary warnings, his lawyers didn't know quite what to do, so they just did what they were told even if they probably didn't have to.

It will be interesting to see what the US court makes of its order being broken due to the order of a foreign legislature.

-- A source on the status of these powers: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18875266

One is a court of competent jurisdiction ordering discovery. The other is not.

As far as i understand (from my British friends): They generally can compel people inside the UK to produce papers, but would not otherwise have jurisdiction to order much here.

Instead, they ordered a person in the UK to produce non-UK protected documents.

So what they did here is pretty extraordinary, and if everyone didn't hate facebook, would likely cause a very serious diplomatic incident.

One of the underlying problems is that they aren't six4three's documents to produce. They are not the owner or custodian of these documents.

They simply have access under a protected set of circumstances by court order.

This is quite literally compelled espionage: "Espionage or spying, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information without the permission of the holder of the information."

>Pretty bold move by the UK gov.

This wasn't the UK government, though, but Parliament through its Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

Parliament doesn't allow government ministers to be members of parliamentary committees, only backbenchers, as Committees are one of the main ways that Parliament holds the government to account.

For anyone wondering: the serjeant-at-arms is a mostly ceremonial role that keeps order in the common parts of the Parliament. You mainly see them carrying the Royal Mace, the symbol of executive power that is kept in Parliament for obvious symbolic reasons. They litterally enforce the authority of the Sovreign.

https://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/principal/serj...

Sending them in town has no close equivalent in the US, maybe threatening someone to be in Contempt of the Supreme Court.

1. You would not be allowed to take such documents on a random business trip to the UK. You are required to protect and treat them as confidential. If you were going to expose them to legal counsel in the UK for some reason, you would have had to seek the court's permission, etc.

2. The reason to assume is it because the story essentially implies it.

They didn't stop the guy and confiscate the stuff he had, they ordered him to produce them. If he had them with them, they wouldn't have to order him to do that. They would just escort him to his hotel room and take them :)

3. The story is also wrong about contempt, etc, at least on the set of facts they present.

The correct answer is to say "I am a citizen of the US, i am not the legal holder or custodian of these documents, i would like to speak to my embassy immediately". Let it be fought over in court.

Especially given our president, he would have made a big scene over the UK doing this to a US citizen, minimum.

Six4three LLC is a US company, its founder, ted kramer, is, as far as i can tell from court docs, a us citizen. They are not represented by an UK law firm.

(FWIW: all of this is why i suspect this was secret deal by six4three done to embarrass facebook)