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Maritime Piracy: Changes In U.S. Law Needed To Combat This Critical National Security Concern, Daniel Pines

Seattle University Law Review

Piracy threatens, and has taken, the lives of American crews and civilians. It poses an enormous economic threat, both in terms of ransom payments and impact on global commerce. It enhances political instability in significant regions of the world, such as the Horn of Africa and the Straits of Malacca. Most critically, though, maritime piracy offers an easy and tempting conduit for terrorism. Terrorists have already used maritime options to advance their cause in several dramatic attacks, including the hijacking of a cruise ship (and murder of a Jewish passenger), the ramming of a boat into a U.S. destroyer (killing …