in international waters

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

an idiom meaning beyond the jurisdiction of any single authority or outside the normal rules and oversight that apply within established domains, derived from the legal concept of the high seas as areas of ocean beyond national jurisdiction where no single state's law applies; to operate in international waters is to move into a space of reduced accountability, where the normal constraints of domestic oversight, regulation, and law enforcement are attenuated; the phrase is used figuratively to describe situations in which participants are operating in a legal, regulatory, or normative grey zone — a new technology that no existing law clearly covers, a business operating across jurisdictions in ways that allow it to arbitrage regulatory regimes, or a conversation that has moved beyond the boundaries of established social norms into territory where the usual rules of engagement are uncertain