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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

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First, he wasn't trying to go to Russia. He was routing himself to prevent being over allied controlled airspace so that they couldn't down his plane[1]. When the U.S. realized they couldn't get to him, they revoked his passport, which stranded him in Russia. That argument shouldn't even work now that the GOP fully embraces Russia as a good guy now.

Second, Thomas Drake did everything you say is the right, he paid the price[2]:

  | The first is Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on the
  | very same NSA activities 10 years before Snowden did.
  | Drake was a much higher-ranking NSA official than
  | Snowden, and he obeyed US whistleblower laws, raising
  | his concerns through official channels. And he got
  | crushed.

  | Drake was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI
  | agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged
  | with crimes that could have sent him to prison for
  | the rest of his life, and all but ruined financially
  | and professionally. The only job he could find
  | afterwards was working in an Apple store in suburban
  | Washington, where he remains today. Adding insult to
  | injury, his warnings about the dangers of the NSA’s
  | surveillance programme were largely ignored.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/02/world/americas/bolivia-presid...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon...

Why do people act like a passport is a magic document that is the only thing that allows people to cross borders? You don't need a passport to seek asylum. There are ways to leave Russia without boarding a commercial flight. He isn't Assange stuck in an embassy in which all entrances and exits could be easily monitored. There are ways he could have gotten himself smuggled out of Russia if that is what he truly wanted.

And I'm not saying that Snowden's life wouldn't be hard staying in the US, but it is notable that your example of Drake and my example of Manning are both now free. If those are the worst case scenarios for Snowden if he stayed in the US, he would also now be living life as a free man at this point. I understand if you think going through that ordeal is unfair, but that is the life one chooses when they decide to become a whistleblower. It is also the morally superior route compared to going to a country with an even worse surveillance record, being forced to swear allegiance to that country, and according to Greenwald continuing to leak things "out of self-preservation".

> There are ways he could have gotten himself smuggled out of Russia if that is what he truly wanted.

Wait what? Are you seriously asserting that if you place a random person in an airport in a random country that person is going to begin to have the knowledge needed to establish the right contacts (and pay them) to smuggle them out of the airport, much less the country?

This isn't a spy thriller, Snowden is a computer geek, not Jason Borne.

Snowden wasn't "a random person in an airport in a random country" forced to figure this out himself. He was an incredibly famous and important political figure that had numerous people, organizations, and even countries offering him help or helping him directly. This included both Wikileaks and the Venezuelan government who collaborated on plans to smuggle him out of Russia.

I can't find any sources to back up your claim that Venezuela and WikiLeaks, or anyone for that matter were offering to smuggle Snowden anywhere, but hey let's take that at face value. We'll assume Venezuela was prepared to take the risk of very publicly smuggling someone out of a Russian airport (which Russia would of course be completely chill about), and the resources to do it successfully.

In that scenario Snowden is taking an incredible risk to trade being stuck in Russia for being stuck in Venezuela, which is also considered a national security threat to the US and is also an authoritarian regime. How is that better?

Source about smuggling him out[1]

>Interviewed in August 2015 by the Bolivian newspaper El Deber, Assange stated that Wikileaks and the government of Venezuela discussed smuggling Snowden out of Russia aboard the presidential plane of either Venezuela or Bolivia.

Source about his other options for asylum [2]

>Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia offer asylum to Edward Snowden

The whole argument was that he was stuck in Russia because he couldn't get to where he really wanted. Where did he really want to go? From my understanding, that was Ecuador, but they didn't seem to want him there. I'm not judging Snowden specifically because he chose Russia over Venezuela. I am judging him for the hypocrisy of decrying US political oppression while fleeing to a country that is even more oppressive which seemed to be a forgone conclusion as soon as he left the US.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident...

[2] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/06/venezuela-nica...

"Discussing" something is not the same as offering it, and your same source mentions that indeed said plane was then grounded due to suspicions Snowden was on board. In other words someone discussed a plan, that had it been put into action would have failed. Not great evidence for "he could have left if he wanted to".

And it should be plainly obvious that offering someone asylum is not the same as offering to smuggle someone out of a foreign country.

>Discussing" something is not the same as offering it

I never said they were "offering" to smuggle him out. I said "collaborated on plans". The phrase you used is "discussed a plan". Are you really going to quibble over the semantic difference between those two?

>and your same source mentions that indeed said plane was then grounded due to suspicions Snowden was on board. In other words someone discussed a plan, that had it been put into action would have failed.

But it wasn't the actual plan because he wasn't on board. As I have said multiple times now in this thread, if he was on board, they could have planned the flight to not fly through the airspace of US allies. That was the only reason the plan was grounded. The US isn't going to shoot down a plane carrying a foreign head of state over international or foreign airspace.

>And it should be plainly obvious that offering someone asylum is not the same as offering to smuggle someone out of a foreign country.

No, but it is an offer that would have made him safe if he was smuggled there.

> No, but it is an offer that would have made him safe if he was smuggled there.

I don't think anyone is arguing that if he magically had the ability to be smuggled somewhere wouldn't then have options. But there's no evidence to suggest he had that ability.

The fact that Assange said "hey do you think you would want to smuggle Snowden out on your plane" and Venezuela said "nah, I'm not really looking for ways to piss of Russia and the US simultaneously" does not constitute an opportunity.

> here are ways to leave Russia without boarding a commercial flight. He isn't Assange stuck in an embassy in which all entrances and exits could be easily monitored. There are ways he could have gotten himself smuggled out of Russia if that is what he truly wanted.

They forcibly grounded the Ecuadorian presidents plane, causing a major diplomatic incident, just because they thought he might be on there (He wasn't). [0] But yeah, it'd be so easy for him to leave.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

If he was really on board, they wouldn't have planned to fly over the airspace of US allies. This incident is evidence that the intelligence community believed smuggling him out was possible, not that it was impossible.

Given his objective at the time was Ecuador, which lies across the sea from Russia, I find it very hard to believe he'd be crossing borders without taking at the very least a plane. And about seeking asylum, you are correct that a passport doesn't stop you from getting asylum, but when the official plane of a head of state is denied entry to the airspace of several European countries due to US suspicion that maybe snowden is on board[0], things become more complicated.

Trying to get himself smuggled out of russia is not realistic, and honestly kind of pointless at this point.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

Isn't that incident evidence that the governments of the US, Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy all believed it was feasible that he could be smuggled out?

Also, the plane was only grounded because the flight plan took them through the airspace of US allies. If Snowden really was on the plane, they could have chosen a different route to avoid this issue. The US isn't going to shoot down a plane carrying a foreign head of state over international waters because they suspect a potential criminal is on board.

> That argument shouldn't even work now that the GOP fully embraces Russia as a good guy now.

What?

Y’all have a very naive view of the US justice system.

> Snowden would have at least been able to argue his whistleblowing case in court if he stayed in the US and limited his leaks to illegal or quasi-illegal behavior

Snowden would not even be allowed to have a public trial, let alone “argue his case in court”? Are you kidding me? He is not even legally allowed to make a case for why the things he leaked were illegal.

Why do people act like Chelsea Manning is in Guantanamo or something? Snowden's initial leaks were much more targeted than Manning's. If he stayed in the country and didn't continue leaking, he could potentially be living life as a free person in the US just like Manning. Instead he made himself a villain by running and ruined any chance of returning to the US outside of handcuffs.

Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, and has only had her sentence commuted--she's not free.

That was the army, which is arguably much less dangerous for whistleblowers than the NSA.

What do you mean she isn't free? She isn't in prison.

If you want to be metaphorical, Snowden isn't close to free either. Manning has more freedom than Snowden.

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