Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

The CIA is not going to disappear him now that he went public. And he can't slip out of Hong Kong without everyone knowing. Seems to me that this can only workout in one of two ways. Either he requests and receives asylum from some 3rd party country before the US requests extradition so that Hong Kong can't stop him from leaving. But I suspect he has a short time window to make this happen, maybe only days before the US delivers the extradition request. At which point Hong Kong will probably take his passport.

If that doesn't happen then it'll just work its ways though the Hong Kong courts. If he attempts a legal delay and obstruction tactic similar to Assange it could take years. Meanwhile the US demonization will continue and the US/China/Hong Kong politics will wax and wane. But most probably he'd end up in a US jail eventually, with all the political fallout that that will entail.

He could be somewhat valuable for the Chinese in countering some PR claims against itself -- "China is monitoring dissidents", "China is hacking peaceful countries" etc etc. All that is true, but now that they have him in exchange of asylum he could become a talking head for them so they can now say "Aha, but US can't tell us anything concerting privacy, look at what they are doing!" And then invite him on a TV show to describe all the massive NSA surveillance apparatus.

What would he do? Would he cooperate with the traditional enemy? That might put his motives in question and he would become an easier target to slander. ("aha, he was a traitor all along, a Chinese spy etc etc.")

It wouldn't work for the reason in your second paragraph: he would loose too much credibility if he was seen as a mouthpiece for China.

"The CIA is not going to disappear him now that he went public."

I won't be surprised if they already got him.

When they make him disappear the world would scream horror for a week and the week after that nobody will even remember him.

I wouldn't be surprised if he left Hong Kong before we'd even heard of Edward Snowden. I imagine getting overland from China to Europe wouldn't be too difficult (we're talking high values of difficult here).

Equally he could have previously acquired an alternateidentity during his planning, and might even be in South America by now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com