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Comment by enko | Hacker News Reader

Man, how times have changed. I was born in the 70s and the US was the country you would run to to escape retribution for whistleblowing you did back home. (†)

For Snowden to be running to Russia to escape extradition from Hong Kong (!) is just fucking bizarro world for me. It is actually quite jarring. I don't trust Russia at all. But even thinking about it forces one to ask whether one trusts the USA. The answer to that is pretty jarring, too.

(†) I'm not making a right/wrong judgement about his actions. He blew a whistle, a whistle he thought needed to be blown. In my opinion that is a necessary check on state power and is a defence in and of itself.

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Really, they haven't. Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers (1971), was also also charged with espionage. In his case all the charges against him were dismissed. Not, to be clear, because of any contriteness on Nixon's part. Instead, it was because the government was found to have illegally bugged his phone and broken into the office of his psychiatrist in order to find material with which to discredit him. Several of those involved were later convicted as part of the watergate trials [0].

If you think things were better in the 70s, you really weren't paying attention.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg#Trial_and_mistr...

> because the government was found to have illegally bugged his phone

Man, how times have changed. Now espionage charges apply when someone leaks that the government bugged everyone's phone.

Because the lovely government has declared it legal under secret 'patriot' laws.

Uh, here you go: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ56/pdf/PLAW-107publ...

Yes. And that is unfortunate.

I wonder where the Govt found this opportunity and grabbed it without delay..was it the new way of terrorism? First propagating Islam-phobia and then bring in the restrains slowly - one by one? What was it exactly?

> If you think things were better in the 70s, you really weren't paying attention.

Yeah, well I was 3.

Even so I don't seem to recall Ellsberg fleeing the country to escape absolute certain injustice. I don't recall his video interview with a foreign paper while he hid in China. Do you?

Something has definitely changed.

Imagine how things might have turned out differently for Bradley Manning if he had a day or two to get out before his arrest.

Manning was a PFC in the Army. He wouldn't have been able to afford fleeing to Hong Kong or Moscow making less than $30,000 per year. He would have had a much more difficult time evading arrest.

How much money could such a fleeing really take? I mean, 30k isn't much at all, but would he even have been paying for rent or food while enlisted? If he managed to save up a few thousand for a few plane tickets and maybe a few days in a hotel on his own wallet, then that would be enough. I don't think a few thousand is a particularly unreasonable ask.

You're basing all this on a sample size of two.

How many famous whistleblowers are there?

For a broader sample base, you just widen your category a tiny little bit to Edward Snowden, Jeremy Hammond, Aaron Swartz, Bradley Manning and Jacob Appelbaum.

Aaron Swartz was a whistleblower?

That sample set would still be statistically insignificant.

I think the point is not that one should use larger samples, but rather than the conclusion is wrong since the sample is too small. Iow, there's no proof that the situation really changed in the US on the discussed topic.

You must mean, ones who are/were made public right?

>"because the government was found to have illegally bugged his phone and broken into the office of his psychiatrist

Can this not be actual legal precedence AGAINST the entire NSA debacle to begin with?

Seriously, can an IAMAL comment on if this could be used?

IANAL. My understanding of how these things work, however, is that the case against Ellsberg was dismissed by the trial judge, and therefore does not establish any precedent. If he'd been convicted, and the conviction overturned on appeal (and the conviction's having been overturned was upheld in any appeals thereof), then precedent would have been created.

The reason it works this way is that trial courts are venues for finding facts, while appellate courts are vehicles for addressing questions of law surrounding those findings of fact. It's how those questions of law are resolved, so-called "case law", that creates precedents.

IANAL; corrections welcome.

Ellsberg has been saying that things were in fact better back then. He was arrested, released on bail, and spent the next couple years able to tell his story to the media. Manning was arrested and kept in solitary for almost four years before his trial, isolated from the outside world.

Ellsberg was a civilian, employed by the RAND Corporation [1] when he leaked the Pentagon Papers, which was a political report commissioned by a politician (Secretary of Defense McNamara). [2]

Manning was serving in active military duty when he leaked actual military data (albeit historical). There is a huge difference there. When you do something like that in the military, you get court-martialed, which is a different set of rules than civilian court. I do think that 4 years of solitary confinement is beyond excessive, but the military has to court-martial him. I'm guessing it's all spelled out in the military handbook, and I don't think anyone would have expectations otherwise.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_papers

Snowden was a civilian contractor. If caught, do you think he would be treated more like Ellsberg or Manning?

I know how I'd place my bet.

Two thoughts: Russia has already offered Edward Snowden asylum. And we don't have independent confirmation that he's on that flight that lands in about 4 hours; we have just the SCMP report, and the destination isn't mentioned in the HK government statement. I wouldn't be surprised if some if it were misinformation.

> Two thoughts: Russia has already offered Edward Snowden asylum.

Do you have a source for this?

I trust you tried Googling "Russia Snowden asylum?" :) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/edward-snowden-r...

While I like your friendly answer, I would really prefer sources to be mentioned alongside statements in HN discussions. Saying "just google it if you do not believe me" places the burden of verification on the reader, whereas it should be the author's duty to ease such verification. When I find 'Source: guardian.co.uk/...' in a discussion, this gives me the warm, fuzzy feeling of being able to easily verify your claims - even if I do trust you.

Why should it be the author's duty to guess at what level of "verification" is enough to satisfy you?

I agree that some people may want to see more evidence than others. Of course, there is no clear boundary between "obvious" and "needs proof". However, I found that most people are quite able to judge whether it would be helpful to include a source for a statement. I think that within most discoursive communities there is an implicit consensus on when a statement needs an explanation or a supporting source for it to be accepted [1].

Regarding the author's "duty": Maybe I should have called it 'courtesy' instead. On the other hand, if I am not completely mistaken, HN was intended as a forum for constructive and thoughtful low-noise discussions. As I want to profit from these discussions, I personally see it as my duty to make my comments as helpful as possible. I would argue that including source for statements more often is beneficial to a discussion than not. Therefore, I prefer to see sources.

[1] sorry, no source but my own experience as a member of some scientific communities and online forums.

A thought experiment, I imagine.

    1) Would it piss off the USA a whole lot if Russia offered Snowden asylum?

    2) Yes

    3) Russia offered Snowden asylum

I'm confused at how this is a "source."

You could say the same about North Korea, but it wouldn't make it mean they actually offered asylum.

I was being humorous.

Ironic, people used to seek asylum in US from persecution in other countries. How times have changed? Now people run to other countries for asylum to avoid persecution in US. More and more land of the free is becoming land of tyrants.

> Ironic, people used to seek asylum in US from persecution in other countries. How times have changed? Now people run to other countries for asylum to avoid persecution in US. More and more land of the free is becoming land of tyrants.

Lol. Russia is a place where journalists are routinely murdered, where governors are appointed like local fiefs, where Putin has rigged elections and brutally intimidated opponents.

If you think Snowden is going there to avoid "persecution" I don't know what la-la-land you live in. He's going to run from the law, and he's going there because Russia is still geo-political public enemy #1, and they are giving him asylum not because he is some champion of human dignity (he lost that when he fled to China and revealed a whole lot more that was unrelated to surveillance), but because he has valuable information and having him in their possession obviously advances some political goals for them.

>>not because he is some champion of human dignity (he lost that when he fled to China and revealed a whole lot more that was unrelated to surveillance)

He didn't lose shit. He revealed the fact that the USA targets and wiretaps non-military targets (universities, civilians, etc.) in China and Hong Kong. This is still whistleblowing, and these revelations make me think even more highly of him.

Now, if he had told them which military targets the USA was spying on, he would have stepped into traitor catagory. But targeting non-combatants is illegal under multiple international treaties that the USA has signed. As such, the USA is breaking the law and Snowden has the duty to reveal that.

Just curious, do you have the same indignation that China does the exact same thing?

I don't, because China doesn't CLAIM to not do so. And doesn't try to drum up disapproval of the USA for doing it. By contrast do you remember the CIPSA nonsense?

Russia isn't Snowden's final destination. Moscow is just his layover.

Right, Cuba or Venezuela is his final destination. Does this change my point at all?

We don't know yet what his destination is. Some people claim Iceland or Ecuador.

I'm choosing not to give him the benefit of the doubt since his intermediaries so far have been HK (a free society, but still under the clutches of PRC and not totally free) and Russia (need not say more about its trampling of human rights).

Even if I agree in your labeling of HK and Russia, I don't think Snowden had a better choice.

Can you suggest something different Snowden could have done?

20,000-40,000 people per year seek asylum in the US; we're discussing one person who has fled the US to avoid prosecution. Let's not overreact.

yeah guys. let's all calm down. the status quo is just fine. this guy is just an aberration.

Uh, he is, though. How many people try to seek asylum from the US each year?

> I was born in the 70s and the US was the country you would run to to escape retribution for whistleblowing you did back home.

I assume you meant "your home" != USA. But even now many people still seek asylum in the USA.

As for Russia, it is certainly more free than in 70s, but a lot of people run from Russia because of prosecution for political reasons.

Did Assata Shakur find a safe haven here in the U.S. in the '70s? Read her autobiography. I don't think "times have changed" so much. There's just a larger number of political dissidents now (as there should be). The Internet and 24/7 sensationalism in the media have made exposing government lies more scandalous, too.

Assata Shakur? The terrorist? Of course she did not "find a safe haven here in the U.S." while she and her Black Liberation Army were shooting people and blowing up buildings. The police were trying to put her in jail.

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"just"? The BLA was shooting people and blowing up buildings, no scare quotes needed, they actually did that. That is why the police were after them: they were breaking the law in a serious way. How confused do you have to be to say that they should not have been investigated for these crimes because they were doing something else also?

Russia will not risk a fairly good relationship with the US because of a "rogue" NSA contractor. They will readily hand him over at the first request (if not voluntary). I'd say it's a risk for Snowden to even land in Moscow. Possibly, it was the lesser evil on the way to safe haven in Cuba or some place else.

have you been paying attention? Putin has shown quite a bit of disdain for Obama for many years and this year he just about dismisses him. When has Russia done much of anything recently to show its earnest co work with us?

If anything the past years have reset a lot of relationships and not for the better.

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