Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow
wikileaks.org
wikileaks.org
If you really want to be an idealistic but hard-headed freedom-fighter, mobilizing an effective popular movement for more freedom wherever you live, I suggest you read deeply in the publications of the Albert Einstein Institution,
http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html
remembering that the transition from dictatorship to democracy described in those publications is an actual historical process with recent examples around the world that we can all learn from.
AFTER EDIT: Good catch by the readers who noticed the non-American English in the Wikileaks press release here (mentioned in other comments in this thread). The press release kindly submitted here is plainly not Edward Snowden's verbatim words, but more self-publicizing from Wikileaks.
In certain contexts, that word means 'counter-revolutionary', so be careful when using it to describe WikiLeaks. It's good that you had the presence of mind to include that i.e.! ;)
Many (not all, but many) of my leads to breaking news on surveillance and data-collection programs come from Hacker News, which includes worldwide participation, so it is a bit surprising that there is so much news about the United States here. Other news aggregation services I rely on (including the wall posts of my literate, diverse, worldwide group of Facebook friends) indeed include more news about other countries than HN sometimes does.
What are the best sources we can readily link to today about surveillance and data-collection practices in China and in Russia?
AFTER EDIT TO RESPOND TO REPLY BELOW: I already know Chinese, as a review of quite recent comments of mine here on Hacker News would make abundantly clear. My Russian is rusty, as I haven't kept it up through daily use since the early 1980s, but I have read the Russian press (of the communist era) in the original Russian, and I still take care to be aware of the Russian official and Russian popular perspectives on world news.
First, you'll want to try learning Chinese or Russian.
In any case Wikileaks is opportunistic, they rely on leaks wherever they may originate.
HN is extremely americanocentric.
>I'd really like to see Wikileaks devoting more of its time, energy,
>and fund-raising into breaking news about government-operated
>surveillance programs in the last two countries where Edward
>Snowden has been located, namely China and Russia.
You'll notice that much of the furor has come from the idea that the NSA might be watching what Americans are doing. For everything else there was effectively a big giant "Of course they were bugging $FOO, that's their job".
Obviously Europe doesn't feel the same way (and didn't with ECHELON)...
The rich would have made more money selling arms to both sides. (In fact some did.)
"wall Street and the Rise of Hitler"
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0945001533
You can probably find it as a pdf someplace too, as it is a pretty old book. Read it and try to see the difference between the US industrialists and German industrialists in the dock at Nueremburg. Same sh*t, different piles imho.
Their people or their governments? Their people disagree with this, as we do. Their governments have long appeared to be cooperating, even if they drop their monocles into their drinks every time something like this comes out.
But I would presume that even parliamentary government must bow to public outcry in some form.
Yes, and? Did Europe intervene in the American Civil War, or in any of the multitude of conflicts in the Americas, East Asia, or Africa over the past 200 years? Even the rest of Europe abandoned Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Germans before Poland fell. Going to war is a huge commitment, and doing it purely for the benefit of a continent that has spent the last several centuries hell-bent on destroying itself sounds like a really bad idea.
The worst part is, when the US government does see a situation that calls for military intervention, like Vietnam or Iraq, that gets criticized as well.
Which is why the US was reluctant to get involved in the World Wars. You can't have it both ways.
One is the good democratic fight versus the bad facists. US were hampered by the isolationist views held by quite a number of senators at the time, hence there was no direct involvement until after Pearl Harbour attack, which resulted in an almost uniform senatorial agreement on declaration of war.
Another is that US could have kept maintaining the profit stream from arms-dealing to both sides (Germany still imported American arms prior to 1941 or so, if I'm not mistaken) but got unwillingly dragged into the war.
Yet another more cynical view is that after the huge Axis loss at USSR, US just saw the opportunity to join in and mope up what's left of the Axis since winners get to dictate the terms. The Pearl Harbour event was a surprising but timely excuse.
"huge Axis losses" in the USSR didn't start happening until 1943 though. Even the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad wasn't until the end of 1942.
So that view is not merely cynical, it's also simply inaccurate.
Of course Pearl Harbour was what got the US directly involved and nuking Japan out in the end, but I hold the speculation that without Pearl Harbour, US would still declare war to either Germany or Japan anyway because of several reasons below: 1) US businesses were being harmed by the Axis, i.e. Germans attacking cargo ships meant to supply arms to Britain. Sooner or later the piled up losses would justify the entry in front of Congress.
2) The Japanese was expanding fast in Asia and they would not stop just short of US territorial waters, plus the imposed embargo had been pissing the Japanese off anyway. A clash was inevitable.
3) Letting USSR being the major player and eventual winner meant letting communism spread throughout Europe. There had to be a sizable participation from the Capitalist group in the war and the rest of the Western bloc was too tattered to muster that up.
The fact that that's not how it worked out is pretty good evidence that there wasn't a global capitalist conspiracy behind the whole thing after all.
The 19th century's balance of power was essentially established by intervening in other countries so as to not plunge the entire continent into war. During the Spring of Nations in 1848, Austria, Prussia and France intervened in several smaller European countries (as well as internally) to crush uprisings.
During the American Civil War, there were a couple of wars in Europe, which were much more interesting to Europeans, as these were part of the German and Italian unification wars. Besides, the USA was nowhere as powerful during the 1860s as Europe was in the 1910s, so the comparison is not really useful.
Remember, states don't have friends, they have interests. Why would the Europeans intervene in a civil war of yours? But besides that, the Europeans did intervene in several conflicts around the world, particularly in places where they had interests. Such as the Latin American independence wars (as well as other wars in Latin America), African revolts (remember the 19th century was the scramble for Africa) and East Asia wars that threatened their trading ports (such as the Boer War).
Which was my point--why would Americans intervene in a war of yours?
Whining about Europe 'not intervening' in the 1860s completely misses the massive changes going on in Europe at the time - it's not like Europe was sitting around peacefully not doing anything in particular like the US was at the start of each World War. Only a few years after the US civil war finished, Germany came into existence and successfully invaded Paris, for example.
Even the rest of Europe abandoned Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Germans before Poland fell
Nice. In one breath you chide Europe for always being at war, in the next you chide them for not going to war enough.
Did Europe intervene ... in any of the multitude of conflicts in the Americas, East Asia, or Africa over the past 200 years
Yes, Europe did - the death of colonialism happend after WWII, considerably nearer to us than 200 years ago. The UK fought an open war against a South American nation only 30 years ago. The French still regularly intervene in Africa. The French fought in Vietnam up until Dien Bien Phu Falls in 1954, only 20 years before the US bugged out of there.
Hell, the UK fought against the Japanese in WWII, which again is much closer to our time than 200 years ago.
And the Russians - still a European country - intervened all over the place. Afghanistan throughout the 80s, for example. Immense amounts of material aid to North Vietnam. So on and so forth.
Good old American Exceptionalism. No-one else ever does anything, it's always up to the 'world cop' (who happens to be very selective about what he's policing). You've got a really simplistic view of European political history - I encourage you to read up a lot more on it (if nothing else, it's really quite interesting).
And when Germany manages to do that for the third time in 80 years, it's America's fault for not intervening?
Look, all I'm trying to do is refute the idea that it's somehow the responsibility of the US to step in and intervene whenever a war breaks out somewhere in the world. Germany invading Poland and France wasn't relevant enough to American interests to justify sending men across the Atlantic to die. It just seemed like business as usual. You can call that isolationism but it's not like any of the European powers stuck their neck out when it wasn't in their interests.
I mean, come on. You have just said that Iraq was a war that 'called for intervention', but you say the same is not true of the Nazis? This is despite nearly 10 years of a steady exodus of Jews from Germany to the US and other countries? It's not like no-one knew that the Nazis were oppressive, it's just the depth that they would eventually get to that was unknown.
You can call that isolationism but it's not like any of the European powers stuck their neck out when it wasn't in their interests.
I never said the US should be faulted for isolationism, though it is odd you cheer both their early isolationism and their later interventionism. I said that you were mischaracterising what was going on and engaging in double-standards.
For example, given that the French were intervening this year in Mali, as 'France' and not part of the UN, how does this stack up against your claim of "Europeans don't intervene in Africa and haven't for 200 years"? Where are the US ground troops intervening in Africa? The US navy, along with European ones, are intervening against the Somali pirates, but that's to protect shipping, it's not to help the people. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some, but I'm unaware of any.
Look, all I'm trying to do is refute the idea that it's somehow the responsibility of the US to step in and intervene whenever a war breaks out somewhere in the world.
The US bills itself as the 'world cop', which was exactly its rationale for invading Iraq. It's natural for people to expect it to live up to its own rhetoric.
Stop posturing--these remarks add nothing to the discussion.
> France and the UK were both hastily remilitarising and were buying time. Everyone knew war was coming, but the UK and the French needed more time to prepare, and it wasn't just the US that was suffering from economic depression in the 30s. They knew for 20 years that there would be another war - Marshal Foch said of the Treaty of Versailles "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years". He was only two months out.
I don't see how that's anywhere at odds with what I'm saying, which is that Europe tended to have these wars from time to time and the US was justifiably reluctant to intervene.
> You have just said that Iraq was a war that 'called for intervention'
I said that's how the US government saw it at the time.
> but you say the same is not true of the Nazis?
> ...
> though it is odd you cheer both their early isolationism and their later interventionism
I did no such thing--I said it's hypocritical to criticize America for both isolationism and for interventionism. Please read what I actually wrote and make an honest attempt to comprehend it.
> The US bills itself as the 'world cop'
In 1939 they did that?
My whole point, which you have arrogantly refused to comprehend, has been to justify the initial American non-intervention in WWII, and in WWII the US never billed itself as any such thing.
I can offer no defense of American interventionism. I think it's consistently been a mistake. But if you're going to go around arguing that the US should have been interventionists in World War II, then you have to accept what it looks like when the US pursues a foreign policy of interventionism. Most people don't like how that turns out. Most people would prefer if the US would mind its own business and not get involved in wars overseas, but if they hold that position, it's hypocritical of them to criticize the US for not directly joining the Second World War before they had a good reason to.
No.
> or in any of the multitude of conflicts in the Americas
Yes, particular one that overlapped the American Civil War in time and neighbored it geographically. [1] Perhaps less in the Americas then elsewhere (particularly when the US wasn't tied up in its own civil war) due to the US's proclamation of regional hegemony (the Monroe Doctrine) and desire not get into a fight over that.
> East Asia
Again, yes, quite regularly.
> or Africa over the past 200 years
There, too.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_intervention_in_Mexico
Thankfully not, as the upper class in Britain at least tended to favour the Confederacy.
> East Asia
There's few parts of the world you could list that is a worse example of places Europe haven't intervened.
European powers were either one of the major sides or a supporting power in most wars in East Asia for a substantial part of the last couple of centuries.
You do realize the US "inherited" the Vietnam war with the associated campaigns in Laos and Cambodia from France, do you not?
That the US fought with the British, French and Russian empires against China in the Opium wars?
Now, arguably those are not good arguments for continued intervention. On the contrary. While I think there were some very good reasons why the US ought to have intervened in World War II earlier, I also wish the US had learned more lessons from some of the wars mentioned above (and a lot of other foolish wars the European colonial powers were involved in).
Instead the US seems to have seen the way the waning colonial powers acted as a recipe for how it needed to behave as its own power grew, with - for anyone paying attention to the outcomes of the colonial wars - predictably horrible outcomes.
> Even the rest of Europe abandoned Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Germans before Poland fell
It's easy to look back and regret those. But the politics around them, and the patchy history of Europe, made them politically "tricky". The Austrian "Anschluss" happened on the background of the German Austria's previous attempts to merge with Germany, which was denied it by treaty, including the Treaty of Versailles. In 1938 Austria was under a semi-fascist dictatorship, and there was then pressure for a referendum on the issue (with extensive support and threats from Hitler). Facing lack of support from Mussolini who had previously protected them against Hitler, the Austrian government accepted a large number of nazis into government, who then used their positions to prepare and conduct a coup against the austro-fascists supported by threats of force on the basis of allegations of plans to rig the referendum. It was then the Austrian nazi government that handed control over to Germany in a manner designed to effectively be a request from the Austrian state for the Germans to enter Austria. They then carried out a vote to legitimise the takeover.
The combination of events made it politically extremely hard for outsiders to do much more than complain. Europe should go to war because a government asked for military support from a neighbour following allegations that the previous dictator may have tried to prevent the will of the people, in the face of widespread public support for the nazis? In retrospect, probably. But without the knowledge of what Hitler went on to do, it was squabbling between two authoritarian governments over control of an artificially created country with a history of wanting to merge, where the new dictator likely had as much or maybe even more support than the old dictator.
In the case of Czechoslovakia similarly, the state was an artifical creation from parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that included a substantially ethnically German population in certain areas (Germans made up 23% of the population of Czechoslovakia) that had genuine grievances of oppression against the elite of the country, and the government also purposefully moved parts of the German population to the West, making it even easier to make excuses.
So Hitler was similarly able to play the role of someone who at least plausibly wanted to "liberate" the German population, and present the whole thing as "rectifying" a situation that was only 20 years old and an outcome of a previous war when the will of the people in question had been largely ignored when the borders were drawn up, and so got Sudetenland. When Hitler went into the rest of Czechoslovakia, he got the support of Slovakia, and both Hungary and Poland used the opportunity to annex area - he was not the only agressor, and support for going to war over Czechoslovakia when even the government over a substantial part of the twenty year old country took part in the aggression against the rest and supported the German invasion was not an appealing proposition.
While there were certainly fears and lots of people who had concerns about it, Hitler played people up against each other, and was dealing with governments who all had gotten their hands dirty in drawing up fairly arbitrary borders without the involvement of the affected people and/or through wars within the last few decades. Combine that with a strong degree of denial - nobody wanted to rush into a new war - and a lot of admiration for what Hitler had achieved domestically in Germany, coupled with a grudging acceptance that perhaps giving these people what they seemed to want might not be such a bad idea if it resolved some of the remaining tensions created by the Treaty of Versailles.
In retrospect, of course, that was stupid. But then in retrospect it was stupid to not intervene when Hitler remilitarised areas Germany was not allowed to militarise and in a whole host of other situations leading up to the war.
But the cases of Czechoslovakia and Austria were still substantially different than the case of Poland, both because they came first, but also because they were clouded in politics and could be "explained away" as something other than naked aggression. By the time of the invasion of Poland, though, there was no denying that Hitlers ambitions did not stop at "liberating" German speaking groups in weird little newly created states, and with the rapid fall of further states
Sidebar to a sidebar, but it went a little deeper than that. The British industrialists tended to favor the South -- and supplied weapons to the Confederacy in the lead up to the war -- because they depended on Southern cotton imports. Their industrial interests were heavily tied up with the South's.
There was actually a very real possibility that Britain would have gone further, and a lot of internal political pressure for it to do so.
Yes they did. Both Vietnam and Iraq are leftovers from European interventions.
The US would have joined the war. By 1940, the US was practically involved in the war, just without men. German U-Boats were sinking American convoys, and American ships were destroying German U-Boats.
It was only a matter of time before the US would have joined the war, Pearl Harbor or not. FDR was prepared to fight it without the approval of Congress.
The US entry into the First World War was primarily to be a participant in the peace negotiations, so Wilson could present his 14 points, create the League of Nations and ensure American dominance in world politics (something the USA has refrained from participating in prior to the First World War, despite its economical power).
The Second World War pretty much started with American involvement, but it was not until Pearl Harbor that the USA could finally - publicly - commit its entire arsenal. But regardless, you would have found a way to join the war. Japan just did you a favour.
As for spying on non-Americans...we have decades of propaganda ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H movies that make that cool and desirable.
Is it not possible he dictated it and WikiLeaks typed it and published it? Or someone at WikiLeaks checked for typos using a British-English spell checker and corrected a few US-English spellings?
At the end of the day, it only matters if a person puts their name behind a statement or not.
Lets be frank here, Snowden is in this situation because he's a dumbass, and he shouldn't have trusted his well being to Wikileaks either. Wikileaks couldn't have saved Bradley Manning, nor do they have the manpower to make Snowden safe.
Snowden leaked information without any plan B. He gave up all of his friends and family and decided to try and live in a strange (US-allied) country while he hid from the long arm of the law... while publicly thumbing his nose. Booz Allen didn't even know he was in Hong Kong when he revealed himself to the world as the NSA leaker. He was still on NSA (related) payroll and was fired after the fact.
Instead of taking advantage of that time to hide, he taunted an entire nation. And the dumbass newspaper reporters let him do it too, without any regard for his safety. Without trying to consult him, or without thinking of the consequences.
After all, coming out with the story was more important than this guy's safety.
This guy has no friends left, and has trapped himself in an even worse country where they openly persecute people like him. Lets see what happens now...
With greater technology comes inevitable supervision over such things, and it isn't in the name of reading about your browsing habits unless you enjoy children being abused or bombing buildings. The only shame is the lack of transparency about the surveillance, but again, this whole thing should have been completely obvious to just about anyone. Snowden is a traitor and a coward for leaking the obvious (while running off to hide instead of facing the demons he accuses so arrogantly) and Assange is a horrible person for a bunch of other reasons.
I think that's kind of sad.
1. PRISM is an apparatus just waiting for another government to use it against the US. Who's to say that Russia, China, etc. haven't been using it to spy on Americans, too? I mean, it's clearly not that hard to get access. Yes - they might not look at your porn history, but perhaps they will use some useful political information against one of your leaders and fuck you up.
2. What would happen if the government was to have a good reason to misuse the information they were gathering. What would happen if a fascist party was to come into power?
3. Calling Assange a horrible person is small-minded. Don't make this about personalities; this is about individual freedom, the right to a transparent government, the constitution your country was founded upon, and human rights.
4. Rather a traitor to the government than a traitor to the principles that made the US what it once was. Unless you want mediocrity...
It's not about "nothing to hide": when anyone can be blackmailed, including judges and lawmakers and law enforcement, the entire system of interlocking checks and balances breaks down.
The FBI threatened MLK Jr with exposing his extramarital affair (they'd discovered via surveillance) if he didn't give up his civil rights work.
You may not have anything to hide, but many do, for entirely legal reasons, and it is shameful of you to deny them their right to privacy.
If you truly have absolutely nothing to hide, it is quite unlikely you are doing very significant work to meaningfully improve the world.
As I wrote in another comment, it's not just surveillance for state purposes, it's also surveillance for the corporate interests of the state (pharmaceuticals, agribusiness/GMOs, oil lobby, etc.). What if the big 3 auto makers were so powerful that they tried to crush Tesla by subtly targeting its customers and employees with fake bad news (oh wait, maybe they're already doing it). I'm convinced that some of the spying on the EU was over agricultural policies such as their strong anti-GMO stance--US companies would love to have advance knowledge to maneuver around them. I'm not sure it's happening yet, then again, how would we know?
[1] http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/king-like-all-frauds-yo...
Rather, what you should have an issue with is them having information about you that is deeply personal and private in nature. Have you or a significant other ever had to get an abortion? Have you ever had trouble maintaining an erection? Are you one of the 30% of women who cannot achieve an orgasm? Do you have any mental disorders, sexually-transmitted diseases, or genetic conditions? How large is your penis? Have you ever been attracted to someone of the same sex? Have you ever fantasized about child porn, fat porn, necrophilia, etc.? Have you ever attempted suicide?
Most importantly: do you believe that the government knowing all of this about you - and everyone else - makes you safer?
Its the fact that if I happen to spend private time doing/thinking/talking about anything someone in the government finds objectionable with anybody someone in the government finds objectionable, I will get flagged and investigated.
Seriously, I couldn't care less if facebook employees read my posts, they have no power to hurt my life. Gmail employees laughing over my email? go for it. Mozilla employees discovering my personal fetish for modget donkey porn? meh.
But the government? I am now dependent on nobody in the governmental apparatus finding my private opinions and speech objectionable or questionable, now or ever in the future.
Fuck that. Either they stop doing that, or I stop expressing my private opinions to other people.
Society loses if the second one occurs on a massive scale. we have entered a really bad place.
Start by thinking of FICO scores or credit histories. Similar concepts can be applied to eligibility for all kinds of 'privately' provided parts of society - job screenings, auto insurance.
Imagine vacation rentals where the owner can screen people out based on political affiliation... the are any number of ways in which private institutions can quietly 'hurt your life' using all this personal data.
I was somewhat understating concerns about private companies there to avoid diluting the conversation too much, but I totally agree.
Hell, anyone could put their hands up to blackmail me over my midget donkey fetish, it doesn't have to be the government - but it does reach a particularly nasty level when it is government policy.
So he would have been much braver by never leading anything? That's a strange definition of coward. Besides the fact that if it was "obvious" like you say, then how is it a leak?
This is doublethink. It's either obvious, or he's traitor for leaking it. It can't be both.
I think that is a mistaken position to be in. It assumes a couple of things -- that people who disagree with the program do so because they are doing hidden illegal things and now those would come to light.
Another assumption is that the government makes no mistakes, is not malicious, can be trusted with such information, and now or in the future it will not misuse it.
This is all coming from the same entity that tortured people while talking about human right and freedom. I am not sure trusting it to "not do the wrong thing" this your history is a rational choice.
At this point trusting it with all this information is no better than trusting a toddler with a box of matches and a can of gasoline.
Let's imagine the presidential election, in the next 10 or 20 years, if the incumbent misuses the tools to find out that his/her pro-life opponent had an abortion (or in its close family), it could change the turn of the election.
You can apply the same kind of reasoning to any whistle-blower reporting corruption, pollution, or a toxic drug. It will become much easier to silence and blackmail them.
Democracy is funded in part on the equilibrium of powers, a dragnet collecting everyone's life, is breaking this fragile thing.
Given that the Congress creates over 50 new federal crimes each year, and where you live, your local government probably also doesn't sit on its hands, are you completely sure you'd never want the government not to know absolutely everything about you? Really sure?
>>> Snowden is a traitor and a coward
I'd give you a traitor - he certainly violated the conditions of his employment and clearance, even if for an arguably good reason, but coward? I'd think it takes guts to take on the US government alone, knowing he'd probably spend rest of his life either hiding or in jail, or maybe eventually both. Would you dare to do the same? If you knew something is wrong and you know it - would you dare to do this, knowing your life will never be the same? It definitely not a behavior of a coward.
>>> while running off to hide instead of facing the demons he accuses so arrogantly
Getting away from an overwhelming force that has every reason to crush you and every possibility is not cowardice, it is a natural act of every human who values his life and liberty.
I hear arguments daily on the subject of the new Xbox and M$'s latest privacy invasion, but most everyone has no clue who Ed Snowden is or what NSA/PRISM are all about.
Please report yourself to the authorities. For the next 5 years I would like you to reflect on the logical flaw of the argument.
I realize you're being hyperbolic, but there's a big difference between some random person slinging around accusations on the internet, and a police force in a sovereign nation deciding that a criminal complaint lodged by one of its citizens warrants the arrest and questioning of a suspect in the case.
Not to mention that the translation (and gravity ) of the crime is closer to "sexual misdemeanor"/"sexual misconduct" rather than "rape".
And that's without even getting into how little sense the conspiracy theory itself makes.
There's a fairly high standard you have to meet to make a claim like that, and just stating that "most reasonable people recognize" your claims of an anti-Assange conspiracy don't suffice to carry the point.
No-one apart from tinfoil hat loonies thinks the charges are trumped up.
And just how many of the suspects in those cases go hiding in embassies to avoid a European arrest warrant?
That phrasing makes it sound like these numbers come from your ass; feel free to correct my impression.
> but has only pursued Assange with this level of detail.
What level of detail? They happen to know exactly who their suspect is and exactly where he has run off to, and thus far what they've done is ask that he be returned.
>If they vigorously extradited every accused rapist who had fled Sweden, that would be highly respected, and Assange would have had far fewer sympathizers for holing up in an embassy.
What does this even mean? How many accused rapists flee Sweden every year? I have no idea, and I bet you don't either. Maybe Assange is the one guy who's fled the country in the last year and this is what they do. Maybe they do vigorously attempt to extradite every single accused rapist that flees abroad. Maybe the Swedish authorities are working harder on this case because it's high profile and they're trying to avoid a PR mess domestically.
You're assuming skulduggery where there's perfectly reasonable explanations, and - this is me guessing here, so if you can reasonably show me to be wrong, I'll happily admit that - you're pulling assertions from your ass to back that assumption up. Stop that.
I don't know how many of these cases are closed per year, but I think it's fair to assume that not all of them are closed within year.
(I'm not arguing for/against the Assange case here.)
Given the recent history of CIA kidnappings and other shenanigans, there is reasonably doubt that this would be the case.
So there isn't actually a disagreement on morals or ethics - just a disagreement about empirical observations.
They were interviewed by a friend of one of the women, in violation of police procedure, and the police on that basis decided to start an investigation without a complaint from the women. An investigation the first prosecutor closed down because she claimed there was no case to answer at all.
One of the women have since consistently refused to sign the police interview protocols.
Now, this might happen if someone is raped. But as it stands, it is unclear to what extent the women even agree with the police transcripts, much less with the police's interpretation of what they said.
Doesn't mean you can run away and avoid facing trial. For example, in Australia, if you flee from a Breath test (drunk driving) without being tested, your punishment is guaranteed to be as bad or worse than as if you were caught drunk driving. Presumption of innocence is a right granted to you as part of a legal system. When you refuse to operate within that legal system... you can't pick and choose the bits you want to apply to you.
To me the case is so murky- I would have no trouble believing that Assange was completely set up, but at the same time from his behaviour I would have no trouble believing he was guilty either. But as long as he avoids facing a trial, you can't just say "we must assume he is innocent". That is a right granted to you as part of a process where you will face a courtroom at some point.
They're both known for wanting to substantially tighten rape laws in Sweden, and the lawyer in question is a partner in a law firm that also includes a former Swedish minister of justice from the time Sweden was complicit in illegal CIA renditions - as revealed by Wikileaks. Rather than a conspiracy, they might just have decided he was a convenient person to make an example of, score some political points on, and as an extra bonus he was someone they don't like.
Note that the above is not mutually exclusive with him actually being guilty of a crime. He could perfectly well be guilty and a victim of an overzealous prosecutor.
I really don't want to make a judgement either way. I do think that there's something fishy about the way the case has been pursued, though, but I'm inclined to think that a Swedish prosecutor with ambitions is sufficient - there's no need to infer outside interference.
Spoiler Alert: A mad neocon would probably want Snowden and Assange dead.
Why am I even taking the time to explain this?
Perhaps showing support for Snowden will help other content come out, but looking at the huge effort President Obama and Vice Clownshoes Biden have put together to get this guy into the brig, not fucking likely. They have done a good job of isolating Snowden and making future whistle-blowing less likely.
In fact, back in 2009, Assange told me personally he was surprised not to have received more information from China.
Admittedly the documents keep getting pulled but apparently they are available on DocumentCloud still.
But I just checked the Ecuador page at WikiLeaks [2] and have yet to see anything. Maybe they just need more time to authenticate the contents? Although then again, Ecuador itself seems to have authenticated it [3].
On that note, Ecuador's page at WikiLeaks seems pretty sparse after 2009 or so. I guess there have been any major secrecy scandals since then in Ecuador?
[1] http://thedesk.matthewkeys.net/2013/06/28/scribd-removes-buz... [2] http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Ecuador [3] http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/ecuador-defends-domestic-s...
Why exactly are we still talking about the messenger(s)? How is this productive?
The goal is to make the world better. Nitpicking about Snowden, his associates, his travel, his criminal behavior or lack thereof, Wikileaks, Assange, and all of this other stuff is completely orthogonal, soap-opera bullshit that has nothing to do with that goal.
We should be focusing now on how to a) spread the word about the constitutional abuses and systemic coverup being perpetrated by NSA and b) working toward building a legal environment wherein these types of circumstances are not only legally prohibited but also cannot be re-engineered in practice either.
People there know there is an extreme censorship and corruption.
IMO the higher government needs to take extreme measure against corruption.
(Note: I am against the death penalty)
I don't find that's the case. Living in the US, it's not surprising that most of what you hear from WikiLeaks is about the US. Take a look at their homepage (http://wikileaks.org) for example, most featured stories are not about the US.
While I agree that surveillance happens everywhere, USA is in unique position of power to do it, considering how much of internet traffic moves through US-based companies. That said, I also agree that the very fact of existence of outrage caused by PRISM is telling about the US citizens and government, people in Russia, for example, assume that tchekists from FSB are already watching every their step or at the very least able to do so.
I don't know about Russia, but in China it's pretty well known by everyone that the PRC is watching you; China doesn't claim to be a democratic republic either. It's not a secret or revelation to even people in the West. The only people who aren't really familiar with it in Western countries, are people who only stick to reading mainstream consumer news.
> I'd really like to see Wikileaks devoting more of its time, energy, and
> fund-raising into breaking news about government-operated surveillance
> programs in the last two countries where Edward Snowden has been located
Lose that and we join a race to the freedom-bottom the US founders would be shocked to learn we have undertaken.
Somewhere along the way we stopped doing that.
US government has been riding a high horse and teaching everybody about internet freedom, and now they are caught pants down. That's a lot of more worthy of news than exposing already known bad guys.
I find it deeply troubling that majority voices in USA are now accusing Snowden / WikiLeaks of damaging USA reputation or things like that.
The recent rhetoric has presents the US as the worst offender of all when in practice it's probably better than anyone else who has the power to do these things (including the UK).
What if you take the US position at face value? There is oversight, and there are real and serious threats from terrorism and cyberattacks.
Is it good to have a massive secret signals collection apparatus? No.
Is it necessary? We don't know and nobody is even discussing that because we're all too busy bashing the US.
Edit: It now seems like there is some reasonable doubt that this notice was forged. I still remain confident this is no forgery, but the point I'd like to make is that there may in fact be an identity question -- and that is a problem with a technical solution that unfortunately seems not to have been leveraged.
This is British writing style. Brits leave off the preposition "from" in these types of sentences; Americans put it in.
American English: "Administration now seeks to stop me from exercising a basic right."
British English: "Administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right."
I'm not a linguistics or grammar expert so I can't name the proper terms for all this. I've just observed in the past that this is a "Britishism" that differs from American style. It's interesting to see it here. Snowden wouldn't write like that. IMO, he needs to ditch Wikileaks because they've done nothing but harm him and seem to only be interested in advancing their agenda.
Pass-phrases help mitigate the concerns for stolen private keys, but they do not provide assurances that things will not be signed or encrypted under duress. The best you can really do there is throw in more human element to increase the number of rubber hoses your enemy will need.
So, trusting the authenticity of a document is a probability game. If he had signed it with a public key, then the probability of a fake would be less.
For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum.
Maybe I'm overanalyzing but I don't think this is a verbatim statement from Snowden.
"...the United States of America has been..."
Edit to add: The statement as quoted at http://boingboing.net/2013/07/01/snowden-asks-russia-for-asy... has the original version with "have" still in there.
Here's a screenshot from twitter of the original - https://twitter.com/ClaraJeffery/status/351833289000112128
So to claim that WikiLeaks would fixup all of Snowden's writings to conform to en_GB and then switch it right back to en_US after HN notices is rather surreal.
At best you could claim that Harrison herself simply transcribed Snowden's speech and that no one caught it until it was posted. But that still wouldn't explain what happened to some of the missing words that Snowden would have said. And that still wouldn't explain why WikiLeaks revised a statement so important without so much as a mention of proofreading corrections post-facto.
I think you need to loosen your tinfoil.
Does that sound like the same person talking about civil liberties and how Obama didn't change enough for him, and being ready to stand up for what he believes in? Or does that sound more like a certain other ego at opposition to the U.S. government and especially its President?
The concern would be if wikileaks were completely fabricating this, but I see no evidence for that. (Nor any motivation.)
I doubt they are fabricating it, but honestly they have Snowden in as much of a bind as the U.S. does now. They are his only source of support right now... what does he do if they take it away? He's in a web of very unequal relationships right now.
This assumes he has other channels of communication. He probably stands behind it insofar as its consistent with everything I've heard from him so far, but neither of us has any way of knowing for the time being.
If you want to preserve your credibility, it's better to either leave the mistakes in, or explain the context (eg 'this statement was a written record of a verbal statement; we apologize for an inaccuracy in our transcription of Mr. Snowden's recorded words').
EDIT: Why the downvotes? Do you have proof this is real? It seems awfully suspicious to change that when someone notices it and not mention anything.
EDIT2: Clarified what I think is (fully or partially) fake.
Also, bitching about downvotes tends to accelerate the rate at which one gets them. You've been here long enough to have noticed that.
Others think it's real because it is on Wikileaks.
I see both sides of the argument, but I'm staying on my side for now.
The risk-adjusted return on making a fake Snowden statement just doesn't pass the sniff test for me.
YMMV.
I'm not sure that going from "I love my country and want the people to know what the government is doing" to "FUCK THE US AND FUCK YOU OBAMA" (paraphrased!) is really the wisest course though. But what do I know?
Suppose (for argument's sake) that Snowden were depressed or had got cold feet, and was uncommunicative or otherwise climbing down from his previous position; a supporter who thought he was simply undergoing a crisis of confidence might decide to draft a statement 'in the spirit of his actions.'
I'm not saying that this has happened here, but such things are not unprecedented. You don't need to believe that the entire organization is engaged in a deception, or even that the (imaginary) author of such a statement would consider it deceptive, but rather reflective of a 'deeper truth'.
Maybe Snowden's words were run past an editor (as are most journalist's words) of British public-school extraction, who applied reflexively what he'd been taught?
This kind of over-parsing is typical of the kind of intensive derailing of Snowden's message that's been going on. ANYTHING to distract us from the Naked Exercise of Unlimited Power of Questionable Legality that's been uncovered.
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/the-united-stat...
Regardless of what happens to him; he is writing himself into the pages of history.
His actions have opened the possibility of Western Europe defecting from the US led coalition that has dominated world affairs for the past 70 years. Which is not a result anyone could have predicted.
The first leak in the dam doesn't look so threatening...
If the UK loses its continental influence, the willingness of Euro-based business to respect the Pound (in trade, I mean - their acceptance, online or elsewhere, of the Pound as currency without first converting to Euro) may diminish. Further, London may fall out of the tech industry's graces as a good destination for regional headquarters.
In either case, the UK's loss is France/Germany's gain - likely moreso Germany's because they're already ahead by a bit.
Being an American, I know less than Jon Snow about how EU power works, but if the UK's losses mount and create a power vaccuum at/near the top, Germany and France are leading states even moreso than they were before. What that might amount to, I couldn't say.
This is cheating on my part, but I agree and disagree.
a) Yes, it's unlikely any one event has the necessary inertia to shift a continent's finance capital from one city to another.
b) Everything starts somewhere. No single assassination is likely to start the largest global conflict in human history, yet Franz Ferdinand's assassination is credited with having "started" WWI. In reality, a number of necessary elements contributed, but human history is written in narrative fashion, and scene 1 of WWI begins with Franz, the way most people tell it. Similarly, the last ~40 years have been very interesting, currency-wise, I think, so, it may do to have an eye out for something big enough to light this powderkeg. Since so much of finance is based on trust, in one form or another, an event that dramatically reduces global trust in the dominant parties of the era would be one logically viable catalyst.
There are economic ties, political, cultural, and military. It was always complicated with EU. Some countries are part of NATO, some aren't. EU doesn't have a military. So geo-politically it can't "project power" too much as a unified force. US and its NATO members know it.
If you read foreign affairs journal (they are stinktank propaganda often but they are read and acted on by many in power). You'd see articles about how EU is a geopolitical threat to US. It would eventually want to extract and use the same resources. It would want to eat the same bananas and dictate policy in parts of the world.
EU was and is a threat to US. If anything before those countries formed a stronger union, they were easier to manipulate as they could be played against each other. Like say offer Italy some trade rights to force France to change their stance or something like that.
Kosovo war for example was a good ol NATO show of force. USSR and then Russia was disabled in the gutter licking its wounds, EU was rising. It was time to bring in NATO to show the world who really rules Western Europe lest EU gets too cocky or gets some funny ideas.
Culturally, well we are friends. Americans love to trace their ancestry. Yes even 5 generations back and claim they are from Italy or France or what have you. They don't speak the language but sure as heck talk about how Italian they are. And so on. At least as far as culture and shared values. There is a closer relationship.
Anyway, I am just rambling without many references but just trying to say that it isn't that simple as "I thought we were friends and now look at what you guys did?"
These perceptions may be entirely factitious; but they are substantive in that they are shaping the political discourse sub rosa across the EU.
What changed compared to previous US spying scandals? (e.g. Echelon and the 2003 European council wiretaps from the US)
I suspect that the Obama administration broke may of their own rules rushing through the a change in status that fast - a bureaucracy the size of the US doesn't process anything quickly without breaking the rules.
The Russians are clearly using Snowden as a pawn, probably because Russia is threatened by people like Snowden just as much as the US is. Snowden threatens those who make the rules, and then apply them fully to others and not at all to themselves and their cohorts.
For the third time in my life (the first two courtesy Bush Jr.) I'm deeply ashamed of my government.
In general the reason things take a long time to do in a bureaucracy is because of the required approvals from many different officials. If the President or a cabinet secretary wants something to happen now, this is less likely to be necessary.
"Bend too far, and you're already broken."
It's more an issue of redefining the rules than breaking them. Court oversight becomes a secret rubber stamp that's never denied. Search becomes querying the database we already have. Non-citizenship becomes 51% confidence. Spying on enemy nations during wartime becomes Hey, Everybody's Doing It, Why Can't We? ...etc
I'm rather out of my depth where passport laws are concerned, though.
Or simply because what else can a government use an individual for?
Which is why I think it's silly that Snowden has (as so many before have and surely after him will) bothered to note that the US isn't allowing him to seek asylum. If you're in the position to seek asylum, and you think you deserve it, you're already claiming that the US is unfairly targeting you. Why would an organization that is unfairly targeting you be fair about asylum?
It's amazing what you can push through when a Secretary of State who can unilaterally revoke your passport once a valid warrant for arrest on Federal charges is issued, reports directly to you.
The only slow part of that would be getting the charges issued in the first place; Snowden simply took too long in Hong Kong.
The relevant U.S. law is 22 CFR 51.70 and 51.72 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-1999-title22-vol1/xml/CFR-1...
He does have a point that restricting travel does make it harder for you to seek asylum. But that's nothing new.
The first is obviously the revelations about NSA "overreach".
The second is that this guy could've remained hidden but he put his name behind the revelations rather than choosing the far safer path of being an "anonymous source". This lends his revelations more credence and you have to respect the guy for standing by his convictions. Maybe he would've been found out had he stayed in the shadows but he certainly didn't try to do that.
The third is that the US is very much two-faced here. It seems clear that the surveillance is being justified by a technical ruling to do with US vs foreign persons, a classified ruling no less. While this might be a fine legal argument, it doesn't engender support amongst foreign powers when you tell them you have every right to spy on their citizens but oh, by the way, can you do us a solid and hand over that fugitive?
In what world does the US think they'll get cooperation from anyone when they aren't treated not even as equals but with simple decency? So the foreign policy apparatus resorts to bullying tactics.
The fourth is that both China and Russia were blatantly thumbing their noses at the US. I see no world in which Russia hands the guy over so the actions of the US have done little more than force a guy in possession of Top Secret information to be harboured by a rival. Congratulations on that statecraft, Obama, Biden and Kerry.
What's more it's made the US appear internationally weak.
The last is that the various players on Snowden's side do seem to have screwed the pooch on this one by both issuing a letter of safe passage and not having some kind of contingency when the US did the predictable thing and revoked his passport. This could hardly have been an unprecedented move.
So good luck to you, Edward Snowden. I hope your sacrifice hasn't been in vein. The optimist in me hopes that a future president will pardon you and otherwise reverse this self-destructive course the US is on.
>>What's more it's made the US appear internationally weak
If that is the case then surely there must be lots of countries willing to offer him asylum and the traveling documents he needs.
I think that internal auditing would have very quickly identified him as the source the moment the leaks hit the papers.
At least this way they have a little bit of a PR shitstorm if they disappear him, as opposed to if he was totally anonymous.
Also, by doing that video interview, he gets to shape the narrative a tiny bit by pointing out all the opportunity he had to be malicious that he didn't use, illustrating that he's simply not. It's hard not to like the guy.
A passport means that the host nation is comfortable with the person traveling abroad. For what should be obvious reasons the U.S. would rather he be back home (to stand trial). Even if you disagree with everything the NSA has done or will do, he technically broke the law. If the U.S. considers itself to observe the rule of law, then they have to pursue him as much as they'd pursue anyone else.
The U.S. has stripped persons of their citizenship for things as mundane as fraud, so this is hardly a made-up case for Snowden.
In fact, it's so not made up that there are existing procedures for when a passport may be revoked [1] [2]. Note that despite the foia_reading_room in the URL of [1], it is simply the U.S. Attorney's Manual, which is accessible directly from http://www.justice.gov/usao/index.html .
[1] http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/tit...
[2] http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppi/info/info_870.html
Edit: Also, since when did a conversation without an exchange of consideration or an agreement to perform certain actions become "wheeling and dealing"? This is the kind of stuff that has turned me off from Assange a long time ago; he's just as willing to distort as a government, as long as it suits his purpose.
Revoking a passport is routine when felony charges are filed. Citizenship on the other hand is much harder to remove, even if the US government had any interest in doing so (it doesn't in this case - it wants him back home).
Naturalized citizens can be stripped of citizenship in extreme cases when they're found to have lied on their citizenship applications. I'm not aware of any circumstance in which natural-born citizens can have their citizenship removed without them voluntarily renouncing it first.
For naturalization fraud. That is, if the original basis for citizenship was found to be invalid. Aside from that, it's nearly impossible to "strip" someone of their citizenship, I don't think it's a power that even authoritarian presidencies like Bush & Obama claim to have.
I winced a bit at the claim of being a stateless person, as I'd previously understood that to mean lacking citizenship anywhere, not being without a passport for travel. Perhaps I've been wrong about that all these years.
I'm still researching, but so far, I've found the following passport-revocation authorities:
1. Obtained illegally or through fraud
2. Altered or misused (no definition yet on 'misused')
3. Issued to persons whose citizenship is cancelled
4. Non-payment of child support
5. Non-repayment of repatriation loan
6. Persons convicted of sex tourism
7. Persons convicted of drug trafficking
8. [based on comment below] Standing warrants for arrest (and other standing legal/court orders against the bearer)
Interestingly enough, 22 USC § 2721 states that:
> A passport may not be denied issuance, revoked, restricted, or otherwise limited because of any speech, activity, belief, affiliation, or membership, within or outside the United States, which, if held or conducted within the United States, would be protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
I've yet to find an authority to revoke a passport from a citizen who is openly seeking political asylum.
However, there is 22 USC § 217a:
>A passport shall be valid for a period of ten years from the date of issue, except that the Secretary of State may limit the validity of a passport to a period of less than ten years in an individual case or on a general basis pursuant to regulation.
So, there's that. Perhaps this is one such individual case.
Additionally, the law requires the DOS to send the passport owner written notification of revocation. I wonder if the US is considering a press statement to be such written notice?
Any lawyers versed in passport issues know whether revoking a passport in a situation like this runs afoul of law or established precedent?
[edit: formatting failure on my part]
http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppi/info/info_870.html
So I think the passport revocation was in fact legal since there was a request for extradition and a federal warrant of arrest.
Any idea on how that plays into the open requests for asylum?
Also, I'm assuming the statute uses passport denial to also include passport revocation?
As for how it interacts with asylum, well, it doesn't. If states had an obligation not to pursue or interfere with the travel of a fugitive seeking asylum, then take a guess what a lot of fugitives would do.
Generally if you're going to seek asylum, it's not the country you're fleeing FROM that facilitates your emigration, it's the country you're traveling TO.
Well, that's exactly what Snowden did, and got a travel document from the Ecuadorian embassy. But the surprising other half of the story here is that Ecuador revoked that travel document while he was in Moscow. THAT is arguably the main reason why he's in a bind right now, not that he or his advisors expected his US passport to remain valid, which is clearly revokable under the law in these circumstances.
On the interaction with asylum, I did a poor job of being clear. I was wondering more about considerations of asylum given the current situation and the US revoking Snowden's passport. I'd already assumed that a country would revoke (although Snowden's a different kind of fugitive than, say, a murderer attempting to flee). Obviously, no country facilitates emigration of a person they wish to make a political and legal example of. Was wondering more if the revocation makes Snowden look like more of a case for political asylum, or less attractive for potential asylum granters.
The Ecuadorian revocation of travel documents--if their stated reasons are true--is certainly surprising (both for the revocation, and the political liability that they're assessing to Assange in relation to Snowden).
All that aside, revoking a standing passport just strikes me as a very dick move. Almost childish, even. It just screams, "Our allies aren't cooperating with us because we've been abusing them, so we'll just maroon the poor bastard until they cave cos they don't want to deal with him either." Not ineffective, but still a disappointing tactic from the administration.
If these people can't strike
Blows for freedom
With a valid visa
We don't need 'em
It appeared for a moment that country was Ecuador. Now, apparently not (and quite possibly because of the publication of the alleged travel documents).
"This passport is the property of the United States. It must be surrendered upon demand made by an authorized representative of the United States."
Title 22, Section 51.9 is the law it references, but I haven't read it.
Does this mean every country who attempts to prosecute people who subsequently seek asylum is violating "a basic right"?
Asylum is considered a basic human right. I've posted elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5974330
Anyway, it really doesn't make sense to talk about asylum in relation to the country being fled. The declaration is a statement of what the destination state should do when it recognizes a case of persecution. 'Persecution' is inherently a subjective concept.
What on Earth are you talking about? It's abundantly clear that he expects to be charged with a crime (or at least to be treated as badly or worse as someone charged with a crime). Why do you think he left the USA and is seeking asylum?
Snowden's claim that the Vice President of the US is involved in similar political pressure against multiple of the nations Snowden has requested asylum from:
"Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions."
This is obviously political "wheeling and dealing" to interfere with Snowden's right to request asylum.
Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela is in Russia right now. He flies not the national presidential airplane but a cuban plane.
Rumor has it, he visited Russia with the intention of giving Snowden a ride back to Venezuela.
We'll see.
This stretching of the truth does not engender trust.
"Exile means to be away from one's home (i.e. city, state
or country), while either being explicitly refused
permission to return and/or being threatened with
imprisonment or death upon return." [0]
Still: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5974040
I think effectively it is a bad situation which has been created for him by the United States government. They are definitely manipulating his citizenship for their purposes whether you like the wording or not.
And this isn't about just being questioned. If he is extradited back to the US, expect a lot worse to happen to him...
What he has done is no doubt illegal, but it also strikes me as a positive thing. I disagree with people that say he is a fugitive from justice - I think it's very clear that he is a fugitive from injustice. He has shown us injustices from the US government - and now they wish to have him stand trial in order that they can lock him up for life, sentence him to death or torture him.
Is there a difference between Snowden and other criminals? Yes, Snowden has done the right thing.
They haven't revoked his citizenship... just his passport. That doesn't remove citizenship, just the ability to travel abroad.
It's not self-imposed exile if returning to the US is a non-option due to their DEMONSTRATED TENDENCY to deny prisoners their basic human rights.
And no, the use of the word "Torture" is not hyperbole in this case; no matter what technicalities you sugar coat it with; the US Government lacks all credibility on the issue of human rights at this time.
Whether you think he did a good thing or a bad thing, it's clear that Snowden is, by his own acknowledgment, guilty of multiple counts of serious felonies in the United States. The government is acting as expected, given this fact.
Yes, absolutely. Are there any English speakers who wouldn't?
That the US government is acting as we might expect rather than allowing a congressional investigation into these clearly unconstitutional programs and the legal smokescreen that was designed to prevent any challenge to their legality; is not an advertisement for it's good faith towards the citizenry.
From Wikipedia: Exile means to be away from one's home (i.e. city, state or country), while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return.
Exile means to be away from one's home (i.e. city, state or country), while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return.
So he's probably not so much worried about whether or not he can return to the U.S., but rather what would happen to him when he did.
"Exile means to be away from one's home (i.e. city, state or country), while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exile
Before calling into question the truth of statements made by a public figure please look up the common definition.
Update:
Websters does not use this exact definition, being a more compact format than wikipedia, but if you look under the examples in Websters you will see "Many chose to live as exiles rather than face persecution." http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exile
To argue that any person who cannot return to their home country without being arrested is "extralegally exiled" would mean that any fugitive is "extralegally exiled," an absurd result.
If the charges are without merit then one of the very same judges that Snowden feels should be involved in these types of surveillance programs will throw them out.
Snowden's exile may very well be extralegal, but both the exile and the extralegality of it are on Snowden himself.
No, he's chosen to avoid the US explicitly to avoid torture.
There's nothing legal about that.
If so, I would think Snowden would have made that his moral priority to emphasize. There's no reason to fear "turnkey tyranny" (as he said) when we're already living in a torture regime, is there? In that case there's no key to turn, it's already here!
Torturing those who leak information prior to trial is something that the US government has already demonstrated a willingness to do. It's simply disgraceful - a national shame.
Because there are no bored, humorless Marines in charge of whatever Federal prison Snowden would end up in. I would surmise he should expect the same treatment as any other civilian accused of a Federal felony.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...
By the way you might have to click on "link" to reply; I think the thread nesting is too deep.
I hope I haven't given the impression that I think prolonged solitary confinement is acceptable. But I will say that the idea of someone as infamous as Snowden being put in solitary without actually trying to shank someone is implausible IMHO. Manning's supporters managed to get him transferred out of a military brig, after all, and Snowden's is a much more sympathetic case (with much more international attention to boot).
And why limit yourself to NSA whistleblowers, a government that has crossed this line has crossed that line in general, not just for some class. All this 'just NSA whistleblowers', 'just whistleblowers', 'just foreigners', 'just enemy combatants' and so on isn't fooling anybody.
Some lines you just don't cross, lest you become that which you claim to fight.
Because the claim isn't that "the USA has tortured people". The claim is that the USA will torture Snowden. Given the wide disparity in justice systems utilized for U.S. citizens, "enemy combatants", and U.S. military, you have to at least make that broad type of distinction to evaluate the probability of the claim that Snowden will be tortured if he returns.
There's no end to the things you can do or refuse to do if your only justification for that action (or lack thereof) is that a government has, at some time, tortured somebody somewhere.
I agree wholeheartedly that the U.S. needs to account for instances where they torture, but that also doesn't completely invalidate the whole government.
1. Threats Made by the US Government: Obama's statements such that Snowden is not worth the effort of an expensive extra-legal killing (“not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker”) by a president that has engaged in many extra-legal killings, at least one against a US citizen, is a threat of extra-legal action. For instance if someone sent a letter that said "I'd kill you but you aren't worth the bullets" would be interpreted by many courts as a threat. Furthermore direct threats of extra-legal killing have been made by other members of the US government.
2. Prior Actions Against Snowden: The fact that Obama has attempted to use trade deals and threats to prevent Snowdens asylum appeals suggests that Obama and the US government is not willing to give Snowden a fair hearing since they are manipulating the international system of asylum to prevent him from getting a fair hearing internationally.
3.Prior Pattern of Action Against Other Whistle Blowers: Obamas illegal treatment of Bradley Manning is part of a pattern going back before Obama of illegal mistreatment of whistle blowers by the US government.
Given this evidence I would argue that the threat of extra-legal punishment is very much real and has been publicly communicated to all involved parties. The reality and communication of this threat to Snowden makes a very strong case for the claim that he has been extra-legally exiled.
By the Wikipedia definition above every criminal who flees the country to avoid arrest is by definition in exile. Skipping town because you want to avoid a crime isn't being in exile, it is being on the run.
It certifies his identity, not his rights. I'm not sure how you can suddenly claim it's not valid, without claiming that the original certification was found to be incorrect.
Not that self-promotion or drama are necessarily bad things in his position. Both are most certainly things he's using to keep himself on the minds of as many people as possible for as long as he can.
He is under no obligation to make concessions to them by adopting terminology which they control.
However if you read the context, what is being said is pretty much true: they are using citizenship as a weapon in order to deny him the human right to seek asylum.
"The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy
of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted
of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport,
leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order,
the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a
basic right. A right that belongs to everybody.
The right to seek asylum."
EDIT: Also, the concept of "a human right to seek asylum" is meaningless. Asylum is a two-party arrangement. Is that a legal obligation for all nations to _grant_ asylum to seekers, regardless of circumstances?
Justice: The quality of being fair and reasonable.
He is a fugitive from injustice.
I do not care whether he is a hero or not, but I do care about whether it was a right thing to do and whether he is treated as a human should be treated. These are principles worth upholding.
How so? I mean this sincerely.
What do you think will happen to him when he is arrested? There's no brig to throw him in, as he's a civilian. Snowden was very concerned about the lack of judicial oversight in what he saw with PRISM, so why would he assume that very same judicial system would mark him for special treatment when people like Hanssen, the Walker gang, and even Aaron Hernandez have not received such?
If Snowden really felt beforehand that the civilian justice system was so completely inequitable it seems weird that he'd have been so insistent on its involvement elsewhere.
The 'justice' system fulfils what power requires from it. It will be as inequitable with a trial as it has been with this whole fiasco.
But I think underlying this is the thought that it would be good if there was an equitable justice system as opposed to an inequitable one.
"...But Obama’s Justice Department, like Bush’s, has not been above an opportunistic (and occasionally downright Procrustean) reading of particular statutes to permit whatever it is that the White House wants to do."
The flipside for Snowden is that at least it will count as time served so if he gets sentenced to more than 2 years it might actually be beneficial as I'd imagine you get to meet with your lawyers more often while prepping for trial.
To your edit: See Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution"
Which is followed by:
"This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations"
Which negates your point, because of this:
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_U.S.%20new...
I don't understand what your point is about the nature of heroism.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has no jurisdiction, it is not a law... If you are confusing it for one, then I think you have some reading to do.
> http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_U.S.%20new....
Most political charges are dressed up as non-political. Does this surprise you?
> I don't understand what your point is about the nature of heroism
If your intent for bringing up heroism was not to imply that he should be "brought to justice", "turn himself in", "should not have run", or any variation of those, then consider my point about the nature of heroism to be an aside.
Snowden's own father says he broke the law... but he wasn't a traitor in doing so. But I don't believe the UDHR talks about treason in their exception request.
He broke the law, and fled to avoid justice. All quite reasonable, from his perspective.
But why is he trying to claim something different? He claims the U.S. pursuit of him is somehow extralegal or some kind of perversion of justice. It's neither.
Snowden decided that the need of the public to know about PRISM was more important than the loss of national security value that would come from revealing the details about it. While that's his decision to make, it's not weird that there are laws in place to protect national security. His father acknowledges that. Hell, even Putin acknowledges that; why can't Snowden now? If you're going to go on the lam then hey, I see why.... but don't act like the government did anything weird in that regard.
He is fleeing "justice", he believes that the US is using extralegal, political, methods to pursue him in order to "bring" him to justice, and he finds it plausible that "justice" will involve a gross violation of his human rights.
I am not seeing the problem here that you seem to think there is. What are you expecting him to say, "The only reason I am running is so that I am not subjected to a fair trail and humane punishment."?
He could just say "I broke the law for the public good, there's no way to get this issue the attention it deserves otherwise. I intend to remain free even if I have to be in exile, as that is how I can do the most good for the people!" etc etc. Not really that hard, you know. :P
No, it's a legal obligation to not infringe on the right of people to seek and enjoy asylum. Of course, it's the UN, so it's debatable how much of a "legal obligation" any of it is, especially for the USA.
Yes. This is what's wrong with this line of reasoning.
Only in the narrowest, most legalistic sense of the term. In terms of what is just however, I think there's a lot of room for debate.
This, while seeming important, is basically irrelevant as long as the US is demonstrating their willingness to torture accused people prior to trial for crimes such as these.
He could have done something 10x worse and it still wouldn't matter. Nobody should ever be subjected to torture - even if convicted. They're torturing people for years before trials even start, if they start at all.
He cannot anticipate anything resembling justice in the US.
It's a red herring.
Snowden would prefer not to find out if that trend is going to continue.
Hint: nobody has ever said they thought Manning was a suicide risk except for his torturers. All qualified medical personnel that have ever examined him (including the prison psychologist) have insisted that he wasn't. Hint 2: doing sleep deprivation and humiliation is not the way to reduce someone's chance of suicide, if you honestly believed they were a risk. Which no one did.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/01/1166253/-The-Tortur...
Additionally, Obama himself declared him (Manning) guilty in public before his trial even began. (I wish I was making this up.)
It's not speculation. We've watched it happen, and recently. They are condemned before the trial even begins, and denied basic human rights from the outset - rights we shouldn't even deny convicted mass murderers.
It's an incredible shame for everyone who used to be proud to be from the USA.
His treatment was bad enough that you don't have to be counter-factual about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning#Detention
Last time I checked May -> April was still 11 months, and definitely not "several years".
> Additionally, Obama himself declared him (Manning) guilty in public before his trial even began. (I wish I was making this up.)
As far as I can tell from Googling, he said in a conversation, in the context of the rule of law, the "he broke the law". And that was it.
Am I missing something?
The rest of the context from the sites Google finds seems to indicate that Manning can't possibly get a fair trial, because the officers who would have to decide his guilt would treat that as some kind of order. Which is simply untrue, as evidenced by Manning's own reaction by asking for a bench trial.
If he had asked for a jury trial he would have had many more people to possibly conceive of his innocence. And the jury pool would have contained enlisted members as well, not just officers.
By asking for a bench trial he's one, and only one, commissioned officer away from being found guilty. That would be an insane choice, if this officer were really that susceptible to finding Manning guilty simply because Obama failed to use the word "allegedly" in a conversation.
Luckily, as Manning realizes since he's actually in the freaking military, that isn't the case at all.
Exerting unknown influence behind closed doors with those who have the ability to grant or deny his requests for asylum is an entirely different matter, though.
"This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile"
Doesn't "exile" refer to his being without a passport? So isn't he clearly saying that it's extralegal?
This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes
(just asking, IANAL, so maybe some technicalities elude me)
If Snowden is mistaken in using this terminology, he isn't the only one.
I don't think that he deserves asylum either. I think he should come back to America, have a public trial with media coverage, and then we can firmly establish if what he did was wrong.
Edit: It appears that I'm unable to reply to the various comments on this, so I'll try to refine what I'm saying:
I do think that whistleblowers are necessary, especially in large, secretive organisations. But I think that Snowden's limbo isn't providing the requisite closure on the matter. I think that he should be compelled to explain his actions in court. I think all whistleblowers should, just as I think that anybody who kills somebody under a make-my-day law should still have their actions examined. Whistle blowing isn't something that somebody does lightly, and i think that should be doubly true for matters of national security.
Additionally, trying to vilify the government in a press statement is silly. Let their actions speak for them, and let your own actions speak for you.
The average american commits illegal acts daily, but I doubt you were referring to that.
If you can give me a hint as to why it might not have been illegal, I would love to be enlightened.
(Not that I'm too keen on the possibility that the U.S. government would grant him the chance of a fair trial...)
(I'm not trying to make a point about Snowden's particular case, just speaking in general.)
I do hope there's a demographic shift here. Facing heavy-handed laws regarding drugs and such, web-savvy young people seem to be slowly catching on about tactics like nullification, not talking to police, etc.
But that's not up to him, and seems... unlikely, let's say.
It is best to give up any hope for a better world, power always prevails; and power is always on the side of authority.
What makes you doubt that? You know you're not meant personally, right?
Isn't it common to revoke a passport of someone you want to try of a crime and have extradited?
Does one expect the government to assist in your asylum attempts?
I don't believe one has the right to not be charged with a crime, especially one you have admitted to.
Every country in the world that has extradition treaties with other states does the same exact thing every day.
It cannot be extra, meaning outside, the legal system, when all you have done is made a request within the established legal system and diplomatic customs.
He has the right to seek it. Closed door pressure against those who can grant it is very certainly extralegal interference.
If they have any legitimate legal reason to interfere with his asylum requests to third parties, why not just charge him with a crime that those third parties would see as valid, or exclude torture from his potential punishments?
This is not about extradition, it's about asylum. Presumably you only grant asylum if you believe an extradition request is bullshit to begin with.
The US only has one non-scumbag move here, and that's to charge him with a crime or crimes, and make a credible commitment that his potential treatment before, during, and after the trial doesn't violate his basic human rights.
Going behind closed doors doesn't suddenly make the charges more plausible (espionage? really? he gave the info only to journos, spoke to no govts) or magically clean up the US's history of human rights abuses and torture against enemies of the military, be it Manning or al-Awlaki.
Bad or good, guilty or innocent - it is always wrong to turn someone over to be tortured.
The US isn't in the habit of ensuring that the rule of law will be fulfilled since that is still the default posture of the government.
Don't get me wrong -- we can't all be Patriots and Revolutionaries -- but our history has ill-fitted us to be good at being Tories and Loyalists. Those were the bad guys in all our grade-school stories ... and now we are those bad guys.
The classical Tory theory of dissidence is called "Passive Obedience." This doesn't mean bending over and being a wimp. It means being obedient to higher authority (God and Constitutional Law), while seemingly disobeying usurpers and tyrants, who are themselves violating the higher Law -- constitutional, moral, and natural. The "Passive" part is an old word meaning suffering (like the Passion of Christ).
Edward Snowden has given us a very good example of Passive Obedience -- if he is correct the programs are indeed unconstitutional. He certainly is suffering for his beliefs, and is fleeing, not resisting or rebelling against the State. Failure to obey the commands of usurpers and tyrants, or to obey bad law in defiance of the dictates of one's conscience, are not required even of Loyalists and Tories.
The fact that Tories and Loyalists, which the American people have become, are condemning his actions, shows only that we have forgotten how to be good Redcoats, as well as most certainly having forgotten how to be good Patriots.
As good Tories (not good Patriots though), Loyal to the American State, we have the right to petition our sovereign -- the American People, not its representative Government -- i.e., to request a constitutional convention to strike down these Star Chamber courts, redress the alleged tyranny, and end the usurpations against our Sovereign's previously constituted declarations, and granted Bill of Rights.
As far as Snowden's flight is concerned, Sir Thomas Hobbes gives a very clear explanation of both Passive Obedience and the right of the dissident to flee, in an attempt to evade the sure punishment he would otherwise receive with or without justice (however if he is caught he must meekly accept his Passion and martyrdom, without resistance -- Civil Disobedience and Resistance are the contrary of the Tory doctrine).
Time to pick sides -- but if we are going to be Tories all, let us not be bad ones. These are the times that try men's souls.
Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
You can get buy one for $135,000. This is what Derek Sivers did. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3944339
http://www.sovereignman.com/lifestyle-design/how-to-obtain-a...
IMHO, he should not have run. I don't think he would have any trouble convincing 12 people that what he did was the right thing. Running was bad form.
I don't like this guy, and I don't trust him.
In the meantime, let's get back to the message, not the messenger.
It reflects strongly on the state of our world now that I was more concerned about the fallout from visiting wikileaks.org than I was by the latest information coming from Snowden.
How can the govt. prevent such an event from happening again or at least attempt to prevent it from happening again? Only way I can think is to invade every citizen's privacy of every nation, as they have done.
It seems for us the US there is no win win and with human nature there never is. If another 9/11 happens we'd be crying why didnt the govt. do more though the govt. is doing more and now we are crying what the hell are they doing?
Humans..we're never satisfied!
You don't. The price of freedom is the risk of getting hurt because the bad guys are in advantage. You don't step out of your front door with a gun and shoot everybody on the street because they may rob you - you get robbed and only after that you try to catch, charge and sentence the guy.
Also, I find it hard to swallow those who are up in arms about NSA spying on non-US citizens... seriously??? What do they think the NSA was formed to do??? That should not be a surprise...
I do worry that Wikileaks is pretty much hijacking his agenda and substituting their own...
He might have the backing of libertarians and the far left, but these were people already opposed to the known over-reach of state power. Honestly, if there's any hope of a significant sway in mainstream public opinion, I think it's going to come from the Tea Party.
These days he gets all his news from (Michigan) broadcast TV and radio, and is pretty reclusive and doesn't talk to anyone.
The narrative he'd constructed from these limited inputs was that he's an egomaniac computer hacker who took government data and then went to China and Russia. Technically it's not false, but that's the narrative (and all the implication) he'd assembled, given only MSM reports.
I think this is much bigger news outside of the US than inside, and that's pretty sad. Then again, Obama claims "foreign entities" (thanks for pretty solidly Othering all of the 6.5+ billion other humans) are the only ones that get surveilled without a warrant.
This whole thing stinks. Why'd NSA have to pull this stupid shit anyway? Did they really think that there'd be some huge domestic unrest against the military if they DIDN'T tap everyone's phones and resultantly missed some attack that hurts fewer people than we blow up quarterly with drones?
I don't get it. The logic simply doesn't pan out, and these aren't stupid people, because you can't build information processing systems at this scale and be dumb.
I feel like I'm missing something critical.
Having said that, given the opportunity and no legal obstacles, it's almost stupid not to soak up every last piece of data.
* If the motives are pure, they might stop a large attack, and/or avoid accusations of incompetence if an attack slips through.
* If motivated from above in the power structure, Obama or Cheney or whoever gets enough data to be ten steps ahead of political and economic foes, at home and abroad.
* If motivated from within, the agencies are able to blackmail and manipulate opponents to maintain their own budget and relevance. They might even do this out of genuine belief in their organization and mission.
* If motivated personally, a handful of powerful individuals get to maintain back-scratching relationships through selective dissemination of information, to say nothing of potential financial gains.
If I had to guess, every single one of these motives is at play at various levels. And of course, being in a position to have all this data gives one an immense amount of leverage to shut people up and hide misdeeds. Good to be the king.
Blaming the NSA for PRISM is like blaming the ocean for New Orleans. It's We The People who failed to build strong enough levees, and somebody was going to take advantage of it eventually. Time will tell if the public will accept the degree to which government institutions are openly doubling down. This is the political issue of our generation; if we accept spying as the norm, it will be very hard to undo.
then
> Blaming the NSA for PRISM is like blaming the ocean for New Orleans.
I simply can't buy that.
It doesn't take a ton of smarts to know that a giant database such as this, even in the hands of the most kind and benevolent stewards, _will not stay in those hands forever_.
It's a ticking time bomb for abuse. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when, and how bad. It's a silent bloodless military coup in a box with a big red button on top.
Once built, something like that could never get meaningfully opposed, and a large-scale abuse would be the absolute end of freedom as we know it: everything from oppression of the free press, to coercion and blackmail of political opponents, and silencing of activists or loudmouths of any/all stripes.
I just can't see how any reasonable person, even with a 100% belief in the legitimacy of spying, even domestically, could not see what a COLOSSALLY BAD IDEA this thing is.
No conceivable threat model, even fantastic ones from Hollywood, makes it seem sane, as the damage to the "American way of life" is an order of magnitude greater from such a system than any bomb or attack.
I see what you're saying, and all of these seem like reasonable explanations, but they all become non-starters when you consider the long-term consequence of this thing being built. It's like a doomsday machine that you can't turn off.
The One-Way Panopticon may be a horrible idea both morally and practically, but given the above human foibles, I'm not ready to jump to the easy conclusion that the perpetrators are Evil, Idiots, or Evil Idiots. People are complicated, and I ultimately lack sufficient data to assess motives. Rather, there are so many possible motives, at some point it doesn't really matter.
EDIT: I should clarify: When I say "they'd be stupid not to spy", I mean in the sense of short-sighted immediate goals. Obviously, on a larger scale, it is sheer lunacy.
Okay, so this guy keeps saying some pretty strange things. If he came to the States, he would no doubt be tried in the legal system. He is putting himself into an extralegal position. I think it's probably the best thing for him to do at this point, but to say that the government has in any way forced him out of the legal system is pretty silly.
How can you be so sure? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
Maybe he should tell Russian state media to tone it down a bit then. From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2351981/Is-Ed-Snowde... :
"In several rapidly-aired shows on state-run TV, Snowden was flattered as 'a soldier in the information war, who fights, of course, on the side of Russia'."
As far as Russia is concerned Snowden isn't fighting for some pan-national ideal; he's fighting on the side of Russia
And, ironically, this terrible decision of the US government, ultimately is responsible for Snowden having to stay in Moscow and probably having to tell the Russian everything he knows, even the parts he never intented to reveal. The US government just did a classical "shot yourself in the foot", I'd say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_In...
From my understanding people submit content to Wikileaks which then decides what and when to publish. But I guess this depends on if you believe Assange pushed Mannings to release documents.
In the USA a date is spoken as "July 2nd, 2013" instead of "2 July 2013", which is why the shorthand date is MM/dd/YYYY (as it lines up with the way it is spoken).
You'll notice he never once mentioned the documents or their contents in this message. He's not "making the story about himself" - he's using the media as a tool to apply pressure to the forces aligned against him in the hopes of securing his safety.
As someone else said, remaining silent lets his opposition control the discourse. You can see this clearly in the frenzy of stories in the media about Snowden's stripper girlfriend and the "IS HE A COMMIE SPY?" headlines. Providing a counterbalance makes it harder for the government propaganda machine to sway public opinion against him and turn him into Just Another Terrorist.
A 'counterbalance' can often instead be a distraction which is what I fear happened here.
I, for one, was grateful for the update. Yes, I care about how Snowden is personally doing in Moscow.
If he chose silence, he'd be infinitely detained, and would receive no justice.
That's his fundamental problem, after all. If any of the countries he intends to flee to were to have someone leak the same kind of documents that Snowden leaked about the US, that person would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the laws of that country.
So when you talk about justice, I don't think you want Snowden to receive justice, because that's a small cell for the rest of his life, or worse.
Joan of Arc stood for France, in the Hundred Year's War. The story was not about her, it was about the country, the people. But yet, her narrative, the ideas she had, her martyrdom, etc all had a profound impact on the events of history, and lead the changing of the tides of the war.
A war is not fought on a martyr's backs. Sometimes, it takes 22 more years for the job to be finished. This doesn't mean putting someone up as an example isn't warranted, nor is it dilute or make the narrative of the people any less powerful.
If he goes entirely silent then the government will step in to fill the void: "His girlfriend's a stripper, he's a hacker terrorist, his neighbors say he's weird, he might be a soviet spy, he did it all for the attention, he's not an American."
If he speaks out on a daily basis the news media will eventually grow tired of the story and move on leaving him to be a 3rd page story when he's arrested.
His best option right now is to stay in front of the news for as long as possible until some solution is worked out. In the meantime staying positive with the American people will do more good for his eventual trial.
A common theme among people who oppose Edward Snowden's is to criticize his character. Even within this thread people have resorted to name calling, dubbing him a "Drama Queen" and accuse him of seeking fame.
I suppose it's easier to attack a person than it is to attack the issues he stands for.
All his globe-trotting and statements just detract from the issues he's raised re: surveillance.
He's trying to gain public support and put pressure on the US government, while at the same time persuading countries to give him asylum. Releasing a statement will help him to do this.
Works either way.