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Edward Snowden Leaves Hong Kong
hazeii writes "Ed Snowden, the U.S. whistleblower responsible for exposing the degree to which the U.S. watches its own citizens (as well as the rest of the world) is reported as having left Hong Kong for Moscow. According to the South China Morning Post, he is on a commercial flight to Russia but intriguingly it seems this is not his final destination. It's not clear whether this move is in response to the U.S. request to extradite him."
What has the world come to?
By the time this was posted on slashdot, he hadn't just left Hong Kong, but landed in Moscow.
DICE: When copying news in development, please make sure you update it as needed before posting. This worked better before. Not well, but it has become worse.
What I heard on NPR this morning is that Snowden's rumored travel involves Moscow to Cuba and then Cuba to Caracas, Venezuela according to an unidentified Aeroflot official.
That, of course, could all be misdirection.
My work here is dung.
According to Interfax.
God speed. Enjoy the hot Venezuelan women. There is no justice for you in the US...not anymore.
He's anything but a coward. A coward would have kept his mouth shut.
uhh, i think the fact that he hasn't been caught yet (and disappeared) suggests he knew exactly how bad the backlash would be. he knew enough that he could plan for it.
he did not take the path of least resistance here. if he were a coward, he wouldn't have leaked the info in the first place. knowing what he knew, and not doing anything about it, is probably what he saw as cowardly.
Its the folks still working at NSA who should be rotting in jail. What they have been doing is illegal. Personally I think anyone still there should be treated as a collaborator. We didn't accept "just following orders" as an excuse after WWII, it would be good for the nation if we locked away everyone at NSA doing anything above sweeping the floors.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
How strange it is that Russia has become the bastion of human rights and the right to expose corruption. 30 years ago you'd be laughed out of a room if you'd suggest that 30 years later people would be fleeing the US for Russia and China for political freedoms and economic freedoms.
Times have sure changed.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
From NYT:
"Russia’s Interfax news service, citing a “person familiar with the situation,” reported that Mr. Snowden would remain in transit at an airport in Moscow for “several hours” pending an onward flight to Cuba, and would therefore not formally cross the Russian border or be subject to detention."
Others speculate that he's only going to Moscow in transit to Iceland (which has offered him asylum) or some other place.
AFAIK Iceland has not offered him asylum. The Icelanders just changed to a fiercely right wing government which has already refused to consider asylum unless Snowden actually lands in Reykjavik and hands in an asylum request in person. That does not exactly indicate much enthusiasm for pissing off Obama and the US Republicans. I'd say Snowden is unlikely to receive much sympathy with the current Icelandic Govt. unless the Icelandic population gets together and to forces them to reconsider by protesting or gathering enough names on a petition. Given the size of the country and the close knit nature of Icelandic society it is actually surprisingly easy to get up to 25-30% of the electorate to sign such a petition if you can stir up enough support.
Frankly, Sparky.. I think he's a flippin' national hero, on a par with many of the heros of the first American revolution, and I'm betting theres a LOT of us out here who think this.... He knew his life was gonna change dramatically and he'd likely be on the run from the pigshit running this country now, YET he blew the whistle on the blatantly UNconstitutional crap these three-letter fiefdoms were perpetrating on the American people.. Sure, I'll grant you that he violated a bunch of laws/rules/regulations, BUT he followed the only really important law.. the Constitution, the one mentioned in the oath that government workers take, where they swear to "protect and defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic..." He was defending it from the pigshit poseurs who are trying to shred the Constitution at every turn.. So you can call me and the rest of us who think he's a hero a moron, but we know we're the people the founding fathers had in mind, and YOU are the moron, if I was into ad hominim attacks, which I try to avoid.. But since YOU started it, I'm gonna play along.. You and your ilk are part of the problem with America today... YOU are the moron...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
I totally agree.. and the old "we were just following orders" didn't work in Nurnberg and it shouldn't work here either.. ANYbody with half a brain AND who has READ the Constitution should KNOW that what they are doing is BLATANTLY unconstitutional.. I don't give a crap what the pigshit running these agencies say, its UNconstitutional..
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
You are confused. Just because Congress authorized it doesn't make it legal. Coming to mind quickly is the McCain Feingold campaign finance reform (authorized by Congress), which has come to the Supreme Court three times and every time been ruled unconstitutional, hence illegal. The NSA spying is illegal according to the 4th amendment no matter what Congress says. If they don't like it, the way to make it legal is pass an amendment to repeal the 4th amendment, whcih they know won't be possible.
Snoden exposed illegal activity by the NSA, also exposing Congress "authroizing" illegal activity without worrying about consequences because they kept it hidden from the public. So in addition to exposing the illegal activity, he also exposed the illegal cover-up of the illegal activity.
He is the definition of a whistleblower, also showing that there are no whistleblower protections for citizens in the USA.
Two words, my friend. "Secret laws".
Yes, lets get this idea of In Transit in front of your Average American. In most countries, you can land at an airport and 'not be in the country' - you are in transit. You don't have to show your passport, you don't need a Visa, you don't need much except directions to the next flight.
In the current Soviet States of America, you may need all of those things and some additional paperwork.
The upshot is that Snowden is likely just connecting to somewhere else without the annoying hassles he would if he tried it in the US. Russia isn't necessarily the good guys, it's just that the US is turning out to be the obese 1600 pound poorly trained gorilla.
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
authorized by and deemed legal by Congress and the court system
That's not entirely true. The court system has not ruled one way or another whether the secret programs are legal. The Supreme Court has so far refused to hear cases brought against the NSA's spying program because the defendands have not been able to prove that their constituional rights were violated by these programs (due to their secret nature) but with Snowden's leaks they can now easily prove that their communications have in fact been targeted and, as a Verizon customer, the ACLU has filed a case against the NSA in federal court.
Thanks to Snowden the Supreme Court will likely be forced to rule on the constitutionality of these programs and if they are found uncsontitutional it matters not what laws Congress passed or Executive Orders the President issued to authorize them because those all become null and void.
16 Am Jur 2d, Sec 177 late 2d, Sec 256:
The general misconception is that any statute passed by legislators bearing the appearance of law constitutes the law of the land. The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and any statute, to be valid, must be In agreement. It is impossible for both the Constitution and a law violating it to be valid; one must prevail. This is succinctly stated as follows:
The General rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of it's enactment and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it. An unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed. Such a statute leaves the question that it purports to settle just as it would be had the statute not been enacted.
Since an unconstitutional law is void, the general principles follow that it imposes no duties, confers no rights, creates no office, bestows no power or authority on anyone, affords no protection, and justifies no acts performed under it.....
A void act cannot be legally consistent with a valid one. An unconstitutional law cannot operate to supersede any existing valid law. Indeed, insofar as a statute runs counter to the fundamental law of the lend, it is superseded thereby.
No one Is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.
I love it when I get modded "Troll" for speaking the truth. How about you refute any part of what I posted?
I grant my trust that somebody in the government will have the stones to do the right thing and expose law-breaking by the government, no matter how many layers of threatened criminal charges the government layers into the contract. That nobody did it before Snowden speaks volumes to how stupid and uneducated Americans really are to what their civil rights are and what their duty to their country is (the oaths all say "support and defend the constitution" not "follow all orders, legal or otherwise.") Really? Nobody in a uniform (before Bradley Manning) had the guts to say "I won't help cover it up any more." Nobody? Not one person?
Nobody is obligated to follow an illegal or unconstitutional order, and this kid did the exact right thing in exposing it. I wouldn't have trusted the US government or relied on the whistle blower statutes (as weak and ineffectual as they are) either based on the government's recent track record of prosecuting whistle blowers. His only "mistake" seems to have been attaching his name and face to it rather than simply mailing it anonymously to the Guardian.
Who did what now?
While I appreciate your honest opinion, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that very little of this can be categorized into "black" or "white"; at least not yet. I not only respectfully disagree with the absolute premise that you offer, I also disagree with the absolute premise taken up by most of those who have replied to you. There are many questions that need to be answered before these kind of conclusions can be drawn.
It is clear that Snowden did violate his confidentiality agreement - there is no arguing this. He broke the law, and I'm not going to dispute it. The legality of the program at-large, however, has not been established. You are correct that the program was authorized by Congress. Suggesting that the program was deemed legal by the court system is dubious, at best. The existence of FISA courts, where federal judges review and grant surveillance warrants does not qualify as judicial review and does very little to validate that the program meets constitutional standards. If it is established that the program violated the constitution (the highest law of the land), it will be the government who violated the law, and covered it under a veil of secrecy. If this is the case, it is a serious violation of the trust of the American people; and whether or not it prevent terrorist attacks is irrelevant, as the ends don't justify the means (IMO). The government can't have it both ways - holding citizens accountable for following the law when it doesn't adhere to its own laws.
I'm also curious about you meant by Snowden doing this for his own gain. What did he have to gain? Notoriety? It seems to me that he had more to lose than he had to gain...but then again, I do not understand the desire for notoriety, and would prefer to avoid the public eye. Either way, until the program is understood and scrutinized, I don't think that it's fair to categorize Snowden is a whistle-blowing patriot or a traitor (yet).
I hope that we do the right thing here and analyze the program; asking the necessary questions to determine what is constitutionally acceptable. Further, I hope that my fellow Americans think long and hard about the implications of programs like this. I'm a bit uncomfortable with the government warehousing massive amounts of data about its citizens, even if mining it takes a warrant from a secret court. I understand the argument that companies are already doing this (to an extent)...but what differentiates them from our government is that they don't have the power to incarcerate or kill people. Now, I'm afraid that our government will sweep this under the rug, preventing any honest dialog in the name of national security. I honestly believe that even if this program is legitimate and legal, the ability to secretly monitor Americans will eventually be abused; if not by this government/administration, it will be by another one.
-Turkey
What happened to them saying he didn't have any secrets, he didn't have access, and that they weren't doing that crap, they were saying it like a week ago.
Did he release the docs he had? How come I feel like there is something missing from then & now?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/06/14/1431232/snowden-is-lying-say-house-intelligence-committee-leaders
This is what I'm talking about. What happened from this to now? And why then is our House Intelligence Committee Leaders lying?
Be seeing you...
"We were just following orders" only fails if you lose the war.
He can spend up to 3 months in Cuba on a tourist visa. Obviously the Cuban government isn't going to extradite him and Cubana won't be sending the US any flight lists. This point is perhaps the most important. Cuba is a place where Snowdon can break the paper trail. He can stay anywhere from 1 to 90 days there and then procede to his final destination.
The only risk to this strategy is that the Cuban government may want to ask him a few questions about the NSA before allowing him to leave. Assuming the Cuban government allows him to leave I would guess Ecuador. It's obviously willing to protect whistle blowers and Assange could have discussed the matter directly with officials at his embassy. According to this list Ecuador does have an extradition treaty with the US though, but maybe it is just for murders and other violent crime. I think Ecuador and Venezuela are both nice places to live. So either way he's good as long as he has money. Hopefully he moved all of his funds out of US banks before blowing his whistle. Otherwise freezing his funds will be one of the first things the US LEO thugs will do.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I took a speech class in high school. Take that for what its worth.
We were taught to use note cards, and the note cards were only for writing an outline of your speech with maybe a reminder to touch on some important points as you progress in your speech. Anyone who tried to write their entire speech into the note cards had significant points deducted from their grade.
The purpose of a teleprompter is not to outline a person's monologue, it is to spoon-feed it to them verbatim. Go watch a nightly newscast if you want to see an example of teleprompters in action.
For as bad as Bush's diction skills were, coupled with his extremely limited vocabulary, he managed to give hundreds of speeches without a teleprompter.
And "Secret Judges" Seem a lot scarier. I thought the whole point of holding a "court" was publicly finding the truth.
The fact that people whose job it is to "know history" and to "know better" set these up is just icing on a very scary cake.
I already see the White House big-shots trying to spin Snowden as a fraud, since he's running away for refuge in nations that don't believe in any of what he claims to be fighting for.
But hey, he's just being practical at this point. As he said himself in an interview, when a major world power decides they're out to get you, they'll eventually succeed if they try hard enough. That doesn't mean it's smart to remain a sitting duck and make yourself easy to snuff out -- which is exactly what staying in the U.S. would do.
It doesn't really matter where in the world he chooses to travel. The media spin, the lies, and the propaganda won't change or come at a reduced rate. The irony of him being temporarily safer in nations like China than here just further illustrates how deep the problem goes -- and buys Snowden some more time to argue for his side of the case in the press.
I mean, how can our country's leaders even keep a straight face when declaring Snowden should come back here voluntarily to get his day in court? Everything they've done regarding the spying is handled by a SECRET court -- so there's no way he'd have a fair trial. Essentially, they'd screw him over just as badly as nations like China do all the time to the people opposing their own governments.