Slashdot Mirror
Edward Snowden Files For Political Asylum In Russia
vikingpower writes "The official Russian Press agency Interfax has the scoop: Edward Snowden asks for political asylum in Russia (Google Translate). Russia Today, however, denies the news. Is this part of a clever disinformation move by Snowden, who reportedly is still in the Moscow airport Sheremetyevo 2?"
The Washington Post is also reporting Snowden did apply for asylum in Russia. Snowden released a statement last night through Wikileaks, quoting: "For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. 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."
and he is us.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
It has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person.
Not quite. He is still a citizen of the United States and can contact the US Embassy for assistance to leave the country, though it would mean his surrender to the United States. If he publicly made that intent known, officials from the US Embassy in Russia could travel to the airport, use diplomatic powers to pass into where Snowden rests, issue him temporary travel documents to escort him out of the airport and to the embassy, and arrange for travel home.
He's not stateless, but I'm sure he likes to think of himself that way.
How I wish this was hard to believe.
According to the age, Snowden has withdrawn that request. Mr Snowden withdrew his Russian asylum request because of a demand that he stop harming US interests by leaking documents
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
"Edward Snowden Files For Political Asylum In Russia"
That was yesterday's news, sorry. Today's news, is that he's not.
Having a passport canceled doesn't effect citizenship. Snowden's statement is rubbish on that point.
Prepared to issue one-entry travel document to Snowden: US
"We reject - you've heard Assange say earlier that he's sort of marooned in Russia. That's not true. We're prepared to issue one-entry travel document. He's still a US citizen. He still enjoys the rights of his US citizenship, which include the right to a free and fair trial for the crimes he's been accused of," the State Department spokesperson, Patrick Ventrell, told reporters at his daily news conference yesterday.
"We reject the notion that this is some sort of political prosecution. Indeed, it's not. These are serious crimes, serious violations of his obligations, and as somebody who had access to classified information, and so our position is that he needs to face a free and fair trial and not be a fugitive," Ventrell said.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The right to asylum has been under attack for quite a while now; this is hardly news.
I'm happy to be explained the difference between 1) seeking asylum fleeing politically-motivated charges, versus 2) fleeing criminal charges, albeit, for offences committed with a political motivation.
Americans will never defend their constitution, that has been proven for decades of abuses.
Land of the fat and LAZY.
The dream died years ago, I still have no idea why people still believe it is still a dream country.
Apparently he withdrew his asylum request after Putin asked him to stop leaking more secrets. Funny he would consider it in the first place knowing that Russians are likely much worst when it comes to surveillance of their own citizens. Can't see many nations wanting him at this time.
This news is a day late. Since this happened Putin told him he can't leak anything else if he wants to stay in Russia so he's withdrawn his request to Russia.
As for the US breaching article 14 I don't think it matters anymore, they've long thrown articles 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12 out the window in the last decade and no one did anything so of course they'll try and get away with violating the rest despite being a signatory to the UDHR.
But in this case they're also now violating article 13, which states that:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Revoking Snowden's passport also violates this from what I can see as by removing his passport they're removing his right to travel and hence to leave Russia.
Or in other words the US has pretty much now completely thrown the de-facto document on basic levels of standards of human rights entirely out the window.
As each year goes on they're breaching a new article, when they do that how can they realistically preach to any other nation on human rights? How can they pretend to have the moral high ground next time a blind Chinese human rights activist turns up at their embassy and they claim they should be allowed to let him go to the US against China's will?
It's not. But it's big and powerful, and would put up a fight if the U.S. tried to extract him. Most first world countries wouldn't even dare protest.
NSA is not us. If NSA were us, Clapper wouldn't be lying to Congress.
FISA ruling wouldn't be hidden from us, especially the 2011 one saying its illegal.
This wouldn't have been done in secret and they wouldn't have to lie to us.
Snowden wouldn't have had to leak something that should/needs be public in a democracy anyway.
FTC and other government agencies wouldn't have to remind Corps there are laws in the land.
Google Yahoo etc. wouldn't be fighting secret orders in secret kangaroo courts.
Cheney wouldn't be smirking.
So no, it's them, no us. A fear-mongering faction in the NSA led by General Alexander that simply decided one day to capture all data and store all data, on everyone, and a lot of traitors to their countries who went along with it. /rant
http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/edward-snowden-applies-asylum-in-norway-5484164
Abstractions... nothing more.... physical reality is only influenced by abstractions to the extent human action is connected to them. To understand this is to know its about excuses to use nothing more than brute force physically.
The Obama Adminastration is not a US governemnt but the government the founders wrote and warned us about when they wrote the Declaration of Independence. And they gave us instructions as to what to do about it. Recognizing its not only our right to do something about it but our Duty to.
So what does this do for Snowden? Plenty know, though the Obama Administration is in denial about it.
NSA template response #1435-33
http://wikileaks.org/Statement-from-Edward-Snowden-in.html?snow
Monday July 1, 21:40 UTC
One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.
On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. 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 kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.
For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. 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.
In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised Ã" and it should be.
I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.
Edward Joseph Snowden Monday 1st July 2013
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Snowden has retracted his asylum application to Russia, on the ground that he does not want to jeopardize the state-to-state relationship between Russia and the USA
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
... but NSA does represent the Americans !!
Whether you like it or not, if you are an American (which I am), NSA is part and parcel of the American government - and whatever NSA is doing (and whatever the Obama administration is doing right now) does represent ALL THE AMERICANS
I mean, look at what is happening in Egypt
The Egyptians who are tired of the non-performing Egyptian presidents are gathering in HUGE CROWD, demanding that muslim-brotherhood figurehead to step down
And about America ... ... do you see anything like that happening ?
Why not ?
What kind of message the Americans are telling the world ? ... that we, the Americans, are SATISFIED with what the Obama administration is doing ... that we, the Americans, agree with what NSA is doing ... that we, the Americans, do not mind our phones be tapped, do not mind that the big brother has invaded our privacy, do not mind at all, that our liberties are being violated
By doing nothing, that's THE MESSAGE the Americans are telling the world ... whether you like it, or not
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Sorry guys, I know you want to fight oppression, corporations, evil governments and what else, but level of cheese coming out of Assange and now Snowden is making me puke. Seriously, a stateless person? Passport is *document*, not nationality or citizenship. It is revoked when you have lost formal trust of country it has been issued by (regular procedure for accused runaways). Edward, you already invalidating anything you have said before (except factual leaked docs), because your intent is to speculate emotionally.
What he really thought will happen after his identification as the source? That everybody will jump out of joy when he will ask for political asylum? That he will have capability to travel after identifying himself? What is this with this childish behavior?
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
If he wanted to blame someone, I'd blame the folks at Wikileaks who advised him to travel from Hong Kong to Russia in the first place. Apparently they told him they'd find him a place for Asylum and it seems they couldn't deliver.
Sorry, but part of civil disobedience is a willingness to suffer the consequences as just or unjust as they maybe. That's what sets people like Gandhi, Mandela and MLKjr apart from this guy. They took their stands and paid the price of their stands.
Some want to lift this guy up as some kind of hero. Others a criminal and traitor. I've held the position that he's both. At least until he begins giving up operational tradecraft information then I start to lean more towards criminal. It's one thing to bring to light what is going on in generalities.
Although I'm getting a laugh at the coming out of the EU being up and arms about our spying on them, especially the French. After all the DGSE is the only intelligence service I know of that publically publishes the fact that 25% of their budget is spent on industrial espionage to help French businesses.
At any rate, glad we can all be focused on this little side drama as opposed to the meat of the story: mainly the spying programs that the NSA have been engaged in. Funny how just a week later that's been pushed from the news headlines. If this wasn't enough to get people into the streets with pitchforks and willing to tar and feather the lot of them in DC I guess nothing will. It was a nice republic, too bad we couldn't keep it.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
So he supposedly "martyred" himself for freedom, and yet has no qualms about living in countries that are much more oppressive than the US. Hypocrite, pure and simple.
He applied for Asylum in a few countries that are less oppressive than the US too.
But it's not a hypocritical act to sacrifice yourself so that others may have greater freedom.
Free to select from a very short list of security cleared lawyers.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Firstly, he's not stateless. The US is not denying the fact he is currently a United States Citizen. A stateless person is one with no citizenship anywhere. A stateless person has no right of entry into any country; he has the right to return to the US any time he wants.
Second, nothing in international law obligates any country to not object to an asylum application. It would be a treaty violation to make asylum seeking in and of itself a crime, but that's not happening.
That UN treaty does protect asylum seekers from purely political prosecutions, but Snowden has moved well away from whistleblowing on domestic surveillance programs (I could certainly classify that as "political"), and has progressed to apparently spilling the beans on every electronic intelligence gathering operation he could get his hands on.
When he was still talking about domestic surveillance of questionably constitutionality, I could see him as a civil liberties hero. But he's gone well beyond that by now.
And, as a side note, how did he NOT think going from Hong Kong to Moscow was going from The Frying Pan Into the Fire? Hong Kong was a strange choice to begin with. (He could be successfully hiding almost anywhere in Western Europe, had he fled there.) Leaving Hong Kong to head to Moscow was even stranger. If he wanted the "Court of Public Opinion" on his side, this was not necessarily the best way to go about it. Not to mention the danger inherent in relying on the goodwill of the Peace and Freedom Loving Peoples of Russia.
"does represent ALL THE AMERICANS"
Only 60 members of Congress were briefed and only 3000 people knew about the project in Government. It doesn't represent *all* Americans. It's a deception that's falling apart sustained by secrecy.
Conspiracies take time to unravel.
Half a million signatures tell me, that half a million people SO FAR have read the Guardian leaks. That's a good start.
As the court opens the 2011 FISA ruling that this program is illegal, they'll be 5 million more.
As the extent of the phone surveillance becomes apparent it will be 50 million.
As the extent of the trawl of public records comes out, that will be 300 million.
Lets see you travel with your citizenship and no passport.
It's possible. Passports exist to prove identity, you don't need to prove your identity if people already know who you are.
The Red Cross and just about any government can issue temporary ID-proving documents although it's unlikely they will be accepted at airports as quickly and easily as a valid passport.
Whether you agree with what Snowden did or not (I for one do not), dude is a serious drama queen. This is somewhat typical of his generation. Everything is just so much more bigger and more important because it happens to them . It reminds me of an article I read some months ago about how his generation is convinced because they re-tweeted some messages in 2009 during the Iranian presidential election unrest that "I was there, man, on the ground trying to help Iranian democracy."
He clearly did not think things out very well. If he had, he would have fled to Ecuador first, asked for asylum, then leaked everything. Instead he thought he could hide out in Hong Kong, not realizing that China could suggest to Hong Kong authorities that making Snowden someone else's problem ASAP might be the best idea for everybody. I am amused at how he talks about how "I am convicted of nothing". Yes, of course. The reason he is "convicted of nothing" is because he has so far avoided having to answer for his actions in a US court of law.
The State Department can revoke your passport. You might notice there's a little part that says "This passport is the property of the United States (Title 22, Code of Federal Regulations, Section 51.9). It must be surrendered upon demand made by an authorized representative of the United States Government." They have the right to revoke your passport and criminal charges are a reason they can. In that event what happens is you can get a special travel document that'll let you go back to the US. Yes, if he takes that, he'll face trial in the US. That is the point of revoking his passport. A passport is not a license to run away, it is a travel document to allow you to travel legally. The US can revoke your passport and tell you to come home if they are charging you with a crime.
I think you need to read up a bit more on the law and human rights. It is quite well established that a country can charge their citizens with a crime, and can do things like revoke travel rights while they stand trial. What Snowden is accused of is a crime. You can certainly argue that they shouldn't charge him, but releasing classified information you've been given access to is a crime. You sign all kinds of NDAs to that effect having a security clearance. You are made full and well aware it is a crime to reveal classified information.
So the US has a valid charge against him, and it is within its rights, nationally and internationally, to revoke his passport and demand he return to face trial. That doesn't mean it is morally right, but that is up to the individual to decide. There is no human rights issue here though. Revealing classified information you are given access to is a crime in every nation I am aware of (in some it is a crime period, even if you are given the information from someone else and have no clearance yourself), and in the US they make it VERY clear when you get your security clearance that you agree not to do so, under penalty of law.
(1) Turned down good asylum candidates: Ecuador, Hong Kong, Russia.
(2) Didnt seem to know that most places dont even consider asylum until you are on their soil (including embassy).
It is really so sad, he has lost any sympathy for his case by associating with that organization.
Fuck off US shill.
The Europeans seem quite surprised and angered by the information, so I call bullshit.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Committing treason against a corrupt government vs. treason against your country can be seen differently by the people. Though he did break the law, many people see him as a hero. Think of it. It took acts of treason against a government that was suppressing and refusing to listen to our people for us to become the country we now are. Maybe this is the first step towards another revolution.
I used to be stateless (de jure, with a 1954 convention travel document), and you are quite wrong. I had the right to return to Germany and the same right of entry to a country someone else with a valid visum has.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
what a tool this Snowden is. he's a wanted fugitive, accused of treason and espionage. then he whines that US is blocking his asylum bids? no shit, sherlock! he needs to recognize the impact of his actions, and set his expectations accordingly. somebody call the waaambulance! US has long arms around the world, so he shouldn't be surprised when the MIB show up to put him on a plane to quantico
in short, he did a really crappy thing (or herioc thingi if that's your worldview), and he's going to be held accountable to it. any statements to the contrary are naive and self centered (like assange himself).
What's happening to Snowden is less about punishing him as it is scaring any future would-be whistleblowers. He already threw his previous life away by exposing illegal data mining, would he have done so if he thought he also wouldn't be able to get safe harbor anywhere else?
Consider, if he was really a bad guy, he'd board the train to Pyongyang from Moscow. I'm sure North Korea would welcome a former NSA sysadmin with open arms.
More Twoson than Cupertino
According to the Passport Fact Sheet published May 2012, (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/smart/pdfs/passport_fact_sheet.pdf) the US may revoke a passport if there is an arrest warrant (which there is) to keep an individual from departing the US, if there is a court order restricting the individual from leaving the US. Since Snowden was already outside the US, it would seem frivolous to issue a court order barring him from leaving the US and therefore, by the State Department's own regulations (laws), it appears revoking his passport was handled improperly and this could be seen as a human rights violation as he is effectively imprisoned without due process (without a passport he cannot enter Russia, either and is confined to the one area of the airport that is considered international space).
If Russia declines asylum, since Snowden is technically not in Russia, but in international space, any country could grant him political asylum, put him on a plane, private or otherwise and let him into their country as a political refugee (for which international law does not require a passport). The question is which country will be the one to do that?
The US better hope that nothing happens to him while he is stranded, too. It would be hard to convince the rest of the world that after not following the law on password revocations that we just didn't take him out.
Snowden was stupid enough to blab about what he found, he could have probably functioned a lot better by slowly feeding the American Conspiracy ideal by saying. I have worked for the CIA, I cannot tell you the details but you all should be really scared about your privacy. He probably could have gotten much further.
How about MLK? Could he have gotten much further if he went around politely murmuring in people's ears, "Uh, I think maybe we could do better for some people who aren't being treated very well..."
Or Gandhi? "You know, perhaps the British have made a mistake or two, and should maybe think about giving India its independence."
Okay, if those two are too far, how about if Daniel Ellsberg kept telling his friends, "Hey, the U.S. might be doing some less than perfect things in Vietnam."
A real man would have, yes. A real man would have told the public,
A real man would not engage in the No True Scotsman fallacy as his opening gambit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
After now the entire world will watch him stand trial --- a FAIR trial. If anything happens to him by unfair means, the reputation of the United States is over.
So if I wanted to tarnish the reputation of the US all I have to do is make sure Snowden dies in suspicious circumstances.
I wonder how many world leaders have thought about that one.
But alive he is doing quite a job tarnishing the reputation of the US by doing nothing but telling the truth.