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Edward Snowden Still Stuck At Airport, May Be Permitted Entry Into Russia Soon
sl4shd0rk writes "Edward Snowden, the enlightening NSA Whistleblower, may have been granted refuge in Russia as reported by Interfax News. He has apparently been given papers (and a change of clothes) by the Russian government to allow him to soon leave the Sheremetyevo airport. The delay in exodus, cited by a Russian official, is apparently due to the 'uniqueness' of the situation being cause for thorough review of Snowden's Asylum request."
Reports are conflicting; WaPo and Reuters say Snowden's Asylum application is still in limbo, whereas other sources are claiming only minor details are blocking his exit and he may be allowed to leave as early as tomorrow. What is certain is that he's not leaving today despite early reports claiming he could.
Whoa. It's been what, like 3 weeks and I've never seen a laundromat in an airport, especially one that lets you stand there naked. So he's been in the same clothes the whole time. Ugh!
They do have a hotel or something like that in there though, right?
He's just waiting for his luggage to pop out on the carousel
This probably means Snowden has agreed to turn over everything he's got to Russia. That way it can be quietly assimilated at a government level and just kind of go away at the public level. That gives Russia secrets they certainly want, and saves face for America publicly.
Better known as 318230.
Once he's out, I'm sure the CIA or someone will send in a team to black bag him in the middle of the night.
It's not like they've never done that before.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Unreported: how much contact Snowden has had personally with the Russian authorities, just like we have no idea how much contact he had with Hong Kong's.
Is he trading info for asylum?
Let me rephrase this unfounded speculation with the purpose of impugning his character:
Is Edward Snowden selling US secrets because he hates freedom?. We don't know. We're just asking the question. Next on Fox News, why don't we know if Snowden has terrorist connections? Is the mainstream media covering this up? We report, you decide.
If he agrees to wear a muzzle and gag, they may even let him talk to his lawyer at Christmas.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
He is the story now. What the governement is doing in terms of spying on its own people is now largely forgotten in the news cycles.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
They're in jail or dead.
What good is disappearing into a hole forever, with no further contact with the world, going to do for his cause? People will just forget about him. At least this way, he and Assange can blog and publicly comment. That's way more than Bradley Manning will ever be able to do again.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
He probably would've stayed in US. However, he saw how US government was torturing Mannings, and he saw how easily US government assassinated their own citizens. I don't blame him at all for escaping. I hope he exposes our corrupt government more once he gets to the safety of Venezuela.
The consequences of his actions are not going to be in proportion. You agree that what he did is a good thing, then you really should agree that the most likely consequences of his actions will not be deserved.
He isn't just going to jail, he is going to get royaly fucked when he goes to prison. You aren't talking about a few years of jail here, you are talking about quite possibly being imprisoned forever. What good are you with a hero that is imprisoned? If you agree that his revealing of what the NSA is doing is a good thing, you should stand up for him not getting any bad consequences at all.
How can you rationalize that he did the right thing and in the same breath condem him for not having bad things happen to him for doing the right thing?
Every time I hear that argument, I have to laugh. If we had any reason to believe Snowden's constitutional rights would be upheld and he'd be given what he has a right to (a fair, speedy, and public trial) I might agree with you. The problem is, Snowden exposed the government in their violations of the basic rights theoretically protected by our Constitution, and it's not as if the government is acknowledging the other rights therein outlined. That's what is at hand here.
Snowden has been in an airport terminal for several weeks precisely because he is aware that his actions have consequences. Neither you nor the US government gets to micromanage what those consequences are, no matter how much Uncle Sam wants to pretend they do.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Bradley Manning's treatment got to them. Going to jail for your beliefs is one thing. Spending a year in solitary confinement with guards refusing to let you sleep for *months* and making you strip naked at random times...before you're even *charged*, is quite another. Indepenent of Manning's guilt/innocence, his treatement before his trial was shameful.
He has an opportunity to come home and strike while the iron is hot. There's enough publicity now for him to get the very best legal representation for free. Running away at this point is silly, he needs to finish what he started or it'll all be for nothing.
Snowden and Assange are going to be in a new reality show produced in Russia
I gave him points for what he did, but they were loss by how he is just hiding across borders, because he doesn't want to face the consequences for his action.
This isn't like Martin Luther King Jr spending a few days in jail in Birmingham. The United States government has made it clear its intentions towards Snowden: They've already caused at least one major diplomatic incident involving violating the rights of a foreign head of state to try to get to him. I have every reason to believe Snowden is on the short list for getting the Anwar Al-Awlaki treatment if he goes to somewhere that the US can get a drone to, and the Bradley Manning treatment if he otherwise ends up in US hands.
I'd be on the run too.
I am officially gone from
That makes him a traitor in my book, regardless of what he ended up finding out.
So investigative reporters who specifically try to dig up all the bad things they can about their own country are traitors. You have some seriously skewed priorities if you believe that someone trying to expose government malfeasence is the wrongdoer.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
A traitor to whom? The only people he betrayed are the ones who betrayed the people by spying on them. He did nothing but expose traitors.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
He lost his cushy 6 figure job, and life in Hawaii with his girlfriend and gets to spend his life on the run. Explain to me again how he isn't facing consequences for his actions? Even though you support his actions, you think it's morally appropriate to lock him in a cage forever?
What Happens When We Actually Catch Edward Snowden? http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/07/what-happens-when-we-actually-catch-edward-snowden/
To paraphrase George C. Scott paraphrasing George S. Patton, "You don't win wars by dying for your country, you win wars by making the other poor bastard die for his."
Also, have you noticed what's happened to the prison system in the past twenty years? Not that it was a peachy keen hotel before, but, yeah, this ain't like spending 30 days in the county jail with a window, a bunkbed and a harmonica. He'd be in solitary, in conditions the U.N. considers torture, and unable to communicate his message to the rest of the world.
Jail is one thing. Torture is something else entirely.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
A real hero would gladly go to jail to prove his point.
Bullshit. He's up against a government that refuses to admit any legal limitations to what it can do, and you say he should just submit? Fuck that.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Are you talking about the guy who was charged with rape by a 'witness' who refused to sign the testimony, for which all charges were initially dropped, then reopened once he leaked the US diplomatic cables?
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Indepenent of Manning's guilt/innocence, his treatement before his trial was shameful.
Not just shameful, it was criminal. Cruel and unusual punishments are prohibited by the constitution.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
he should be stuck in a US prison,
For what?
He informed us of billions of counts of illegal wiretapping. Whistleblowing isn't a crime.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Snowden stated that he tried to get that position for the specific purpose of digging up whatever he could to use against his country... That makes him a traitor in my book.
Pretty sure he dug it up for his country, and against the real traitors (his employers) who are usurping the autonomy of the people of the United States.
At any rate, he undoubtedly sought the Booz Allen gig because he suspected agency wrongdoing based on his prior experiences with the NSA/CIA. I don't think you could ask for a better whistleblower than this: someone willing to get the full story, obtain and screen evidence, and responsibly disclose the matter to public attention (while giving up a $200,000/year Hawaiian lifestyle).
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Ghandi, Mother Theresa, etc...
You die for your principals--
As in I love this country (USA) so much, and believe what has been done is so bad, that I am willing to leak this information to world, but of course I will keep the true secrets out of anyone's hands that could harm the US and it's citizens.
I think that is the OP's point and I don't think it's "Flamebait" at all.
You die for your principals
As the great General Patton once said, you don't win by dying for your principles.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
He should wear a red & white striped shirt and hat on the next interview.
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
That poll is bullshit. If a third of people don't know who he was, then the number was larger when the propaganda campaign started. All that this poll shows is that most people are ignorant and influenced by propaganda.
And as far as his lawyer, your claims are ridiculous. In his case he needed to hire a lawyer with connections. In Russia than means that he would likely have contacts with the FSB. If he hired someone unconnected, he would be fucked. But that does not mean that Snowden is giving information to the FSB.
All that you are doing is trying to smear Snowden by association, comparison to a spy, and by misleading polls. Your post is nothing but a smear piece. I have to wonder if your fingers felt greasy before clicking 'submit'. Looking through your comment history reads like the posts of a neo-con. You justify the Iraq invasion, you talk about how Afghanistan is better now, you discount the idea of proportionality, and you unequivocally support spying on US citizens. And that is only in the past couple of days. You are a zealot who has no connection to reality, which explains your above post.
What part of 'WE DONT TRUST THE GOVERNMENT TO CONDUCT A FAIR TRIAL' do you not get. They have PROVEN they are quite happy to ignore the law, torture people and hold them for very long periods of time without trial or representation. Your suggestion is like letting a rape victim be judged by the rapist.
Good-bye
I don't understand this mentality. I would say that him releasing the information he did means that he is willing to go to jail or be killed for what he believes in. If he wasn't willing to have that be an option, then he would have kept the info to himself.
Soldiers are, in theory, willing to die for their country. That certainly doesn't mean they purposely go run into the line of fire, and anyone who would suggest that a soldier need to do so in order to prove they're "willing to die for their country" would be ridiculed.
Being willing to suffer the extreme consequences of your actions in no way precludes attempting to avoid those consequences. Unless your cause has something significant to gain by making yourself a martyr, odds are you're of more use alive and free.
Also, would you rather people not expose crime, corruption, and abuse of power if they aren't willing to go full martyr right after their "one-hit-wonder"? If you had the info Snowden did, you probably wouldn't even be brave enough to release it to the public, much less hand yourself right over to the government whose corruption your just exposed.
Mother Theresa didn't die for her principles. She got old and sick and received better treatment than she ever delivered to the patients under her care. If anything, she compromised her principles in the end by seeking so much expensive treatment to ease her suffering and prolong her life.
Gandhi did die for his principles, but it made sense for him to do so because he was the leader of a movement. The movement that he built outlived him and he continued to give it power after death as a martyr. The same can be said for Martin Luther King, Jr. Their deaths cemented the will of their followers.
Snowden isn't the leader of a movement. He doesn't have throngs of followers that are following his guidance. He is a whistle blower, a messenger. His death won't make him a martyr and cement any particular movement, because there is no movement. It makes more sense for him to remain alive and continue the discussion at this point, even if the US government does paint him as an Emmanuel Goldstein of sorts.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
No, they weren't reopened. They were, however, assigned to a prosecutor and an extradition was filed to bring him into the country for 'questioning' (like they can't send someone to question him where he is now).
Also, I might add, this happened (prosecutor assigned) 2 days after he leaked the US diplomatic cables, after having lain discarded for months. Odd how the timing of these things works out, isn't it?
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Snowden has been planning this for years. Do you think he hadn't though about that possibility? The Guardian reporter was quite clear that Snowden doesn't want the information falling into the wrong hands. To that end, according to the reporter, the information he is carrying is heavily encrypted and he doesn't have the keys. He spread copies of the encrypted data and copies of the keys to trusted associates around the world. If something happens to him, then they can share their keys and reveal the information. While the Russians could break it in time, by then the information will have considerably less value.
How about Jose Padilla? He spent nearly five years in a military prison without being charged with a crime, just because the President labeled him an "enemy combatant."
You are a fucking neo-con and you call my ideas from the fringe? How many wars started, people killed, and rights crushed will it take for your to realize that history has rejected your bullshit?
It is not Snowden's fault that the government created a surveillance program that violated the 4th Amendment. He bravely exposed that. And working at the CIA and NSA, if his goal was to give information to the Russians for asylum, he could have collected far more valuable information on foreign intelligence than domestic spying. He is a whistleblower, not a spy. And as anyone who has taken an official oath in the US knows, all oaths go to the US Constitution first. You claim that he has violated trust and lied, while it is clear that he has upheld a trust that even high levels of our government can't. And unlike them, he has never lied under oath. So screw your broken philosophy where there is no government accountability over spying programs and when somebody points this out they get thrown into an oubliette. And screw all of your other philosophies where you believe the ends justifies the means. The US Constitution was based on principle, not your Machiavellian bullshit.