Snowden Granted One-Year Asylum In Russia

New submitter kc9jud writes "The BBC is reporting that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been granted temporary asylum in Russia. According to his lawyer, Snowden has received the necessary papers to leave the transit zone at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, and the airport press office is reporting that Snowden left the airport at 14:00 local time (10:00 GMT). A tweet from Wikileaks indicates that Snowden has been granted temporary asylum and may stay in the Russian Federation for up to one year." Reader Cenan adds links to coverage at CNN, and other readers have pointed out versions of the story at Reuters and CBS.

Comments

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Opportunist]

But seriously. Think back a quarter century and ponder what someone would have said if you told him that a US citizen flees to Russia to beg for asylum because he's being prosecuted for telling the truth...

Re:In Soviet Russia

[artfulshrapnel]

Except that by asking him to do something illegal, the NSA invalidated their own contract. Under U.S. law no contract may require a person to commit an illegal act, nor may it prevent them from reporting a criminal act so long as they have first attempted to report the criminal activity using internal policies. As long as Snowden tried to get his bosses to stop the illegal wiretapping and reported their actions to his supervisor, he should be protected under us whistleblower protection laws.

That said, this is the NSA, and they seem not to care about the law. Running away is smart, to keep them from doing something illegal to punish him for reporting the OTHER illegal things they did.

gay?

[bzipitidoo]

You joke, but the military is very quick and free to trot that idea out. "He did it because he is gay" as if being gay makes a person more likely to leak information, I mean, commit treason. Some of Bradley Manning's posts I ran across would seem to show he might indeed be gay. Then it occured to me those posts might be fakes.

The 1989 gun turret explosion on the USS Iowa was a classic. The navy put out this ridiculous hypothesis that Clayton Hartwig, a sailor who died in the disaster, was gay and so sexually frustrated that he was suicidal and deliberately caused the explosion. Under pressure, the navy dropped the gay part but clung on to the idea Hartwig was suicidal and did it on purpose. As the disaster was investigated further, it became even more painfully obvious that the navy was doing a cover up. The real reason was that they were using experimental mixings of explosives that if not rammed slowly could prematurely detonate. Strangest was that the officer the navy picked to lead the investigation was the same guy who made the experimental mix.

And remember, some of the most radical social conservatives advanced this absurd notion that 9/11 happened because America is too tolerant of homosexuality. Just the other day I stopped in at my insurance agent's office and heard Limbaugh on their radio, ranting about the possibility that Trayvon Martin might have been gay and tried to sexually assault Zimmerman. I don't expect any better of those retards, but we should have smarter military leaders than that. No General Boykins! May be hard to do. I suppose a military career is attractive to simpletons who think force is a good answer to most problems.