Slashdot Mirror
EU Parliament Rejects Asylum For Snowden
cold fjord writes "Euronews reports, 'MEPs have rejected a demand from the European Green Party that urged EU governments to grant asylum to whistleblower Edward Snowden. The move came during the adoption of a European Parliament committee inquiry into the NSA spying scandal. As Claude Moraes, a centre-left British parliamentarian, explains, member states have the final say over who they allow to remain inside their borders. "The European Union does not have the power to grant asylum as the European Union, so this is something for individual member states," he told euronews. "And the issue of asylum within this report therefore does not become a relevant issue for the European Union."'"
They didn't reject it (or not). They are unable to grant it, so the issue is moot.
"We'll punt." (not sure how well that phrase carries to Europe)
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
That's the problem with the EU: the member states have far too much power still so the EU can not function as one entity in matters like this. This gives enormous problems who come in shiploads to Italy for instance.
-- Cheers!
You have the mil NATO side of many EU members who have totally connected their domestic telcos to the storage and computing power of 5 competing nations (and a few more). :)
Kind of hard for the EU to compete in a global marketplace if the US gov is given all data in realtime
Then you have the post WW2 refugee commitments and protection laws.
How does the EU make it all work out after Snowdens EU telco related whistleblowing?
"NSA inquiry: what experts revealed to MEPs" has some hints:
http://cryptome.org/2014/02/eu... shows some of the EU thinking on Snowden, the NSA and tame telco staff in the EU.
page 16 and 17 show a simple overview of what the NSA did in the EU, onto transborder access, lack of encryption.
Page 26 has 'likely to originate from state entities acting on behalf of foreign governments or even from certain EU national governments that support them" i.e. staff been more helpful to the US than protecting their own govs?
In the face of junk encryption and useless open telco networks it seems the EU has a lot to thank Snowden for.
The good news is the crypto and networking information is out, governments and companies can fix their network use.
As for Snowden, Russia is safe. The press has the whistleblowing material. How the EU mil will work to stop any EU privacy reforms or quality encryption work will the fun to watch over time.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
They didn't reject it. In fact, they said they want to give it, but the law doesn't allow them to. The want to, but they can't. The liars at Fox News of course claim his request was rejected. It was not.
Depending on where you are in the EU:
We only ever share with the NSA.
We used to work for Moscow but we only share with the NSA.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
If the EU granted asylum where would Snowden live? The EU has no land; It's constituent sovereign nations have the land. For Snowden to live somewhere the country would need to accept him which makes the acceptance by EU a moot point. What if the EU gave him asylum but some of the constituent countries disagreed? Could the EU override the decisions of a sovereign country on a political issue?
Some people have an issue with the EU acting too much like an overriding country. If the EU gave asylum it would be acting like such a country.
An individual state could grant asylum _according_to_their_laws_ (which differ*) and then there could possibly be complications if Snowden travels to another EU country. One one hand he would be considered a citizen of the asylum granting nation, however AFAIK there isn't a EU rule that guarantees he wouldn't be extradited.
(* there are some common rules which refugees have to be granted asylum however above that the rules differ greatly)
I would suggest an international conference of the USA, UK, Sweden and Russia on Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Sarah Harisson, and Bradley Manning.
The best solution would be to send them to live to the North-Eastern Siberia, to Yakutsk or Krasnoyarsk regions, for, say, 10 years. During imperial period such an exile was a punishment in itself. At the same time they would be safe and free. The climate is very cold, but healthy and beautiful. It is another world. Everybody is happy.
Life itself suggests it. Edward Snowden is already almost there. They could work there as school teachers of English language and literature, and IT education.
After ten years emotions would calm down and the situation will be more clear.
As an EU supporter, I'm afraid that at the next european elections we'll see a triumph of every kind of populism / demagogy / nationalism, left-wing and right-wing, and the people who get elected will work exclusively to suppress the EU from the inside. And I have few arguments against them left. The EU can't carry on by having only the support of the "elite" who can understand the advantages of the common market. They need to conquer back the trust of regular people, or they will disappear.
You clearly do not understand the political structures that you live under. The EU's competencies are clearly defined in treaties. As such, its source of legitimacy is the member states themselves and it cannot, by definition, overrule them, only set conditions on their continued membership in the organisation. Those competencies primarily lie in the establishment and maintenance of the single market. Most member states choose to accept the conditions it sets because the single market is beneficial to them. There is even an example of a country (sort of) that chose not to: Greenland.
Now, the grandparent spoke poorly when he asked if the EU could override a political issue, since virtually anything can be called a political issue. However, most people who study these things differentiate between "low politics" that do not touch a country's sovereignty (such as labeling rules on food) and "high politics" that do touch a country's sovereignty (such as foreign policy). With the exception that the treaties specify that member states agree to institute democratic rule and accept a common approach to basic human rights, the treaties are very careful to avoid any wording that could be construed to give the EU competency over "high politics". They do establish certain coordination structures for "high political" things necessary to ensure the integrity of the single market (border control and common military action), but these are governed under a completely separate paradigm than the single market that allows countries to conserve every ounce of sovereignty.
Now, I personally am a Euro-skeptic, but most of the criticism that the EU gets is frankly uninformed tripe. If the Brits want out of the EU, then they are free to leave at any time... but they want access to the single market, now don't they?
Believing in some ineffable higher power is one thing , believing in the clearly made up sub harry potter level childrens stories that are laughably known as religious texts is another entirely.
Sounds like the EU parliament is in fact in a state of superposition and their cats are better than your cats.
Sounds like a job for the cat hacker.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
IETF rejects demand for asylum for Snowden
In a surprise move today, the IETF (also known as the Elders of the Internet) rejected a demand from IT professionals that Edward Snowden be granted asylum everywhere that has an internet uplink. While Snowden has gained widespread support from concerned IT professionals, the IETF indicated that it was incompatible with their goals.
'The IETF is committed to creating strong standards and RFCs for internet-related tasks,' they wrote. 'It is neither in our interest nor our mission scope to grant asylum to people, nor do we have the authority to do so.'
Political activists around the world have condemned their stance as shortsighted and disappointing. Slashdot Editor Samzenpus however expressed hope that the move would generate sufficient backlash to drive clickthroughs.
Renowned OS developer Linus Torvalds and Google CEO Larry Page also denied an appeal for asylum, indicating both that they had no sovereign territory and that they were corporations, not nations.
I'm tired of this argument. Russia might have been officially atheist, but it drank deeply from the well of the quasi religion of communism as a substitute. For all intents and purposes, that WAS the religion, and the intelligent people were the ones that saw through the dogma. And then got gulag'd. Scientology has no 'god' either, yet somehow gets to call itself a religion. Do you think it sets a good example for the idea of religion in general?
So what are we actually getting angry about here when we say religion is dumb - are we angry about the non existence of god, frankly I don't care if it is true or not, or are we angry the willingness of certain types of people to wrap themselves in written bullshit made up by somebody else without actually thinking for themselves? When you stop using your own common sense to make decisions, you abandon what we think of as a solemn duty.