

Why should we believe that Snowden is in the Moscow airport? - josephby

If I can briefly remove my tinfoil hat...<p>As far as I can tell, no media outlet has been able to independently confirm that NSA leaker Edward Snowden is actually in Sheremetyevo airport. No one has seen him, and the Russian Government has not presented him to the media. Yet the New York Times, and other outlets, report on his location as if it were a verified fact. Why is this?
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gexla
Though Putin has said he is outside the control of Russia, there has to be
some sort of Russian authority in that transit area and I imagine they would
have detained Snowden right away. He has no valid passport and he can't get a
visa. Russia also doesn't need for Snowden to be a traveling circus in their
airport with his mug being beamed to the world from Russia on a daily basis
until they get rid of him.

I would also think that given his situation, that they would have to put
through some sort of request to the Russian government for asylum or a similar
scheme for staying there without a visa (from what I have read, you can only
stay at that airport for 24 hours without a visa.) That process will probably
take a while.

Maybe Hong Kong and Russia have been dragging their feet a bit as an F.U. to
the U.S. but it seems like they have been following their own laws. All the
chatter about whisking Snowden away to some safe location seems to have come
from people with no authority to do anything.

I think it's simple. Russia detained Snowden in the transit area (if for no
other reason than to keep him away from the media frenzy) and that's why we
haven't seen pictures of him.

~~~
brown9-2
Isn't it also likely that while detained, a parade of agents from Russia's
special services would be attempting to talk to him? I have a hard time
believing that any country, let alone the US or Russia or China, would not be
at least attempting to talk to a person holed in your airport with thousands
of classified documents.

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runjake
I don't necessarily believe anything about Snowden and I try not to pay
attention to Snowden. Snowden reportedly asked that people focus on the issue
and not him, and I'm taking that to heart.

What I _do_ try to pay attention to are the crimes my (the US) government is
committing in violation of the US Constitution. And how they're using these
criminal acts against friendly nations and its own citizens in order to
violate additional Constitutional rights.

That's what I'm concerned with. The rest is Kardashian drama fluff
disseminated to direct people's attentions from the real issue.

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jessaustin
They're using the same method when reporting on Russia government activities
that they use when reporting on USA government activities: send a stenographer
to the press conference, and be sure to get press releases in copy-and-
pasteable electronic form. Whatever they do, they never exhibit any
skepticism.

Perhaps it's easier to see how little the popular news media contributes when
they're "working" in unfamiliar environs. In this case, we can't rely on RT as
a check because Russia. I just checked, and unfortunately Al Jazeera don't
seem to have anything either. (Well, they had a link to the entertaining
"Whistleblower" reggae mix, but no positive indication that Snowden is in the
transit section.)

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rcamera
This is quite irrelevant to Hacker News. Please read the guidelines:
[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

 _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic._

~~~
ctdonath
_anything that gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity._

This seems to. I've wondered variants of the same thing: there's a lot of
authoritative commentary surrounding an issue which nobody talking has
authority on (to wit: "those who know don't talk, those who talk don't know").

 _If they 'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic._

Poster's point was exactly that "how do they know he's there?" _isn 't_ being
covered.

Obviously the overall topic is interesting (having completely taken over the
HN front page at one point not long ago); "how do we know X?" is relevant
thereto.

~~~
rcamera
There is no point in discussing this, as this entire thread will be based on
assumptions and not facts. The only 'fact' one could get would be a picture of
Snowden in Russia or someplace else dated very recently, but if there was such
picture, it would be in the news already.

~~~
ctdonath
Today there IS a very big point in discussing this. Snowden is either in that
Russian airport, or he is on the President of Bolivia's plane which just had
its diplomatic immunity violated. His provable whereabouts are now a big
factor in world diplomatic relations.

