
Edward Snowden 'missing' in Hong Kong - Finbarr
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22850901
======
zatara
There is all this talk about how he made a mistake going to Hong Kong because
Hong Kong actually has a strong extradition treaty with the United States
(although ultimately, mainland China can veto anything if it chooses to do
so). Snowden did not make a mistake going to Hong Kong, he was exceptionally
clever because most likely he knows more about NSA spying than just the
domestic spying that he revealed. He probably knows details of international
spying and how the U.S. manages to snoop on countries through technological
means. By sitting in Hong Kong he is signaling that he could easily defect to
the Chinese and reveal real damage to National Security or perhaps the U.S.
will cut a deal with him to let him go home without much jail time. Also, at a
time when the U.S. has been admonishing the Chinese for spying, this would be
a propaganda gold mine for the Chinese as well as an intelligence windfall if
he were to defect to their country. The U.S. would be seething if this were to
happen but the Chinese know that the Americans are so tied up with business
deals with China that they would not or could not do much to damage relations
between the two countries. Snowden could have went to Iceland first but his
trump card is sensitive security information that U.S. real adversaries would
like to have. Iceland could not use that information.

------
sethbannon
This is sensationalist use of the word "missing". The BBC doesn't know where
Snowden currently is -- that's all the article says.

~~~
joelrunyon
Especially if he "checked out" of his hotel. That suggests it's a lot more
purposeful than the maid coming to his room and finding him "gone."

~~~
jfoster
... and the reason he checked out might be that the BBC (along with other
media and governments) knew where he was.

------
bane
Stuck in Hong Kong?

Short on money?

On the run from the Triads or the Man?

Come stay at the (formerly) fabulous Chung King Mansions!

The only hotel you can live in 24/7, get a job and raise a family in. In balmy
Kowloon! Rooms start at $30.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XiRF1OOuw8&list=PL12CEAFFE67...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XiRF1OOuw8&list=PL12CEAFFE67656EDB)

~~~
quantumpotato_
Have you stayed there?

~~~
smky80
I have, as a young oblivious backpacker. I chuckled. As far as I remember, the
room was basically a broom closet with just enough room for a single bed and
the door to swing open. Downstairs was ... interesting. But I enjoyed my
mansion :)

~~~
conroe64
I've stayed there, too. I felt like I was living in the movie Blade Runner.

------
bgentry
Sounds like it's not so much "he's missing" as "he checked out of his hotel".

~~~
zwtaylor
Thus far it seems like Mr. Snowden has taken the utmost precaution in
maintaining OPSEC while releasing these documents. I wouldn't be surprised if
he was long gone from Hong Kong days ago or never there to begin with.

~~~
freshyill
Or, maybe he _was_ there and didn't fully think through his choice of hiding
places until it became abundantly obvious that Hong Kong was a terrible
choice.

------
quackerhacker
So far all of his decisions have been very well calculated. I think this is
apart of his reveal, to either keep the focus on the story, or maintain some
type of safety and appear to have disappeared into China's intelligence
agency....the real point I think is to keep the focus on the reveal.

~~~
cpleppert
Booz Allen said he was an employee for less than three months. That sounds
really interesting, I thought he would have worked there for longer since he
claims he was planning this for a long time and the reporter said he was in
contact for months.

If you read what the Wash Post reporter said Snowden tried to get him to
release the entire slide deck. Why couldn't he put it on the internet? It is
also interesting to me that he said this required a lot of preparation. If he
had the accesses he claimed he had copying classified slide decks would be
risky for him but not something that would take a long time.

He also claimed that the NSA could track all emails in the USA and he (or an
analyst not sure what he meant) could access the email of the president if he
had the personal address. If that is the case, surely evidence of that type of
deep telecommunications interception would be more important than PRISM
especially since he raised that claim specifically to explain why he did it.
With the access he had it would be easy to prove.

I don't know what to make of his decisions. Not saying he isn't who he said he
is but I think there are a lot of unanswered questions.

~~~
daenz
> Booz Allen said he was an employee for less than three months.

I don't really get this Snowden guy. From what I've read about him, I don't
see why someone like him would be given access to the whole picture in the way
he claims to have had access to. Unless someone was positioning him with the
intention that he would become a whistleblower /conspiracy

I just have a hard time buying that of all the people that have worked for the
NSA, of all the people who must have had access to what he did, only one would
become a big whistleblower. Either somebody dropped the ball in psych
profiling Snowden, or this must have been intentional, right?

~~~
krenoten
First of all, there have been several NSA whistleblowers that have spoken on
this issue. William Binney even gave the CCC a copy of some code that was a
similar model to what his team initially designed for the NSA. Second, his
current job at a contractor is relatively new, but before joining Booz Allen
he worked directly under an intelligence agency.

~~~
jjtheblunt
Where is it recorded that he worked directly under an intelligence agency?
(Honest question; i've not found that.)

~~~
wyck
He worked for the CIA on IT security since approximatly 2004-2005.

In 2007 he was stationed in Switzerland (CIA), he left the CIA in 2009.

In 2009 he started to work for a private contractor in the U.S and Japan which
had him stationed at a NSA facility.

I don't get all the media reports that he only been on the inside for 3
months. This adds up to 7+ years.

It all on his wiki page with footnotes to sources.

------
noonespecial
Could just as easily be _Edward Snowden 'hiding' in Hong Kong_. In his
position, I wouldn't exactly be checking in on foursquare right now either.

~~~
raverbashing
"You just became the mayor of Snowden's Hiding Place, congratulations!"

------
detcader
Trust me -- if Snowden wasn't anywhere he wanted to be, Greenwald would know
and would be letting everyone else know.

------
josscrowcroft
Hypothetically, I mean I'm sure he's got it all planned out, but he could
convincingly change his appearance, stock up on supplies and a backpack, and
grab a ferry over to one of the nearby islands to hide out until the news dies
down a little bit. Then it's pretty trivial to make your way south-east. I
mean he can't expect to get back safely to any Western country any time soon..

------
contingencies
Appears from cursory video vs. hotel website that he was using the less
expensive room types at this hotel: 'club rooms' or 'mira suites'.
[http://www.themirahotel.com/en/rooms/room-
choices.aspx](http://www.themirahotel.com/en/rooms/room-choices.aspx)

There's some really good food around there. Seems such a shame to limit
yourself to room service when you're facing jail!

(Edit: What kind of warped mind would downvote such witty and perceptive
analysis? Hahaha.)

------
scottshea
I imagine that he will keep moving until he gets asylum or some guarantees
from the Chinese government.

~~~
dllthomas
... or is pardoned: [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-
snow...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-
snowden/Dp03vGYD)

Not that I am holding out a lot of hope, but the more signatures the better.
It does seem like the best outcome; we need greater transparency, and whistle-
blowers help with that substantially.

See also:
[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/government_sec...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/government_secr.html)

~~~
zalew
not sure how it works in the US, but my understanding of a pardon is that you
have to be trialed and convicted first, you can't be pardoned in blanco.

~~~
pyre
You can be granted immunity.

------
untog
It seems entirely sensible that after he gave the interview to The Guardian,
he left his hotel and found other accommodations before his identity became
public.

I would not be surprised if The Guardian are in touch with him, but are not
publicly stating so until they have a good reason to.

------
tzs
Why would anyone who worked at NSA and is publicly known to have had a very
high security clearance go to Hong Kong in the first place? Wouldn't Chinese
intelligence agencies love to get a hold of such a person and interrogate him?

------
ck2
CIA was down the road from his hotel at the embassy.

I am not sure if he really had a plan there.

~~~
junto
The CIA has a office 'down the road' from every hotel.

------
citricsquid
I wonder if this will go the way of Mcafee.

~~~
pekk
That depends, is Edward Snowden plainly out of his mind like McAfee clearly
was even before the murder flap?

------
anujabro
What if he is not actually in Hong Kong? Just a ploy

~~~
TillE
I'm certain that the US government is able to easily track someone traveling
on their own legitimate passport. So that kind of ruse makes no sense.

It's sort of a shame he didn't travel to the EU, as I suspect he'd get better
support from most countries and would be able to travel in the EU without a
passport.

~~~
redwood
This guy is former CIA...

~~~
tdfx
He worked as a "technical assistant" for the CIA. He probably picked up a few
tricks during his tenure but he didn't go through the clandestine service
trainee program, which are the people you're thinking of when you think of
spooky CIA types.

~~~
dllthomas
Or so they're telling us.

Not that I _dis_ believe on this count, but who was doing just what in the CIA
seems like something we don't tend to know with certainty.

------
joelrunyon
That didn't take long.

------
workbench
Can't they use the NSA logs to find him? hah

------
octo_t
Welp he's dead.

Edit: (Sarcasm, I can't imagine the US being this obvious/idiotic)

~~~
lambda
You mean, you can't imagine the US government executing its own citizens for
speaking out against the government in a foreign country without trial?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-
Awlaki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki)

~~~
Steko
The idea that Anwar al-Awlaki was only guilty of 'speaking out against the
government' is bananas.

~~~
ihsw
Anwar al-Awlaki may have been a terrorist or he may not have been, however he
wasn't tried in a court of law so he wasn't guilty of anything.

The above statement looks very awkward but we shouldn't advocate extra-
judicial killings.

~~~
mpyne
On the other hand, America would have shown no regard for the citizenship of
the enemy in the equivalent situation of a German-American serving in the Nazi
armies.

Congress has told the President to use military force to eradicate Al Qaeda,
al-Awlaki was in AQ, so even that isn't what you make it seem.

~~~
markdown
I am a guy in a 3rd world country. Your government could assassinate me
tomorrow, and then simply say that I was in Al Qaeda. They have proof of this,
but of course they can't reveal that information for reasons of "National
Security".

You think this is OK, because your Congress has given the president authority
to kill anyone who (according to whoever is holding the trigger) is involved
in that organisation.

Fuck you.

~~~
mpyne
"Military force" doesn't actually mean indiscriminate killing is OK, otherwise
we wouldn't consider My Lai a massacre.

So my government would have to, at the very least, demonstrate that you
actually play some operational role within AQ where a targeted killing of you
would appreciably impair the military capacity of AQ.

This was the logic used by the U.S. to send what was essentially a kill
mission against the Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto during WWII, but it
probably helped end that war faster so people don't seem to complain as much
about that one, for some reason.

But either way, if you're a non-U.S. citizen in a 3rd world country then for
whatever reason you're not someone that our civil libertarians in the U.S.
care about, as they only care about the extrajudicial killing of _American_
citizens.

I'm assuming when you say that they have proof that you are implying that the
government is _pretending_ they have proof but won't show it. If you're
actually in AQ and involved in the violent death and destruction of Muslims,
Americans, civilians and our allies throughout the world then I can't honestly
say that I'd feel too sorry for you...

~~~
jacquesm
If 'you' (not you personally) really thought My Lai was a massacre then there
would have been some more serious sentencing around that event.

From the relevant wikipedia page:

"While 26 U.S. soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses for
their actions at Mỹ Lai, only Second Lieutenant William Calley, a platoon
leader in Charlie Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22
villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but only served three and
a half years under house arrest."

Putting this event forward as an example of how well the US deals with
military excesses is really not clever. See Fallujah for a more recent
example.

~~~
mpyne
My point is not that the U.S. "deals well" with military excesses. Like most
other nations we have a hard time coming to grips at the time of an atrocity
with the blood on our hands. We do _usually_ come around though, such as My
Lai which is now considered a massacre even by the U.S. Army, which now uses
My Lai (among other notable crises) as a case study in their officer training
curriculum at West Point. The massacre is taught as a "massacre" in our
history books, and our guilt is not shirked or avoided.

On the other hand you'll even today see people claim that the German _Heer_
(Army) wasn't so bad during WWII, that they were simply a professional army
that wasn't involved in atrocities like the _actual_ villains such as the
Nazis, the Waffen SS, and the Gestapo. It's not actually true; senior German
Army officers were just as involved in atrocities as the rest, even if they
didn't participate in the worst extremes. I won't say that the current German
Army training curriculum and senior leadership don't look at that aspect of
their own history (in fact I'm sure they do), but if more armies had been like
America's over the past 100 years world history would have been very
different.

My point instead related to the comment about Anwar al-Awlaki. He was playing
a military game and was treated as such, nothing more or less. If he didn't
want to be treated by military rules then he shouldn't have joined a quasi-
military organization that ended up at war with the U.S. But once it became a
martial conflict different rules apply, including the Law of Armed Conflict
and the Geneva Conventions.

