
Snowden appeals to 15 countries for political asylum - simonbrown
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23138073
======
jgrahamc
About an hour ago Glenn Greenwald tweeted this
([https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/351730381478821888](https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/351730381478821888)):

"NOTE: Snowden's leak is basically done. It's newspapers - not Snowden -
deciding what gets disclosed and in what sequence."

If that's true then Putin's condition that Snowden stop is easily met, or
impossible to meet depending on how you read it.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
I suspect Putin's ego is a bit too big to be defied on a technicality. I think
that will be a problem.

~~~
pavs
Seriously, I would probably take Putin over Obama any-day, at-least he doesn't
pretend to be a nice guy.

~~~
orblivion
I'm not sure, I feel like Obama pretends to be a nice guy because he sortof
has to be a nice guy in the US. He couldn't get away with poisoning a
journalist. Correct me if I'm wrong.

~~~
jlgreco
He could probably get away with poisoning a journalist, but probably not in
such a... dramatic and obvious... way. That polonium poisoning was astounding,
it just screams _" So fucking what."_

~~~
VladRussian2
>it just screams "So fucking what."

In my reading it wasn't the main motif, it was a way to kill in the way that
nobody would even question who did it, while not having to publicly claim
responsibility.

------
digitalengineer
What a time we live in when asking for your constitutional rights is too much
to ask...

 _"...would return voluntarily to the US if there were "ironclad assurances
that his constitutional rights would be honored"."_

~~~
anigbrowl
Nobody said it would be too much to ask, but you don't have a constitutional
right to released on bail (judges have always decided that on a case-by-case
basis) or to decide which court your case will be heard in (I presume Snowden
is hoping to have a trial take place within the 9th circuit based on his
residence in Hawaii, given the relatively libertarian bent of the 9th Circuit
appeals court).

All defendants have the right to make requests for such things...through
filing motions in court. Snowden is asking (strictly speaking, his father is
asking on his behalf) for extrajudicial guarantees that are not mentioned in
the constitution or available to normal defendants.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
I don't think anyone said that you have a constitutional right to be released
on bail or to decide which court your case will be heard in.

You (supposedly) have a right to a fair trial, as well as the right to be free
of torture, and the argument is that sitting in solitary confinement for
months or years, only to be convicted in a heavily biased Virginia court,
would violate these things.

~~~
anigbrowl
No, that's not the argument at all. Snowden's father said that he anticipated
his son would return if he had a guarantee of freedom before trial, no gag
order, and a choice of venue. This was widely reported and I am assessing his
statements at face value.

Nobody but you has mentioned solitary confinement or Virginia courts; you're
entitled to an opinion that that's the risk he's facing, but that has nothing
to do with the statement made by Snowden's father. You don't speak for him.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
I know what his father said. You're reading it wrong is all. You're also
incorrect that nobody but me mentioned solitary confinement or Virginia
courts. Snowden himself brought that issue up and it's been widely discussed.

------
hooande
From what I understand Snowden's father is very eager to get him back to the
US. As long as he has "iron clad assurances of his constitutional rights",
which is kind of silly. This is an incredibly high profile case and the
Justice Dept doesn't want to win this one by cheating. They take pride in
their work as investigators and prosecutors, they will want this case to be
nice and fair. Despite what the movies have lead use to believe we aren't
going to send Jason Bourne to assassinate him in the snow.

Snowden is a very interesting case. On one hand, he seems to have an
idealistic view of his actions. He sincerely believes that he did the right
thing. On the other hand, he now has what most 29 yr olds would give anything
for: _international fame_. The world is tracking his every move, people are
starting to venerate him...I kind of trust that his motives were pure but this
is one hell of a side benefit.

Does anyone remember when Kanye West looked into the camera and said "George
Bush does not care about black people"? I think that he and Snowden are linked
because they both felt very strongly about an issue, but couldn't or didn't
pursue recourse through the proper channels. Anyone who saw Kanye's face
before he made his statement could see the brew of fear and nervousness inside
of him, because deep down he knew that his next action probably wasn't the
right thing to do. I would guess that Snowden went through similar emotions.
He absolutely had to do what he thought was right, but inside he knew that
there was probably a better way.

Snowden isn't an agent of espionage or a traitor. He is a criminal, he clearly
broke the law. The perceived Constitutionality of the NSA programs is
irrelevant. The Constitution itself says clearly who is in charge of
interpreting the Constitution. He doesn't get a pass based on his beliefs or
because of our beliefs.

I hope he comes home and faces a trial. If he gets an OJ level superstar legal
team he has a good chance of being found not guilty. If he loses he's facing
around 10 yrs in a lower security prison. The show trial and national debate
he'll spark will probably be more than worth it.

~~~
andrewljohnson
"The perceived Constitutionality of the NSA programs is irrelevant."

This is incorrect. If the NSA programs are found to be unconstitutional by the
courts, Snowden will have to be regarded as a whistleblower. If he is a
whistleblower, then he is not a criminal.

The very problem here is that a good number of us Americans, and a great many
more non-Americans, regard secret surveillance as both an affront to the 4th
amendment of the US Constitution, and the basic human right to freedom.
Secrecy is simply anathema to democracy.

~~~
tptacek
I don't think it's actually true that whistleblower protections in the US
effectively sanction any disclosure or leak if what is leaked somehow
implicates some crime. I'd welcome a source to back your assertion up, though.

~~~
olefoo
It's an interesting question the criminality of his actions may from a legal
standpoint be completely independent of his status as a whistleblower or spy (
and those two categories may not be mutually exclusive either ).

Certainly he has violated his confidentiality agreements ( a civil liability )
and exposed information that is classified ( potentially a criminal liability
).

And it's possible for rational people to think that he may be doing things
that are morally justifiable even if criminal. Where most people who think
that investigating systematic acts of lawbreaking ( and wholesale collection
of private metadata absent criminal suspicion from private companies by
__any__ .gov qualifies as such on first examination ), may believe that those
who bring such acts to light should be spared punishment because they are
acting in defense of the greater good of society.

It is healthy for us to be reminded that our naive moral calculus is only
loosely mapped to our system of laws.

~~~
tptacek
Sure. I'm interested pretty exclusively in the legalisms of this situation,
not in the moral dimension (which I don't believe I can learn anything about
from a message board).

------
tippytop
According to this article [1], with Ecuador wavering, Snowden as applied for
asylum to 15 different countries, Russia among them.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/world/europe/snowden-
appl...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/world/europe/snowden-applies-for-
asylum-in-russia.html)

------
jbattle
Not sure how many layers of paranoiac overanalysis I'm applying here, but
letting Snowden fall into the clutches of Russian intelligence may be a far
better deterrent to future leakers than a 'clean' prosecution and imprisonment
here in the US.

~~~
greyman
Why? They will take his data, as the Chinese did, and then what else would
they do?

~~~
JonFish85
Once Russia has what they need from him, they probably don't care what happens
to him. Ship him back to the US, probably--that way they can try to patch
things up diplomatically, and I imagine they have whatever they could squeeze
out of him, intelligence-wise.

~~~
vetinari
Why would they ship him back? That would be just a weakness. They can afford
to keep him.

~~~
JonFish85
On the other hand, why wouldn't they hang onto him for a month or so, see if
they can't extract information from him (not even talking about torture, there
are much better ways of getting information from people), then ship him back
to the USA or send him on his way someplace else. Long-term, he's served his
purpose, no reason to spend a lot of money on him, especially if they want to
smooth things over with the USA. And that's basically exactly what they're
doing now: saying he can stick around until someone else claims him. Whether
that's the USA convincing Russia to hand him over or some nation offering him
asylum, Russia probably doesn't really care.

------
llomlup
If Russia grants him an asylum, nothing will stop US media from screaming
'traitor', since, he, well, "fled" to Russia.

~~~
mokash
Right, FLED. He is fleeing the USA because the government are after him
because he revealed their corruption. Sure, the media could spin it but people
already know.

~~~
JonFish85
Well if we're going to spin a narrative, allow me to spin a different one just
as reality-based as yours. He took a job to get a clearance, worked there for
a few months to get access to sensitive information, dumped it to the internet
before he had to take a lie detector test and took off to avoid any
consequences of his actions. And wow, what are the odds, he ended up in a
country with a recent history of espionage with the USA (I'm sure we do it
too, I'm just pointing out that it's an interesting choice).

~~~
betterunix
Ah yes, the classic _overtly telling everyone that you are taking their
information_ version of espionage!

Usually countries try to keep their spies in positions where they can
continuing leaking information, and usually they try to hide the fact that
they are obtaining the information. Anyone who thinks that this looks anything
like espionage is either uninformed or a US government shill.

~~~
JonFish85
I didn't say anyone put him up to it. I'm saying that Russia has an incentive
to get on his good side for the time being. He has information that they
undoubtedly want and have probably been working to get their hands on.

------
staunch
Do we know whether or not Snowden is being held captive and/or being coerced
by The Russians?

------
dnautics
He should appeal to the US for political asylum, for completeness.

------
ramblerman
"On the other hand, Mr Snowden, we understand, has travelled there without a
valid passport and legal papers." \-- Obama

We understand, really?? This double talk really makes me sick, they took his
passport away, at least call a spade a spade.

------
lgomezma
I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up in a plane to Venezuela, after all
Maduro is in Russia at the moment.

~~~
jlgaddis
It'd be quite interesting if he flew there with the President of Venezuela on
his way back from Russia.

~~~
lgomezma
They actually said that Snowden was free to leave as long as he could buy a
ticket. You can't buy a ticket from an airline without a passport but a
private diplomatic airplane is another thing...

------
JoeCoo7
He has NOT asked Russia for asylum. [http://rt.com/news/edward-service-
immigration-russian-493/](http://rt.com/news/edward-service-immigration-
russian-493/)

~~~
anigbrowl
FTA: _Information in the foreign media which states that Snowden asked for
asylum “is not true,” Zalina Kornilova, head of FMS press service, told RT.

However, Kim Shevchenko, a consul at Sheremetyevo airport, said that Snowden
did apply for asylum in Russia._

------
fusiongyro
Anybody know which 15 countries?

~~~
jabiko
No. According to [http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-putin-
sn...](http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-putin-snowden-
russia-20130701,0,4270240.story):

    
    
      The official didn't name the countries, but said that Russia was among them.

~~~
fusiongyro
Thanks. I guess this isn't news so much as the promise that news is happening
somewhere.

~~~
jabiko
Wikileaks has now published the list of countries:
[http://wikileaks.org/Edward-Snowden-submits-
asylum.html](http://wikileaks.org/Edward-Snowden-submits-asylum.html)

    
    
      The requests were made to a number of countries including the Republic of Austria, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, the Federative Republic of Brazil, the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba, the Republic of Finland, the French Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Republic of India, the Italian Republic, the Republic of Ireland, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Republic of Nicaragua, the Kingdom of Norway, the Republic of Poland, the Russian Federation, the Kingdom of Spain, the Swiss Confederation and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

------
antihero
For what reason did he not enter Ecuador _before_ leaking the information?

------
hindsightbias
Well played, Mr. Putin

------
pointillistic
your cynical remarks are unbecoming of this situation

~~~
pc86
Whose? You didn't reply to anyone.

------
lmgftp
If he's willing to give away state secrets (I know we have objections to their
content sometimes, but they are state secrets), he should also be willing to
face trial in the U.S. in civilian court.

Running across the ocean is possibly the most cowardly thing, and only further
cements his future legacy as a "traitor". Unfortunately one narcissist cannot
decide the policy of a nation, and Mr. Snowden has made a mistake in
attempting to do so via leaks of classified and top secret information.
It's... Traitorous.

~~~
mikeash
People keep saying this but I don't get it. Why should he be willing to face
trial, exactly? What's so bad about running when you're sure you'll be
punished for doing what you think is right?

~~~
pc86
Because rather than making an argument against Mr. Snowden on its merits, they
get to just dismiss him as a coward and a traitor. It's the same basic reason
why most arguments on the internet devolve into ad hominems and profanity.

I'm not making a judgment either way (although I probably have in my earlier
comment history), it's just easier for some people to say "Whatever, he's a
traitor and a coward" rather than actually think about why he did what he did,
what his motivation(s) were/are, and if they ultimately think the ends justify
the means.

~~~
john_b
Bradley Manning is rotting away in some military jail and the average American
still thinks he's a traitor. If powerful interests want to spin your story a
particular way, they will spin your story. Snowden at least has a voice while
he's on the run. He may be persecuted, but he's not silenced.

~~~
mpyne
Well in Manning's case the reason is what Manning did to get in trouble in the
first place, not about what he did afterwards.

Indiscriminate dumping of classified data that you didn't look at, to
opponents of your government, is pretty much on page 1 of "Compendium of
Spies".

What the public got out of his leak was that a) war sucks and b) diplomats are
not pure as the driven snow. Both of which the public knew, and have known,
and will pretty much always know.

What AQ, TTP, Taliban and other extremist groups got is detailed ground-level
descriptions of how the Army operated against them, what informants they used,
and much much more. As an intelligence analyst himself, Manning would be in an
exception position to understand just how useful those documents would be in
their hands, and if we are charitable somehow still judged that the gain to
the enemy was somehow still less than the gain to the public.

And __this __is why Snowden was so careful to note in his initial interviews
that he took _specific things_ from the NSA instead of just copying what he
could.

~~~
john_b
That's a valid point, and indiscriminately dumping data definitely deserves
some punishment (though far less than the Gitmo style treatment he got, if you
ask me).

However, the most relevant point is that, based on what is being written in
the media, there is no real distinction in the average American's mind between
the two except that one was caught and the other is on the run. They are both
labeled as "leakers" and "traitors" by the government, and except for a few
outlets, the mainstream media largely parrots the official talking points.
Being treated as a traitor based on a label the government applies to you
rather than on the details of what you did is what is really frightening.

~~~
mpyne
I am 110% convinced that if Snowden had made his leaks about PRISM, and
wiretapping of domestic data, and __nothing else __, and had not run to Russia
/Ecuador/ _CHINA_ /WikiLeaks that the American people _would_ consider him
different.

The media has little choice about the distinction the people draw though. He
fled to Hong Kong, away from a nation where at least 1/3rd of the population
still has a jingoistic antagonism to China. He allied with WikiLeaks, who the
American people know are at least somewhat more anti-American than anti-
secrecy. He tried to get asylum from Ecuador (who is already allied with
WikiLeaks), and Venezuela has been chomping at the bit to grant him asylum
(I'll let you guess what Americans think about either country at this point).

To put the cherry _right on top_ he delivered his TS-containing brain and his
TS-containing gear to effing _Russia_.

His father has been the smartest Snowden in this whole sorry affair; there's a
reason he's worried about the perceived association to WikiLeaks, and that's
because it's not favorable to Snowden in the USA.

