Edward Snowden Leaves Hong Kong 536
hazeii writes "Ed Snowden, the U.S. whistleblower responsible for exposing the degree to which the U.S. watches its own citizens (as well as the rest of the world) is reported as having left Hong Kong for Moscow. According to the South China Morning Post, he is on a commercial flight to Russia but intriguingly it seems this is not his final destination. It's not clear whether this move is in response to the U.S. request to extradite him."
"News" that matters? (Score:5, Insightful)
By the time this was posted on slashdot, he hadn't just left Hong Kong, but landed in Moscow.
DICE: When copying news in development, please make sure you update it as needed before posting. This worked better before. Not well, but it has become worse.
Re:"News" that matters? (Score:3, Insightful)
> I'd rather not know where he is.
You'd just be undermining his chosen strategy for minimizing the chance he'll "be disappeared". Frankly, what he wants is for all of us to know where he is, all the time.
Re:Run coward run!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Allegedly Venezuela By Way of Cuba (Score:4, Insightful)
I support what he has done, and appreciate him informing American citizens to the constant surveillance that we at under.
But Venezuela? I want him to escape prosecution. I do not want him to enable a despotic government to appear to be free. Ironically Snowden will be "free" in Venezuela, but the Venezuelan people are not.
I was really hoping he'd end up in Iceland.
why no outcry in the US? (Score:2, Insightful)
Given that his espionage charges and leaning on HK for extradition was all over the US news, why has there been very little popular outrage outside of tiny niche communities like slashdot? Why are there no mass cries to try the senators responsible for the spying program on charges of treason? Where are the million-man marches against the surveillance society that it is no longer possible to pretend we haven't become?
We used to hold ourselves as better than the East Germans and the Soviets for just this reason: we lived in a society free from mass government surveillance, with only special cases allowed based on search warrants obtained with reasonable suspicion. We did not surveil our population as a whole. Seriously, we will let ourselves fall into that place with barely a peep?
What happened to us?
Re:Run coward run!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
uhh, i think the fact that he hasn't been caught yet (and disappeared) suggests he knew exactly how bad the backlash would be. he knew enough that he could plan for it.
he did not take the path of least resistance here. if he were a coward, he wouldn't have leaked the info in the first place. knowing what he knew, and not doing anything about it, is probably what he saw as cowardly.
Re:Run coward run!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Its the folks still working at NSA who should be rotting in jail. What they have been doing is illegal. Personally I think anyone still there should be treated as a collaborator. We didn't accept "just following orders" as an excuse after WWII, it would be good for the nation if we locked away everyone at NSA doing anything above sweeping the floors.
Re:Going to Russia for safety from the US. (Score:5, Insightful)
While modded as funny this is tragic that the US government is spying wholesale on it's own citizens, breaking the spirit of the Constitution to the extent that employees of the government feel the need to "blow the whistle" and expose those activities. Then those whistle blowers have to seek asylum in country's that have been known to engage in wholesale repression of anti-government dissent by the citizens of those country's.
There is just something so wrong about all of this and on so many levels.
Re:Run coward run!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, Sparky.. I think he's a flippin' national hero, on a par with many of the heros of the first American revolution, and I'm betting theres a LOT of us out here who think this.... He knew his life was gonna change dramatically and he'd likely be on the run from the pigshit running this country now, YET he blew the whistle on the blatantly UNconstitutional crap these three-letter fiefdoms were perpetrating on the American people.. Sure, I'll grant you that he violated a bunch of laws/rules/regulations, BUT he followed the only really important law.. the Constitution, the one mentioned in the oath that government workers take, where they swear to "protect and defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic..." He was defending it from the pigshit poseurs who are trying to shred the Constitution at every turn.. So you can call me and the rest of us who think he's a hero a moron, but we know we're the people the founding fathers had in mind, and YOU are the moron, if I was into ad hominim attacks, which I try to avoid.. But since YOU started it, I'm gonna play along.. You and your ilk are part of the problem with America today... YOU are the moron...
Re:Going to Russia for safety from the US. (Score:5, Insightful)
and yet, we'll continue to lie to our kids at school when we teach them about our 'constitution' and how we have the high moral ground on all the issues and that the US is the most free country in the world.
I wonder, at what age, do the kids see thru the bullshit and realize they are being lied to 180degrees ?
when I was growing up (70's), 'the red commies' were the ones that did the shit WE are now doing. we laughed at them for being so non-free.
I'm not doing a lot of laughing these days, however. ;(
I'M ASHAMED OF MY COUNTRY.
our government has stopped representing the will of the american people. you can blame us for not rising up and overthrowing them, but given that they are the most powerful government in the history of the world, its not an easy task to reign in the corruption and restore normal law and order again.
pity us for having the american dream ruined before our very eyes. realize that we were once a great nation, but sadly, I cannot say we are a great nation anymore. no one in the US government will say they are sorry, so I'll say it for them. not that it matters, as I am a total nobody, but I am sorry that we have lost our way and turned to the dark side. I am very very sorry and I want the world to know that the majority of *thinking* americans do not approve of this bullshit spying and data-grab.
Re:He is not entering Russia. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are deluded if you think Russia vs United States, Russia is the 'good guys'. In fact, I don't consider the US to be 'good guys', but compared to Russia they appear to be. Putin orders hits on reports who write unfavourable articles on him, more than once, and its fairly widely accepted in Russia. End of story.
The US and all its NSA bullshit isn't quite comparable to the threat of death for speaking out, if so all of the reporters who've covered Snowden would be fearing for their lives.
Re:He is not a whistleblower (Score:5, Insightful)
You are confused. Just because Congress authorized it doesn't make it legal. Coming to mind quickly is the McCain Feingold campaign finance reform (authorized by Congress), which has come to the Supreme Court three times and every time been ruled unconstitutional, hence illegal. The NSA spying is illegal according to the 4th amendment no matter what Congress says. If they don't like it, the way to make it legal is pass an amendment to repeal the 4th amendment, whcih they know won't be possible.
Snoden exposed illegal activity by the NSA, also exposing Congress "authroizing" illegal activity without worrying about consequences because they kept it hidden from the public. So in addition to exposing the illegal activity, he also exposed the illegal cover-up of the illegal activity.
He is the definition of a whistleblower, also showing that there are no whistleblower protections for citizens in the USA.
Re:How strange. (Score:4, Insightful)
I recommend actually looking hard and who you're defending. Pussy riot girls are epic level attention whores (literally) who have shot orgy porn while pregnant to "protest" the same issue a couple of years ago, among other similar stunts (you'll find photos of the orgy if you look, video is harder to come by).
No one cared about them until they busted into church and violated right to freedom of practicing religion without idiots disturbing them in their church. Rather strange, if they were nailed for political reasons rather then their actual stated crime, surely they would have been nailed much earlier, like when they were shooting the preggo porn orgy against Putin?
There are MANY groups of people in Russia who are worth defending for protecting rights of people. Pussy riot is not one of such groups. You should instead consider people who are trying to dig into human right abuses in Chechnya, journalists who investigate shady regional and federal ties and corruption and so on.
But instead, we (Westerners) are wasting our energy and efforts on a bunch of dumb attention whores who's main accomplishment is breaking into the church and interrupting orthodox service with risque acts. And at the same time, persecution people who are actually investigating real issues goes unnoticed.
Re:How strange. (Score:4, Insightful)
But instead, we (Westerners) are wasting our energy and efforts on a bunch of dumb attention whores who's main accomplishment is breaking into the church and interrupting orthodox service with risque acts. And at the same time, persecution people who are actually investigating real issues goes unnoticed.
So it's ok to persecute people because they are attention whores? The US puts up with attention whores (WBC), because they still have 1st Amendment rights. Russia is not much better now than it was when it was part of the USSR, and Putin is not so slowly and definitely surely taking them back that way. Calling Russia a "bastion of human rights" like the GP did is like calling Somalia a bastion of gun control.
Re:He is not entering Russia. (Score:3, Insightful)
How you know your country is fucked (Score:5, Insightful)
Two words, my friend. "Secret laws".
Re: Allegedly Venezuela By Way of Cuba (Score:4, Insightful)
But Venezuela? I want him to escape prosecution. I do not want him to enable a despotic government to appear to be free.
The problem with the non-despotic governments is that my government keeps threatening them if they don't carry our despotic water.
Re:He is not entering Russia. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, and Hitler was a vegetarian, therefore vegetarians are genocidal maniacs!
Re:Going to Russia for safety from the US. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is just something so wrong about all of this and on so many levels.
Yes. The US has a whistleblower law that's ostensibly to protect them, yet this administration has attacked more whistleblowers than any other. Thomas Drake was vindicated but after that Snowden wasn't comfortable relying on a whistleblower law that's being ignored. Now they're going after Snowden charging him with espionage when Snowden showed the NSA has been spying on Chinese civilians' communications.
First Orwell's "1984", now Kafka's "The Trial". What's next, Carrol's "Through The Looking Glass (Alice in Wonderland)"? Snowden's protectors so far are PRC, Russia, and Cuba. I feel a need to drag in "Rip van Winkle" here for some reason.
Is there some kind of undiagnosed "Drop Dead Simplemindedness Disease" running rampant through the USA official circles these days? John Dean's "Cancer on the presidency" comes to mind.
Re:He is not entering Russia. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your main mistake is assuming that there are any 'good guys' at all. There are not. All countries act to one degree or another to further their own interests. The fiction that there are 'good' and 'bad' countries is just that, a fiction.
Re:He is not a whistleblower (Score:4, Insightful)
I love it when I get modded "Troll" for speaking the truth. How about you refute any part of what I posted?
I grant my trust that somebody in the government will have the stones to do the right thing and expose law-breaking by the government, no matter how many layers of threatened criminal charges the government layers into the contract. That nobody did it before Snowden speaks volumes to how stupid and uneducated Americans really are to what their civil rights are and what their duty to their country is (the oaths all say "support and defend the constitution" not "follow all orders, legal or otherwise.") Really? Nobody in a uniform (before Bradley Manning) had the guts to say "I won't help cover it up any more." Nobody? Not one person?
Nobody is obligated to follow an illegal or unconstitutional order, and this kid did the exact right thing in exposing it. I wouldn't have trusted the US government or relied on the whistle blower statutes (as weak and ineffectual as they are) either based on the government's recent track record of prosecuting whistle blowers. His only "mistake" seems to have been attaching his name and face to it rather than simply mailing it anonymously to the Guardian.
Re:He is not entering Russia. (Score:5, Insightful)
The US and all its NSA bullshit isn't quite comparable to the threat of death for speaking out, if so all of the reporters who've covered Snowden would be fearing for their lives.
Not true, all the reporters who reported that he was doing the right thing would be fearing for their lives. Most are reporting things like "I'm sure the guy had an overactive Mother Teresa gene and thought he was going to go out and save America from Americans, but in reality he was very foolish," -CNN
Russian and the US have very different methods but both ensure the free press toe the official line.
Re:Going to Russia for safety from the US. (Score:4, Insightful)
and yet, we'll continue to lie to our kids at school when we teach them about our 'constitution' and how we have the high moral ground on all the issues and that the US is the most free country in the world.
We'll continue the "lie" in the hopes that our children will take up the mantle and fight for freedom from domestic spying and all the other Constitutional abuses that we have permitted to creep into our lives. Since us adults have utterly failed at the job.
Re:He is not entering Russia. (Score:5, Insightful)
the 80s and early 90s every european kid wanted to be american.
No we didn't.
Re:Going to Russia for safety from the US. (Score:4, Insightful)
when I was growing up (70's), 'the red commies' were the ones that did the shit WE are now doing.
Erm... You might want to look into COINTELPRO [wikipedia.org]. The US was doing this back then as well, just not as efficient.
Re:He is not entering Russia. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, the initial reporters that were talking about him being a "true american hero" all have completely shut up and some have retracted their statements quickly.
Real journalism in the USA has been dead for a very long time. You do what you are told and report as expected.
Re:Run coward run!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
"We were just following orders" only fails if you lose the war.
final destination (Score:5, Insightful)
He can spend up to 3 months in Cuba on a tourist visa. Obviously the Cuban government isn't going to extradite him and Cubana won't be sending the US any flight lists. This point is perhaps the most important. Cuba is a place where Snowdon can break the paper trail. He can stay anywhere from 1 to 90 days there and then procede to his final destination.
The only risk to this strategy is that the Cuban government may want to ask him a few questions about the NSA before allowing him to leave. Assuming the Cuban government allows him to leave I would guess Ecuador. It's obviously willing to protect whistle blowers and Assange could have discussed the matter directly with officials at his embassy. According to this list [wikipedia.org] Ecuador does have an extradition treaty with the US though, but maybe it is just for murders and other violent crime. I think Ecuador and Venezuela are both nice places to live. So either way he's good as long as he has money. Hopefully he moved all of his funds out of US banks before blowing his whistle. Otherwise freezing his funds will be one of the first things the US LEO thugs will do.
Re:He is not entering Russia. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am going to call Bullshit here! For starters I am not going to be hiding behind an anonymous coward. Secondly I don't hate Americans, I rather like Americans. I like the American ideals and how people want to do things. What I dislike are parts of the American government.
Now to get to the scoop. You don't have a threat of death for speaking out? Really, how about we ask this fellow:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/18/AR2006051802107.html [washingtonpost.com]
""Everyone knows that Mr. al-Masri was a mistaken victim of the rendition program. He is now a victim of the misuse of the state-secrets privilege." "
So the CIA did an oopsie, hurt this fellow, detained him, and tortured him. They did this by "accident" and when this guy asks for his rights the American government says, "oopsie no can do, state secret you know." Do you know which country does this? Oh yeah RUSSIA! While you might say at least this guy is alive, well how about those that are not alive? Do we hear their story?
Again I am not critiquing Americans and America as I have many American friends, have lived there and like it there. What I am critiquing is that there are parts of the American government that since 9/11 have gotten a blank cheque to do whatever they feel is right regardless of the law. America as an ideal stands for freedom, justice and being able to pursue without being persecuted. This is a good thing, and something that all humanity should strive for. But these other programs are just overreaching IMO.
Re:Going to Russia for safety from the US. (Score:4, Insightful)
A "whistleblower" is someone who exposes illegal behavior or misconduct, and the "whistleblower law" is meant to protect him from reprisal. The problem here is that everything Snowden has exposed would appear to have the sanction of US law.
Obviously it's wrong, by most people's commonsense idea of what their rights are, and his act is a form of protest. To pardon him or exculpate him would, under normal rules, be a mistake, because going to jail for breaking an immoral law is an intrinsic aspect of civil disobedience -- Thoreau and MLK went to jail, their incarceration simply became a demonstration of the manifest immorality of the law.
A problem going forward is that the government doesn't seem satisfied to merely jail someone anymore, it has to hold them for months or years without indictment, as in the case of Bradley Manning. I can't tell yet if holding someone like Manning incognito, without charge for months or years, actually helps or hurts the protestor's case.
(I'd say on balance it seems to help, so far; if they'd simply arrested him, indicted him and convicted him in the old-fashioned way, nobody would be talking about him anymore.)
Notes != teleprompter (Score:3, Insightful)
I took a speech class in high school. Take that for what its worth.
We were taught to use note cards, and the note cards were only for writing an outline of your speech with maybe a reminder to touch on some important points as you progress in your speech. Anyone who tried to write their entire speech into the note cards had significant points deducted from their grade.
The purpose of a teleprompter is not to outline a person's monologue, it is to spoon-feed it to them verbatim. Go watch a nightly newscast if you want to see an example of teleprompters in action.
For as bad as Bush's diction skills were, coupled with his extremely limited vocabulary, he managed to give hundreds of speeches without a teleprompter.
Re:He is not entering Russia. (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the words "Secret Courts" (Score:4, Insightful)
And "Secret Judges" Seem a lot scarier. I thought the whole point of holding a "court" was publicly finding the truth.
The fact that people whose job it is to "know history" and to "know better" set these up is just icing on a very scary cake.
Re:Going to Russia for safety from the US. (Score:4, Insightful)
I knew people who went down to participate in the Civil Rights movement in the South during the 1960s. Many of them also participated in the movement against the war in Vietnam. I went on a couple of demonstrations with them myself.
I never heard of an official rule book on civil disobedience. They did what they thought was effective. For Ghandi and MLK, doing things publicly and getting arrested worked. In other situations they didn't.
A lot of people didn't think it would do any good to refuse to be drafted, and go to jail for 10 years. I don't either. They went to Canada instead.
Daniel Ellsburg did a lot to end the Vietnam war. He did it secretly and didn't want to get arrested. If he were being prosecuted under today's rules, he might have gone to jail for 10 or 20 years. What's the point of that? Richard Nixon didn't go to jail.
Jail is something the government does to make you less effective. I'd rather be effective. There were a few moments in history when you could get valuable publicity for your cause by going to jail. Today isn't one of those moments.
If you want to engage in civil disobedience, reveal your lawbreaking and go to jail, be my guest. Other people want to fight injustice and stay out of jail. That's their decision.
The enemy of your enemy is your friend .... (Score:4, Insightful)
I already see the White House big-shots trying to spin Snowden as a fraud, since he's running away for refuge in nations that don't believe in any of what he claims to be fighting for.
But hey, he's just being practical at this point. As he said himself in an interview, when a major world power decides they're out to get you, they'll eventually succeed if they try hard enough. That doesn't mean it's smart to remain a sitting duck and make yourself easy to snuff out -- which is exactly what staying in the U.S. would do.
It doesn't really matter where in the world he chooses to travel. The media spin, the lies, and the propaganda won't change or come at a reduced rate. The irony of him being temporarily safer in nations like China than here just further illustrates how deep the problem goes -- and buys Snowden some more time to argue for his side of the case in the press.
I mean, how can our country's leaders even keep a straight face when declaring Snowden should come back here voluntarily to get his day in court? Everything they've done regarding the spying is handled by a SECRET court -- so there's no way he'd have a fair trial. Essentially, they'd screw him over just as badly as nations like China do all the time to the people opposing their own governments.
Re:He is not entering Russia. (Score:4, Insightful)
Never heard of Pravda.
Are you for real?
Seriously, there are people who know how to read and write who haven't heard of Pravda? That's like saying you haven't heard of The Times, Der Spiegel and Le Monde. The mind boggles.
Anyhow, the GP is ignorant too (although not to this astonishing degree), not appearing to know the difference between Pravda and Komsomolskaya Pravda - in these days, two very different publications. The latter having gone through the local equivalent of Murdoch and tabloidism. It's more like Bild Zeitung or The Sun than a newspaper for actual news.