Edward Snowden Files For Political Asylum In Russia 447
vikingpower writes "The official Russian Press agency Interfax has the scoop: Edward Snowden asks for political asylum in Russia (Google Translate). Russia Today, however, denies the news. Is this part of a clever disinformation move by Snowden, who reportedly is still in the Moscow airport Sheremetyevo 2?"
The Washington Post is also reporting Snowden did apply for asylum in Russia. Snowden released a statement last night through Wikileaks, quoting: "For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum."
We have met the enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
NSA is not us (Score:5, Insightful)
NSA is not us. If NSA were us, Clapper wouldn't be lying to Congress.
FISA ruling wouldn't be hidden from us, especially the 2011 one saying its illegal.
This wouldn't have been done in secret and they wouldn't have to lie to us.
Snowden wouldn't have had to leak something that should/needs be public in a democracy anyway.
FTC and other government agencies wouldn't have to remind Corps there are laws in the land.
Google Yahoo etc. wouldn't be fighting secret orders in secret kangaroo courts.
Cheney wouldn't be smirking.
So no, it's them, no us. A fear-mongering faction in the NSA led by General Alexander that simply decided one day to capture all data and store all data, on everyone, and a lot of traitors to their countries who went along with it. /rant
You may not want to admit it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... but NSA does represent the Americans !!
Whether you like it or not, if you are an American (which I am), NSA is part and parcel of the American government - and whatever NSA is doing (and whatever the Obama administration is doing right now) does represent ALL THE AMERICANS
I mean, look at what is happening in Egypt
The Egyptians who are tired of the non-performing Egyptian presidents are gathering in HUGE CROWD, demanding that muslim-brotherhood figurehead to step down
And about America ... ... do you see anything like that happening ?
Why not ?
What kind of message the Americans are telling the world ? ... that we, the Americans, are SATISFIED with what the Obama administration is doing ... that we, the Americans, agree with what NSA is doing ... that we, the Americans, do not mind our phones be tapped, do not mind that the big brother has invaded our privacy, do not mind at all, that our liberties are being violated
By doing nothing, that's THE MESSAGE the Americans are telling the world ... whether you like it, or not
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Re:You may not want to admit it ... (Score:4, Interesting)
And the rest of the world is both laughing their asses off at you, and increasingly realizing that what America says and what America does are two entirely different things.
All that talk about rights and freedoms is hypocrisy, and as a government they're more interested in forcing other countries to adopt stricter copyright protections than anything else.
America has lost the right to tell other countries to not spy on their citizens, or pretty much anything -- because they do it themselves. You ignore your own Constitution more every week.
What the rest of the world is seeing is a steady decline into being xenophobic idiots who like to tell everyone else how to run their countries while steadily allowing their own to fall apart.
Re:You may not want to admit it ... (Score:4, Insightful)
America has lost the right to tell other countries to not spy on their citizens
BS. If Hitler admonishes someone for anti semitism, he's still correct because anti semitism is wrong. Hypocracy doesn't remove someone's right to tell the truth.
Yet (Score:4, Informative)
"does represent ALL THE AMERICANS"
Only 60 members of Congress were briefed and only 3000 people knew about the project in Government. It doesn't represent *all* Americans. It's a deception that's falling apart sustained by secrecy.
Conspiracies take time to unravel.
Half a million signatures tell me, that half a million people SO FAR have read the Guardian leaks. That's a good start.
As the court opens the 2011 FISA ruling that this program is illegal, they'll be 5 million more.
As the extent of the phone surveillance becomes apparent it will be 50 million.
As the extent of the trawl of public records comes out, that will be 300 million.
Re:Yet (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yet (Score:5, Insightful)
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So you are not responsible for whatever your democratically elected government does, as long as they decide to not tell you about it.
Re:You may not want to admit it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So I think the "it is us" statement is true.
Re: You may not want to admit it ... (Score:5, Informative)
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Unfortunately, the average American is more interested in going to a monster truck event or feeding their kids kosher hot dogs from Wal-Mart than caring. After all, who cares, it's only privacy, which is only a commodity, and did you know you could save fifty cents on socks at Marshall's this week?
"You must not abide and ignore with a passion
injustice that only turns other lives ashen.
You shall not permit it! You dare not, at all
accepting that outrage upon all will fall!
I cry with the final gasps of my bre
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So how, exactly, do the citizens effect change? We've been bitching about the exact same shit for the last 3 elections - that doesn't seem to be getting the job done. OWS made
Snowden's statement - 1st July 2013 (Score:5, Informative)
http://wikileaks.org/Statement-from-Edward-Snowden-in.html?snow [wikileaks.org]
Monday July 1, 21:40 UTC
One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.
On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.
This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.
For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.
In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised Ã" and it should be.
I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.
Edward Joseph Snowden Monday 1st July 2013
Life imitating art (Score:2)
Snowden has retracted his asylum application (Score:5, Informative)
Snowden has retracted his asylum application to Russia, on the ground that he does not want to jeopardize the state-to-state relationship between Russia and the USA
Re:Snowden has retracted his asylum application (Score:4, Insightful)
on the ground that he does not want to jeopardize the state-to-state relationship between Russia and the USA
I am not sure about that ground. The only fact we know for sure, at the moment, is that he has retracted. The ground is not known, and is being indicated by many sources to be the fact that Putin posed "no more disclosures" as a conditions. Which is not quite the same as what you state, only similar or an indication thereof.
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... being indicated by many sources to be the fact that Putin posed "no more disclosures" as a conditions.
Your mistake is taking whatever Putin (or any politician for that matter) publicly stated at face value.
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what a tool this Snowden is. he's a wanted fugitive, accused of treason and espionage. then he whines that US is blocking his asylum bids? no shit, sherlock! he needs to recognize the impact of his actions, and set his expectations accordingly. somebody call the waaambulance! US has long arms around the world, so he shouldn't be surprised when the MIB show up to put him on a plane to quantico
in short, he did a really crappy thing (or herioc thingi if that's your worldview), and he's going to be held accountable to it. any statements to the contrary are naive and self centered (like assange himself).
What's happening to Snowden is less about punishing him as it is scaring any future would-be whistleblowers. He already threw his previous life away by exposing illegal data mining, would he have done so if he thought he also wouldn't be able to get safe harbor anywhere else?
Consider, if he was really a bad guy, he'd board the train to Pyongyang from Moscow. I'm sure North Korea would welcome a former NSA sysadmin with open arms.
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A real man would have, yes. A real man would have told the public,
A real man would not engage in the No True Scotsman fallacy as his opening gambit.
Re:We have met the enemy (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure. I was born in an Eastern-bloc country (not Russia) and my dad took my mom and I out of there before I was 2. All I heard growing up was how America was the land of the free, and the evil Russians were holding down my cousins back in the homeland, and all of that was true. They were the enemy. They were opening the mail going back and forth between us and our relatives (literally - you could see it when the letters arrived, at both ends) and they were keeping more of them from leaving and joining us in the US, although some more did make it over.
Now we're the ones opening the mail of our own citizens. So what if it's electronic? Then you have one guy who made public a lot of the details of how the US government is spying on its own citizens, (and I'm glad he did it although I feel sorry for him because he's getting fucked) and he's being punished by the current gov't bringing the full weight of diplomatic pressure to make sure he can't get anywhere, even as they lie through their teeth and claim there's nothing special about his case and no backdoor dealing is being done to get "some hacker."
For me, it doesn't get any more backwards from what I grew up with.
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Then you have one guy who made public a lot of the details of how the US government is spying on its own citizens, (and I'm glad he did it although I feel sorry for him because he's getting fucked) and he's being punished by the current gov't bringing the full weight of diplomatic pressure to make sure he can't get anywhere, even as they lie through their teeth and claim there's nothing special about his case and no backdoor dealing is being done to get "some hacker."
There is "nothing special" about how they're treating him compared to other international fugitives. If you're on the run from your government, they're going to revoke your passport to make it harder for you to travel. Grow up already. In the real world, that's what governments do when trying to get their hands on fugitives.
The hard thing for me to believe is how stupid he's being. Flee America which has become too oppressive and seek asylum in RUSSIA? He's in Russia and complaining about how intrusi
Re:We have met the enemy (Score:5, Interesting)
Over here in ex-Soviet Estonia, your government cannot revoke your travel documents unless you've suddenly become certifiably dead, or the information therein has suddenly become false. Neither of which is to be excluded without consideration, but a passport can't be revoked because you've become fugitive.
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My guess would be it was a case of bypassing the established security procedures (one could at least hope there
Re:We have met the enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he was worried because the semi-autonomous island Hong Kong has an extradition policy with the US. Russia was meant to be an intermediary location to get to South America, probably through Cuba because you can get a direct flight. There are few direct flights to South America from Asia and most of those go to US friendly countries.
Incidentally, he probably was safe in Hong Kong due to the US's blunder of charging him with espionage (thus making it a political crime). If they'd simply charged him with theft, got him extradited, and then dumped death penalty espionage charges he'd be at the end of a noose already, right where Obama and co want him so they can keep their super secret illegal spy ring going. If you don't think this is all about keeping the NSA spying going and sweeping Snowden's body under the rug, remember that Cheney and Armitage did the exact same thing exposing Plume and there certainly weren't any espionage charges filed for that.
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He was charged on June 14th.
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Can you give an example of a political crime that is not also a legal one? In Cuba, you can be arrested for criticizing the government. In Cuba doing that is a serious crime. Just because it is not a crime, to you, does not mean it is not a crime. In Cuba it is. From Cuba's POV if you do that you are a criminal.
Clearly you are of the opinion that leaking information that your government is doing stuff that many people believe it should not be doing is not a freedom of speech issue. I believe it most defini
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He's not being sought for anything regarding anything of his his own expression, so it's not about freedom of speech.
Specifically, he engaged "in unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information.
In addition to those charges, both brought under the Espionage Act, the government charged Snowden with theft of government property."
I don't know why he didn't just resign his position and then give an interview to a reporter
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He's not being sought for anything regarding anything of his his own expression, so it's not about freedom of speech.
I disagree with your interpretation of events. He is being sought for releasing information about some stuff that the government is doing. Communicating that information is a form of speech in our high tech world. It is that communication that is the crime in this case. Doing what he did is the only way to criticize the government when their activities are secret.
Specifically, he engaged "in unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information.
Emphasis mine.
In addition to those charges, both brought under the Espionage Act, the government charged Snowden with theft of government property."
Theft? Did he steal a government car or at least a USB drive? Oh. You mean he stole information? I disagree with the implication tha
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Freedom of speech (expression) is the freedom to express yourself freely. It is not the freedom for me to publish your love letters to your girlfriend. Or your porn surfing habits. Or to distribute recordings of your most recent musical performance. These are things that, in our system of government, I do not own.
Snowden's actions, however, take this a step further. Not only did he release information that wasn't his, but information that he explicitly agreed not to reveal - under penalty of law. He w
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A democracy cannot function properly if the actions that its government takes are secret. In order for US citizens to stop its government from doing bad things, they must first know what those bad things are.
In this case our governmnent has embarked upon a worldwide surveillance program. You may approve of such a program, but not everyone does. What Snowden has done is open up these immoral, shameful activities so that the world can judge whether they are right or wrong and whether something should be done
Re:We have met the enemy (Score:5, Informative)
Don't worry, I nice room at the ADX supermax awaits. The next 50 years of your existence: 23 hours a day locked up, in a poured concrete cell, sleeping on a poured concrete bed, pissing in a poured concrete toilet, with a 4 inch wide window that you can only see the sky out of.
hope it was worth it..
If life imprisonment is ultimately Snowden's fate, then it's up to /us/ to make sure his sacrifice is "worth it" by holding the criminals
that his disclosures forced into the light accountable for their crimes. We need to get the politicians, cops, bureaucrats and any others who supported these blatantly un-Constitutional activities out of their positions of power and replaced by people who actually follow the laws and ideals of this country.
So, given Snowden is likely to have sacrificed his freedom for us, I too hope it was worth it. We have an opportunity to squish the roaches underfoot before they scuttle out of the light. Let's make the best of it.
Re:We have met the enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We have met the enemy (Score:4, Insightful)
If life imprisonment is ultimately Snowden's fate, then it's up to /us/ to make sure his sacrifice is "worth it" by holding the criminals
that his disclosures forced into the light accountable for their crimes. We need to get the politicians, cops, bureaucrats and any others who supported these blatantly un-Constitutional activities out of their positions of power and replaced by people who actually follow the laws and ideals of this country.
Unfortunately, the American people are binary thinkers by nature. En masse, we lack the mental capacity to think other than black and white, and will conclude that if it's proven that Snowden did anything bad, that proves that the government was good.
I don't think I agree with this statement... (Score:4, Insightful)
It has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person.
Not quite. He is still a citizen of the United States and can contact the US Embassy for assistance to leave the country, though it would mean his surrender to the United States. If he publicly made that intent known, officials from the US Embassy in Russia could travel to the airport, use diplomatic powers to pass into where Snowden rests, issue him temporary travel documents to escort him out of the airport and to the embassy, and arrange for travel home.
He's not stateless, but I'm sure he likes to think of himself that way.
Re:I don't think I agree with this statement... (Score:5, Insightful)
It has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person.
Not quite. He is still a citizen of the United States and can contact the US Embassy for assistance to leave the country, though it would mean his surrender to the United States. If he publicly made that intent known, officials from the US Embassy in Russia could travel to the airport, use diplomatic powers to pass into where Snowden rests, issue him temporary travel documents to escort him out of the airport and to the embassy, and arrange for travel home.
He's not stateless, but I'm sure he likes to think of himself that way.
The point of him seeking asylum is that he does not want to surrender to the US authorities, that was the whole point in him fleeing in the first place, but I'm sure you're aware of that. What he should have said to avoid needless pedantry is 'The US government have taken away the one advantage of US citizenship that is of any use to me right now, the ability to travel to somewhere that I won' t be incarcerated and demonised for the rest of my life'.
Re:I don't think I agree with this statement... (Score:4, Insightful)
A conviction at this point would represent trial in absentia and would be meaningless.
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His crimes have not been proven in court. Under our system he must technically still be considered innocent. A free country would not consider his crimes to be real crimes, but nevertheless he did break the laws of the repressive regime that we live under here in the U.S.
He is certainly a valid asylum seeker. He's no different from a dissident who speaks out against any other repressive regime and faces life in prison or death if he is sent back to the country of birth. Seems pretty straightforward to me. I
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They would even provide him with a place to stay when he got back to the U.S.--a permanent place to stay.
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Re:I don't think I agree with this statement... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh (Score:2)
How I wish this was hard to believe.
Snowden has withdrawn that request? (Score:5, Informative)
According to the age, Snowden has withdrawn that request. Mr Snowden withdrew his Russian asylum request because of a demand that he stop harming US interests by leaking documents [theage.com.au]
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This link was corroborated by Democracy Now this morning.
The post is therefore moot, but the mudslinging will continue unabated.
Yesterday's news for nerds (Score:5, Informative)
"Edward Snowden Files For Political Asylum In Russia"
That was yesterday's news, sorry. Today's news, is that he's not [foxnews.com].
Re:Yesterday's news for nerds (Score:4, Funny)
This is /. Yesterday's news is their specialty.
Re:Yesterday's news for nerds (Score:5, Funny)
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IMHO, there's a better chance of the news acquiring a few facts, and squeezing out a little bit of the partisan punditry (as the various partisan pundits point out each others' lies and exaggerations), if you let the news age for a week. It gives it a chance for some of the knee-jerk reactions to die off and perhaps even for slightly more thoughtful ones to creep in.
Unless you're actually Edward Snowden, you'd have done just fine getting this news next week, or next month. I believe that the rise of instant
Snowden isn't stateless (Score:4, Informative)
Having a passport canceled doesn't effect citizenship. Snowden's statement is rubbish on that point.
Prepared to issue one-entry travel document to Snowden: US [business-standard.com]
"We reject - you've heard Assange say earlier that he's sort of marooned in Russia. That's not true. We're prepared to issue one-entry travel document. He's still a US citizen. He still enjoys the rights of his US citizenship, which include the right to a free and fair trial for the crimes he's been accused of," the State Department spokesperson, Patrick Ventrell, told reporters at his daily news conference yesterday.
"We reject the notion that this is some sort of political prosecution. Indeed, it's not. These are serious crimes, serious violations of his obligations, and as somebody who had access to classified information, and so our position is that he needs to face a free and fair trial and not be a fugitive," Ventrell said.
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he needs to face a free and fair trial
With a jury of his peers? I won't comment on whether the whistle-blower or the government is wrong here, but I would be very interested if a group of Average Joe's were given a chance to make a ruling with respect to the rights that a government has to keep details of its surveillance program secret.
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The executive branch of the united states has made it public that they feel its within their rights to capture, torture, and murder "US citizens" that they feel are an "imminent threat" to the United States. Which they clearly feel Snowden is. Snowden IS a US citizen, his state however, has forsaken him.
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Snowden IS a US citizen, his state however, has forsaken him.
By no means. Forsaken means to abandon, or give up. The US hasn't done that, they have been trying to bring him back to the US the whole time.
they feel its within their rights to capture, torture, and murder "US citizens" that they feel are an "imminent threat"
Capture or kill, not torture or murder. I hadn't heard that Snowden had taken up arms against the US, or was directly aiding anyone who had. I doubt very much that he is subject to being killed, at least apart from possible judicial sentencing.
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Re:Snowden isn't stateless (Score:4, Informative)
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Spies [wikipedia.org] is been held up by a tame US mainstream media and warmed over rewritten talking points.
The US telco/ad/VoIP/chat brands and their support for bulk domestic access is now just part of life.
Snowden joins an impressive list of people:
http://cryptome.org/2013-info/06/whistleblowing/whistleblowing.htm [cryptome.org]
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Americans will never defend their constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans will never defend their constitution, that has been proven for decades of abuses.
Land of the fat and LAZY.
The dream died years ago, I still have no idea why people still believe it is still a dream country.
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Inertia. The center of empire, always building on the outskirts of the old collapsing one, had shifted from Europe to the Us and is now shifting to China. The world is learning a terrible lesson that there's more to freedom than freedom of speech. What good is it if every economic action is contained, proscribed, and approaching a corrupt state where you must get on bended knee to do anything?
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The dream died years ago, I still have no idea why people still believe it is still a dream country.
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." -- Wiston Churchill
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This just in: The world sucks, there are no utopias, but western countries (including the US) are still a heck of a lot better than the alternatives.
That may be why "people still believe it is a dream country". This guy is in trouble for leaking state secrets. In most other countries (including the one Snowden is currently in) you get this star treatment just for speaking any ill of the government (see: Kasparov).
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This just in: The world sucks, there are no utopias, but western countries (including the US) are still a heck of a lot better than the alternatives.
Have you actually lived in any of these alternatives? Or put another way, do you have any idea what you are talking about?
Getting desperate? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Getting desperate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone's ire is directed at the US, and it will stay that way regardless of which country, if any, eventually grants him asylum. Ultimately, Snowden's fate is completely irrelevant to the rest of the World, it will only affect the potential whistleblowers who come after him. Setting an example with his case is strictly an internal US affair.
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Problem is he isn't whistle blower, but leaker, t.i. I'm yet to see anything to have "criminal charges" resonate outside of casual leftist forum message in web. He copied bunch of documents, most of them honeypot level. So what? It renewed discussion of NSA and laws it operates with, fine, it would be nice to have productive outcome from it (from example, having secret courts and legal opinions is just wrong). However, neither majority of electorate has wish to touch this issue, nor their representatives ca
Re:Getting desperate? (Score:5, Insightful)
To deem him not a whistleblower seems like a rather harsh interpretation of the term. He is exposing, what he believes to be, unlawful practises, that seems to me to be exactly what a whistleblower does.
Many on /. seem to be overlooking that the ball is still rolling on this, the US government is not just collecting data on american citizens, but actively carrying out espionage missions against allies. Nobody around here (Europe) gives two flying fucks about Snowden or his fate, nor the laws NSA allegedly follows. The media here is much more concerned with the bugging of EU offices. The pictures most prominent on TVs across Europe is Obama trying to explain that little turd, all the while coming off as a complete idiot trying to explain 1+1 to a 4 year old, it really is not very pretty. And in case you havn't been paying attention the last couple of decades, what the media cares about, John Doe general public cares about.
The statement, that the ire of the world would turn to Russia if they granted Asylum to Snowden, smells very much like a "everybody probably thinks like me" fallacy, it's a projection based on the assumption that the rest of the world are americans.
Re:Getting desperate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Putin is a pragmatist. He no doubt has some very good reasons for wanting him to shut up. If they harbour him, then everyone's ire will be turned on the Russians. Russia wants to be seen as a big, serious player, not as a rogue state.
And Snowden himself doesn't seem to have the brains to not shit in his own nest.
More to the point: Putin is a former intelligence officer. While he certainly is open to obtaining information that would help Russia; he is probably has little respect for people who commit espionage against their country and little trust that they will stay loyal to Russia if he grants asylum. He's a pro, and will do whatever is best for Putin and Russia. At this point, he probably thinks the downside isn't worth it. No matter what our personal opinions are of Snowden's actions; we can probably agree he is really screwed.
Re:Getting desperate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Putin is a pragmatist. He no doubt has some very good reasons for wanting him to shut up. If they harbour him, then everyone's ire will be turned on the Russians. Russia wants to be seen as a big, serious player, not as a rogue state.
It's the US that's coming off as a rouge state here. The Russians have come off as reasonable and rational on the whole Snowden thing, and the not giving weapons to fundamentalists in Syria thing.
And Snowden himself doesn't seem to have the brains to not shit in his own nest.
Because you believe it's right that everyone must live in fear of the US government?
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Can't see many nations wanting him at this time.
There are plenty of nations that love to poke the US in the eye and don't cooperate with the US. I can name half a dozen, and I've heard that he is in contact with about 20. If he were on Iranian, North Korean, Cuban, Venezuela, Ecuador, etc soil he would be fine. The difficult issue is extracting him from where he is now. Putting somebody in your pocket is one thing. Removing him out of someone else's pocket is quite another.
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The Europeans seem quite surprised and angered by the information, so I call bullshit.
A day late, but... (Score:4, Informative)
This news is a day late. Since this happened Putin told him he can't leak anything else if he wants to stay in Russia so he's withdrawn his request to Russia.
As for the US breaching article 14 I don't think it matters anymore, they've long thrown articles 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12 out the window in the last decade and no one did anything so of course they'll try and get away with violating the rest despite being a signatory to the UDHR.
But in this case they're also now violating article 13, which states that:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Revoking Snowden's passport also violates this from what I can see as by removing his passport they're removing his right to travel and hence to leave Russia.
Or in other words the US has pretty much now completely thrown the de-facto document on basic levels of standards of human rights entirely out the window.
As each year goes on they're breaching a new article, when they do that how can they realistically preach to any other nation on human rights? How can they pretend to have the moral high ground next time a blind Chinese human rights activist turns up at their embassy and they claim they should be allowed to let him go to the US against China's will?
Re:A day late, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Revoking Snowden's passport also violates this from what I can see as by removing his passport they're removing his right to travel and hence to leave Russia.
Or in other words the US has pretty much now completely thrown the de-facto document on basic levels of standards of human rights entirely out the window.
Owning a passport/travelling between countries is a privilege not a right. When someone is suspected of a crime and there is a good chance this person may seek to leave the country to evade prosecution, the passport will be revoked. Snowden is not a special snowflake to warrant a different treatment.
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You don't revoke passports. Once you arrested someone, the judge may decide to retain the travel documents to avoid that person fleeing justice. But the passport is not revoked, it is confiscated. And that is done once the person is arrested, not while the person is sitting somewhere in the world in a transit area.
Revoking a passport is quite extreme and I have never heard of such action. It is not the usual way to pursue international criminals. Thus it is a different treatment.
Re: (Score:3)
You don't revoke passports. Once you arrested someone, the judge may decide to retain the travel documents to avoid that person fleeing justice. But the passport is not revoked, it is confiscated. And that is done once the person is arrested, not while the person is sitting somewhere in the world in a transit area.
Revoking a passport is quite extreme and I have never heard of such action. It is not the usual way to pursue international criminals. Thus it is a different treatment.
Passport Canada [ppt.gc.ca] (US must have something similar) has a description of actions that may get your passport revoked. At this point I think he does fall in there.
Re:A day late, but... (Score:5, Informative)
There is nothing extreme about it, it is entirely routine:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/smart/pdfs/passport_fact_sheet.pdf [usdoj.gov]
This pdf is about sex offenders, but that isn't relevant to the regulations they cite (and I'm just demonstrating that it is standard procedure). 22 C.F.R. 51.62 allows them to revoke a passport if the bearer would not be eligible to get a new passport:
22 C.F.R. 51.60 allows for denying a new passport based on outstanding arrest warrants:
Put together, they can and do revoke passports based simply on having an outstanding arrest warrant, without a specific court order
Re: (Score:2)
So if it's a privilege not a right then why is it defined as a human right in the UDHR which the US was active in both writing and voting for? The problem is they're not stopping him leaving the US for committing a crime there, they're stopping him travelling full stop by revoking his passport. That's not quite the same as a court forcing surrender of travel documents.
What about Chen Guangcheng? He was deemed a criminal in China but the US seemed to have no problem with arguing to get him out of the country
As others have said (Score:2)
Ummmm, no. (Score:3)
The State Department can revoke your passport. You might notice there's a little part that says "This passport is the property of the United States (Title 22, Code of Federal Regulations, Section 51.9). It must be surrendered upon demand made by an authorized representative of the United States Government." They have the right to revoke your passport and criminal charges are a reason they can. In that event what happens is you can get a special travel document that'll let you go back to the US. Yes, if he t
Norway (Score:5, Informative)
http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/edward-snowden-applies-asylum-in-norway-5484164 [tvnz.co.nz]
Re:Norway (Score:4, Informative)
Norway has declined his application on formal grounds:
http://www.dagbladet.no/2013/07/02/nyheter/politikk/snowden/27999533/ [dagbladet.no] (article in Norwegian language).
According to Norwegian law you have to actually be on Norwegian territory (an embassy would do) to apply for asylum. Since the application was sent to the embassy in Moscow by fax it was denied.
I think most of Europe has similar laws and will deny his application for the same reason.
What is it really all about? (Score:2)
Abstractions... nothing more.... physical reality is only influenced by abstractions to the extent human action is connected to them. To understand this is to know its about excuses to use nothing more than brute force physically.
The Obama Adminastration is not a US governemnt but the government the founders wrote and warned us about when they wrote the Declaration of Independence. And they gave us instructions as to what to do about it. Recognizing its not only our right to do something about it but our Du
Circus and farce (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry guys, I know you want to fight oppression, corporations, evil governments and what else, but level of cheese coming out of Assange and now Snowden is making me puke. Seriously, a stateless person? Passport is *document*, not nationality or citizenship. It is revoked when you have lost formal trust of country it has been issued by (regular procedure for accused runaways). Edward, you already invalidating anything you have said before (except factual leaked docs), because your intent is to speculate emotionally.
What he really thought will happen after his identification as the source? That everybody will jump out of joy when he will ask for political asylum? That he will have capability to travel after identifying himself? What is this with this childish behavior?
This is getting to be an interesting show... (Score:3, Interesting)
If he wanted to blame someone, I'd blame the folks at Wikileaks who advised him to travel from Hong Kong to Russia in the first place. Apparently they told him they'd find him a place for Asylum and it seems they couldn't deliver.
Sorry, but part of civil disobedience is a willingness to suffer the consequences as just or unjust as they maybe. That's what sets people like Gandhi, Mandela and MLKjr apart from this guy. They took their stands and paid the price of their stands.
Some want to lift this guy up as some kind of hero. Others a criminal and traitor. I've held the position that he's both. At least until he begins giving up operational tradecraft information then I start to lean more towards criminal. It's one thing to bring to light what is going on in generalities.
Although I'm getting a laugh at the coming out of the EU being up and arms about our spying on them, especially the French. After all the DGSE is the only intelligence service I know of that publically publishes the fact that 25% of their budget is spent on industrial espionage to help French businesses.
At any rate, glad we can all be focused on this little side drama as opposed to the meat of the story: mainly the spying programs that the NSA have been engaged in. Funny how just a week later that's been pushed from the news headlines. If this wasn't enough to get people into the streets with pitchforks and willing to tar and feather the lot of them in DC I guess nothing will. It was a nice republic, too bad we couldn't keep it.
I don't think Snowden quite understands the law. (Score:3)
Firstly, he's not stateless. The US is not denying the fact he is currently a United States Citizen. A stateless person is one with no citizenship anywhere. A stateless person has no right of entry into any country; he has the right to return to the US any time he wants.
Second, nothing in international law obligates any country to not object to an asylum application. It would be a treaty violation to make asylum seeking in and of itself a crime, but that's not happening.
That UN treaty does protect asylum seekers from purely political prosecutions, but Snowden has moved well away from whistleblowing on domestic surveillance programs (I could certainly classify that as "political"), and has progressed to apparently spilling the beans on every electronic intelligence gathering operation he could get his hands on.
When he was still talking about domestic surveillance of questionably constitutionality, I could see him as a civil liberties hero. But he's gone well beyond that by now.
And, as a side note, how did he NOT think going from Hong Kong to Moscow was going from The Frying Pan Into the Fire? Hong Kong was a strange choice to begin with. (He could be successfully hiding almost anywhere in Western Europe, had he fled there.) Leaving Hong Kong to head to Moscow was even stranger. If he wanted the "Court of Public Opinion" on his side, this was not necessarily the best way to go about it. Not to mention the danger inherent in relying on the goodwill of the Peace and Freedom Loving Peoples of Russia.
Re:I don't think Snowden quite understands the law (Score:5, Informative)
I used to be stateless (de jure, with a 1954 convention travel document), and you are quite wrong. I had the right to return to Germany and the same right of entry to a country someone else with a valid visum has.
Snowden the Drama Queen (Score:3)
He clearly did not think things out very well. If he had, he would have fled to Ecuador first, asked for asylum, then leaked everything. Instead he thought he could hide out in Hong Kong, not realizing that China could suggest to Hong Kong authorities that making Snowden someone else's problem ASAP might be the best idea for everybody. I am amused at how he talks about how "I am convicted of nothing". Yes, of course. The reason he is "convicted of nothing" is because he has so far avoided having to answer for his actions in a US court of law.
Re:Snowden the Drama Queen (Score:5, Insightful)
Being from Snowden's generation -- I'm the same age -- I have to say that I for one am personally shocked by the entire NSA spying incident and the subsequent witch-hunt of Snowden himself. Not surprised, but still despite myself, shocked.
Despite having grown a warty hide of cynicism over the last decade, despite having watched western society fail again and again over the last 10 years, despite having suspected the truth for many years already, the sheer scale and nakedness of the NSA's programs has pierced right down to the soft kernel of hope for the world instilled in me during the 1990s. The brazen outrage of the NSA and US military, the absurdly exaggerated charges against Snowden, and the relentless and petty retaliation by the US government have cast present reality back into a past which I was raised to believe would never reoccur.
Snowden is a hero. He's a straight up hero. He gave up reward, riches, happiness, and his own future for the sake of his principles and his fellow countrymen. People in the US should build a statue in his honour. Instead, they're howling like fascists for satisfaction.
If Snowden returns to the United States, I don't think he will get a day in open court. I doubt he will see a military tribunal. After everything that has happened, after just how wrong the world has become, it would not surprise me if Snowden was simply disappeared. It would shock me yes, but not surprise me.
rank amatuer -needs advisor (Score:3)
(2) Didnt seem to know that most places dont even consider asylum until you are on their soil (including embassy).
US should follow its own rules (Score:3)
According to the Passport Fact Sheet published May 2012, (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/smart/pdfs/passport_fact_sheet.pdf) the US may revoke a passport if there is an arrest warrant (which there is) to keep an individual from departing the US, if there is a court order restricting the individual from leaving the US. Since Snowden was already outside the US, it would seem frivolous to issue a court order barring him from leaving the US and therefore, by the State Department's own regulations (laws), it appears revoking his passport was handled improperly and this could be seen as a human rights violation as he is effectively imprisoned without due process (without a passport he cannot enter Russia, either and is confined to the one area of the airport that is considered international space).
If Russia declines asylum, since Snowden is technically not in Russia, but in international space, any country could grant him political asylum, put him on a plane, private or otherwise and let him into their country as a political refugee (for which international law does not require a passport). The question is which country will be the one to do that?
The US better hope that nothing happens to him while he is stranded, too. It would be hard to convince the rest of the world that after not following the law on password revocations that we just didn't take him out.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not. But it's big and powerful, and would put up a fight if the U.S. tried to extract him. Most first world countries wouldn't even dare protest.
Re: (Score:2)
We make these crazy lines between good guys and bad guys, with government these lines do not exist every government is capable of great good and evil at the same time.
Russia really doesn't care much about what he did. But they like putting the US in a position that they will need to beg and bargain to them.
Snowden was stupid enough to blab about what he found, he could have probably functioned a lot better by slowly feeding the American Conspiracy ideal by saying. I have worked for the CIA, I cannot tell yo
Re: (Score:2)
Millions of people do that every year, this particular refugee was just dumb enough to start attention whoring before he was in a safe haven.
Re: (Score:3)
Lets see you travel with your citizenship and no passport.
It's possible. Passports exist to prove identity, you don't need to prove your identity if people already know who you are.
The Red Cross and just about any government can issue temporary ID-proving documents although it's unlikely they will be accepted at airports as quickly and easily as a valid passport.
Re: Amateur... (Score:2, Funny)
NSA template response #1435-33
Re: (Score:2)
At least, he's not an Anonymous Coward, making such bold statements.
Re:Is he insane?? (Score:2)
One of the worst countries regarding to human rights, freedom of press etc.
Um so? They're bad to their own people, but they have no call to do anything to him. Quite the opposite since Putin so very much enjoys trolling the US. Yes Russia is bad, but Snowden was revealing the huge amount of illegal stuff that the US and it's normally moderately good on human rights allies were doing.
So what would you have him do, given that many places would deny him entry or turn him over to the US. And the US hasn't exact
Re:Hypocrite (Score:5, Insightful)
So he supposedly "martyred" himself for freedom, and yet has no qualms about living in countries that are much more oppressive than the US. Hypocrite, pure and simple.
He applied for Asylum in a few countries that are less oppressive than the US too.
But it's not a hypocritical act to sacrifice yourself so that others may have greater freedom.
Re: (Score:3)
After now the entire world will watch him stand trial --- a FAIR trial. If anything happens to him by unfair means, the reputation of the United States is over.
So if I wanted to tarnish the reputation of the US all I have to do is make sure Snowden dies in suspicious circumstances.
I wonder how many world leaders have thought about that one.
But alive he is doing quite a job tarnishing the reputation of the US by doing nothing but telling the truth.