Edward Snowden: Russia offers to consider asylum request
Source: The Guardian
Russia has offered to consider an asylum request from the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, in the Kremlin's latest move to woo critics of the west.
Snowden fled the United States before leaking the details of a top-secret US surveillance programme to the Guardian this month. He is currently believed to be in Hong Kong, but has reportedly changed hotels to keep his location secret.
Fearing US retaliation, Snowden said at the weekend that "my predisposition is to seek asylum in a country with shared values", citing Iceland as an example. He defended his decision to flee to Hong Kong by citing its relative freedom compared with mainland China.
Snowden is not known to have made any asylum requests, including to Russia. Yet speaking to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin's spokesman, said: "If such an appeal is given, it will be considered. We'll act according to facts."
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/edward-snowden-russia-asylum-request
NB: Snowden has, at least publicly, made no asylum request to any state, so Russia may be getting ahead of itself here.
pnwmom
(109,021 posts)So he'd never accept asylum from Russia, right?
I wonder what kind of offer they'll be making him, in exchange for . . . what? Maybe some of those documents that haven't yet been published . . . .
SkyDaddy7
(6,045 posts)I know Hong Kong is not considered as bad as mainland China but after it is all said & done Hong Kong is China.
still_one
(92,492 posts)SkyDaddy7
(6,045 posts)However, it operates on a completely different legal system than does the rest of China...You are aware of this, correct?
still_one
(92,492 posts)SkyDaddy7
(6,045 posts)SoapBox
(18,791 posts)And then let's see family start to "disappear" if he doesn't cooperate with them.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)are being 'disappeared.' And his girlfriend is still posting half-naked pics to Facebook. So I think they haven't had the heavy hand of the law some down...
leftyladyfrommo
(18,874 posts)AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)I suggest he scope out some abandoned oil rigs in international waters or something.
Steviehh
(115 posts)His moves are very careful. He is very good, but knows the security apparatus as well.
I think he will stay in China. We can have the blind activist though, the Chinese aren't dumb. They have many of our assets plans. This Asia pivot can be toast now.
Or a Gulf of Tonkin event waiting to happen.
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)SkyDaddy7
(6,045 posts)Snowden threw away his life to "leak" info that was already posted online, here on DU, & other places for so long "NSA Wiretapping" has its own Wikipedia page!!
Seriously, this guy tried out for the special forces & did not make it...I think he is more interested in attention than anything else.
Thank you SkyDaddy7!
SkyDaddy7
(6,045 posts)full blown Chinese Agent!! WOW!!!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023001669
&
Chinese State Controlled Paper saying the same thing!!
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1259508/edward-snowden-us-government-has-been-hacking-hong-kong-and-china
I wonder how many of his apologist on DU will backtrack now??
Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)SkyDaddy7
(6,045 posts)Ed Snowden is nothing more than a Chinese agent!!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023001669
SkyDaddy7
(6,045 posts)Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)Laelth
(32,017 posts)Your post is rather cryptic and apocalyptic. You seem to know more than many of us. Care to expand?
-Laelth
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)He was an IT person, not an agent or analyst.
pnwmom
(109,021 posts)And he might have more information about procedures they'd like to know.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)of NSA internal procedures.
It's interesting how little the hair on fire folks seem to understand about all of this.
pnwmom
(109,021 posts)that showed information that really could be of interest to China or Russia; also, the other slides contained information about tech methods that the WA Post and The Guardian thought shouldn't be published.
We can only speculate what else is in there.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/snowden-powerpoint/
Only five slides from the presentation have been published. The other 36 remain a mystery. Both the Guardians Glenn Greenwald and the Posts Barton Gellman have made it clear that the rest of the PowerPoint is dynamite stuff
which were not going to be seeing any time soon. If you saw all the slides you wouldnt publish them, wrote Gellman on Twitter, adding in a second tweet: I know a few absolutists, but most people would want to defer judgment if they didnt know the full contents.
Even Greenwald, who urged me rather strongly in 2010 to publish Bradley Mannings personal chats, is taking a more conservative view of the NSAs PowerPoint. Im not going to discuss our legal advice with you, Greenwald wrote on Twitter, but were not publishing NSA tech methods.
To us geeks, the tech methods, of course, are the most interesting part. Snowden evidently wanted the entire presentation published, at least at one point in his discussions with the Posts Gellman. On May 24, Snowden asked for a guarantee that the Washington Post would publish within 72 hours the full text of [the] PowerPoint presentation, Gellman wrote Sunday, in a fascinating account of his interactions with the whistleblower. I told him we would not make any guarantee about what we published or when.
SNIP
The most compelling part of the new slide is the top half, which seems to show (as first noted by ACLU technologist Chris Soghoian) the rough location of NSA fiber optic taps on cables in South America, eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean. Now thats interesting.
SkyDaddy7
(6,045 posts)existentialist
(2,190 posts)should, but probably won't give the United States pause in its pursuit of him.
Surely it is better for the United States to have Snowden in Hong Kong cooperating with journalists than in Moscow cooperating with Putin and the Russian state.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Snowden was just an IT person, not an agent or analyst.
existentialist
(2,190 posts)IT geeks have access to facts.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Even so, the value of such things is usually very limited.
Botany
(70,635 posts)tavalon
(27,985 posts)And yeah, I really do think.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)what he considers his duty.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)It's a surprising story
still_one
(92,492 posts)Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)SoapBox
(18,791 posts)He can be Putin's lap dog, now that he's been fired.
Comrade Snowden!
existentialist
(2,190 posts)We are all guessing.
Progressive dog
(6,929 posts)Lee Oswald went there.