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."
Re:Snowden isn't stateless (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.
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.
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:I don't think I agree with this statement... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.