If you really want to be an idealistic but hard-headed freedom-fighter, mobilizing an effective popular movement for more freedom wherever you live, I suggest you read deeply in the publications of the Albert Einstein Institution,

http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html

remembering that the transition from dictatorship to democracy described in those publications is an actual historical process with recent examples around the world that we can all learn from.

AFTER EDIT: Good catch by the readers who noticed the non-American English in the Wikileaks press release here (mentioned in other comments in this thread). The press release kindly submitted here is plainly not Edward Snowden's verbatim words, but more self-publicizing from Wikileaks.

  >I'd really like to see Wikileaks devoting more of its time, energy, 
  >and fund-raising into breaking news about government-operated 
  >surveillance programs in the last two countries where Edward 
  >Snowden has been located, namely China and Russia.

You'll notice that much of the furor has come from the idea that the NSA might be watching what Americans are doing. For everything else there was effectively a big giant "Of course they were bugging $FOO, that's their job".

Obviously Europe doesn't feel the same way (and didn't with ECHELON)...

The US would have joined the war. By 1940, the US was practically involved in the war, just without men. German U-Boats were sinking American convoys, and American ships were destroying German U-Boats.

It was only a matter of time before the US would have joined the war, Pearl Harbor or not. FDR was prepared to fight it without the approval of Congress.

The US entry into the First World War was primarily to be a participant in the peace negotiations, so Wilson could present his 14 points, create the League of Nations and ensure American dominance in world politics (something the USA has refrained from participating in prior to the First World War, despite its economical power).

The Second World War pretty much started with American involvement, but it was not until Pearl Harbor that the USA could finally - publicly - commit its entire arsenal. But regardless, you would have found a way to join the war. Japan just did you a favour.

Yes, and? Did Europe intervene in the American Civil War, or in any of the multitude of conflicts in the Americas, East Asia, or Africa over the past 200 years? Even the rest of Europe abandoned Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Germans before Poland fell. Going to war is a huge commitment, and doing it purely for the benefit of a continent that has spent the last several centuries hell-bent on destroying itself sounds like a really bad idea.

The worst part is, when the US government does see a situation that calls for military intervention, like Vietnam or Iraq, that gets criticized as well.

Whining about Europe 'not intervening' in the 1860s completely misses the massive changes going on in Europe at the time - it's not like Europe was sitting around peacefully not doing anything in particular like the US was at the start of each World War. Only a few years after the US civil war finished, Germany came into existence and successfully invaded Paris, for example.

Even the rest of Europe abandoned Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Germans before Poland fell

Nice. In one breath you chide Europe for always being at war, in the next you chide them for not going to war enough.

Did Europe intervene ... in any of the multitude of conflicts in the Americas, East Asia, or Africa over the past 200 years

Yes, Europe did - the death of colonialism happend after WWII, considerably nearer to us than 200 years ago. The UK fought an open war against a South American nation only 30 years ago. The French still regularly intervene in Africa. The French fought in Vietnam up until Dien Bien Phu Falls in 1954, only 20 years before the US bugged out of there.

Hell, the UK fought against the Japanese in WWII, which again is much closer to our time than 200 years ago.

And the Russians - still a European country - intervened all over the place. Afghanistan throughout the 80s, for example. Immense amounts of material aid to North Vietnam. So on and so forth.

Good old American Exceptionalism. No-one else ever does anything, it's always up to the 'world cop' (who happens to be very selective about what he's policing). You've got a really simplistic view of European political history - I encourage you to read up a lot more on it (if nothing else, it's really quite interesting).

And when Germany manages to do that for the third time in 80 years, it's America's fault for not intervening?

Look, all I'm trying to do is refute the idea that it's somehow the responsibility of the US to step in and intervene whenever a war breaks out somewhere in the world. Germany invading Poland and France wasn't relevant enough to American interests to justify sending men across the Atlantic to die. It just seemed like business as usual. You can call that isolationism but it's not like any of the European powers stuck their neck out when it wasn't in their interests.

I mean, come on. You have just said that Iraq was a war that 'called for intervention', but you say the same is not true of the Nazis? This is despite nearly 10 years of a steady exodus of Jews from Germany to the US and other countries? It's not like no-one knew that the Nazis were oppressive, it's just the depth that they would eventually get to that was unknown.

You can call that isolationism but it's not like any of the European powers stuck their neck out when it wasn't in their interests.

I never said the US should be faulted for isolationism, though it is odd you cheer both their early isolationism and their later interventionism. I said that you were mischaracterising what was going on and engaging in double-standards.

For example, given that the French were intervening this year in Mali, as 'France' and not part of the UN, how does this stack up against your claim of "Europeans don't intervene in Africa and haven't for 200 years"? Where are the US ground troops intervening in Africa? The US navy, along with European ones, are intervening against the Somali pirates, but that's to protect shipping, it's not to help the people. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some, but I'm unaware of any.

Look, all I'm trying to do is refute the idea that it's somehow the responsibility of the US to step in and intervene whenever a war breaks out somewhere in the world.

The US bills itself as the 'world cop', which was exactly its rationale for invading Iraq. It's natural for people to expect it to live up to its own rhetoric.

Stop posturing--these remarks add nothing to the discussion.

> France and the UK were both hastily remilitarising and were buying time. Everyone knew war was coming, but the UK and the French needed more time to prepare, and it wasn't just the US that was suffering from economic depression in the 30s. They knew for 20 years that there would be another war - Marshal Foch said of the Treaty of Versailles "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years". He was only two months out.

I don't see how that's anywhere at odds with what I'm saying, which is that Europe tended to have these wars from time to time and the US was justifiably reluctant to intervene.

> You have just said that Iraq was a war that 'called for intervention'

I said that's how the US government saw it at the time.

> but you say the same is not true of the Nazis?

> ...

> though it is odd you cheer both their early isolationism and their later interventionism

I did no such thing--I said it's hypocritical to criticize America for both isolationism and for interventionism. Please read what I actually wrote and make an honest attempt to comprehend it.

> The US bills itself as the 'world cop'

In 1939 they did that?

My whole point, which you have arrogantly refused to comprehend, has been to justify the initial American non-intervention in WWII, and in WWII the US never billed itself as any such thing.

I can offer no defense of American interventionism. I think it's consistently been a mistake. But if you're going to go around arguing that the US should have been interventionists in World War II, then you have to accept what it looks like when the US pursues a foreign policy of interventionism. Most people don't like how that turns out. Most people would prefer if the US would mind its own business and not get involved in wars overseas, but if they hold that position, it's hypocritical of them to criticize the US for not directly joining the Second World War before they had a good reason to.

No.

> or in any of the multitude of conflicts in the Americas

Yes, particular one that overlapped the American Civil War in time and neighbored it geographically. [1] Perhaps less in the Americas then elsewhere (particularly when the US wasn't tied up in its own civil war) due to the US's proclamation of regional hegemony (the Monroe Doctrine) and desire not get into a fight over that.

> East Asia

Again, yes, quite regularly.

> or Africa over the past 200 years

There, too.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_intervention_in_Mexico

The 19th century's balance of power was essentially established by intervening in other countries so as to not plunge the entire continent into war. During the Spring of Nations in 1848, Austria, Prussia and France intervened in several smaller European countries (as well as internally) to crush uprisings.

During the American Civil War, there were a couple of wars in Europe, which were much more interesting to Europeans, as these were part of the German and Italian unification wars. Besides, the USA was nowhere as powerful during the 1860s as Europe was in the 1910s, so the comparison is not really useful.

Remember, states don't have friends, they have interests. Why would the Europeans intervene in a civil war of yours? But besides that, the Europeans did intervene in several conflicts around the world, particularly in places where they had interests. Such as the Latin American independence wars (as well as other wars in Latin America), African revolts (remember the 19th century was the scramble for Africa) and East Asia wars that threatened their trading ports (such as the Boer War).

Which was my point--why would Americans intervene in a war of yours?

Which is why the US was reluctant to get involved in the World Wars. You can't have it both ways.

One is the good democratic fight versus the bad facists. US were hampered by the isolationist views held by quite a number of senators at the time, hence there was no direct involvement until after Pearl Harbour attack, which resulted in an almost uniform senatorial agreement on declaration of war.

Another is that US could have kept maintaining the profit stream from arms-dealing to both sides (Germany still imported American arms prior to 1941 or so, if I'm not mistaken) but got unwillingly dragged into the war.

Yet another more cynical view is that after the huge Axis loss at USSR, US just saw the opportunity to join in and mope up what's left of the Axis since winners get to dictate the terms. The Pearl Harbour event was a surprising but timely excuse.

"huge Axis losses" in the USSR didn't start happening until 1943 though. Even the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad wasn't until the end of 1942.

So that view is not merely cynical, it's also simply inaccurate.

Of course Pearl Harbour was what got the US directly involved and nuking Japan out in the end, but I hold the speculation that without Pearl Harbour, US would still declare war to either Germany or Japan anyway because of several reasons below: 1) US businesses were being harmed by the Axis, i.e. Germans attacking cargo ships meant to supply arms to Britain. Sooner or later the piled up losses would justify the entry in front of Congress.

2) The Japanese was expanding fast in Asia and they would not stop just short of US territorial waters, plus the imposed embargo had been pissing the Japanese off anyway. A clash was inevitable.

3) Letting USSR being the major player and eventual winner meant letting communism spread throughout Europe. There had to be a sizable participation from the Capitalist group in the war and the rest of the Western bloc was too tattered to muster that up.

The fact that that's not how it worked out is pretty good evidence that there wasn't a global capitalist conspiracy behind the whole thing after all.

Thankfully not, as the upper class in Britain at least tended to favour the Confederacy.

> East Asia

There's few parts of the world you could list that is a worse example of places Europe haven't intervened.

European powers were either one of the major sides or a supporting power in most wars in East Asia for a substantial part of the last couple of centuries.

You do realize the US "inherited" the Vietnam war with the associated campaigns in Laos and Cambodia from France, do you not?

That the US fought with the British, French and Russian empires against China in the Opium wars?

Now, arguably those are not good arguments for continued intervention. On the contrary. While I think there were some very good reasons why the US ought to have intervened in World War II earlier, I also wish the US had learned more lessons from some of the wars mentioned above (and a lot of other foolish wars the European colonial powers were involved in).

Instead the US seems to have seen the way the waning colonial powers acted as a recipe for how it needed to behave as its own power grew, with - for anyone paying attention to the outcomes of the colonial wars - predictably horrible outcomes.

> Even the rest of Europe abandoned Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Germans before Poland fell

It's easy to look back and regret those. But the politics around them, and the patchy history of Europe, made them politically "tricky". The Austrian "Anschluss" happened on the background of the German Austria's previous attempts to merge with Germany, which was denied it by treaty, including the Treaty of Versailles. In 1938 Austria was under a semi-fascist dictatorship, and there was then pressure for a referendum on the issue (with extensive support and threats from Hitler). Facing lack of support from Mussolini who had previously protected them against Hitler, the Austrian government accepted a large number of nazis into government, who then used their positions to prepare and conduct a coup against the austro-fascists supported by threats of force on the basis of allegations of plans to rig the referendum. It was then the Austrian nazi government that handed control over to Germany in a manner designed to effectively be a request from the Austrian state for the Germans to enter Austria. They then carried out a vote to legitimise the takeover.

The combination of events made it politically extremely hard for outsiders to do much more than complain. Europe should go to war because a government asked for military support from a neighbour following allegations that the previous dictator may have tried to prevent the will of the people, in the face of widespread public support for the nazis? In retrospect, probably. But without the knowledge of what Hitler went on to do, it was squabbling between two authoritarian governments over control of an artificially created country with a history of wanting to merge, where the new dictator likely had as much or maybe even more support than the old dictator.

In the case of Czechoslovakia similarly, the state was an artifical creation from parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that included a substantially ethnically German population in certain areas (Germans made up 23% of the population of Czechoslovakia) that had genuine grievances of oppression against the elite of the country, and the government also purposefully moved parts of the German population to the West, making it even easier to make excuses.

So Hitler was similarly able to play the role of someone who at least plausibly wanted to "liberate" the German population, and present the whole thing as "rectifying" a situation that was only 20 years old and an outcome of a previous war when the will of the people in question had been largely ignored when the borders were drawn up, and so got Sudetenland. When Hitler went into the rest of Czechoslovakia, he got the support of Slovakia, and both Hungary and Poland used the opportunity to annex area - he was not the only agressor, and support for going to war over Czechoslovakia when even the government over a substantial part of the twenty year old country took part in the aggression against the rest and supported the German invasion was not an appealing proposition.

While there were certainly fears and lots of people who had concerns about it, Hitler played people up against each other, and was dealing with governments who all had gotten their hands dirty in drawing up fairly arbitrary borders without the involvement of the affected people and/or through wars within the last few decades. Combine that with a strong degree of denial - nobody wanted to rush into a new war - and a lot of admiration for what Hitler had achieved domestically in Germany, coupled with a grudging acceptance that perhaps giving these people what they seemed to want might not be such a bad idea if it resolved some of the remaining tensions created by the Treaty of Versailles.

In retrospect, of course, that was stupid. But then in retrospect it was stupid to not intervene when Hitler remilitarised areas Germany was not allowed to militarise and in a whole host of other situations leading up to the war.

But the cases of Czechoslovakia and Austria were still substantially different than the case of Poland, both because they came first, but also because they were clouded in politics and could be "explained away" as something other than naked aggression. By the time of the invasion of Poland, though, there was no denying that Hitlers ambitions did not stop at "liberating" German speaking groups in weird little newly created states, and with the rapid fall of further states

Sidebar to a sidebar, but it went a little deeper than that. The British industrialists tended to favor the South -- and supplied weapons to the Confederacy in the lead up to the war -- because they depended on Southern cotton imports. Their industrial interests were heavily tied up with the South's.

There was actually a very real possibility that Britain would have gone further, and a lot of internal political pressure for it to do so.

Yes they did. Both Vietnam and Iraq are leftovers from European interventions.

The rich would have made more money selling arms to both sides. (In fact some did.)

"wall Street and the Rise of Hitler"

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0945001533

You can probably find it as a pdf someplace too, as it is a pretty old book. Read it and try to see the difference between the US industrialists and German industrialists in the dock at Nueremburg. Same sh*t, different piles imho.

Their people or their governments? Their people disagree with this, as we do. Their governments have long appeared to be cooperating, even if they drop their monocles into their drinks every time something like this comes out.

But I would presume that even parliamentary government must bow to public outcry in some form.

Why exactly are we still talking about the messenger(s)? How is this productive?

The goal is to make the world better. Nitpicking about Snowden, his associates, his travel, his criminal behavior or lack thereof, Wikileaks, Assange, and all of this other stuff is completely orthogonal, soap-opera bullshit that has nothing to do with that goal.

We should be focusing now on how to a) spread the word about the constitutional abuses and systemic coverup being perpetrated by NSA and b) working toward building a legal environment wherein these types of circumstances are not only legally prohibited but also cannot be re-engineered in practice either.

Is it not possible he dictated it and WikiLeaks typed it and published it? Or someone at WikiLeaks checked for typos using a British-English spell checker and corrected a few US-English spellings?

At the end of the day, it only matters if a person puts their name behind a statement or not.

Lets be frank here, Snowden is in this situation because he's a dumbass, and he shouldn't have trusted his well being to Wikileaks either. Wikileaks couldn't have saved Bradley Manning, nor do they have the manpower to make Snowden safe.

Snowden leaked information without any plan B. He gave up all of his friends and family and decided to try and live in a strange (US-allied) country while he hid from the long arm of the law... while publicly thumbing his nose. Booz Allen didn't even know he was in Hong Kong when he revealed himself to the world as the NSA leaker. He was still on NSA (related) payroll and was fired after the fact.

Instead of taking advantage of that time to hide, he taunted an entire nation. And the dumbass newspaper reporters let him do it too, without any regard for his safety. Without trying to consult him, or without thinking of the consequences.

After all, coming out with the story was more important than this guy's safety.

This guy has no friends left, and has trapped himself in an even worse country where they openly persecute people like him. Lets see what happens now...

Many (not all, but many) of my leads to breaking news on surveillance and data-collection programs come from Hacker News, which includes worldwide participation, so it is a bit surprising that there is so much news about the United States here. Other news aggregation services I rely on (including the wall posts of my literate, diverse, worldwide group of Facebook friends) indeed include more news about other countries than HN sometimes does.

What are the best sources we can readily link to today about surveillance and data-collection practices in China and in Russia?

AFTER EDIT TO RESPOND TO REPLY BELOW: I already know Chinese, as a review of quite recent comments of mine here on Hacker News would make abundantly clear. My Russian is rusty, as I haven't kept it up through daily use since the early 1980s, but I have read the Russian press (of the communist era) in the original Russian, and I still take care to be aware of the Russian official and Russian popular perspectives on world news.

In any case Wikileaks is opportunistic, they rely on leaks wherever they may originate.

HN is extremely americanocentric.

In certain contexts, that word means 'counter-revolutionary', so be careful when using it to describe WikiLeaks. It's good that you had the presence of mind to include that i.e.! ;)

    > I'd really like to see Wikileaks devoting more of its time, energy, and
    > fund-raising into breaking news about government-operated surveillance
    > programs in the last two countries where Edward Snowden has been located

Lose that and we join a race to the freedom-bottom the US founders would be shocked to learn we have undertaken.

Somewhere along the way we stopped doing that.

In fact, back in 2009, Assange told me personally he was surprised not to have received more information from China.

Admittedly the documents keep getting pulled but apparently they are available on DocumentCloud still.

But I just checked the Ecuador page at WikiLeaks [2] and have yet to see anything. Maybe they just need more time to authenticate the contents? Although then again, Ecuador itself seems to have authenticated it [3].

On that note, Ecuador's page at WikiLeaks seems pretty sparse after 2009 or so. I guess there have been any major secrecy scandals since then in Ecuador?

[1] http://thedesk.matthewkeys.net/2013/06/28/scribd-removes-buz... [2] http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Ecuador [3] http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/ecuador-defends-domestic-s...

I don't know about Russia, but in China it's pretty well known by everyone that the PRC is watching you; China doesn't claim to be a democratic republic either. It's not a secret or revelation to even people in the West. The only people who aren't really familiar with it in Western countries, are people who only stick to reading mainstream consumer news.

While I agree that surveillance happens everywhere, USA is in unique position of power to do it, considering how much of internet traffic moves through US-based companies. That said, I also agree that the very fact of existence of outrage caused by PRISM is telling about the US citizens and government, people in Russia, for example, assume that tchekists from FSB are already watching every their step or at the very least able to do so.

I don't find that's the case. Living in the US, it's not surprising that most of what you hear from WikiLeaks is about the US. Take a look at their homepage (http://wikileaks.org) for example, most featured stories are not about the US.

Perhaps showing support for Snowden will help other content come out, but looking at the huge effort President Obama and Vice Clownshoes Biden have put together to get this guy into the brig, not fucking likely. They have done a good job of isolating Snowden and making future whistle-blowing less likely.

US government has been riding a high horse and teaching everybody about internet freedom, and now they are caught pants down. That's a lot of more worthy of news than exposing already known bad guys.

I find it deeply troubling that majority voices in USA are now accusing Snowden / WikiLeaks of damaging USA reputation or things like that.

The recent rhetoric has presents the US as the worst offender of all when in practice it's probably better than anyone else who has the power to do these things (including the UK).

What if you take the US position at face value? There is oversight, and there are real and serious threats from terrorism and cyberattacks.

Is it good to have a massive secret signals collection apparatus? No.

Is it necessary? We don't know and nobody is even discussing that because we're all too busy bashing the US.

https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:China

People there know there is an extreme censorship and corruption.

IMO the higher government needs to take extreme measure against corruption.

(Note: I am against the death penalty)

With greater technology comes inevitable supervision over such things, and it isn't in the name of reading about your browsing habits unless you enjoy children being abused or bombing buildings. The only shame is the lack of transparency about the surveillance, but again, this whole thing should have been completely obvious to just about anyone. Snowden is a traitor and a coward for leaking the obvious (while running off to hide instead of facing the demons he accuses so arrogantly) and Assange is a horrible person for a bunch of other reasons.

1. PRISM is an apparatus just waiting for another government to use it against the US. Who's to say that Russia, China, etc. haven't been using it to spy on Americans, too? I mean, it's clearly not that hard to get access. Yes - they might not look at your porn history, but perhaps they will use some useful political information against one of your leaders and fuck you up.

2. What would happen if the government was to have a good reason to misuse the information they were gathering. What would happen if a fascist party was to come into power?

3. Calling Assange a horrible person is small-minded. Don't make this about personalities; this is about individual freedom, the right to a transparent government, the constitution your country was founded upon, and human rights.

4. Rather a traitor to the government than a traitor to the principles that made the US what it once was. Unless you want mediocrity...

Its the fact that if I happen to spend private time doing/thinking/talking about anything someone in the government finds objectionable with anybody someone in the government finds objectionable, I will get flagged and investigated.

Seriously, I couldn't care less if facebook employees read my posts, they have no power to hurt my life. Gmail employees laughing over my email? go for it. Mozilla employees discovering my personal fetish for modget donkey porn? meh.

But the government? I am now dependent on nobody in the governmental apparatus finding my private opinions and speech objectionable or questionable, now or ever in the future.

Fuck that. Either they stop doing that, or I stop expressing my private opinions to other people.

Society loses if the second one occurs on a massive scale. we have entered a really bad place.

Start by thinking of FICO scores or credit histories. Similar concepts can be applied to eligibility for all kinds of 'privately' provided parts of society - job screenings, auto insurance.

Imagine vacation rentals where the owner can screen people out based on political affiliation... the are any number of ways in which private institutions can quietly 'hurt your life' using all this personal data.

I was somewhat understating concerns about private companies there to avoid diluting the conversation too much, but I totally agree.

Hell, anyone could put their hands up to blackmail me over my midget donkey fetish, it doesn't have to be the government - but it does reach a particularly nasty level when it is government policy.

It's not about "nothing to hide": when anyone can be blackmailed, including judges and lawmakers and law enforcement, the entire system of interlocking checks and balances breaks down.

http://pastebin.com/7SRmFpFH

The FBI threatened MLK Jr with exposing his extramarital affair (they'd discovered via surveillance) if he didn't give up his civil rights work.

You may not have anything to hide, but many do, for entirely legal reasons, and it is shameful of you to deny them their right to privacy.

If you truly have absolutely nothing to hide, it is quite unlikely you are doing very significant work to meaningfully improve the world.

As I wrote in another comment, it's not just surveillance for state purposes, it's also surveillance for the corporate interests of the state (pharmaceuticals, agribusiness/GMOs, oil lobby, etc.). What if the big 3 auto makers were so powerful that they tried to crush Tesla by subtly targeting its customers and employees with fake bad news (oh wait, maybe they're already doing it). I'm convinced that some of the spying on the EU was over agricultural policies such as their strong anti-GMO stance--US companies would love to have advance knowledge to maneuver around them. I'm not sure it's happening yet, then again, how would we know?

[1] http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/king-like-all-frauds-yo...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5962529

I think that's kind of sad.

This is doublethink. It's either obvious, or he's traitor for leaking it. It can't be both.

I think that is a mistaken position to be in. It assumes a couple of things -- that people who disagree with the program do so because they are doing hidden illegal things and now those would come to light.

Another assumption is that the government makes no mistakes, is not malicious, can be trusted with such information, and now or in the future it will not misuse it.

This is all coming from the same entity that tortured people while talking about human right and freedom. I am not sure trusting it to "not do the wrong thing" this your history is a rational choice.

At this point trusting it with all this information is no better than trusting a toddler with a box of matches and a can of gasoline.

Let's imagine the presidential election, in the next 10 or 20 years, if the incumbent misuses the tools to find out that his/her pro-life opponent had an abortion (or in its close family), it could change the turn of the election.

You can apply the same kind of reasoning to any whistle-blower reporting corruption, pollution, or a toxic drug. It will become much easier to silence and blackmail them.

Democracy is funded in part on the equilibrium of powers, a dragnet collecting everyone's life, is breaking this fragile thing.

Rather, what you should have an issue with is them having information about you that is deeply personal and private in nature. Have you or a significant other ever had to get an abortion? Have you ever had trouble maintaining an erection? Are you one of the 30% of women who cannot achieve an orgasm? Do you have any mental disorders, sexually-transmitted diseases, or genetic conditions? How large is your penis? Have you ever been attracted to someone of the same sex? Have you ever fantasized about child porn, fat porn, necrophilia, etc.? Have you ever attempted suicide?

Most importantly: do you believe that the government knowing all of this about you - and everyone else - makes you safer?

So he would have been much braver by never leading anything? That's a strange definition of coward. Besides the fact that if it was "obvious" like you say, then how is it a leak?

Given that the Congress creates over 50 new federal crimes each year, and where you live, your local government probably also doesn't sit on its hands, are you completely sure you'd never want the government not to know absolutely everything about you? Really sure?

>>> Snowden is a traitor and a coward

I'd give you a traitor - he certainly violated the conditions of his employment and clearance, even if for an arguably good reason, but coward? I'd think it takes guts to take on the US government alone, knowing he'd probably spend rest of his life either hiding or in jail, or maybe eventually both. Would you dare to do the same? If you knew something is wrong and you know it - would you dare to do this, knowing your life will never be the same? It definitely not a behavior of a coward.

>>> while running off to hide instead of facing the demons he accuses so arrogantly

Getting away from an overwhelming force that has every reason to crush you and every possibility is not cowardice, it is a natural act of every human who values his life and liberty.

Spoiler Alert: A mad neocon would probably want Snowden and Assange dead.

Why am I even taking the time to explain this?

I hear arguments daily on the subject of the new Xbox and M$'s latest privacy invasion, but most everyone has no clue who Ed Snowden is or what NSA/PRISM are all about.

Please report yourself to the authorities. For the next 5 years I would like you to reflect on the logical flaw of the argument.

I realize you're being hyperbolic, but there's a big difference between some random person slinging around accusations on the internet, and a police force in a sovereign nation deciding that a criminal complaint lodged by one of its citizens warrants the arrest and questioning of a suspect in the case.

That phrasing makes it sound like these numbers come from your ass; feel free to correct my impression.

> but has only pursued Assange with this level of detail.

What level of detail? They happen to know exactly who their suspect is and exactly where he has run off to, and thus far what they've done is ask that he be returned.

>If they vigorously extradited every accused rapist who had fled Sweden, that would be highly respected, and Assange would have had far fewer sympathizers for holing up in an embassy.

What does this even mean? How many accused rapists flee Sweden every year? I have no idea, and I bet you don't either. Maybe Assange is the one guy who's fled the country in the last year and this is what they do. Maybe they do vigorously attempt to extradite every single accused rapist that flees abroad. Maybe the Swedish authorities are working harder on this case because it's high profile and they're trying to avoid a PR mess domestically.

You're assuming skulduggery where there's perfectly reasonable explanations, and - this is me guessing here, so if you can reasonably show me to be wrong, I'll happily admit that - you're pulling assertions from your ass to back that assumption up. Stop that.

I don't know how many of these cases are closed per year, but I think it's fair to assume that not all of them are closed within year.

(I'm not arguing for/against the Assange case here.)

And just how many of the suspects in those cases go hiding in embassies to avoid a European arrest warrant?

Not to mention that the translation (and gravity ) of the crime is closer to "sexual misdemeanor"/"sexual misconduct" rather than "rape".

And that's without even getting into how little sense the conspiracy theory itself makes.

No-one apart from tinfoil hat loonies thinks the charges are trumped up.

There's a fairly high standard you have to meet to make a claim like that, and just stating that "most reasonable people recognize" your claims of an anti-Assange conspiracy don't suffice to carry the point.

Doesn't mean you can run away and avoid facing trial. For example, in Australia, if you flee from a Breath test (drunk driving) without being tested, your punishment is guaranteed to be as bad or worse than as if you were caught drunk driving. Presumption of innocence is a right granted to you as part of a legal system. When you refuse to operate within that legal system... you can't pick and choose the bits you want to apply to you.

To me the case is so murky- I would have no trouble believing that Assange was completely set up, but at the same time from his behaviour I would have no trouble believing he was guilty either. But as long as he avoids facing a trial, you can't just say "we must assume he is innocent". That is a right granted to you as part of a process where you will face a courtroom at some point.

They're both known for wanting to substantially tighten rape laws in Sweden, and the lawyer in question is a partner in a law firm that also includes a former Swedish minister of justice from the time Sweden was complicit in illegal CIA renditions - as revealed by Wikileaks. Rather than a conspiracy, they might just have decided he was a convenient person to make an example of, score some political points on, and as an extra bonus he was someone they don't like.

Note that the above is not mutually exclusive with him actually being guilty of a crime. He could perfectly well be guilty and a victim of an overzealous prosecutor.

I really don't want to make a judgement either way. I do think that there's something fishy about the way the case has been pursued, though, but I'm inclined to think that a Swedish prosecutor with ambitions is sufficient - there's no need to infer outside interference.

They were interviewed by a friend of one of the women, in violation of police procedure, and the police on that basis decided to start an investigation without a complaint from the women. An investigation the first prosecutor closed down because she claimed there was no case to answer at all.

One of the women have since consistently refused to sign the police interview protocols.

Now, this might happen if someone is raped. But as it stands, it is unclear to what extent the women even agree with the police transcripts, much less with the police's interpretation of what they said.

Given the recent history of CIA kidnappings and other shenanigans, there is reasonably doubt that this would be the case.

So there isn't actually a disagreement on morals or ethics - just a disagreement about empirical observations.

Edit: It now seems like there is some reasonable doubt that this notice was forged. I still remain confident this is no forgery, but the point I'd like to make is that there may in fact be an identity question -- and that is a problem with a technical solution that unfortunately seems not to have been leveraged.

For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum.

Maybe I'm overanalyzing but I don't think this is a verbatim statement from Snowden.

"...the United States of America has been..."

Edit to add: The statement as quoted at http://boingboing.net/2013/07/01/snowden-asks-russia-for-asy... has the original version with "have" still in there.

Here's a screenshot from twitter of the original - https://twitter.com/ClaraJeffery/status/351833289000112128

So to claim that WikiLeaks would fixup all of Snowden's writings to conform to en_GB and then switch it right back to en_US after HN notices is rather surreal.

At best you could claim that Harrison herself simply transcribed Snowden's speech and that no one caught it until it was posted. But that still wouldn't explain what happened to some of the missing words that Snowden would have said. And that still wouldn't explain why WikiLeaks revised a statement so important without so much as a mention of proofreading corrections post-facto.

I think you need to loosen your tinfoil.

Does that sound like the same person talking about civil liberties and how Obama didn't change enough for him, and being ready to stand up for what he believes in? Or does that sound more like a certain other ego at opposition to the U.S. government and especially its President?

The concern would be if wikileaks were completely fabricating this, but I see no evidence for that. (Nor any motivation.)

I doubt they are fabricating it, but honestly they have Snowden in as much of a bind as the U.S. does now. They are his only source of support right now... what does he do if they take it away? He's in a web of very unequal relationships right now.

This assumes he has other channels of communication. He probably stands behind it insofar as its consistent with everything I've heard from him so far, but neither of us has any way of knowing for the time being.

If you want to preserve your credibility, it's better to either leave the mistakes in, or explain the context (eg 'this statement was a written record of a verbal statement; we apologize for an inaccuracy in our transcription of Mr. Snowden's recorded words').

EDIT: Why the downvotes? Do you have proof this is real? It seems awfully suspicious to change that when someone notices it and not mention anything.

EDIT2: Clarified what I think is (fully or partially) fake.

Also, bitching about downvotes tends to accelerate the rate at which one gets them. You've been here long enough to have noticed that.

Others think it's real because it is on Wikileaks.

I see both sides of the argument, but I'm staying on my side for now.

The risk-adjusted return on making a fake Snowden statement just doesn't pass the sniff test for me.

YMMV.

I'm not sure that going from "I love my country and want the people to know what the government is doing" to "FUCK THE US AND FUCK YOU OBAMA" (paraphrased!) is really the wisest course though. But what do I know?

Suppose (for argument's sake) that Snowden were depressed or had got cold feet, and was uncommunicative or otherwise climbing down from his previous position; a supporter who thought he was simply undergoing a crisis of confidence might decide to draft a statement 'in the spirit of his actions.'

I'm not saying that this has happened here, but such things are not unprecedented. You don't need to believe that the entire organization is engaged in a deception, or even that the (imaginary) author of such a statement would consider it deceptive, but rather reflective of a 'deeper truth'.

Maybe Snowden's words were run past an editor (as are most journalist's words) of British public-school extraction, who applied reflexively what he'd been taught?

This kind of over-parsing is typical of the kind of intensive derailing of Snowden's message that's been going on. ANYTHING to distract us from the Naked Exercise of Unlimited Power of Questionable Legality that's been uncovered.

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/the-united-stat...

This is British writing style. Brits leave off the preposition "from" in these types of sentences; Americans put it in.

American English: "Administration now seeks to stop me from exercising a basic right."

British English: "Administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right."

I'm not a linguistics or grammar expert so I can't name the proper terms for all this. I've just observed in the past that this is a "Britishism" that differs from American style. It's interesting to see it here. Snowden wouldn't write like that. IMO, he needs to ditch Wikileaks because they've done nothing but harm him and seem to only be interested in advancing their agenda.

So, trusting the authenticity of a document is a probability game. If he had signed it with a public key, then the probability of a fake would be less.

Pass-phrases help mitigate the concerns for stolen private keys, but they do not provide assurances that things will not be signed or encrypted under duress. The best you can really do there is throw in more human element to increase the number of rubber hoses your enemy will need.

Regardless of what happens to him; he is writing himself into the pages of history.

His actions have opened the possibility of Western Europe defecting from the US led coalition that has dominated world affairs for the past 70 years. Which is not a result anyone could have predicted.

What changed compared to previous US spying scandals? (e.g. Echelon and the 2003 European council wiretaps from the US)

The first leak in the dam doesn't look so threatening...

There are economic ties, political, cultural, and military. It was always complicated with EU. Some countries are part of NATO, some aren't. EU doesn't have a military. So geo-politically it can't "project power" too much as a unified force. US and its NATO members know it.

If you read foreign affairs journal (they are stinktank propaganda often but they are read and acted on by many in power). You'd see articles about how EU is a geopolitical threat to US. It would eventually want to extract and use the same resources. It would want to eat the same bananas and dictate policy in parts of the world.

EU was and is a threat to US. If anything before those countries formed a stronger union, they were easier to manipulate as they could be played against each other. Like say offer Italy some trade rights to force France to change their stance or something like that.

Kosovo war for example was a good ol NATO show of force. USSR and then Russia was disabled in the gutter licking its wounds, EU was rising. It was time to bring in NATO to show the world who really rules Western Europe lest EU gets too cocky or gets some funny ideas.

Culturally, well we are friends. Americans love to trace their ancestry. Yes even 5 generations back and claim they are from Italy or France or what have you. They don't speak the language but sure as heck talk about how Italian they are. And so on. At least as far as culture and shared values. There is a closer relationship.

Anyway, I am just rambling without many references but just trying to say that it isn't that simple as "I thought we were friends and now look at what you guys did?"

These perceptions may be entirely factitious; but they are substantive in that they are shaping the political discourse sub rosa across the EU.

If the UK loses its continental influence, the willingness of Euro-based business to respect the Pound (in trade, I mean - their acceptance, online or elsewhere, of the Pound as currency without first converting to Euro) may diminish. Further, London may fall out of the tech industry's graces as a good destination for regional headquarters.

In either case, the UK's loss is France/Germany's gain - likely moreso Germany's because they're already ahead by a bit.

Being an American, I know less than Jon Snow about how EU power works, but if the UK's losses mount and create a power vaccuum at/near the top, Germany and France are leading states even moreso than they were before. What that might amount to, I couldn't say.

This is cheating on my part, but I agree and disagree.

a) Yes, it's unlikely any one event has the necessary inertia to shift a continent's finance capital from one city to another.

b) Everything starts somewhere. No single assassination is likely to start the largest global conflict in human history, yet Franz Ferdinand's assassination is credited with having "started" WWI. In reality, a number of necessary elements contributed, but human history is written in narrative fashion, and scene 1 of WWI begins with Franz, the way most people tell it. Similarly, the last ~40 years have been very interesting, currency-wise, I think, so, it may do to have an eye out for something big enough to light this powderkeg. Since so much of finance is based on trust, in one form or another, an event that dramatically reduces global trust in the dominant parties of the era would be one logically viable catalyst.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri

I suspect that the Obama administration broke may of their own rules rushing through the a change in status that fast - a bureaucracy the size of the US doesn't process anything quickly without breaking the rules.

The Russians are clearly using Snowden as a pawn, probably because Russia is threatened by people like Snowden just as much as the US is. Snowden threatens those who make the rules, and then apply them fully to others and not at all to themselves and their cohorts.

For the third time in my life (the first two courtesy Bush Jr.) I'm deeply ashamed of my government.

Which is why I think it's silly that Snowden has (as so many before have and surely after him will) bothered to note that the US isn't allowing him to seek asylum. If you're in the position to seek asylum, and you think you deserve it, you're already claiming that the US is unfairly targeting you. Why would an organization that is unfairly targeting you be fair about asylum?

It's amazing what you can push through when a Secretary of State who can unilaterally revoke your passport once a valid warrant for arrest on Federal charges is issued, reports directly to you.

The only slow part of that would be getting the charges issued in the first place; Snowden simply took too long in Hong Kong.

In general the reason things take a long time to do in a bureaucracy is because of the required approvals from many different officials. If the President or a cabinet secretary wants something to happen now, this is less likely to be necessary.

"Bend too far, and you're already broken."

It's more an issue of redefining the rules than breaking them. Court oversight becomes a secret rubber stamp that's never denied. Search becomes querying the database we already have. Non-citizenship becomes 51% confidence. Spying on enemy nations during wartime becomes Hey, Everybody's Doing It, Why Can't We? ...etc

I'm rather out of my depth where passport laws are concerned, though.

Or simply because what else can a government use an individual for?

The relevant U.S. law is 22 CFR 51.70 and 51.72 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-1999-title22-vol1/xml/CFR-1...

He does have a point that restricting travel does make it harder for you to seek asylum. But that's nothing new.

The first is obviously the revelations about NSA "overreach".

The second is that this guy could've remained hidden but he put his name behind the revelations rather than choosing the far safer path of being an "anonymous source". This lends his revelations more credence and you have to respect the guy for standing by his convictions. Maybe he would've been found out had he stayed in the shadows but he certainly didn't try to do that.

The third is that the US is very much two-faced here. It seems clear that the surveillance is being justified by a technical ruling to do with US vs foreign persons, a classified ruling no less. While this might be a fine legal argument, it doesn't engender support amongst foreign powers when you tell them you have every right to spy on their citizens but oh, by the way, can you do us a solid and hand over that fugitive?

In what world does the US think they'll get cooperation from anyone when they aren't treated not even as equals but with simple decency? So the foreign policy apparatus resorts to bullying tactics.

The fourth is that both China and Russia were blatantly thumbing their noses at the US. I see no world in which Russia hands the guy over so the actions of the US have done little more than force a guy in possession of Top Secret information to be harboured by a rival. Congratulations on that statecraft, Obama, Biden and Kerry.

What's more it's made the US appear internationally weak.

The last is that the various players on Snowden's side do seem to have screwed the pooch on this one by both issuing a letter of safe passage and not having some kind of contingency when the US did the predictable thing and revoked his passport. This could hardly have been an unprecedented move.

So good luck to you, Edward Snowden. I hope your sacrifice hasn't been in vein. The optimist in me hopes that a future president will pardon you and otherwise reverse this self-destructive course the US is on.

I think that internal auditing would have very quickly identified him as the source the moment the leaks hit the papers.

At least this way they have a little bit of a PR shitstorm if they disappear him, as opposed to if he was totally anonymous.

Also, by doing that video interview, he gets to shape the narrative a tiny bit by pointing out all the opportunity he had to be malicious that he didn't use, illustrating that he's simply not. It's hard not to like the guy.

>>What's more it's made the US appear internationally weak

If that is the case then surely there must be lots of countries willing to offer him asylum and the traveling documents he needs.

A passport means that the host nation is comfortable with the person traveling abroad. For what should be obvious reasons the U.S. would rather he be back home (to stand trial). Even if you disagree with everything the NSA has done or will do, he technically broke the law. If the U.S. considers itself to observe the rule of law, then they have to pursue him as much as they'd pursue anyone else.

The U.S. has stripped persons of their citizenship for things as mundane as fraud, so this is hardly a made-up case for Snowden.

In fact, it's so not made up that there are existing procedures for when a passport may be revoked [1] [2]. Note that despite the foia_reading_room in the URL of [1], it is simply the U.S. Attorney's Manual, which is accessible directly from http://www.justice.gov/usao/index.html .

[1] http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/tit...

[2] http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppi/info/info_870.html

Edit: Also, since when did a conversation without an exchange of consideration or an agreement to perform certain actions become "wheeling and dealing"? This is the kind of stuff that has turned me off from Assange a long time ago; he's just as willing to distort as a government, as long as it suits his purpose.

Revoking a passport is routine when felony charges are filed. Citizenship on the other hand is much harder to remove, even if the US government had any interest in doing so (it doesn't in this case - it wants him back home).

Naturalized citizens can be stripped of citizenship in extreme cases when they're found to have lied on their citizenship applications. I'm not aware of any circumstance in which natural-born citizens can have their citizenship removed without them voluntarily renouncing it first.

For naturalization fraud. That is, if the original basis for citizenship was found to be invalid. Aside from that, it's nearly impossible to "strip" someone of their citizenship, I don't think it's a power that even authoritarian presidencies like Bush & Obama claim to have.

I winced a bit at the claim of being a stateless person, as I'd previously understood that to mean lacking citizenship anywhere, not being without a passport for travel. Perhaps I've been wrong about that all these years.

I'm still researching, but so far, I've found the following passport-revocation authorities:

1. Obtained illegally or through fraud

2. Altered or misused (no definition yet on 'misused')

3. Issued to persons whose citizenship is cancelled

4. Non-payment of child support

5. Non-repayment of repatriation loan

6. Persons convicted of sex tourism

7. Persons convicted of drug trafficking

8. [based on comment below] Standing warrants for arrest (and other standing legal/court orders against the bearer)

Interestingly enough, 22 USC § 2721 states that:

> A passport may not be denied issuance, revoked, restricted, or otherwise limited because of any speech, activity, belief, affiliation, or membership, within or outside the United States, which, if held or conducted within the United States, would be protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

I've yet to find an authority to revoke a passport from a citizen who is openly seeking political asylum.

However, there is 22 USC § 217a:

>A passport shall be valid for a period of ten years from the date of issue, except that the Secretary of State may limit the validity of a passport to a period of less than ten years in an individual case or on a general basis pursuant to regulation.

So, there's that. Perhaps this is one such individual case.

Additionally, the law requires the DOS to send the passport owner written notification of revocation. I wonder if the US is considering a press statement to be such written notice?

Any lawyers versed in passport issues know whether revoking a passport in a situation like this runs afoul of law or established precedent?

[edit: formatting failure on my part]

http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppi/info/info_870.html

So I think the passport revocation was in fact legal since there was a request for extradition and a federal warrant of arrest.

Any idea on how that plays into the open requests for asylum?

Also, I'm assuming the statute uses passport denial to also include passport revocation?

As for how it interacts with asylum, well, it doesn't. If states had an obligation not to pursue or interfere with the travel of a fugitive seeking asylum, then take a guess what a lot of fugitives would do.

Generally if you're going to seek asylum, it's not the country you're fleeing FROM that facilitates your emigration, it's the country you're traveling TO.

Well, that's exactly what Snowden did, and got a travel document from the Ecuadorian embassy. But the surprising other half of the story here is that Ecuador revoked that travel document while he was in Moscow. THAT is arguably the main reason why he's in a bind right now, not that he or his advisors expected his US passport to remain valid, which is clearly revokable under the law in these circumstances.

On the interaction with asylum, I did a poor job of being clear. I was wondering more about considerations of asylum given the current situation and the US revoking Snowden's passport. I'd already assumed that a country would revoke (although Snowden's a different kind of fugitive than, say, a murderer attempting to flee). Obviously, no country facilitates emigration of a person they wish to make a political and legal example of. Was wondering more if the revocation makes Snowden look like more of a case for political asylum, or less attractive for potential asylum granters.

The Ecuadorian revocation of travel documents--if their stated reasons are true--is certainly surprising (both for the revocation, and the political liability that they're assessing to Assange in relation to Snowden).

All that aside, revoking a standing passport just strikes me as a very dick move. Almost childish, even. It just screams, "Our allies aren't cooperating with us because we've been abusing them, so we'll just maroon the poor bastard until they cave cos they don't want to deal with him either." Not ineffective, but still a disappointing tactic from the administration.

  If these people can't strike
  Blows for freedom
  With a valid visa
  We don't need 'em

It appeared for a moment that country was Ecuador. Now, apparently not (and quite possibly because of the publication of the alleged travel documents).

"This passport is the property of the United States. It must be surrendered upon demand made by an authorized representative of the United States."

Title 22, Section 51.9 is the law it references, but I haven't read it.

Does this mean every country who attempts to prosecute people who subsequently seek asylum is violating "a basic right"?

Asylum is considered a basic human right. I've posted elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5974330

Anyway, it really doesn't make sense to talk about asylum in relation to the country being fled. The declaration is a statement of what the destination state should do when it recognizes a case of persecution. 'Persecution' is inherently a subjective concept.

What on Earth are you talking about? It's abundantly clear that he expects to be charged with a crime (or at least to be treated as badly or worse as someone charged with a crime). Why do you think he left the USA and is seeking asylum?