Generally there's this thing called "due process", if they were just planning on putting Snowden on a CIA plane I really can't see how that's supposed to be okay.
The fact that it might ruffle a few feathers diplomatically is hardly something the CIA considers when they handle operations like the one they're describing. Also, if they did grab him, trust me, he wouldn't be heard from again. Considering Snowden has an army of governments after him, it would be easy for the CIA to run a disinformation campaign to keep people guessing who really kidnapped him.
It would be easy for the CIA to rotate him between several of their "black sites" around the world and basically let him wither and die in one these miserable places.
At least as long as the CIA operatives are not crazy enough to run an armed operation in Moscow.
But yeah, I seriously doubt they'd kill anyone unless they needed to.
Moreover, even if the US managed to grab him, it'd be easier to manufacture a bogus story explaining how he suddenly ended up in custody. After that, he'd just be sent off to ADX Florence for life.
They could likely assassinate him in most places, although in NK/RU/CN/IR it would likely involve a lot of collateral damage, although probably not global thermonuclear war.
Umm, no. That's not quite how things work.
That ruffled the feathers until a few years later when it was all swept under the carpet.
Now the disagreement is over Ukraine and Syria. So Russia is in the bad books again for the killing
In Russia? Spetsnaz would eat them alive. Maybe Mossad could pull it off but no way the CIA.
And what has anybody ever done about it? Maybe sent out a few strongly worded memos, if anything at all.
But if the CIA just dragged him back to America and turned him over to the US Marshals it wouldn't impact his charges.
There is no recognized right to be a fugitive.
Afterwards, he was banned from USA.
Soon we'll have to arrest everyone for drinking alcohol, because that's against laws in some countries, we'll have to arrest all women for driving, because that's against the law elsewhere, etc. etc.
The list is endless, and, IMO, pointless.
This is inaccurate in a number of ways. Certain American laws are, on their face, restricted in territorial applicability (others are explicitly not, others are neither explicitly limited nor explicitly unlimited and the application requires reference to principles beyond the individual law in question), and, particularly, certain protections of the Constitution have been held unenforceable against the government in the context of certain actions outside the territory of the United States.
But you can't correctly make a blanket statement that US law is not applicable outside of US territory.
No, they aren't (unless you are using "US National laws" as a label you've made up for laws that are restricted to US Nationals and the territory of the US.)
For online businesses it's a lot more risky as your customers and operations may be located anywhere.
(I'm not sure where you got the idea that citizenship bears any relevance at all here)
US LEAs might have a hard time harassing people like me if EU countries stopped coöperating with them.
Russia pretty much got away with murdering Litvinenko in London; if they'd done that to a natural-born UK citizen in the UK with no other ties to Russia, and unambiguously, there would have been much more serious consequences.
Well, up until now. It was so clearly a political decision to ignore it when it happened and now that relations with Russia have deteriorated it's been investigated and the obvious conclusion reached.
The CIA could have someone with 'CIA' on their jacket shoot a UK citizen on the street in broad daylight and the UK would avoid investigating it if it was politically inconvenient to do so.
Jeffrey W. Castelli, Rome station chief received a 7 year prison sentence
Robert Seldon Lady, Milan station chief received a 8 year prison sentence
I'm referring to Her Majesty's government: Italy isn't the US's poodle the way the UK is, the thread was discussing the non-action of the UK government due to political inconvenience
I get that, but figured it would still be worth noting that other EU states have previously done this.
Edit:
>> Why would you give that particular benefit of the doubt?
If it's a) legal, b) gets the job done, why on earth would you make an unforced error when you know everyone on the planet would be watching how you handled this? I'm not relying on the better angels of men here, I'm relying on self interest, path of least resistance, and government laziness. Each on their own has rarely failed me and never all three at once.
>Extradition shall not be granted in any of the following circumstances:
>6. In respect of a military offense.
@ryanlol: I very much hope that laws and treaties are never interpreted via "common sense". Tech is not the only field with a technical argot, and it is good that specific words have specific meanings. If laws were enforced by "common sense" then every time you had an interaction with a contract or government agency would be subject to the whims of whatever moron happened to have power over you that day. Even though that is sadly frequent in practice, it shouldn't be, it isn't law that it be so, and I feel much better that we at least aspire to better.
>@ryanlol: I very much hope that laws and treaties are never interpreted via "common sense". Tech is not the only field with a technical argot, and it is good that specific words have specific meanings. If laws were enforced by "common sense" then every time you had an interaction with a contract or government agency would be subject to the whims of whatever moron happened to have power over you that day. Even though that is sadly frequent in practice, it shouldn't be, it isn't law that it be so, and I feel much better that we at least aspire to better.
You can hope, but as someone who has a plenty of experience with Scandinavian legal systems I'll have to assure you that's sadly not the case.
Anyway, here I am sitting with a money laundering conviction for receiving a wire transfer of some 6000 euros from a Chinese bitcoin exchange. The prosecutor could never find _anything_ explaining the origin of the money, but as an unemployed person convicted of (not financially motivated) hacking crimes the judge figured it was "common sense" that the money had to be the proceeds of a crime.
I possess a non-trivial amount of bitcoins, I sold some. It's really impossible for me to figure out what I got those specific bitcoins for, especially since this was around when bitcoin was at around $1k a pop so selling 7 or so was absolutely nothing for me.
According to Finnish law money laundering is activity where someone receives, spends, transforms or transfers illicitly obtained (this is a bit difficult to translate but the law specifically says "acquired by crime") property to cover up or disappear the origins of the property.
Logically you shouldn't be able to be convicted of this without proof that the crime actually happened, but apparently not here. Lighter sentences seem to make it easier to wrongly convict people, especially when it's extraordinarily rare for them to actually end up in prison.
Expecting some sort of bookkeeping might be reasonable with real money, but not with imaginary internet money.
And FWIW the investigation regarding me and LS was dropped a few months ago.
Are you saying that you provided to the court evidence of your legitimate business which accepts or transacts Bitcoins for services that it is impossible for you not to know about, in the process of which you acquired 7 or so Bitcoins (transactions for which will be on the blockchain), and then you sold them for a higher price at a Bitcoin exchange (transactions for which you should have receipts and email correspondence for) and they didn't accept it?
You don't have to answer any of this, obviously, it's just hard to believe there isn't more to it than what you're saying.
Even if he couldn't really remember what his business was selling, he would still have receipts, records and/or emails demonstrating that the source of the 6000 Euros was a legitimate Bitcoin exchange, as a result of the massive increase in price.
This was also before the tax authority clarified on their stance on bitcoins, before that everyone was under the impression that you wouldn't have to tax your coins until you exchange them to real currency.
And that's ignoring all the coins I mined way back, it's literally impossible to attribute that transaction to any specific source.
Outside of our discussion here, I honestly hope everything works out in the best way it can for you. On the bright side it's not a hacking conviction in the US?
Why would you give that particular benefit of the doubt?
I don't think secret services feel the need to justify their operations in this manner. On the other hand, people who pay for it..
If my explicit reference to it was not enough to convince you then you can go read it.