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Comment by kafkaesq | Hacker News Reader

Meaning, for Snowden, that his best bet, clearly, is to stay in Russia (or whatever country will take him)† for at least the duration of the coming shitstorm that will be the next administration.† Instead of coming back to the U.S. to face the consequences of his actions (which nearly every reasonable-minded person -- including Snowden himself -- strongly prefers).

Kind of sucks for Snowden, but more to the point, an incredibly stupid position for the U.S. to take.

† EDIT: Given that while his chances in Russia may not be best, for much longer -- his prospects for asylum in many other countries, especially in Europe, will rise quite substantially if he is explicitly threatened with a death sentence.

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So my view for Snowden is that this is actually worse than what you're saying.

Snowden should fear for his life at this point. It's not enough to live in Russia with the weird Bro-ness that Putin and Trump have come to have of late [1]. That means chance for extradition goes up.

Let's say Snowden goes into hiding. What does that mean for a Law and Order type to run the CIA with potentially limited government oversight [2]?

Keep in mind the CIA can kill terrorists who are US Citizens abroad and has been given that permission since Bush 43. [3]

The question then just remains is Snowden a terrorist? It's probably not harder to justify than some might think.

[1]: http://wapo.st/2fNivVk

[2]: Senate Select Intelligence Committee on CIA Tortue (point #6 on.) https://goo.gl/dS1pv7

[3]: https://goo.gl/6XxYL1

Agree with this. Trump has more or less expressed that he wants the US to mend its relationship with Putin. Friends are great for trading favors. I can't imagine what Putin would ask for in exchange for Snowden, but Trump would love to make a deal.

My suspicion is that it would suit Trump and Putin if Snowden were deposited in a neutral country. Like 'Ecuador'.

Putin cannot give him directly to America without the Russian stance losing credibility and they would look mercurial which would deter others using it as a safe haven. They've made plenty of hay out of Snowden's presence and would be loathe to lose possible future haymaking supplies.

Trump wouldn't know what to do with him if he had him. The Dems immediately take to the high horse and he loses the libertarians altogether. That loses him the balance of power with the social conservatives and that would be a problem for him getting re-elected because Sanders could easily turn him into George III.

The alternative is for Russia to get something big like formal recognition of Crimea (flying as Putin the magnificent horsetrader putting Russia first) and Snowden gets a quick trial with relatively short sentence of five-ten years and STFU good behavior policy thereafter.

I think the first scenario is the more likely so I think Snowden may receive an invitation to a nice European country such as Switzerland.

Putin cannot give him directly to America without the Russian stance losing credibility and they would look mercurial which would deter others using it as a safe haven.

It's just a question of what he gets back in return. Snowden handed over on a silver platter in exchange for recognition of the Crimean annexation, along with a lifting of sanctions and a substantial watering-down of pledges to support the Ukraine, George, and the Baltics? You can imagine both camps might already be salivating at the prospect.

> Trump wouldn't know what to do with him if he had him.

If I were a Law and Order type, I would make an example out of him. The Dems will cave because they don't want to support a Traitor/Terrorist.

Russia would probably like to stop the sanctions against them. [1]

1: http://www.newsweek.com/node/521580

Has russia bought the gop? Starting to worry about this...

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/underst...

> I can't imagine what Putin would ask for in exchange for Snowden, but Trump would love to make a deal.

George Soros ?

Even under Obama, he was looking at life in prison, which is effectively a living death sentence. Personally, I'd rather get the death penalty than spend my remaining years in a federal supermax prison (especially given that Snowden is fairly young).

Putin will give him up in a heartbeat if it curries any favor at all with Trump. Most European governments do not look favorably on what he did either, and wouldn't harbor him anyway - both out of fear of reprisal from the US and fear of encouraging their own Snowden-type incidents. The end of Snowden's freedom is likely near, whether he gets the death penalty or not. It's not the end that many of us would like the see for him, but he did know the penalties well before he did what he did.

I'm still surprised Obama seemingly knew about this, yet did nothing. It makes me wonder how many other things he knows about, and how full of it this makes him.

He says a lot of things, but at the end of the day, he seems like a worthless, know-nothing, unconcerned idiot when it comes to things like protecting the people, looking out for them, helping things progress, and you know, everything else the government is supposed to be about.

It's annoying that this outdated, corrupted, worthless system is being strung along, defended, and operated as though it's the norm, the way it should be, and as though it was, at any time, something other than the product/result of self-serving agendas.

There's a lot more data, technological advancement, knowledge, experience, and general intelligence available these days (enough to show how stupid what's being done is), but all they do is try to drag around whatever's more garbage as though it's not just more shit.

I suppose in one way I'm not too surprised, as whether it was an after school club, a mail room, church, college, or a corporate work environment, wherever I was, it would be the same pattern of shit being defended, propped up, and carried on; and of everyone reacting violently to anything else that would appear.

It would also be the same pattern of no one knowing why anything was the way it was and of no one questioning or thinking about anything, yet thinking they knew something and violently defending whatever garbage was in place. What's that? You don't even know what it is, how it got there, why it's there, or anything else, but off you go saying the dumbest things?

Also, most quickly realize that most things in place are either the result of politics, self-serving BS, "just doing something to get it done," and everything else that's a reflection of stupidity repeating again; yet they continue on as though something else is the case.

It might not be irrational.

Conservatism in a system could serve to prevent trashing of scenarios that always go to deadlock.

Isn't "conservatism," especially when the system isn't worth much to begin with, something that is deadlock?

I think of conservatism (political meaning) to be Conservation (save the whales), but for humans and their institutions.

I think it is part of an algorithm which (when it works) prevents deadlock.

Whenever the (left/right) stakeholders have a balance of power at a stable equilibrium, upsetting the system just leads to a waste of energy, what I called 'trashing'. It's similar to feature creep or faux innovation.

The cost of shooting down net negative moves over and over could sap the strength of the whole system because there is an opportunity cost to ignoring the few possible net positive moves.

So without conservatism, paradoxically, there is no progress.

It does have failure modes though. Peter Thiel points out one of them, which is that in order to produce net positive moves the economy must be healthy (you cannot horsetrade in a zero sum game).

The other failure is that you can get caught in a local minimum.

I believe one or both of these modes are taking over at present.

> It's not the end that many of us would like the see for him, but he did know the penalties well before he did what he did.

One can justify all kinds of whistle blower revenge this way. Just remember that Snowden didn't violate the constitution.

Which is worse exactly: Violating the constitution or violating laws to expose those that are doing it?

To me it seems like the NSA was acting more traitorous than Snowden ever did.

Well, I'd like to see him pardoned. I just know it will never happen, and he had to know that as well when he did it. No government can afford to be seen as tolerant of this kind of action from within its own ranks. Perhaps as a result of Snowden there will be better ways for government employees to vent their concerns, but that likely won't help him out.

Obama should still pardon him so he can have his passport back.

As Overtonwindow mentioned (in this very thread)¹, it’s probably not in his best interests to do that:

“[That] would likely create a tremendously huge backlash from the intelligence community, and turn them against the Democratic party for a very long time. You think Wikileaks and Hillary's emails were bad? Piss off the intel community and have them turning their mighty tools of deception and surveillance on the entire DNC…”

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¹ — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12989859

That would never fly. The IRS couldn't even be slightly more critical with the RNC without everything exploding.

Meh. Obama is done Jan 20 regardless.

So...he should burn every bridge he's built over the past decade because it soon won't be his problem anymore?

You seem to think those bridges were open to begin with. I'm saying they're not. Democrats being commie pinkos aligned with Russia and are traitors in sheep's clothing is an old (and given recent events, ironic) meme. See "FBI is Trumpland"

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/03/fbi-leaks-hi...

This is a bit of conspiracy theory, but sometimes I suspect that has already happened. It seemed somewhat coincidental for the intelligence community to time their very public investigation of Clinton the way that they did after largely leaving politicians alone for so long (at least in public).

The conspiracy theorist inside me wonders if part of the reason for the use of a private server went beyond convenience, obliviousness, or active avoidance of FOIA requests which are the common suppositions.

Perhaps she was aware of the surveillance state and tried to circumvent scrutiny from a meddling intelligence community by going private? The implementation was poor, of course, but it would strike me as a reasonable thing for one organization of the government to do if there was some other organization that was overreaching to the point where they were eavesdropping on government communication.

This is definitely all speculation, but given the lack of transparency in government activity at that level, it's hard to come up with something more data-based.

I don't know that this is completely implausible, given a few assumptions:

1. The surveillance state has been making extreme advances with their capabilities.

2. Clinton likely has a greater knowledge of the extent of those advances as part of her role in the executive branch.

2. The various agencies have a history of political engagement behind closed doors.

3. FOIA seems relatively weak, given ability of the government to delay or redact released information. This weakness would seem to reduce the likelihood of FOIA avoidance as a reason for the violation.

4. Clinton _had_ to know the policies that were in place which restricted her use of private email, given her position and history. At the very least, the people performing the implementation knew. This reduces likelihood of convenience as viable causation.

If, for theoretical discussion, we accept the possibility that Clinton was actively attempting to thwart attention of the surveillance apparatus, then the timing and public nature of the investigation (after leaving politicians alone for so long, at least publicly) could be seen as retaliation in the right light. It would certainly send an object lesson to other politicians and government officials that they should avoid treading on the interests of the intelligence community.

As to what those interests are.. well. It depends on your degree of trust, I imagine. Perhaps they have a political agenda, or perhaps this is simply protection of their assets (as it is possible retaliation for lack of security resulting in a breach with material impact that they chose or were not able to disclose). When the leaders of the intelligence community come out to publicly state that political dissidents should be executed, all bets are off when looking at their motivations.

So.. yeah. I'm going to take off my tinfoil hat now.

It's not crazy, she could have had a half baked instinct for this, but I don't think so.

A while back Clinton asked for a special crypto phone from the NSA (like Obama has) and they told her to fuck off.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/nsa-re...

If she was apprehensive she would never have asked.

Barack Obama isn't going to do a thing that doesn't benefit Barack Obama in some way, shape or form.

He is a politician. That's what they do.

A Snowden pardon does nothing but possibly threaten Obama's legacy. Which, at this point in all administrations, is the primary focus of Presidents.

Pardoning Snowden would encourage whistleblowers under the Trump administration, which could help rescue Obama's legacy from its current obvious fate.

My impression is that his legacy is pretty positive. Whether or not you agree with that, it definitely rules out the word 'obvious'.

I meant two things: normalizing and expanding the security state to hand it over to Trump, and many of the more positive developments immediately repealed. No, these haven't happened yet, but they're the obvious default course of events now.

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