Hacker News Reader

Comment by strogonoff | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how Snowden reconciles his position on self-censorship with his current country of residence. Is it meta, in the sense that he too has to self-censor out of fear for own life? Does he consider it a necessary move, presuming any country with stronger freedom of speech is also a country that would extradite him to the US?

View on HN

> I wonder how Snowden reconciles his position on self-censorship with his current country of residence.

By remembering that he got only got stuck in Russia because the United States revoked his passport while he was on an international flight that was to make a connection in Moscow?

While it’s a good point, it doesn’t really explain anything here.

I don’t have the details, but isn’t there a way to apply for an asylum, say, in neighbouring Georgia, Ukraine or Finland (by walking into an embassy or even straight to a land border)? Is he being held against his will? Does he not desire to move? Is it because he’s thinking those countries would be likely to deport him at the request of the US? Is it because he doesn’t believe living in a country which regime is closer to one’s own philosophy is worth the hassle of moving there? Or he doesn’t consider those countries any better than Russia in this regard? Etc.

He applied to 27 countries including Finland. Apart from Russia, the ones he could actually reach turned him down.

I have no doubt Russia is milking this for all it’s worth (wouldn’t you in their place?) but Snowden really didn’t have a totally free hand in where he ended up after his passport was cancelled — just America or Russia.

If he did apply for asylum and was refused, that explains the situation to me personally. I never thought all of the (admittedly, quite few) directly adjacent to Russia democratic countries would do that to him. I hope he continues to write on these topics from wherever he is.

> directly adjacent to Russia democratic countries

I wonder how necessary the "directly adjacent" criteria is. Couldn't he sail from Russia to Iceland, for example? Perhaps if he was wanted by Interpol he would find it hard to travel through the territorial waters of European nations (assuming their coast guards would intercept a vessel carrying him).

In practice, though, I assume that Putin's government has made it very clear to him that his safety relies on him remaining a useful propaganda piece for the regime, so he wouldn't even get as far as Russian waters.

The moment that ship sails into international waters, he's at risk of being spirited off it by a detachment of the FBI [https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/fawaz-younis].

... and if he books passage on a ship that doesn't reach international waters, there's nothing to stop US operatives from bribing the captain to take a detour.

> Couldn't he sail from Russia to Iceland, for example?

The United States has a recent history of kidnapping people in other countries and sending them off to CIA black sites where some have ended up tortured to death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site

Except Snowden is a citizen of the US. The Constitution unequivocally applies to his relationship with the US gov't anywhere in the world.

There was no due process for the citizens that a former president ordered to be killed in a drone attack and justified it after the fact that they were enemy combatants.

That time it was probably the right call but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that that special relationship isn't flexible when the government deems it so.

It is a pretty big step, however, from drone strikes against terrorists to kidnapping a US citizen and throwing them into a secret prison for committing a crime. The blowback would be immense, and the gov't knows it.

Do I think they'd take a convenient opportunity, even extralegal, to snatch Snowden? Yep. But only to bring him back to the US to stand trial.

I’d like to think there would be immense blowback, but there was less than I expected and hoped for from his revelations. I’m still surprised by public figures denouncing him as a traitor.

My thought processes seem to be nowhere near normal when it comes to politics. I’m not ASD (AFAICT), but I am definitely not neurotypical either.

Obama killed American citizens with drone strikes.

Trump normalized it.

>Nawar "Nora" al-Awlaki was an eight-year-old American citizen of Yemeni descent who was killed on January 29, 2017 during the Raid on Yakla, a commando attack ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Nawar_al-Awlaki

It's hard to claim that citizenship affords you due process.

American operatives cant move freely in Russia as they can in any other European/Western country.

> Putin's government has made it very clear to him that his safety relies on him remaining a useful propaganda piece for the regime

If so, then there would be an obvious conflict between what he writes and his personal circumstances. I’d be reluctant to assume such circumstances without evidence, though.

Dude it's not like Snowden is stoked to be living the dream in Russia. He's an exile.

Not blaming him and not sure whether he had a choice. Just noting a certain dissonance in reality, which I’d assume he also experiences, and wondering how he frames it in his mind (e.g., does he think “yes, my writing is affected by the very thing I describe, but I currently have no other choice”, or “I’m not self-censoring since somehow I have a deal that I can write anything I want, as long as I’m not trying to disseminate it in Russia”, or “self-censorship is a thing happening everywhere now, so Russia or not there’s not much difference where to reside”, or something else entirely).

It’s not quite an elephant in the room, but IMO if he went a bit meta on this it could make for an interesting read (maybe he does elsewhere—I’m not using Substack and not following his writing very closely).

It's not like he had a huge amount of choice in where he ended up. Putin allows it because he can point to Snowden and say "see, he uncovered programs in the American system that are doing things they accuse me of". And likely also because Putin sees Snowden as a potentially valuable bargaining chip.

> I wonder how Snowden reconciles his position on self-censorship with his current country of residence. Is it meta, in the sense that he too has to self-censor out of fear for own life? Does he consider it a necessary move, presuming any country with stronger freedom of speech is also a country that would extradite him to the US?

TFW your thought piece is a subtweet of itself.

"with his country of residence" wtf? ... he prefers Russia to "suicide" in an American jail, and this is supposed to negatively impact his credibility?

Or should he martyr himself to integrity and start calling Putin and the leaders of Russia out for their bad behaviors?

I honor the man as a hero; but if I was him I'd STFU and try to live a quiet life in the woods somewhere, never attracting public attention again. Lest the end be messy and spectacular like Assange is being treated to.

How do people reconcile that Snowden, who should be lauded as a hero finds refuge at a country where Vladimir Putin is president is frankly a much more interesting question.Btw: He doesn’t need to be a martyr to be a hero.

Because he didn't have much of a choice? I have a feeling he'd much prefer being back in the US or somewhere in Europe or any other number of places, but all of those lead to a jail cell.

You misread that question.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com