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Comment by jakobnissen | Hacker News Reader

He didn't go to a hostile country. He went to Ecuador, not a hostile country. The US government cancelled his passport while he was connecting in Russia, and then the Russian airport refused to let him leave.

The fact that he's now in Russia is 100% on the US.

Also, he didn't bring any stolen information to Russia. He says he was contacted by Russian intelligence but that they pretty quickly figured out he had nothing more to give them than what he gave to the journalists.

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He went to China and leaked documents of what Chinese systems the NSA had compromised in a failed attempt to gain asylum in Hong Kong. China kicked him out.

The fact that he's in Russia is 100% on Russia. If you think the Russians care about Snowden's travel documents, you don't know anything about Russia.

If you think that russia is not a beuerocratic hellhole that cares to an extreme amount about travel documents you have never had the pleasure of dealing with russian border security in a moscow airport.

Or you have more money and backing than an average person. I hear langely is quite hot this time of year?

If you think the bureaucracy's dealings with average citizens applies to Snowden's inability to leave Russia, you have no idea how it works. https://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/edward-snowden-ecuado...

In 1997 during the handover ceremony for Hong Kong there was a part that involved the PLA marching into Hong Kong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4-Sr_t_kE4

To pretend that they weren't in control of the situation when he was there from a national security standpoint is a bit naive. Ultimately the decision to allow him to depart Hong Kong was made in Beijing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/world/asia/china-said-to-...

"The Chinese government made the final decision to allow Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, to leave Hong Kong on Sunday, a move that Beijing believed resolved a tough diplomatic problem even as it reaped a publicity windfall from Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, according to people familiar with the situation."

You're claiming this with no evidence and calling me naive. What's more, there is a good explanation for choosing Hong Kong - it's the only non-US aligned country in the area with a history of free speech (well it was, back then). New Zealand or Australia has free speech too, but if he had gone there he would have been black bagged and sent on a plane to USA, Guantanamo style.

Hong Kong is China and in 2013 the process to take over administrative control by the CCP was already well under way. But looking at it from a national security standpoint China was in control. Why would I look at it from a national security standpoint? Given who he was and what he was carrying it has to be viewed that way. Let's not forget that he was carrying information on NSA espionage on China when he landed in Hong Kong.

2014 - NYTimes: "N.S.A. Breached Chinese Servers Seen as Security Threat" https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-c...

> what he gave to the journalists.

We now know Glenn Greenwald was likely a Russian asset at the time he was given access to the Snowden files. For a member of the intelligence community, he sure did a piss poor job of vetting who he chose to whistleblow with.

https://thespectator.com/topic/why-glenn-greenwald-backs-put...

No, we do not know that.

Your own article concludes

>Greenwald is not, as many of his critics lazily allege, a Russian agent

> We now know ...

> ... was likely ...

That would be "suspect", not "know"

Glenn Greenwald advocating isolationism in 2022 is not evidence he was a Russian asset in 2013. Or 2022.

The conclusion of the article you referenced is the opposite:

"Greenwald is not, as many of his critics lazily allege, a Russian agent; that would imply that his motivation is pecuniary rather than heartfelt. Greenwald remains what he has always been: a sincere enemy of liberal democracy and a genuine lickspittle for tyrants."

Glenn Greenwald is a real liberal democrat and fights for free speech. He even left "The Intercept" when they suppressed inconvenient facts.

An agent is a very different thing to an asset.

So is a chip off the old block and a chip on one's shoulder.

I've noticed that most criticisms of Greenwald seem to be "he sticks to his principles and calls things out consistently, even when it's Our Team doing them. He must be an enemy agent!". At both a domestic and geo politics level

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