Add that to the concerted effort of the powers that be to paint China as our cyber-terror-enemy ... and he is aligned with China now, vis-a-vis HK ... you know very well that j6p already refers to him as "that nerd that defected to China".
China is not an US ally, very powerful, easily offended and aggressively nationalistic i.e. no US special ops team is going to kidnap Snowden on Chinese territory. That would most certainly start a serious international conflict with China and arresting Snowden is not worth that.
There are many anti-totalitarian government activists in HK. There has already been a pro-Snowden support rally in HK: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1261433/live-upda...
English is a common language in HK so Snowden doesn't necessary need to learn a new language.
Overall HK looks like a logical choice to me.
Just look at how the pirate bay guy was deported from Cambodia to Sweden. You need someone really ballsy to stand up to the U.S.. If you don't want to end up in some 3rd world clusterfuck (e.g. North Korea, Venezuela) your options are pretty much limited to Russia and China. Hong Kong combines a relative first world living standard wit the backing of a true superpower.
And he gives China a huge reason not to extradite him - reciprocity for the US granting asylum to Chinese dissidents, and further the ability to use his case to advance their argument that the US government is being hypocritical when it criticizes China for all manner of things, from civil rights violations to cyberespionage.
He is a huge political coupe for the Chinese government, that just sort of fell into their hands, and as the Xinhua article supporting asylum for Snowden shows, they are going to milk it for all it's worth.
He's playing a dangerous game, and there are no guarantees anywhere for him, but I'm pretty certain he put himself in the best possible place with the best possible odds. Better to play one superpower off another, than to put yourself in the power of a country that may share your sympathies but have no power to protect you.
Why not flee to a country that is a weak (but not too weak) ally of the U.S., thoroughly outraged by the PRISM program, and which doesn't have an extradition treaty that could possibly be construed as permitting extradition under the stated terms (as Hong Kong arguably does with the U.S.).
I'm not try to defend Wolf. Just sayin' . . .
Even small businesses won't hire someone unless they have a four year degree. I know its possible for developers to get a job based on being self taught. I highly, highly, doubt a government agency like the NSA would hire someone with such sketchy credentials.
My other real concern was brought up in the article. Once you're about to feel the full brunt of the United States Government coming after you, it's usually standard procedure to lawyer up. Considering this guy hasn't done so indicates he's not scared of whatever bad guys are coming after him. Which means, either he's really stupid, or he has no reason to be afraid.
Absolutely. It's boilerplate on job descriptions for Federal jobs of any consequence. You can't answer the phones without having a four-year degree.
Disclaimer: I don't know this for sure, just repeating one explanation given in another recent thread about this.
>Considering this guy hasn't done so indicates he's not scared of whatever bad guys are coming after him. Which means, either he's really stupid, or he has no reason to be afraid.
He's been working with ex-Constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald since January. He is very well advised, and I'm sure he'll lawyer up if he ever finds himself back in the US.
He enlisted in the Army and got a security clearance, which is the credential that's really crucial for CIA/NSA/contractor jobs. The Army is willing to accept a GED, which you can get in an afternoon.
Here's an article from 2009:
http://www.nodropouts.org/blog/bad-economy-bad-news-dropouts...
"Army recruiters now tell potential recruits that their chances of getting into the service are not good if they don't have a high school diploma. And even a GED won't cut it in most cases."
I did notice the "in most cases" language, so maybe he got in on a pass from someone?
Yes, that's what I mean by "willing to accept". If a person's ASVAB scores are high and they're not a total mess, they can get a waiver for many things. It varies by service, of course; I'm not surprised that the Marines and Air Force don't waiver GEDs.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/06/10/hong_kong_...
To expand on this scenario: Snowden knows that the bureaucratic wrangling to get him out of Hong Kong by the book would be significant. He assumes he'll get at least several months of effective asylum in Hong Kong while having easy access to high speed internet, professional filmmakers, etc., all of which are crucial for waging an international public relations campaign. Meanwhile, he's geographically adjacent to China, home of the only government in a strong enough global position to openly vie for him to release state secrets in exchange for protection. This puts the U.S. gov't into a difficult position: they can extract/assassinate him illegally, which of course is a public relations nightmare. They can wait six months to extract him legally, and take the chance that he'll make a deal with China (or be illegally extracted by the Chinese). Or they can look the other way while he pursues another option - asylum in a country like Ecuador for instance. That last option is his only real hope. Basically, that he's able to put enough pressure on the U.S. gov't through public relations and international positioning that they don't pursue backdoor sanctions against a country granting asylum.
> Having worked at a U.S. military base in Japan, Snowden reportedly had a deep interest in Japanese popular culture and studied the Japanese language.[15] He also has a basic understanding of Mandarin, was deeply interested in martial arts, and claimed Buddhism as his religion.[16] Before his disclosure of top secret documents to the public in 2013, Snowden had travelled to Hong Kong for a holiday with his girlfriend Lindsay Mills.[17]
He speaks some Mandarin (which would be somewhat useful in HK, especially if he can read it, which he probably can since he's studied Japanese), and he's been to Hong Kong before. All his justifications about HK's legal system is probably relative to the other choices he was considering (presumably Japan, HK, Taiwan, mainland China).
He worked in a start-up which sold anime. "Anime nerd flees US, resurfaces in East Asia" is not really surprising. I guess he picked HK because it has a lower US presence than Taiwan and Japan; and mainland China was a bit too scary.
He could have picked a more secure place to flee to, but most of what he's done hasn't been totally rational.
And the writing is all pretty similar (Japanese Kanji, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified).