Snowden's destination is Venezuela through Havana
interfax.com
interfax.com
http://flightaware.com/live/findflight/UUEE/MUHA/
If he will indeed fly HK-Moscow-Havana-Caracas without delay, he may finish with flight V04101 on Monday at 23:50 Venezuela time (21:20 California time).
"Citing a source close to Snowden, Russian news agency Interfax reported that the whistleblower’s final destination will be Venezuela with a transfer in Havana, Cuba. He will reportedly be on flight SU150 to Havana, leaving Moscow on Monday and then on flight V-04101 to Caracas."
Is this it? He's about to enter US airspace, if so.
hihi.
Since there's no one else for him to hide from, what's the point of not telling the public? On the contrary, he probably feels much safer knowing it's impossible for US agents to silently intercept him en route.
[1] Thanks to Snowden, I can confidently write most and not maybe
most people don't vote
1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339A
2] http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/03/28/dont-be-a-grin...
Do you honestly think they're all the same? We're discussing a scandal about the NSA being exposed as doing something I for one have always assumed they were doing as a matter of course (indeed, I assumed they did worse and believe they probably do). Mostly I hoped the NSA was more competent.
Is the US the most free country in the world by every measure? Of course not. Overall is it one of the most free or the most free? I would say yes.
But the US wins big on freedom of speech. Almost no other country protects free speech as well as the US does (flawed as it is) and that's not a stupid measure.
I don't necessarily agree with you that an American more freedom of speech than say, a British person. But assuming it is, well, US: 1 (freedom of speech), Europe: 10 (for all the other nonsense illegalities in the US).
P.S: It is quite ironic you are saying the US wins big on freedom of speech in a thread on this article. Not saying that a European state wouldn't do the same to a whistleblower (many wouldn't though; especially Scandinavian countries), but even if they would, the governments didn't put themselves in that situation in the first place.
How poor is their record (including foreign policy) compared with the US?
Venezuelan here, and I can tell you that there is nothing reasonable about Venezuela these days. The big scandal here is that USA citizens had been monitored without a warrant but in Venezuela government agencies had been doing that for years and without any shame.
They had shown in national TV, audio recordings of phone conversations just to embarrass people that are no pro-government (nothing relating to felonies or crimes, just to make fun of them). So it is ironic indeed.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Democracy_Index&ol...
You seem sure that a trial in the US would be a mega-press event. You mean, like the Manning military trial? Are you reading the press coverage of Snowden? The TV press coverage? How do you think he would be portrayed by the US media? Surely you're not that naive. Indeed it might be better for the cause of domestic surveillance to have him tried in the US press and a federal court in Virginia, right outside Washington. Most Americans, the ones who get their news passively from TV or who do not watch the news much, would never even know what happened; his fate would be decided quickly and without fanfare, except announcement of the severe punishment he receives, to show that "leakers" are some sort of "insider threat": scare tactics (and maybe a high profile prosecution as part of some US Attorney's political aspirations to one day run for office). The more he evades this (expected) fate, the more he embarasses Washington, and the more otherwise ignorant Americans will learn who he is and what his principles are.
His principles seem pretty clear so far: Do you want every packet that travels over the Internet to be clear text, captured and analyzed by governments? Or do you want reasonably secure communications, free from prying eyes, similar the US postal mail? Do you want the government to decide this for you, in secret? Snowdon thinks you should be entitled to decide for yourself.
Your comment about the democratic ratings of other countries and getting help from authoritarian regimes if "it suits his interests" could easily be applied to the US government as well. They will deal with regimes as it suits their interests, regardless of the form of government of those regimes, so long as it suits their interests (e.g. oil). The government does what it has to do to acquire oil so you can run your car, applicances, devices, etc. And Snowden is doing what he has to do to enable his country (and maybe others) to debate the question of spying on what travels over the Internet.
I should elaborate on Snowden's choice of helper countries: is a national security risk to the United States. Here you have someone in possession of state secrets who needs help from a foreign government. That's the definition of compromised. What is he going to trade for protection? More classified information, of course--possibly much more sensitive information than the relatively harmless, widely known) programs like PRISM. He has national security information, and foreign governments want it. This information will eventually flow to the intelligence agencies of China and/or Russia.
So let's take score. US military has over a hundred bases globally. The CIA operates in over a hundred countries. The US intelligence budget is over $80 billion. The NSA can 'see' practically everything. And there goes Snowden, escaping on a common commercial flight out of Hong Kong.
If anybody looks stupid, it's clearly the US Government.
Is he important enough to move heaven and earth for? I didn't get that. The Obama administration needs to tread very carefully here, which is why, so long as Snowden doesn't make a stupid mistake, which it looks like he won't, he'll be able to squirrel himself away in Latin America. Obama, as head of state, needs to at least make the appearance he's protecting the power and prestige of the government. But he also needs to avoid looking like the terroristic assholes we're at war with.
It's a very thin line, and I'm actually a little impressed with how he's handling this.
I can't imagine the NSA looks too kindly on non-business trips to Caracas, Moscow, or Havana. Even Iceland could have turned some heads given its recent streak of standing up for itself.
He has roundly ruined HK for future whistleblowers though!
Not really. What can they really do? Usually, they'd bully countries into submission. Hong Kong proved it does not bow down to the US. They also cannot really kidnap him or anything like that. It's way too public at this point, and as "terrible" the CIA sometimes is, they're not a bunch of murdering assholes like the Mossad.
However, this is a poorly chosen rhetorical attack in defense of the CIA since the US currently is engaging in a global assassination war using drones and other means which has murdered far far more people than the Mossad ever has, and far more of those people are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Mossad at least picks specific and known enemy leaders and tends to assassinate only them up close and personal. It is true there is collateral damage, but the collateral killings caused by the US assassinations are much greater. The CIA is deeply involved in selecting targets and running the assassination programs, just as it was involved in horrific torture, abuse and war crimes committed against thousands of people in recent years. The CIA is a powerful and dangerous criminal organization which routinely engages in crimes against humanity. There is absolutely no defense possible for the crimes committed by the CIA.
http://www.livingunderdrones.org/
http://humanrightsclinic.law.stanford.edu/project/living-und...
The argument that "at least the CIA doesn't assassinate" like some other country that has nothing to do with Snowden's case makes no sense. It's simply not true that the CIA doesn't assassinate as much as the Mossad. The CIA assassinates far more, and far more indiscriminately. The CIA assassinates by giving american kids videogame-like control over flying robotic drones and having them assassinate anyone who they think looks suspicious while eating candy and drinking soda safe in an air conditioned room thousands of miles from where the robot planes are flying patrols. When they see someone they feel like shooting they shoot them and it is assumed that person is a "militant" because they said so. To them it is a fun videogame about shooting what they call "ragheads", and other derisive terms even worse. They keep track of their kill counts as a competition. At no point do they take responsibility for their actions, consider their targets human beings, seek justice, risk their own lives, or display any intelligence or skill. They are just cowardly thugs playing a video game where they shoot up random people who are a religion and color they don't like, because that's their job.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/21/us-usa-drones-idUS...
"President Barack Obama's administration has decided to give the Pentagon control of some drone operations against terrorism suspects overseas that are currently run by the CIA, several U.S. government sources said on Monday."
The article suggests that the Yemen assassination program will be transferred to the Pentagon, but the CIA will retain total control over the Pakistan assassination program to "maintain deniability for both the United States and Pakistan", which seems pretty Orwellian a statement given that they are obviously acknowledging it by saying they want to maintain deniability.
There's tons of articles on the drone program, the Stanford study I linked to above (Living Under Drones) is a very good intro.
There's also lots of coverage about the random nature of the assassinations. We're not at war with these countries so it can't be considered a military act of defense, at best it is an assassination. I'm not sure we should even call them assasinations though when the target is not known at all and some guy is just shooting people at random for fun. I believe the accurate term there is "genocide", "murder", and "psychopathic spree killing". Rather than a crazed individual though, it is a "normal" person, who has undergone some training, is working for a contractor who pays him, and the entire thing is managed by a state. Is a state running such programs a legitimate entity at this point? A pretty reasonable argument can be made for "no". It's interesting and disturbing from a psychological standpoint that after all the genocide in the 20th century and the talk against that genocide, that these sorts of state run programs still exist, and the sorts of countries that run them and what sort of values they claim to represent and defend.
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/06/cia_often_doesnt_know_who_it...
Incidentally, this rule also holds if you plan to work in Russian or Chinese intelligence agencies.
It's like a world tour of US foreign failures under Bush's fourth term.
Can we start a whitehouse petition for Obama to give back his Nobel Prize?
Let's say you and I share some secret. When I pass that information you trusted in me to a third party (who is interested in acquiring that information) secretly for some favor (cash/kind) only then it becomes a case of espionage no?
When I share facts that were meant to be confidential according to you with everyone through a public channel then how does it become a case of espionage? It's only a revelation albeit a forced one.
How are we placed on this?
Dictionaries are not the final arbiter of criminal law.
[1]http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-37
Edit: Criminal complaint here: http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_U.S.%20new...
As I expected, there are two Espionage Act charges, specifically:
18 USC 793(d) Unauthorized Communication of National Defense Information
18 USC 798(a)(3) Willful Communication of Classified Communications Intelligence Information to an Unauthorized Person
Funny how none of the defense contractors that were hacked by the Chinese had to face these charges. Some rules for some, other rules for the rest of us.
And unless you have all of that information, you can't possibly make that judgement.
For instance, it seems like common sense or widely accepted practice that sensitive materials should be stored on machines that should be air-gapped, and common knowledge informs legal decisions about what is gross negligence or not.
For instance:
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Gross+negligen...
"If one has borrowed or contracted to take care of another's property, then gross negligence is the failure to actively take the care one would of his/her own property."
Obviously this is open to interpretation and maybe the contractors responsible leave their own private affairs open willy-nilly to the world, but I would suppose they shouldn't have security clearance then...
That seems fair, considering the magnitude of the expenditures and the nature of the work.
Or do you just not have any idea how government contracting works?
Edit: Perhaps I should be more clear. There are multiple companies working on these projects. Some of them are in multiple countries. The US government has awarded contracts for various parts of the F-35 project to these various companies and told them to work together. The government knows this will involve communicating between multiple sites around the world.
Even within the US, the government knows different companies are in different states, and does not expect the entire workforce of every company to relocate to one place. These contracts are awarded to geographically diverse companies for political reasons, which you might not like, but that's how it is.
You can't charge people with a crime for executing on a government contract in exactly the manner they are supposed to.
No one would want to lose the advantage of having secretive information by blowing it in the open, right?
Secondly, from what I see from comments above the law makers are using Espionage Act of 1917 to frame/indict all whistleblowers. 1917. Framework of 1917 being applied in the year 2013 :-) That seems bit of a joke in itself.
Without a residency visa of some kind, it is difficult to open foreign financial accounts abroad. Perhaps he has a bag full of cash although that may create some issues of its own with various immigration authorities.
Some US politicians asked for a recount after the Venezuelan election, as has become customary. There was no recount.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/17/us-venezuela-elect...
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/12/world/americas/venezuela-c...
[1] http://rt.com/news/venezuela-presidential-election-results-8...
The electoral notebooks were audited twice. The first time before the October 2012 elections and the second one before the 2013 elections. In both case, the opposition parties approved the process. Now they are asking for a new audit of the used notebooks, one not supported by the law. They only asked for a new audit to try to keep alive their "protest".
Those 3,200 "irregularities" are anonymous, unsubstantiated, and in many cases patently false reports made in an opposition website. Some examples included "Ms. Mary, a witness from the government party didn't assisted to the process the day of the election", "An electronic machine didn't work". And you have the "grave" accusation like opposition witness expelled of the voting centers at gun point. The only problem is that there's no support for those accusation. No police report, no video, no witness willing to swear before a court of law. Or you have an accusation, like the one made by Capriles in public tv that a voting center had more votes that voters... if you count all the votes in the building but only the voters of one station poll in the building.
These kind of irresponsible denounces will be laughable and those who spread them condemn to the public ridicule if the media would do its job. Instead, they have been keeping repeating the number of (alleged) denounces without spending one second in their substance. For god's sake! The denounces officially presented to the electoral council were a printing of a powerpoint presentation devoid of any actionable piece of information that could be used to investigate them.
As far as the irregularities, my point wasn't they should all be automatically taken seriously, but certainly it should be within the CNE's interest to try to dispel some of the more plausible accusations such as voters attempting to vote multiple times under different identities.
/s
They were arrested for trespassing, as they were standing on usgov property. But they were really arrested because they were making trouble.
No, I don't remember their affiliation or what they were trying to accomplish. Maybe they actually were just troublemakers, which has never been against the law but which will always attract a smackdown.
If Venezuela is his final destination, going by way of Moscow and Cuba is clever. It avoids going through any countries that would honor an INTERPOL Red Notice or a "diffusion" notice for his detention.
Damn contradiction.
The US is plenty scummy these days. It's busy completely violating the rights of its citizens, ignoring its own governing documents, acting just like a violent, thuggish 3rd world banana government. In fact, its behavior is exactly what I would expect out of someone like Hugo Chavez.
Enemy of thy enemy. It makes perfect sense. What you've got now is a showdown between scumbag nations.
[0] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/03/why-us-d...
If you are fighting against the hypocrisy and frankly tyranny of the west, where would you go to be protected? All that's left is allies, like the UK who will just hand you over, or as you put it, "scum". Whether you like it or not, he has very little choice, the US has too many countries in its pocket.
You argument is down there with the other weasel language (hero, patriot, anti-American, what have you got to hide, etc) deployed against whistle blowers.
So, where you go to try to be safe? Or are you too "patriotic", or is it scared, to ever criticize or expose the US?
You want "damn contradiction"? How about claiming to be leaders of the free world while industrially mass spying on the so called free citizens you claim to lead?
There's no contradiction in it unless you start providing support to said scum.
This also presumes that we agree with your assessment of who is the bigger scum. The Cuban government is easily more repressive to its own people, but the US government murders far more innocents, for example.