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Comment by betterunix | Hacker News Reader

""Hunt down" implies something Seal Team Six-style."

Is it unreasonable to expect such a thing? Suppose Snowden beats the odds and makes it to Ecuador. Would you be surprised to hear that he was found dead in his apartment in a year or two? Would you be shocked to learn that the US government was involved?

Why should we trust the US government to follow the laws of Ecuador, Venezuela, or Cuba? Snowden runs a real risk of being covertly kidnapped without regard to the laws of whatever country he happens to be in. He runs a real risk of being killed by a drone strike. The US government has done all of the above in the recent past, to both citizens and foreigners, in various regions and countries.

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Is it unreasonable to expect such a thing?

Yes, because outside of the movies, the USA doesn't seem very good at that sort of thing. How would they seal team six someone out of Moscow, Ecuador or Hong Kong?

Right, because as we all know the USA has never covertly assassinated someone, nor kidnapped someone from a foreign country, nor deployed drones... I guess if we ignore all the times the US government has done this sort of thing, you might be right.

I think I am seeing the outline of a decent propaganda technique here. If you want to make anything seem infeasible, just write it into fiction.

Government assassinations? Won't happen because it happens in the movies. High end German automobile catches fire after hitting a tree at 80+mph? Doesn't happen because that is what happens in the movies (Remember the Michael Hastings conversation on HN a few days ago? Assertions that cars don't actually catch fire were running rampant.) Marry your highschool sweetheart and enjoy each others company for the rest of your lives? Won't happen, because that is what happens in the movies. Bad guy gets shot in the arm but keeps shooting a few more times at the good guy? Won't happen, because that is what happens in the movies. (Countless examples of this happening, though tell my mother this and she'll tell you Hollywood is making it up.)

They Seal-Team-Sixed Osama Bin Laden, and subsequently his corpse, out of a country on perennially high military alert. They couldn't do it in Moscow or Hong Kong without potentially starting a major war, but I could easily see them doing a targeted kill or extract from Ecuador. Seal Team Six's capabilities, as demonstrated in the OBL raid, are extremely high.

I don't think Snowden is going to make it out of Moscow as a free man, but if he does, the US will orchestrate political change in Ecuador and eventually get him that way. America is Ecuador's biggest and most important trading partner, and relations are usually friendlier-- the current President is an exception to the rule. The US also tolerates a little bit of Yankee-bashing from Latin America as political posturing, but this is different-- harboring Snowden is a serious issue for the Obama Administration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Omar_case Just an example

Israel (a much tinier country with much less resources for this sort of thing) quite handily kidnapped Eichmann from Argentina in 1960. Why do you think that it would be so impossible for the US to do the same?

No, I don't think such a thing is unreasonable. What I think is unreasonable is Amnesty International using the words "hunt down" to refer to the United States filing criminal charges and making formal extradition requests.

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