Putin: Russia can't turn over Snowden
yle.fi
yle.fi
Snowden is probably in good shape. If he can't leave Russia for one reason or another, that may change the moment Russia wants someone accused of a crime in Russia sent back to them from the United States, which I understand happens. In that case they probably won't be getting anyone unless they swap for Snowden.
Also, there is a wikileaks twit: "Cancelling Snowden's passport and bullying intermediary countries may keep Snowden permanently in Russia. Not the brightest bunch at State.".
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/349556329645473792
So he remains in Russia, and he probably has problem getting to Ecuador.
Putin is maintaining the moral high ground while using the exact same language the US is.
Savvy.
If Russia has a constitutional government with limited powers (which, I think, on paper it does, whatever it may otherwise do in practice), not having a legal basis to detain and hand him over may, legally at least, prevent them from detaining him and handing him over.
It wouldn't surprise me if, on paper at least, being compelled by the government to pass out of the area not requiring a visa was not an immigration offense.
It also isn't surprising to me that the government of a sovereign state isn't particularly interested in going out of their way to game their own legal systems to make the government of a geopolitical rival who is publicly threatening them look less impotent and ineffectual.
So I'm not entirely sure how this squares up with my anecdote, but flying from Sydney, Australia to Vancouver, Canada (did, at some point) require stopping in Honolulu to refuel and take on passengers.
At that point in the journey, passengers were (are?) required to get off the plane and pass through US immigration to continue their flight on to Canada. I know of at least one passenger that was refused passage through US immigration at that point (even though she was forced to go through it and her final destination was not the US) and so she was not allowed to continue.
Like I say, I don't really know how that quite squares up with your comment, but I thought it was "interestingly similar", maybe?
When I was in London, 2002, a Chinese national living there wanted to attend a solidarity camp in El Salvador, in august 2002, organized by the hall of residence I was living in. The flight had a single scale in the US (probably Florida but who knows, it was not a 'stay', just a scale). BOWM: travel forbidden.
Uhu? What?
Just that. NO WAY you are going to fly to El Salvador via the US.
Mmmhh I call that being terrorized.
Here is my crude translation of the relevant part:
"Considering possible extradition somewhere, we can extradite people only to the countries which have extradition treaty with us. We don't have such agreement with the USA. Snowden haven't committed any crimes in the territory of Russia".
Note: Putin hasn't used the exact formal term "extradition". So he may have spoken of some other type of agreement.
"Considering possible extradition somewhere, we can extradite people only to the countries which have extradition treaty with us. We don't have such agreement with the USA. Snowden haven't committed any crimes in the territory of Russia, thanks God".
Putin's cynicism?
Maybe no direct flights and other transit countries might arrest him?
The originally announced path was: HK -> Russia -> Havana -> Venezuela (probably: -> Ecuador).
I am wondering if the US pressed hard on Cuba and if Snowden can reach Ecuador on a private plane.
In other words, considering how US has promised to treat him, Snowden has almost no options. The Russians hold all the cards and know how to play them well. USA should have advised his family to hire a lawyer for him and issue a pardon while he was in HK, before spilling all the other info he has.
Well done, morons!
You mean the promises to arrest him for releasing confidential information? I'm honestly confused why people don't think he should be arrested. If he had released weapons designs instead of NSA documents, would you support his galavanting across HK and Russia?
The question, "Is the NSA program unconstitutional?" is a far different one than "Should those who release confidential documents be arrested?" Unless you think that there should be no state secrets, it makes absolute sense to arrest and prosecute Snowden. I'm grateful that he shed some light on a very troubling program, but that doesn't just grant him immunity from prosecution. It would be far more honorable to accept responsibility rather than to continue this mess.
Arrest, a fair trial and humane treatment is different from what Bradley Manning suffered. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/11/stripped-naked-b...
Also, need I remind you all the statements made against him by politicians?
Because many people consider him to be a whistle-blower. If he truly believes that he is exposing a large and direct illegal activity, he should be protected under law.
I think you're missing the point. The fact is he didn't release weapons designs; he released information pointing to surveillance programs that violate the 4th amendment.
> The question, "Is the NSA program unconstitutional?" is a far different one than "Should those who release confidential documents be arrested?"
The two questions you ask are not mutually exclusive, because whistleblowers need protection when surfacing evidence of illegal behavior. You seem to be taking arguments to their absolute extremes rather than considering the fact that there are instances where there is a reasonable expectation that individuals should be protected. That doesn't mean there should be no state secrets, it means there should be protections for individuals who reveal state secrets that demonstrate the government is not acting in accordance with the law. Furthermore, I would argue that state secrets that hide evidence of wrongdoing from the public should most certainly be leaked.
Disclosure of information that is required by law or Executive Order
to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or the conduct
of foreign affairs is unprotected, unless made to the agency’s Inspector
General, to “another employee designated by the head of the agency to
receive such disclosures” or to the Office of the Special Counsel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Counsel#Scott...
This doesn't seem like a rational position. Either Snowden performed a service or he committed a crime. He can't have done both. The fact that it's really a subjective call speaks to its political nature. As such, there is no dishonor in absconding to a country with more favorable politics.
Isn't that what a trial - after arrest and prosecution - is supposed to determine?
The problem is not prosecution, it's that a fair trial is hardly guaranteed.
He actually can have done both. That something has value to the public does not mean it is not within the scope of prohibition of a criminal statute. (Further, even if there was a blanket "public service" exception to the applicable criminal laws, its quite possible that some of the information he absconded with and released could be "service" and the rest could still be "crime".)
Following a consistent internal logic given its factual and aesthetic premises.
> Philosophy, or "love of wisdom", of which law is a branch, is all about trying to apply aesthetic ideals to the real world.
This would be something other than a non-sequitur if "philosophy" was equivalent to "reason" rather than the latter being a tool used by the former but which is not coextensive with it.
I'm having trouble seeing this as anything other than a purely semantic distinction.
> Following a consistent internal logic given its factual and aesthetic premises.
is better described as "consistent" than as "rational". The language Brainfuck is consistent, but it would be a stretch to call it a rational language to build stuff with.
Rationality carries with it a connotation of deeper underlying symmetry to surface reasoning. The "aesthetic ideals" you're referring to.
A reasoning is different from a rationale. A rational person makes optimal decisions, renorming his expectations as needed. A consistent person makes the same decision over and over based on some unchanging principle.
We want our laws to be rational, not consistent. To seek out an ideal regulation of behavior that's fair and useful to everyone. It is certainly consistent within a specific framing of law that useful actions be outlawed, but it is not rational.
I disagree. Rationality is orthogonal to aesthetic ideals.
> A reasoning is different from a rationale.
No, its not.
> A rational person makes optimal decisions,
That's true pretty much only if you are referring to the definition of a rational actor in rational choice theory, in which "rational" has a very special definition that isn't very much like its use anywhere else (since it presumes both perfect and total knowledge of the utilities and disutilities, both immediate and distant, that will result from any choice, and a universal decision rule of action in which the actor always maximizes his own utilities.)
> We want our laws to be rational, not consistent.
"Rational" in the sense it has to make your previous sentence true cannot be applied to laws except as acts of individual legislators, and if it was it would mean that they were acts maximizing the legislators personal utilities.
> To seek out an ideal regulation of behavior that's fair and useful to everyone.
"fair and useful to everyone" is "just", more than "rational".
> It is certainly consistent within a specific framing of law that useful actions be outlawed, but it is not rational.
In the sense that your stated definition of "rational" is an unattainable ideal and, consequently, any real world law regardless of its attributes will be "not rational" by it, I agree; OTOH, I don't think that -- even aside from the fact that "rational" is the wrong word for it -- its really useful to use such a definition in a binary sense to discuss real world laws.
OTOH, using a continuous scale, even the most just law possible is going to occasionally prohibit some acts with social utility.
I do not agree that the law could never attain rationality/justness. I believe that it can, but it can only ever stay there temporarily. Eventually society will change and make the laws irrational again. Which is why my focus would be on the tuning the machinery of state rather than each individual law. With enough work, we could build a system that anticipates societal changes rather than simply reacts to it.
> OTOH, using a continuous scale, even the most just law possible is going to occasionally prohibit some acts with social utility.
In this case a jury can exercise discretion and refuse to convict someone even when the law and evidence would demand it.
Right. Or (in the abstract, though there are pretty strong signs that its not the current intention in this case) prosecutorial discretion or executive pardon can be used before or after the point where the jury would get involved. There are numerous tools available to fine tune the justice of the application of criminal law beyond just the scope of its prohibitions, and trying to foresee all the low-probability future possibilities in crafting the statutory prohibitions gets you into nasty trap; you've got to find a balance. And, most importantly, not view criminal law (or any law) as a machine that produces justice automatically without considering the people involved in its application.
The law is a system. For the system to work, it must be enforced fairly and without political considerations.
No one cares what the law says. Decide whether what he did was good and if so it wasn't a crime. If the law says it was then do what it takes to avoid injustice.
Same goes for your analogy.
Which means I think we're in agreement that whether fleeing is appropriate depends on the probability of fair trial.
One can't excuse flight by waving one's hands claiming "unfair process", without subjecting that process to objective scrutiny (via a judge and appellate court). In Snowden's case the process hasn't even begun yet. If that's all it took, every criminal in the would use it to successfully flee their respective countries.
Nor does the determination of "unfair process" rest with a banana republic which hates the United States (as in the case of an asylum request), or with wannabe superpowers with axes to grind.
If you (a "criminal") determine that there might not be a chance that you'll be treated fairly I have 0 problem with you running.
If the government believes that he still has valuable intelligence potentially damaging to national security that may not have already been released, and if the government's primary concern with his actions is addressing the national security impact (which all public statements point to), the primary goal of the government should be preventing foreign powers, potentially hostile ones, from getting access to the secrets he possesses.
Publicly threatening to arrest and try him for serious and potentially capital offenses like espionage while he is in territory not subject to the US or any close ally that would be likely inclined to cooperate given the circumstances is, from that perspective, quite foolish.
the primary goal of the government should be preventing foreign powers,
potentially hostile ones, from getting access to the secrets he possesses.
Publicly threatening to arrest and try him for serious and potentially
capital offenses like espionage while he is in territory not subject to
the US or any close ally that would be likely inclined to cooperate given
the circumstances is, from that perspective, quite foolish.
If you're the US government, your default assumption must be that Putin has a hard drive with everything that Snowden took. If that's the case, it makes absolute sense to publicly threaten to arrest him and charge him with the most severe of consequences.
Look at it from a game theory perspective; the US government 'lost' the first game to Snowden. The only reason they are still engaging with him is that the US is playing a repeating game. They need to make the penalty for leaking high enough to persuade other potential leakers to stay quiet.
You can do the second without doing the first; indeed, the first can be actively counterproductive to the second, since he cannot be arrested and prosecuted without first being brought within the practical reach of the US government, which the public threats to him (and the public threats to other sovereign states) have made less, not more, likely.
> Look at it from a game theory perspective; the US government 'lost' the first game to Snowden. The only reason they are still engaging with him is that the US is playing a repeating game. They need to make the penalty for leaking high enough to persuade other potential leakers to stay quiet.
Making public threats that make acheiving the stated goals of those threats less likely, thus demonstrating impotence, is not a particularly effective method of doing that.
Plus assuming that anyone would actually think that there is no desire to prosecute Snowden is foolish, as would be your suggestion for the government to keep its intentions a secret, especially given the nature of this case.
No, I'm not.
> You seem to think that keeping the desire to arrest and prosecute Snowden a secret would somehow help the government's position.
No, I said that not making the kind of public threats they are making would improve their ability to serve a particular, clearly specified national security interest, if it was their goal.
> What kind of precedent would it set if this information was kept secret and folks could then seek asylum citing a presumed yet not stated threat from their government.
People can (and do) seek asylum on those grounds now.
> When asked about it, how should the government respond?
They could point out that they don't share information about ongoing investigations.
Or that confirming or denying anything related to the matter could potentially adversely impact national security.
Or...
Being arrested and facing a fair trial isn't anyone's fear.
Being arrested, placed in solitary confinment for months on end, subjected to technically-not-torture-torture, threats against your family all the while having your entire character destroyed thread by thread until the day you stand in front of a show room to argue why you should only receive 50 years of prison time instead of 500 is another story.
If we truly lived in a fair and free society I would be championing his arrest, if anything simply for the truth to come out. As it stands it is hard to believe a truly fair trial is something that even exists anymore.
1. Theft of Government Property
2. Unauthorized Communication of National Defense Information
3. Willful Communication of Classified Communications Intelligence Information to an Unauthorized Person
Is there some chance that he's innocent of any of those charges, and will be wrongly convicted? They all seem pretty obvious and there are Federal laws in place to guide penalties and fines.
Why is everyone convinced he won't have a fair trial? Is a result where he ends up in jail an unfair result?
[1] http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/us-vs-edwar...
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/manning-treatment-i...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#C...
> Is a result where he ends up in jail an unfair result?
NO. If we had set a high bar for wanting a free and fair trial (which we haven't) then the case would be decided in an open manner which could very well end in jail time, community service or some equivalent. I fully support that process.
“On two occasions … a medical officer determined that suicide risk
status was no longer warranted and the brig staff did not immediately
take PFC Manning off the suicide risk status,” Galaviz wrote in his
February 23 findings. In one instance, the suicide watch continued
for five days after doctors recommended it be canceled and in another
it went on for two to three days, the review found.
[1] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58991.html#ixzz2XF...
I'm curious, would you have begrudged a slave for escaping from his slave-owner, given that that action was clearly illegal?
I'm curious, would you have begrudged a slave for escaping
from his slave-owner, given that that action was clearly illegal?
Slavery was clearly unconstitutional, and was made even explicitly so by passing the 13th amendment. Is your stance that releasing confidential intelligence is an act that deserves constitutional protection? Of course not, so I'm sure it's more like, "Releasing confidential intelligence that exposes illegal programs should be protected." But there's no indication that the programs were illegal, I'm sure they had teams of lawyers sitting next to the engineers who were designing the systems. So then you're left with a judgement call about the severity of the leak and the public good it served. Who's going to make that call?
My stance is that he committed illegal acts, so he should be arrested and undergo a trial, like everyone else that commits illegal acts. If he feels his acts shouldn't be illegal, he can appeal to the Supreme Court which will make a ruling on the constitutionality of laws against releasing confidential information. If he feels that his illegal acts were a public service, he can lobby for a pardon. It's clear that the popular sentiment is on his side, he has some very high profile supporters, it might not be a long shot.
Speaking of, I also think that anyone who lied under oath about the NSA programs should be arrested and undergo a trial, as should anyone who abused the capabilities of the NSA's programs, as should any CIA employees who were illegally monitoring US citizens.
I'm a bit surprised that support for the laws of our country is a controversial position.
The way you mince words is quite adept, actually. Are you a politician? You mention slavery being "clearly unconstitutional." Then you contrast that with the surveillance programs, saying "there's no indication the programs were illegal." You've set two very different bars. You blatantly omit the following two bits: that there are convincing arguments that the government surveillance programs are unconstitutional, and that 150 years ago there was no indication that slavery was illegal in slave states.
You haven't answered the question.
150 years ago there was no indication that slavery was illegal in slave states.
That there are convincing arguments that the government surveillance programs are unconstitutional
We'll be back next Sunday, because if it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press.