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Comment by mpyne | Hacker News Reader

Well it's always better to go "You can't fire me! I QUIT!" as you get booted from the door.

> (which would have hurt innocent civilians - does the US even care about that anymore?)

There are two sides to that particular story bub, and only one side has taken actual action so far to hurt those civilians... and it was the government charged with protecting those same civilians.

So what you're basically saying is that Ecuador has decided to harm their own innocent civilians in order to head toward granting asylum to a U.S. citizen to poke their thumb in Uncle Sam's face (again).

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They are standing up against the bully that is the US. That is a service to their own citizens and those of various other countries around the world.

In what sense? If a member of the Ecuadorian opposition party infiltrated their government and stole classified information, then fled to the United States, wouldn't they demand to get him back?

The US didn't demand him back (and he isn't even there yet). They are threatening to remove some economic benefit that is completely unrelated to the issue at hand to coerce the Ecuadorean government to fall in line. That's pretty obviously bullying, and the Ecuadorean government has simply called uncle sam's bluff.

"Economic benefits" are generally not free. Why should the U.S. reward a country that has shown a willingness to embarrass them on the world stage (twice, now) when there are a hundred other countries that would be just as deserving (not to mention the millions of Americans here at home who could benefit from a bit of largesse)?

Actually, in economic theory, trade benefits are generally seen as free and mutually advantageous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

Just as deserving? So you view trading with the US as a privilege then? That's extremely arrogant.

Why should they "reward" them? ... Because the U.S. always claims to have the moral high grounds? Because they offered asylum to people declared criminals by other countries (Russia, China, ...) many times in the past? You don't have the moral high grounds by stating you do; you do so by your actions.

Let's look at a slightly different viewpoint. The US is threatening MY (a US citizen) rights to trade with someone in this. Why is my government saying "we won't allow our people to trade with you without penalty". That is not an action on my behalf. That is threatening me with punishment over something they do.

Because Ecuador, in exchange, was working together with the US on the war on drugs - that's what is written in the article.

your best friends are the ones that are allowed to tell you what you are like. the people who don't do that, they are not your best friends.

If I believed for a second that Ecuador's government had genuine friendship-based concern for the U.S. and its actions I think I'd agree with you. But that's not what this is.

That doesn't change the fact that the more any entity relies on threats, the less it can have have real friends. This is like the physics of relationships and just how it is. Wether or not it applies here doesn't even matter for it being generally true, and the US seems to threaten friend and foe alike, if in doubt. Why, it even treats its own citizens like subjects quite often.

I agree that threats are not how friendly countries carry on friendly business. What I do not agree on is that Ecuador is acting at all as a "friend" to the U.S. in this matter, for the reasons I stated above.

The best friends are those that don't allow you to make mistakes. The ones that aren't really your friends are the ones that pander to you, for fear of embarrassing you. They are doing you a disservice.

Which is of greater embarrassment, the alleged behaviour of the NSA, or an offer of asylum to a whistle blower destined for death or Guantanamo?

Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006:

"So was I right not just in supporting the war, but in actively prosecuting it? I’ve been asked a million times since the invasion whether, knowing then what I know now, I would have made the same decision. And no, I wouldn’t. How could we have agreed to invade Iraq if we had known that there were no WMD there?"[1]

Earlier in the same article:

"As I spelt out the seriousness of the situation and my conviction that we now had to confront Saddam Hussein militarily, my wife Alice and children Will and Charlotte were up in the gallery listening.

None of them shared my view. Each of them would have been among the million or so demonstrators on the recent protest march through London against the war if it had not been for their loyalty to me and their wish not to embarrass me."

Jack Straw, Blair and Straw's family would have been better friends had they caused embarrassment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_blair#Relationship_with_t...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2208155/Jack-Straw-I... [1]

> Which is of greater embarrassment, the alleged behaviour of the NSA, or an offer of asylum to a whistle blower destined for death or Guantanamo?

Given that Snowden is not destined for either death or Guantanamo I'm not sure how to take your question. The NSA's alleged behavior is at least consistent with what we've known and thought it able to do since the Cold War. The worst I can say about it is that they are pushing right up on the edge of the law and court precedent... but is that worse than flat-out breaking the law or doing things like actually focusing specific IRS attention on specific political-interest groups? Or passing laws to disenfranchise minority voters?

I'm not sure of the answer to that question, but I don't think it's "Yes", given what I know of what our law enforcement and national security teams have already had the fully-legal ability to do.

---

As for the friendship question, for me that goes back to who is really the 'friend' here. A 'friend' would certainly not castigate another about 'human rights abuses' (as if Snowden were clearly innocent) while at the same time having an asylum process that itself violates basic human rights as claimed by Human Rights Watch [1].

A "friend" would at least take the stick out of their eye before pointing to others' flaws. And this is why I say that the government of Ecuador has no legitimate friendly intent here. Even if I agreed with Snowden 100%, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, and neither is the friend of my friend.

[1] http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/06/19/ecuador-fully-respect-ref...

Well none of us can predict the future, all we can do is guess. So that's your opinion. I doubt you hold your own opinion on the matter in higher regard than William Binney's. [1]

Q: He'll be prosecuted?

Binney: First tortured, then maybe even rendered and tortured and then incarcerated and then tried and incarcerated or even executed. [2]

We certainly haven't known what the NSA capabilities are. We may have thought or suspected. Even now we don't really know, note Nadler's turnaround and the language used:

"Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that." "

then: "I am pleased that the administration has reiterated that, _as I have always believed_, the NSA cannot listen to the content of Americans' phone calls without a specific warrant."

Did he not believe what he said in the first statement?

You're saying that because this fresh new, now known abuse, is no worse than other existing abuses, it's not an embarrassment. That seems like fallacious reasoning to me.

See Clapper's lying on camera to the senate here, and his subsequent claim that lying was the 'least untruthful' option. An embarrassment. [5]

The allegation that all calls are recorded for playback is startling, that would also be very embarrassing if it were proven.

Asylum has nothing to do with innocence, rather: evading persecution, i.e. the law in one place being an ass.

America is no slouch in the human rights hypocrisy department either.[4] Having a clean slate in that department is not a prerequisite for doing the right thing. Ecuador would be doing the right thing to grant asylum, and it would be an act of mercy and friendship, and truer friendship than simple pandering.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_%28U.S._intelli...

[2] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowd...

[3] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-fla...

[4] http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/countries/americas/usa

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TPKC8F-Zz0

Regarding [2], I suggest you lookup the treatment meted out to actual spies like Hanssen and John Walker. The last spies to be executed were the Rosenbergs, and even that did not go off without a fight by a certain Supreme Court justice.

Ecuador hasn't embarrassed the US, the US has embarrassed itself. After a run of such events over the last 10ish years you'd thing an approach with less aggression could be tried. See the Afghanistan and Iraq adventures for the best examples.

And ideally these things should be decided on their merits, not who has control over a bigger economy.

I don't know, would they? This idea that a government would demand that another, non-allied government return someone whose crime is leaking secret information doesn't make any sense to me. I get why you'd extradite an accused murderer or similar, but an accused leaker? Why would another country listen to such a demand?

Especially given that the US government has made it extremely clear that such spying was targeting foreigners, including, most likely, Ecuadorian people.

The purpose of classified information is not to hide human rights abuses.

> only one side has taken actual action so far to hurt those civilians... and it was the government charged with protecting those same civilians.

A meaningless technicality. You can't seriously be arguing that the US' continued hegemonic paternalism toward Ecuador isn't a major source of their population's problems.

Well it's always better to go "You can't fire me! I QUIT!" as you get booted from the door.

Ecuador hasn't yet taken in Snowden. So no, your analogy doesn't fit: They are rejecting bullying outright.

Also, it's often not better to say that.

Agreed - but a better parallel to this situation is if you suspect you will be fired soon, to leave with dignity of your own accord beforehand.

It feels satisfying to go "You can't fire me! I QUIT!" but it's usually a bad idea. Removing a point of leverage before its attempted use is a slightly different scenario, though.

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