Ask HN: What proof is there that Snowden is safe?
I don't trust anything Assange has to say. Besides Assange's tweets, what proof is there that Snowden isn't been held in Russia and that he is safe?
Putin said Snowden remained in Sheremetyevo airport's
transit area and vowed that Moscow would not extradite
the whistleblower to the US. He also insisted that
Russia's security services had no contact with Snowden,
a claim greeted with suspicion.
We haven't received a sign of life from Snowden for six days now, we don't know for sure if he is safe.
Good read: http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-Without-Face-Unlikely/dp/15944...
Personally, I'm more inclined to distrust any media reports & criticism of Assange, because their sources tend to have some sort of ulterior motive (fame, smear, counter-intel).
The best smear campaigns happen when you have recruited former insiders. It's more believable and the population likes juicy details.
And to answer your question, Wikileaks has a staff member accompanying Snowden, so they probably have a clear idea of the situation.
I had a crazy idea the other day that we find as many Snowden doppelgängers as possible. We all fly to Moscow and give him our passports. We then all wait in the airport an allotted time until Snowden is safe somewhere else and then all report that our passports have been misplaced and apply for temporary new ones to return home.
If that's the case, then that is pretty good proof that he's doing ok, and can also connect to the internet :-)
However, scrolling down his Twitter timeline, it seems that there's a lot of auto-generated tweets. Not sure.
Assange making claims that he had safe passage to Ecuador only to have that discredited calls into question anything he has said about his safety up until this point.