I'm actually surprised he has any access to his money at all. I assumed all of his assets would have been frozen under some sort of murky fugitive/terrorist/organized crime laws.
Or maybe he took proactive steps to keep this from happening?
Or maybe he took proactive steps to keep this from happening?
As any ex-cat-1 prisoner can tell you, life on the run is the most expensive way to live. With Snowden he has had many agencies after him, all with their different approaches. Obviously the U.S. have been on his case, they tend to be good at the sigint stuff but not so good at actual spy trade craft. I would not be at all surprised if there was a British team on his case too, better able to watch him pop to the shops for a pint of milk. Then the Russians will be monitoring everything, on their home turf and able to keep watch on who is keeping watch. Not all watchers will be hostile to him, after all we are all human (Tony Blair excepted), however, none of the many folks observing him will be able to assist him. They will watch him starve rather than intervene.
Presumably he is not as on-the-run as he has had to be, however, the practical implications of being completely on-the-run are more than you might think. Imagine he wants to be able to do things like sleep without being observed. That means he has to move every day, and at extremely short notice so anyone watching him does not get a head start, e.g. to bug a hotel room before he gets in there. He also has to pay cash up front just on the off chance he has lost his tail. Then the same again the next day and the day after that.
Eventually he will realise that trying to escape his watchers is a fruitless task and decide it is better to take a disinformation approach. At this stage he could try to convince those behind the bugs that he has gone mad. Claiming to be the messiah, pretending to have narrowly avoided being poisoned, hearing voices - standard lunatic stuff. He might also want to go the extra mile on proving that he is no longer an existential threat to the American Way of Life, taking up a pastime such as computer gaming, putting in marathon Playstation sessions and completely ignoring the news. After a year or so of doing this he will be able to convince himself that he has his privacy back and live the normal life.
Snowden probably also has had the problem of living off a good pay cheque and then having to adapt to a normal pay check, or no money at all. If you are used to paying thousands a month on accommodation, buying nice food and doing things like driving a car then it can take a while to adapt to barely having enough money to afford groceries for the next day. A mental attitude has to change, from being generous with tips to actually living off what that tip would be. That change does not happen so easily, even if circumstance forces that change to be necessary.
Anyway...
This talk of sending the guy a few bitcoins is far off from the reality of his situation. Sounds to me that he actually does have everything that he needs to live, i.e. a job and a few close friends. He has sorted himself out. He does not need to be beholden to charity handouts.
Not so sure fear of poisoning would be evidence of mental illness in this case, depending on the nature of the poison.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium#Well-known_poisoning_c...
Your description of a life on the run was quite interesting and I was wondering if I could ask a few questions - would it be possible to do that? (your profile does not have an email ID)
I have no special insight gained from first hand experience, however, if I meet someone that has a criminal record I make friends rather than run away from them. There can be many benefits in doing this, e.g. you have someone that appreciates and respects your advice, they can possibly do a better job than the police in retrieving your belongings if they get stolen, you can obtain unobtainable 'black market' items, get to the best parties, find out information not in the public domain and so on. You also get the best stories. I merely presented a composite, abbreviated version of things I have learned along the way. I am sure the same stuff could be found in films and books. I am also sure that the spies know what cycle to expect from those they take care of.
Anyway, couple of other things for you, since you are interested in the topic...
In the movies the guy on the run is able to get some help and support, in real life moral courage coupled with cognitive dissonance, hostile propaganda and ineptness gets in the way of that. Hence Mr Snowden, for all his many supporters is probably alone in very subtle ways, even when amongst trusted friends. None of those around him have pushed back the fear boundaries or played a tight game in a sigint-hostile 'battlespace', therefore, even if their intentions are good, or they think they have good intentions, things like basic stupidity get in the way. (Note that stupidity is the most harmful thing in the known universe.) Furthermore, anything involving actual risk is not something an honourable sort like Mr Snowden can palm off on others, so he is very much stuck doing everything himself, with no meaningful organisation to help him.
This situation was also a serious problem for Martin Luther King. He was able to get millions to turn up in support of what he had to do, yet he was also deeply alone. Part of his popularity stems from this, people who were alone could relate to what he said.
Orwell's classic 1984 is also quite interesting. We all read it at school, however, I believe the book takes on a whole new level of insight to those that are blowing the whistle in a surveillance society. Details like Winston's health problems take on a peculiar relevance. However, Orwell did not go far enough on the subtleties of betrayal and stupidity.
Being a whistleblower doesn't excuse you from having to work for a living. I hope he's able to get decent employment.
The IRS always get paid.
That would probably be tough for him to have done.
Withdrawing large amounts of cash, or transferring money to (e.g.) the Bank Melli Iran would have presumably raised red flags.
WallStreetJournal :"Both houses of the U.S. Congress have drafted legislation threatening to penalize Swift's board and owners if they didn't ban the suspect Iranian entities from using its network."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405297020479530...
As the quote from Dune goes, He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge-approves...
http://nypost.com/2012/04/05/us-regulator-cites-citibank-for...
It's not about where to move it to, but moving it in the first place.
Also, I wouldn't overestimate how many of his friends he could successfully enlist in what technically (if not morally) was a conspiracy to commit treason.
For something like this to be successful, it needs to come out of the blue.
a) Why are we not mad about that kinda thing? b) Doesn't the law of large numbers say that even if someone does something that looks weird, it might just be for random fluctuations? Or is the financial system too.. regular?
They have so much work that they have to hire contractors to do it. They rely on the clearance process to weed out the untrustworthy. Re-investigations are typically at 5 year intervals.
It would not surprise me that any person they have watching the store is someone who is being chided for not doing "real" work.
Basically "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Nobody, apparently.
Put another way, I have a friend who couldn't run a mile in less than an hour. He could easily put a bullet into an apple on your head at a couple hundred yards however. If we were to consider him an adversary, dismissing him because he cant run worth a damn would be unwise.
The NSA tries to monitor all communication. If it fails to monitor 10% of the communication, or 5%, or 1%, it is still problematic that it monitors the other 90-99%.
If it retains control of the information it has captured at a 90-99% efficacy rate, on the other hand, that still basically means that it leaks information like a sieve.
Judging from this report, they seem to have a misplaced faith in the ability of the almighty polygraph to root out insiders.
I quote: If you've been cleared and especially if you've been polygraphed, you're an insider and you are presumed to be trustworthy
<http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE9A703020131108?irpc...
In any case, if you're financially well-disciplined (that's a very big if), it's easy to hide money somewhere and pretend you're blowing it on useless junk.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08...