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Comment by mpyne | Hacker News Reader

And Putin says no, of course not, that would be strictly illegal and would be unsupported by our society.

Which is, of course, B.S., at least insofar as it's possible to trust government in general with this kind of thing. Remember just a year ago when people were saying we couldn't compare what NSA does to what FSB does, because they're Russia and obviously would spy on their own people?

But the question wouldn't have come up (it appeared on live TV but was pre-recorded) if the answer Putin was going to give wasn't already teed up.... what is Snowden trying to play here with the softball? Surely he can't be meaning to be the fiddle for Putin to play (a similar Reuters article claims Snowden is trying to press on surveillance in other countries, but that makes zero sense whatsoever, pushing too hard on that could only get his asylum revoked...).

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Now that Putin has clearly said "no", if evidence comes out that they have dragnet surveillance like the NSA, then he is shown to be lying.

This is like how they were able to prove that the NSA was lying in its responses, over and over again after each leak. So when mandarins attempt to say we're having a "great debate" or whatever it is transparent that they are fucking with you.

And he won't give a shit because he's already getting away with other things. We have to start treating the world as a global community. What if Russia was doing this to Canada? Would other countries just stand by to see how badly it escalates or immediately jump in as peace keepers?

Edit: I should clarify and that it isn't "Russia" doing it to anyone, it is Putin and the people in control there.

If you mean the Ukraine thing, then the principle reason we're not getting involved is because World War III would be bad for everybody.

Make no mistake: any conflict between NATO and Russia would end in Russian defeat, but not before you saw China get involved (against Russia, to keep the Japanese off the mainland) and the Middle East explode as a bunch of nations took the tying up of the usual powers as an opportunity to grab some land and settle old scores.

Wave goodbye to the American economy, Chinese economy (but ironically possibly not the European one) - assuming of course, that everyone stays sane and no one thinks to try and use their nuclear arsenal offensively to retake lost ground.

Economies don't just disappear, they change - they maybe don't grow as quickly, maybe they contract a bit (some areas would be worse off than others if they don't have local sustainable practices). War shifts activity towards military-related creation which I don't agree with, though letting that little irritation grow into a rash is the wrong approach - because that rash gains "power" or rather the ability to control more and be more free than could be if you were applying an ointment to it. The fear that has been injected to people relating to the "economy is going to collapse" only has power because capitalism currently causes a false state of scarcity. We have the resources to feed and shelter everyone, giving them the time to live life, to learn, etc.. Once we solve this false scarcity then that fear will be alleviated and people who have control issues and who are unkind can be limited by societies of how much influence and control of resources they have.

There's no need for anything to "come out", SORM and SORM-2 are official systems of mass surveillance deployed in Russia and everybody who knows anything about what's going on knows about it. Of course, Putin's words are directed to those that don't know, and these are the overwhelming majority.

Perhaps Russian authorities realized the shock value of helping Snowden had worn off and thought it was about time to leverage their position as asylum-granter to pressure him into lobbing the softball?

But as gatehouse says, it comes back to bite them if it turns out that they were lying and he has proof.

How will it bite them? (you should read that question as "If it turns out Putin is exposed as a liar about monitoring his own people what could the populace do that would make Putin give a shit?")

It can't possibly come back to bite them. Everyone who cares already knows that it's a lie, inside Russia or not. Oh, no, you caught them in a lie! Whatever will they do?? They'll probably do the same thing they did when the world caught them in the several lies relating to their invasion of Crimea...

You do realize this is the Russia that publicly and obviously assassinated a critic by a means which left no doubt it could only have been state sanctioned (polonium).

The Russia where its not clear where the FSB ends, the executive begins, and which parts are in fact just the Russian mafia?

It's safe to say Snowden, in so far as he doesn't want to - at minimum - get his asylum revoked - has no choice. At worst Russia, and Putin specifically, are exactly the types to kill him and not tell anybody.

> It's safe to say Snowden, in so far as he doesn't want to - at minimum - get his asylum revoked - has no choice.

Of course he has a choice. The fact that he has not exercised that choice leads me to conclude it's not coercion at all, but that he's willingly cooperating.

Put yourself in his shoes. If you had a choice between being sent back to the US and Bradley Manning'd vs lobbing a softball question that technically exposes a lie (albeit one that isn't surprising) but also improves Putin's image domestically, which would you choose?

Part of the reason the continuing stories about NSA surveilance have been effective is that the NSA doesn't know what's coming. If they had a chance to put him in isolation and waterboard him until he confessed to what he took, the NSA could pre-empt the disclosures and do effective damage control.

Whether the value of that exceeds the impression of being hypocritical is up for debate.

> If you had a choice between being sent back to the US and Bradley Manning'd vs lobbing a softball question that technically exposes a lie (albeit one that isn't surprising) but also improves Putin's image domestically, which would you choose?

The "choice" is being offered to a guy who took an action he claimed to be very difficult, because of the principle of that action.

So yes, I expect him to demonstrate a commitment to his principles. Fleeing justice in pursuit of the greater good of those principles is one thing.

Aiding and abetting a different regime's use of mass surveillance and wiretapping, which violates the very principles he claims to espouse, is another thing entirely.

That he claimed to do this all in order to facilitate the end of mass surveillance in the U.S. only reinforces this point, because American data is also not safe if Russia can wiretap it.

If Snowden's standard is that mass surveillance is hazardous, then that needs to be his global standard on a global Internet.

But that is not Snowden's standard, which I've tried to warn about since a couple of days after his leaks first broke out.

My guess, it's a necessary favor to extend that one year asylum limit Snowden has.

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