so this was a sneaky way of getting him in there. I don't think this story was meant to leak (lol!) because it came from the airlines in Singapore I think, and then some other airlines confirmed it before journalists got a vague answer from the UK authorities. The whole thing stunk anyway because there's no way Snowden would even dream of going to the UK where Julian Assange has been holed up in an embassy for a year. So much for their strong protection of activists. And Snowden, of all people, knows about the surveillance crimes taking place at Menwith Hill where the UK spies on Americans, and the Americans spy on the Brits, and then they swap the raw data saying they didn't spy on their own citizens. And from there, they also spy on all of Europe. Slippery little buggers.
The 560 acre NSA listening post at Menwith Hill has been a sore point with other EU countries and UK citizens because it was never debated in Parliament and they have no control whatsoever over it, not even their lawmakers. This is from 2007
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But because Snowden may be charged with improper disclosure of classified materials, the charges could include information that itself is classified. There are limits on how that can be publicly disclosed in court, which could delay the filing of charges, experts said.
“The approval process of charges of this kind are more involved than other kinds of crimes,” said Jason Weinstein, a former deputy assistant attorney general and a partner in the law firm of Steptoe and Johnson. “There is a lot of consideration given to what portion of the evidence can be used in the courtroom. That makes the process longer. The investigation is probably at a very early stage.”
To get Snowden back to the United States, U.S. authorities could revoke his passport, putting the burden on Hong Kong to deport him. But that opens the possibility that Hong Kong or Chinese authorities – or those in a sympathetic third country – could grant Snowden protected status, complicating U.S. efforts to repatriate him.
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The treaty allows extradition for vaguely defined “computer crimes.” But it also allows Hong Kong to refuse to extradite someone “where there is a political motivation for the offense,” and Hong Kong authorities could decide that Snowden’s disclosures constitute a political statement against U.S. surveillance programs.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-challenges-charging-edward-snowden-20130612,0,1937321.story
= new reply since forum marked as read
. It's all still considered classified until the government declassifies it.
