Edward Snowden: Russia offers to consider asylum request

[Recursion]

Source: The Guardian

Russia has offered to consider an asylum request from the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, in the Kremlin's latest move to woo critics of the west.

Snowden fled the United States before leaking the details of a top-secret US surveillance programme to the Guardian this month. He is currently believed to be in Hong Kong, but has reportedly changed hotels to keep his location secret.

Fearing US retaliation, Snowden said at the weekend that "my predisposition is to seek asylum in a country with shared values", citing Iceland as an example. He defended his decision to flee to Hong Kong by citing its relative freedom compared with mainland China.

Snowden is not known to have made any asylum requests, including to Russia. Yet speaking to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin's spokesman, said: "If such an appeal is given, it will be considered. We'll act according to facts."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/edward-snowden-russia-asylum-request

---

NB: Snowden has, at least publicly, made no asylum request to any state, so Russia may be getting ahead of itself here.

[pnwmom]

1. But Snowden says he can't live in a country that isn't free.

So he'd never accept asylum from Russia, right?



I wonder what kind of offer they'll be making him, in exchange for . . . what? Maybe some of those documents that haven't yet been published . . . .

[SkyDaddy7]

6. He fled to China!! LOL!

I know Hong Kong is not considered as bad as mainland China but after it is all said & done Hong Kong is China.

[still_one]

10. Just to let you know, Hong Kong IS China now

[SkyDaddy7]

33. I am fully aware of that...

However, it operates on a completely different legal system than does the rest of China...You are aware of this, correct?

[still_one]

38. Yes, but in the end they will take their order from the mainland

[SkyDaddy7]

39. true.

[SoapBox]

18. Get him and the family there..

And then let's see family start to "disappear" if he doesn't cooperate with them.

[msanthrope]

27. His family got visited by the FBI from the local Allentown office. It hardly sounds like they

are being 'disappeared.' And his girlfriend is still posting half-naked pics to Facebook. So I think they haven't had the heavy hand of the law some down...

[leftyladyfrommo]

2. Wow! This just gets better and better. n/t

[AtheistCrusader]

3. If he wants to stay in a FREE country

I suggest he scope out some abandoned oil rigs in international waters or something.

[Steviehh]

4. Snowdon is now a valuable intelligence asset

His moves are very careful. He is very good, but knows the security apparatus as well.

I think he will stay in China. We can have the blind activist though, the Chinese aren't dumb. They have many of our assets plans. This Asia pivot can be toast now.

Or a Gulf of Tonkin event waiting to happen.

[Fuddnik]

5. Considering the Gulf of Tonkin incident never actually happened.

[SkyDaddy7]

7. "He is very good"?!?!? WTF??

Snowden threw away his life to "leak" info that was already posted online, here on DU, & other places for so long "NSA Wiretapping" has its own Wikipedia page!!

Seriously, this guy tried out for the special forces & did not make it...I think he is more interested in attention than anything else.

[SoapBox]

19. Ditto!

Thank you SkyDaddy7!

[SkyDaddy7]

35. Ed Snowden just went from attention getter to...

full blown Chinese Agent!! WOW!!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023001669

&

Chinese State Controlled Paper saying the same thing!!

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1259508/edward-snowden-us-government-has-been-hacking-hong-kong-and-china


I wonder how many of his apologist on DU will backtrack now??

[Katashi_itto]

21. Glad to know we have you to tell us what his motives really were.

[SkyDaddy7]

34. Well, try on Chinese Agent!!

Ed Snowden is nothing more than a Chinese agent!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023001669

[SkyDaddy7]

36. From Chinese controlled paper...

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1259508/edward-snowden-us-government-has-been-hacking-hong-kong-and-china

[Katashi_itto]

40. Which proves what, oh guru of information?

[Laelth]

9. Welcome to DU.

Your post is rather cryptic and apocalyptic. You seem to know more than many of us. Care to expand?



-Laelth

[stevenleser]

22. Unless he copied more files, no, I dont think he is a valuable intelligence asset

He was an IT person, not an agent or analyst.

[pnwmom]

29. But he's got copies of the more than 40 slides they haven't published yet.

And he might have more information about procedures they'd like to know.

[stevenleser]

30. If so, the NSA really screwed up. And the biggest likely result of all this is a tightening

of NSA internal procedures.

It's interesting how little the hair on fire folks seem to understand about all of this.

[pnwmom]

32. For example, there was an additional slide published after the first batch

that showed information that really could be of interest to China or Russia; also, the other slides contained information about tech methods that the WA Post and The Guardian thought shouldn't be published.

We can only speculate what else is in there.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/snowden-powerpoint/


Only five slides from the presentation have been published. The other 36 remain a mystery. Both the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald and the Post’s Barton Gellman have made it clear that the rest of the PowerPoint is dynamite stuff … which we’re not going to be seeing any time soon. “If you saw all the slides you wouldn’t publish them,” wrote Gellman on Twitter, adding in a second tweet: “I know a few absolutists, but most people would want to defer judgment if they didn’t know the full contents.”

Even Greenwald, who urged me rather strongly in 2010 to publish Bradley Manning’s personal chats, is taking a more conservative view of the NSA’s PowerPoint. “I’m not going to discuss our legal advice with you,” Greenwald wrote on Twitter, “but we’re not publishing NSA tech methods.”

To us geeks, the tech methods, of course, are the most interesting part. Snowden evidently wanted the entire presentation published, at least at one point in his discussions with the Post’s Gellman. On May 24, “Snowden asked for a guarantee that the Washington Post would publish — within 72 hours — the full text of [the] PowerPoint presentation,” Gellman wrote Sunday, in a fascinating account of his interactions with the whistleblower. “I told him we would not make any guarantee about what we published or when.”

SNIP

The most compelling part of the new slide is the top half, which seems to show (as first noted by ACLU technologist Chris Soghoian) the rough location of NSA fiber optic taps on cables in South America, eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean. Now that’s interesting.

[SkyDaddy7]

37. Try Chinese Agent!!

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1259508/edward-snowden-us-government-has-been-hacking-hong-kong-and-china

[existentialist]

8. Russia's statement that it may be willing to give Snowden asylum

should, but probably won't give the United States pause in its pursuit of him.

Surely it is better for the United States to have Snowden in Hong Kong cooperating with journalists than in Moscow cooperating with Putin and the Russian state.

[stevenleser]

20. Do you think there is anything he knows that SVR hasn't already found out?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Service_(Russia)

Snowden was just an IT person, not an agent or analyst.

[existentialist]

23. Yes

IT geeks have access to facts.

[stevenleser]

25. I doubt it, but it is possible. He would have to have copied them to a file.

Even so, the value of such things is usually very limited.

[Botany]

11. Well it sure would be different from Hawaii

[tavalon]

12. Still, it has a ring of irony, don't you think?

And yeah, I really do think.

[jwirr]

13. We have really hit rock bottom when and American citizen has to apply to Russia for asylum for doing

what he considers his duty.

[Recursion]

15. Google "Arnold Lokshin"

It's a surprising story

[still_one]

16. Russia said they would consider it. As far as we know it wasn't solicited.

[Katashi_itto]

17. Agree!

[SoapBox]

14. Perfect...Siberia for you Mr. Traitor.

He can be Putin's lap dog, now that he's been fired.

Comrade Snowden!

[existentialist]

24. "at least publicly"

We are all guessing.

[Progressive dog]

26. Hope he goes, at least it has more freedoms than when

Lee Oswald went there.

[maxrandb]

28. Still think he's a fucking hero?? n/t

[Sunlei]

31. he mentioned he saw a lot,he didn't release. Any country would love to mind-ripp him.