This is by far the most informative [edit: if speculative] article I've read on Snowden's choice of Hong Kong, which has been the most puzzling detail of the whole story. If true, it explains a lot, not just about why he chose Hong Kong but also about his subsequent interview with the press there. Can HNers who know Hong Kong shed light on how plausible it is?
It's striking how one obscure blog post can be more valuable than all the media speculation on this question (that I've seen) put together. That doesn't make its interpretation true, of course. But the alternate explanation that was going through my head seems a bit movie-esque by comparison.
It's striking how one obscure blog post can be more valuable than all the media speculation on this question (that I've seen) put together.
The infographic is taken from the South China Morning Post, a mainstream media outlet. It's followed by some verbiage about the speed of the Hong Kong judiciary and then a mention of a murder trial (actually, two trials) that's gone on for nearly 10 years - but that's a murder trial, not an extradition proceeding.
This is just as speculative as anything else but from what little we've learned about Snowden, he just doesn't strike me as some fiendishly clever schemer. If I had to guess, I'd say he went to Hong Kong because he has an interest in Chinese language and culture and went to the most comfortable place in China that's China-but-not-quite.
I'm not being entirely serious (hard to be, given the little we know) but I'm not being sarcastic, either. Some of Snowden's behaviour has been pretty odd. A variety of interpretations are possible. One is that he's a mastermind media manipulator/intelligence operator/exploiter of immigration laws/meticulous planner of a fugitive. This idea has some traction on HN and outside but I'm pretty skeptical of it. The interpretation that I lean towards, mostly for Occam's razor-ish reasons, is that he's maybe a little bit naive and perhaps doesn't quite know what he's doing.
If you care about things like your credibility and being taken seriously you probably don't do things like fib about your salary or suggest the CIA is going to hire triads to have you whacked.
If you hope to avoid the reach of the US criminal justice system or intelligence services you probably don't meet, in person, with high-profile US journalists in a Hong Kong hotel carrying a Rubik's cube. You probably don't go to Hong Kong in the first place where your ability to predict your future fate is very limited.
And finally, if you hope to represent your prosecution as political and your acts as acts of conscience in defense of civil liberties, you probably don't start divulging operational details of overseas US intelligence operations to foreign governments - they're not related to your stated cause and just land you in much deeper doodoo.
Now, it's possible all of this is some diabolically clever ploy/gambit but, personally, I find that a little hard to swallow.
I think the most salient point is that he needed to go to a country where
- the US did not have significant influence
- could not be strong-armed into giving him up
- would cause significant problems if he were taken without consent (or killed outright - not implausible, given the things we've seen in Pakistan)
China is a fairly logical choice - it's as far as you can run from the US in geopolitical terms. Hong Kong is just being in China without "being in China".
Ooof, kind of, sort of, maybe? I can see the argument, at a very high level but I don't think it survives even a cursory examination of the details, which are - by going to HK he's walking into a very convoluted situation the outcome of which neither he nor anyone else can really predict. And he's basically betting that all twists and turns of the various intermediate outcomes will go his way. This seems incredibly risky and not very, well, strategic.
I don't think, though, that in the unlikely event he gets Vanunu'd out Hong Kong it would cause significant problems for anyone but him. He also doesn't really face any risk of being killed - whatever one may think of the ethics, legality or quality of targeting of the drone strikes, they do target people involved in a violent, armed conflict with the US - 'enemy combatants' as the USG likes to call them. Snowden is not any sort of enemy combatant.
Most European countries have to a smaller or greater extent been complicit in illegal CIA rendition flights over the last decade and/or are extradition-happy or have already made it clear he's not a desirable person to host (UK telling airlines not to allow him onto flights).
Poorer countries or countries with unstable governments provide plenty of options to bribe someone to pick him up and/or drone strikes.
It needs to be somewhere where the US can't interfere without local government support without a massive backlash, and where there's at least a chance the local government or judiciary will hinder or delay an extradition, and there's not many places that fits those criteria and even fewer that fits those criteria and are desirable to go to. I assume, e.g. Iran isn't particularly tempting.
Releasing the information was incredibly risky. He might have chosen what he sees as the least bad alternative on a long list of bad alternatives.
> whatever one may think of the ethics, legality or quality of targeting of the drone strikes, they do target people involved in a violent, armed conflict with the US - 'enemy combatants' as the USG likes to call them.
Or so they say. And use as an excuse for all kinds of "collateral damage" including dead children. I don't see why the leap to going after Snowden if he were to hide in a country where they did not see a large risk of political fallout and didn't have other options, would be so great. E.g. if he were to hide in any country with a rebel movement hostile to the US, it'd be easy to claim he was meeting terrorists. I don't we have any basis for saying anything about what his risk of being taken out is.
I also find it interesting that you write off his risk of being killed by questioning the likelihood of drone strikes. US intelligence agencies have decades of history of "quieter" assassination methods.
I'd suggest he should have quit his job, made his disclosures and stayed put. Look at the three people in the linked interview - while it's undisputed that they've suffered great disruptions to their careers and lives in general, all three are free men, giving interviews to a national US newspaper. Edward Snowden is a fugitive in some strange limbo largely of his own making which he appears, inexplicably, quite blithely set on making worse.
As to the drone strikes, I was replying to the other commenter who seemed to think drone strikes or some sort or intervention by the US military is a realistic risk Snowden faces. I'd put 'covert CIA assassination' in the same bucket and I don't really know how to put this politely but this is, in my mind, tinfoilhattery.
He's facing a big fat criminal indictment - there are probably people at the DOJ working on it who didn't get to go home this weekend after he started talking about entirely unrelated (to his civil liberties claims) details of US intelligence operations. There's probably nothing the US government would like more than to see him tried on criminal charges in open, civilian court - it's a slam dunk of a case, by this point. There's nothing whatsoever to be gained by killing him.
Once indicted, I think kidnapping is at least a plausible concern - there are documented cases of US Marshals pursuing people wanted by the US courts overseas - with varying degrees of success and with or without the cooperation of local authorities. I can even think of a couple of cases pre-war-on-terror military interventions as part of efforts to apprehend wanted persons. The Achille Lauro hijackers come to mind - and even they, while being actual terrorists and actual murderers, ended up being prosecuted in Italy and serving time in Italian prisons. But again, Snowden could have trivially avoided this entire line of unpleasant possibilities by simply not getting on a plane to Hong Kong.
"I'd put 'covert CIA assassination' in the same bucket and I don't really know how to put this politely but this is, in my mind, tinfoilhattery."
I don't know how much any of us is in a position to assess the how 'tinfoilhattery' the risk of this is,
its easy to dismiss that as something that only happens in movies, but if it happens in real life, would we be any the wiser?
we do know that Iranian scientists have low life expectancies
couple of thoughts:
1) Snowdon is probably in a better position than us to assess that risk, and seemed to think it was real
2) either way, going public lessened the risk, if he gets in a drunk driving accident next week, or is shot by a mugger, most people won't assume it was coincidence
3) I think Mannings fate is argument enough against staying put
I guess my point is that there would be severe ramifications if the US deployed its military to retrieve Snowden within Chinese territory.
Whether they'd do it or not is not the issue - Snowden is a whistle blower who's had a peak inside the system, and is paranoid (perhaps justifiably given what he was leaking) about his safety. We're only trying to explain his choice, not whether it was a good one.
edit: also, the US has already killed its citizens without trial using drones in the war on terror. I think it's a pretty thin line between "enemy combatant" and "treasonous spy", slippery slope and all..
I don't want to bury you in some dreary repeat wall of text so I sort of combine-replied to you in the response to the upthread poster.
As to the quality of his choices, I think that's the actual interesting thing - not whether we can come up with some semi-plausible theory for them. Are his choices a part of some grand strategy (like the article we're discussing seems to suggest) or are they haphazard? To me, the evidence so far seems to strongly point to 'haphazard', which is very bad news both for him personally and for the cause of civil liberties which he claims as his motivation.
I'd love to be wrong about this but not quite to the point where I leave my critical faculties in my other pants.
The other most obvious point is that on top of all external considerations he had some particular friend or resource in HK. Having left the hotel, where is he staying now? If he got there and then later wished to go to Iceland, would he have anyone beyond what popular sympathy drums up to help him?
Even if Hong Kong has lots of practical concerns because of its relationship with China it was obviously going to provoke obvious questions about idealistic / vs ulterior motives, a big negative I would think for someone acting from idealistic motivations and knowing from experience how much that would be questioned.
I'm inclined to agree with Glurgh's comment and Occam's razor -- he's surely bright, but doesn't necessarily seem to be some type of master manipulator / strategist to have ended up in Hong Kong at this point, good cell phone access aside.
He mentioned picking up Mandarin in one of his Ars posts, I think. Not "fiendishly" clever, just apparently more clever than the folks running our intelligence services.
Snowden is not proficient in Chinese, no way. (I am, by test.)
As Confucius said, in one of his most famous take-downs, "始吾於人也、聽其言而信其行、今吾於人也、聽其言而觀其行。At first in dealing with people, I would hear their words and trust their deeds, but now my way of dealing with people is to hear their words and observe their deeds." We'll see what appears about his planning and his view toward China and a lot of other things about him as he continues interaction with news media and the governmental authorities of various governments.
Sorry, if it sounds personal but I have to ask: How do you know he's not proficient and what does your proficiency have to do with it?
I have a basis of knowledge about how language proficiency is defined (the federal government in the United States has a standard rating scale of foreign language proficiency, as do most other countries with an active diplomatic corps and military alliances with other countries) and I know how much time it takes in specialized training programs and in-country to become proficient in Chinese, none of which Snowden has. I would find it more believable that he has some knowledge of Japanese, because Snowden lived in Japan for a while, but he apparently has little knowledge of that language either.
> I know how much time it takes in specialized training programs and in-country to become proficient in Chinese
wow. Err... aren't there other ways how to learn a language than government sanctioned programs? How about attending lectures in the evenings and a Chinese speaking friend (not that unbelievable in Hawaii).
Time will tell us more about Snowden but I believe his intentions to be primarily towards exposing the surveillance state for American citizens. Its existence as described by his documents is contrary to our guiding principles. I kind of doubt he was too focused on exposing this to the rest of the world but feels that it's a necessary part of what he's doing for his country.
"It's striking how one obscure blog post can be more valuable than all the media speculation on this question (that I've seen) put together."
Perhaps this still qualifies as striking, but it's becoming rapidly more common, as mainstream journalism becomes ever more predictable and imitative, and individuals with expertise and actual insight, not working for news organizations, stand out as the only voices worth paying attention to.
Exactly. Blogging allows subject matter experts to easily, cheaply publish, be widely read, and compete for eyeballs with the MSM.
There's no way most people who just went to Journalism school can compete with, say, an experienced Constitutional lawyer like Greenwald or Lessig, or hacker like PG or Spolsky, or VC like Fred Wilson etc.
But there are some things MSM can still do - good professional journalists can still round up experts and put together a composite of their views. Or they do real investigative journalism that bloggers may not have the resources for, be it Bloomberg suing the Federal Reserve under FOIA [1], or sending reporters to hotspots for first-hand reporting.
Personally I think a combination of data journalism and investigative journalism (like WaPo's Top Secret America [2] and Bloomberg's FOIA lawsuit and reporting) are their best way forward. Both require resources most individual bloggers can't provide, and both are real news, real journalism.
I agree with all your points absolutely. The best reporting and photojournalism in the New York Times and other real newspapers is worthy of tremendous admiration; fortunately they still have the resources to put correspondents all over the world. My comment was not meant to suggest that we can dispense with the MSM, and I don't agree with the replies below that seem to advocate this.
Phone service is indeed cheap. SIM cards are bought at every kind of venue right on down to carts on the street. No ID needed, no contract. You give money, you get SIM card with nn minutes. Handsets are cheap too, really cheap, like throw away cheap. I hadn't thought about that from a signals intelligence perspective, but I bet that fact combined with the density of people would make it quite challenging to find his signal from among the others. Speaking of people density, guaranteed, no drone strikes in HK. Also, probably no movie-style snatch and grabs in HK. Aside from the tension that would cause in US/China foreign affairs, traffic would prevent that from happening most hours of the day. It would definitely not go unnoticed.
Yeah, I was also amazed at how good the 3g was on a random sim I bought at the airport. Works great in the metro too which is awesome coming from Melbourne and having no connectivity between stations in our metro.
I haven't seen any articles discuss a major issue: his immigration status. If he's on a visitor/business visa he likely only has 6-12 months in the country. If he's there as a tourist, 90 days. If he overstays his visa, he can be arrested and deported.
By which time he can probably get a Visa somewhere else and rinse and repeat, shuffling between two secure locations and flight paths. Once extradition proceedings have begun, he can no longer be deported.
Macau is a Special Administrative Region, of the PRC just as HK is. An entry/exit is sufficient to reset the timer on your entry visa with the mainland. I'm assuming the same thing works between HK and Macau, but I've never tested it.
There is another big reason why Snowden may have chosen HK. A few months ago the HK high court ruled that the process for applying for asylum needs overhaul, and until that happens all extradition proceedings for asylum seekers are on hold. So Snowden simply needs to apply for asylum in HK to significantly delay things:
I haven't seen much coverage of this in the US press, aside from Slate & CSM. The rest of the media seems more interested in Snowden's girlfriend and scholastic record instead (sigh).
I was about to ask, how he would deal with staying, as you can't simply choose a country but must conform to its visa regulations. He might be there as a tourist for now but I would think that cannot do so forever.
You can also sneak out of Hong Kong easily, and it is an hour ferry ride a to Macau or Guangzhou or a bus or taxi ride to Shenzen.
Hong Kong has very loose exit visa policies on western passports. You can jump on a plane to some destinations with your passport only being checked at checkin (which is of the ticket). It is very simple to get to any number of ~50 countries in the space of hours and not having your identity checked until you land.
Private banking in Hong Kong means he can have money sent to him and he can spend money without worrying about who finds out who supports him.
He is also likely to find work, since there is a lot of English speaking expat work in the country especially in the IT industry.
I'm unsure if he has a path to citizenship, a path to residency is easy but I think the only way he could swap his passport is if he works out an entire 4 or 5 year residency or go citizenship via asylum.
This isn't true.
At the airport there is a passport check after security. At Hung Hom train station the same. At all the China land borders things are pretty strict.
Most smugglers go through Sha Tau Kok in the north east, but you need a permit to even enter that area.
Somewhat disingenuous to suggest swapping sim cards to avoid being tracked. This myth is one that law enforcement love. They just track phones with IMEI numbers.
If you can patch firmware of your phone you can forge IMEI. Most of phones have IMEI in OTP flash, but with unlocked boot loader modification of code which actually send it to network is usually possible.
Many cheap Chinese phones on MTK chipsets produced at non-working time without knowledge of factory owners don't have unique IMEIs, they have all zeroes or all ones in it so user can flash it itself one time; loads of fake iPhones with quadro SIMs and analog TV support can have IMEIs of few real iPhones.
> produced at non-working time without knowledge of factory owners don't have unique IMEIs
I've had odd troubles with USB devices for the same reason; a bunch of them with identical or overlapping serial numbers. I wonder how much of a problem it causes for the operators, I doubt their systems were originally designed to accept duplicate IMEI.
AFAIK the IMEI and IMSI (IMEI for subscribers) are nothing more than client side variables. The telcos have their own internal designations that relate to billing and active connections.
The idea behind "swapping SIMs" to avoid being tracked assumes that the phone itself can't be identified and tracked (regardless of the SIM card in it). Once one of your SIM cards can be identified as belonging to you (maybe you break down and call a relative), it can be linked to the phone. If the phone can be tracked, then all of the other SIM cards that you use with it can be linked together, regardless of the whether or not the original purchase of the phone or SIM cards can be linked to you (cash vs. card).
I think he's referring to the artificial security based on swapping SIMs into the same phone, since both can be tracked. In fact, with appropriate metadata[1], this could poison a number of SIMs and phones if they were ever passed between handsets and/or people.
Now I'm imagining the trouble one could cause with a cell-phone recycling bin at Best Buy.
Well fine there's cloning a phone, setting a bogus or duplicate IMEI, or simply buying cheap throw-away phones. Here, have a look at a really terribly done video of one electronics market in HK. One of many. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxTR5X0PIP4
I don't know about you, but where I live (Western Europe) it would be much harder to come up with an anonymous SIM than an anonymous phone.
I could walk today in any second-hand shop (selling used CDs, videogames, books, coffee machines etc...) and buy a crappy old unlocked Nokia, for less than 20 bucks, cash, no ID required.
But if I would need a SIM card, even if top-up, I would need to go to a service provider and give at least a valid ID.
The weak link would still be the SIM, not the phone. A place where you could easily get anonymous SIMs would be a definite advantage in order to mantain anonymity, so I guess the author has a point.
I live in Hong Kong too (about 20 minutes walk from the Mira where Snowden was allegedly staying), and his stated reasons of coming here due to the country's commitment to free speech and political dissent are baffling and misguided. When compared to China, Hong Kong seems free but the reality is very different.
Start with the South China Morning Post, the main English language newspaper here which has been covering this story extensively. The current editor, Wang Xiangwei, joined in 2011, is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Congress, and has been criticized for self-censorship multiple times since taking over.
Then you have the political system here, where people can vote in local elections but not in the main election that actually decides the Chief Executive (President). The current CE, CY Leung, was dogged by accusations that he was a Communist Party member throughout the election period. These accusations were not without merit given his political history (appointed to a prominent committee at a young age, a position traditionally occupied by party members), and these issues have not died down since he's taken office.
It makes no sense for Snowden to have come to HK for its political freedom. Neither is this city a hotbed for political dissent. The Occupy movement here was largely ineffective (there were often more homeless people than protestors at the camp), and power here is concentrated in the elite (HK has one of the highest Gini coefficients in the world).
He came here because here he can leverage China vs the US. Any talk of political freedom or appreciating the culture is pure fluff.
There is a lot of perceived political freedom from people outside of Hong Kong (both people in US as well as in China - why else would Chinese dissenters travel to Hong Kong to protest?). By declaring Hong Kong has political freedom, China is forced to defend that image, both domestically and internationally. I am from Hong Kong, so I know what you're talking about, but I'm currently living outside of Hong Kong, so I know what foreigners' perspective of Hong Kong is, too.
Fourth point about Hong Kong being under China probably has a significant effect that public cannot know about to full extent.
It's not a outright conspiracy to believe that there's a largely hidden but real power struggle between US and China. China probably likes the fact that Snowden has brought NSA and US government into public scrutiny and they are probably plotting a way to make the best out of it.
I don't think so. China has so many problems, it's government always preferred the status quo, anything new like this is considered a threat to political stability: imagine if a few Chinese decided to go Snowden way?
It can be spun other ways too. Snowden could be heralded as "proof" that China is better than the US.
"US citizen flees oppressive government, seeking refuge
in China."
I'm sure that this incident will also enter the lexicon of North Korea when they try to bring up the bad things that US has/may have done in order to justify their own actions.
The way that I understand it, a lot of the propaganda that the Chinese see in the media is known to be propaganda (i.e. it's not fooling anyone). Why would this be any different?
China can and does easily suppress dissent. They love opportunities to jab back at the US regarding human rights issues. That's worth a lot more than the very very very small risk that Snowden presents toward inspiring emulators.
Why do you feel the need to add "easily"? It is not easy at all.
Some dissident like the artist Ai Weiwei recently are playing all the time with the sensitive nerves of the regime but he managed to make himself famous enough, and to never crosses the red line too far as to get "suppressed". For instance, there is this picture of him giving the finger to Mao in Tiananmen square, but it is labelled "art".
With these guys trying the system all the time and the highly reactive web sphere, suppressing dissent is far from an "easy" job.
How is it not easy? For every Ai Weiwei whose fame gives him some protection (and who still ends up getting harassed and put under house arrest) there are many Li Wangyangs
What I meant is that, against the cliche, Chinese people are not easy to control, because they have a very long experience gaming the rules and enjoy this sport. In this sense they resemble the French more than the Japanese.
Is this a cliche you've actually encountered? I have a hard time imagining anyone actually believes such a ridiculous generalization. Although if you worry about such things, you probably want to give a second thought about how you generalize about others, be they French or Japanese.
You know, "thinking" is usually done by analysis and synthesis, both movements together. And synthesis is just another name for generalization. I think it is a relevant generalization to state that French people have had in their history a bunch of struggles, which make them more sensitive to the topic than other people.
Another cultural traits: Chinese men are more shy than, say, male US citizen. I have lived in China 10 years, I don't see how anyone could deny this.
And yes, I have met the cliche of the Chinese being "easy to control" a lot of time.
Ai Weiwei who was disappeared for three months and reportedly subject to psychological torture? And he's the one who should be protected most by his international fame.
Edit: You may be right that it's not "easy": I'm sure it costs billions and billions of RMB a year. But they've had a lot of success at it.
I live in Hong Kong, and can verify that it is absolutely a technologist's paradise and an extremely easy place to move around in.
Phones are incredibly cheap; the cheapest functional Android knockoff smartphones will run you about $50-80 (all prices in USD for simplicity), maybe less if you get it in Kowloon. "Burner"-style phones can be as low as $8. SIM cards are essentially free (usually about $8-10 deposit on the card) and minutes are as lower than $0.01 each[1]. Data is about $5/GB prepaid. All cash, no credit cards, no checks. You don't even have to give them your name.
Coverage is completely universal here because the density is absurd. It's a cell phone carrier's dream; one tower can potentially reach nearly a million people. Taxi drivers here regularly have half a dozen cell phones in their cars. One for personal use, one for work, one for less savory work... who knows, there is always a lot going on, especially in relation to gambling.
Additionally, the broadband is great (and cheap) - I regularly get as much as 250mbps or more to the US from my home connection. I can say with confidence that I browse US sites more quickly from here than I could from my home connection when I lived in the states. The ping is of course higher but it is not as bad as you'd think (150-180ms).
There are great technology centers like Cyberport[2] that will rent you a desk or tiny office with gigabit internet for very little money.
It is easy to disappear in HK because it is so dense. While housing is not cheap it is available and some landlords will take cash. Being white earns you stares here, it is well known that the Chinese suffer from the same problem we do; it is difficult to tell white people apart, much like we may find it difficult to tell some ethnic Chinese apart. I am speculating but it could be used to his advantage: with a hairstyle change and contact lenses it would be difficult for a US citizen to identify Snowden, going only on the news photos. It would be even harder for a foreigner. That is, if the novelty of seeing a young nerdy white man doesn't arouse suspicion alone.
Members of the expat community have been setting up rallies for Snowden and they have been getting decent attendance. The South China Morning Post has been very favorable in their framing of his actions. I think the populace here is very sympathetic to his plight.
As for the legal system, I can't comment; I just work here, man.
| The ping is of course higher but it is not as
| bad as you'd think (150-180ms).
I've had higher pings while trying to ssh from East Coast to West Coast. I'd wonder if those pings were to sites mostly hosted on the West Coast, because crossing the Pacific is mostly just travel time, and doesn't include 10-15 hops through various routers/ISPs.
Yeah, you're right - an East Coast EC2 instance is about 220ms, but it's a very stable 220. No problem using SSH through that, and you can use mosh if it really bothers you. It's really much more pleasant than I'd expected, being the other side of the world and all.
Unfortunately for Snowden, the Act only covers federal employees, not the private subcontractors whose security clearances may expose them to criminal acts, but whose employment status leaves them unable to report them safely.
That's what it appears on the outside - The Hong Kong government and Chinese government spend a lot of effort to maintain this image. Take a deeper look and you will see this isn't the case. The government has previously tried to sneak Chinese propaganda into primary schools as well as pass copyright laws that will outlaw (often political) satire and allow governments to sue on behalf of companies(!!). It was only from SOPA style opposition as well as massive street protests (measured in hundreds of thousands of people) these measures haven't passed yet.
Yes, but these protest did happen and I'm assuming then the measures were defeated. That is something and one can be at least doubtful that this would happen in the US.
And it's not because the US government isn't doing some pretty horrible things, as we can see.
If China cuts pollution, respects human rights, and improves working/live for a lot of people (those are the complains I hear about)it should be a good place.
Then the only debatable thing that remains in censorship, and "absolute power corrupts absolutely".
It might not be a democracy, but if people are truly happy/content ... why would they riot ?
The premise of this thread is that China is going to solve three giant intractable problems. That might take some time. When they're done, will over 40% of our male prison population still be black?
And my point is that even after solving those problems, China will still have a ways to go before it's even crappy at dealing with minorities like the U.S.
No. On paper it's a Republic. In reality the USA is run by a bunch of self serving politicians and unelected bureaucrats who get their positions from the special interest and big business lobbies.
It will only get worse as long as people want security over liberty and elections are decided by money and not voters.
Unless you're a democratic activist: http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2011/eap/187483.htm (Section 2(a)). (" Democratic activists claimed central government authorities closely monitored their e-mails and Internet use. In a Netizens Power survey, 33 percent of users of Golden Forum, a popular local Internet community forum, said they had some of their online posts deleted over the past year and almost half indicated this was because their posted content was 'too politically sensitive.'")
Also, the system they have in place for surveillance of telecommunications seems exactly the same as the one the U.S. does: "The use of covert surveillance and the interception of telecommunications and postal communications can be granted only to prevent or detect 'serious crime' or protect 'public security.' The law establishes a two-tiered system for granting approval for surveillance activities, under which surveillance of a more intrusive nature requires the approval of a judge, and surveillance of a less intrusive nature requires the approval of a senior law-enforcement official." (Section 1(f)).
Indeed, the U.S. system is a bit more stringent, because "surveillance of a less intrusive nature" requires a law-enforcement official to get a FISA warrant (from a court that isn't an Article III court but is composed of Article III judges).
I lived and worked in/around Central when I was in HK a couple years ago. HKCSL 3G data was unusably slow (I don't think cell towers handle extreme density well). I switched to Three and it was slightly better but still horrendous compared to T-mobile in SF or Rogers in Toronto.
I paid 50HKD/month for "50mbps" cable internet (some special deal at the time). What a joke. I got 50mbps torrenting and about 0.5mbps from anywhere outside Hong Kong.
The OP's "It's a cell phone carrier's dream; one tower can potentially reach nearly a million people." is the exact opposite of true. Frequencies used for mobile communication are limited and with that the total bandwidth of a cell site is limited.
This is the main reason new G's are coming out, 3G is packing many more bits per Hz then 2G was, and 4G is doing yet more.
New frequency bands are released for mobile communications to further alleviate the problem.
Network planners have to install more and more cells in dense urban areas and be careful not creating too much noise on the frequency as they have to reuse frequencies and codes.
In a place like HK skyscrapers are creating lots of problems with signal shadows and reflections.
Major office buildings sometimes have (unintentionally) selective glass that keeps outside mobile comms frequencies out and have indoor antennas that have strong and clean signals, but this is hardly the case for residential buildings.
It's much better now compared to your experience. I get "unlimited" LTE for around $40 USD/Mo more than half as much as I was paying AT&T. Quite fast and reliable even in the MTR which blew me away after having lived in NYC for a short while. Even the prepaid carriers like OneTwoFree are a quite good.
True, but it's a bit misleading. Although the developed areas of Hong Kong are quite literally wall-to-wall skyscrapers, the majority of Hong Kong's land is undeveloped country parks and village areas.
Less than 25% of total land area of ~400 sq. mi. is actually developed.[0] The average density of those developed areas is thus incredibly high. Mong Kok for example, has a density of 340,000 / sq. mi., which is described as the highest population density of any district in the world.[1]
Yes, although it's somewhat bittersweet. I can't think of another city of similar size where I can live 5-minutes by car from the center of the business/entertainment district and a 5-minute walk from being in the middle of the forest. To give a visual example, this (very high end) residential building is about 10-minutes by car from the middle of the city:
The downside is that housing is close to the least affordable in the world with respect to median income. The average flat size is ~450 sq. ft., (of which typically less than 80% is actually the inside of the flat itself).
There have been a number of photo exhibits of late depicting the housing conditions that a significant portion of the population have to deal with:
The pay is awful for the average Hong Konger compared to cost of living. Minimum wage is $30/hr, which is ~$3.75 USD. That doesn't sound bad for China until you factor in rent; 800 sqft apartments cost upwards of HK$20,000 - HK$30,000/mo. Hardly affordable on HK$60k/yr, and many young professionals live with family.
In case anybody doesn't know - HK is nothing like (mainland) China in terms of costs of living, quality of infrastructure or the standard of living. It's the Asian version of NYC or London. Really expensive, really high class, really good infrastructure etc. Basically nothing you associate with the word 'China' other than lots of Chinese people.
Author says, "Budding spies and others of a paranoid nature can buy a couple of those SIM cards to swap in and out of their (unlocked) phones for $10 in any 7-11, no registration, no questions asked (try doing that in India or Argentina!)"
I don't live in India, but I do live in Argentina, and there are guys selling SIM cards on the subway and outside the train stations for, I think, AR$5, which is about US$0.76. No registration, no questions asked. If you instead go to a cellphone store, not only do you need to register, but they want ID.
I suspect that India is porous enough that there are similar holes in whatever controls they have to require registration.
I don't get 250Mbps in my house though; maybe 1Mbps to the US. And the murder rate is a little higher than in the US.
Some of the rationales for being in Hong Kong we see attributed to interview statements by him sound like statements by a person who knows a lot less about east Asia than he thinks he knows. In the six years that I lived in east Asia, all spent there after first learning the history, language, and culture of China thoroughly by university studies and independent reading and participation in foreign student clubs before going over, I grew quite tired of instant experts on Asia who can't even speak any local language. Snowden made the move he could make when he decided to leave his employment at Booz Allen Hamilton, but it's not clear that his move was "brilliant" or even very thought out at all.
I want to explain why I think you are wrong in terms of it being thought out. I think it was very carefully thought out and it fit into his plans very well. Whether it was "brilliant" or not I suppose depends on what you think of the game he is playing.
If you carefully look at Snowden's actions and his statements to various press establishments, his entire strategy is based on playing one group off another. He got the Washington Post to publish a story on Prism by getting the Guardian to run one on the Verizon warrants, for example. If you look carefully he is doing the same thing regarding Hong Kong.
1. He went to Hong Kong and immediately made provocative statements about the commitment of the special administrative province to the rule of law and to political dissent. This does not mean he believes that this is the nature of things. What these statements immediately did was put the image of Hong Kong's independence at risk of Bejing comes in too forcefully.
2. He then makes a number of statements about US intelligence activity which, quite frankly, everyone would probably assume to be the case anyway (hacking Chinese internet backbones etc). This creates a US vs China dynamic and shows that he can be a danger to the US if the US does not back off.
In essence what he has done has been tailored around Hong Kong specifically. He has chosen somewhere to make a stand that fits his strategy, nothing more and nothing less.
I'm curious... is there anything currently preventing him from flying to a further country as well? I'm not aware of there being a warrant out for his arrest or anything yet... What would happen today if he just hopped on the next flight to Iceland or Ecuador or wherever else (or let's just assume nonstop flights)?
Apparently INTERPOL can issue red notices that are not public. So its possible if he tried to leave Hong Kong under his own ID he'd get arrested.
I assume he doesn't have a real forged passport. But how hard do they check for leaving Hong Kong? Could he get to Iceland and instead of trying to fool Icelandic passport control, just request asylum?
They spend 30 seconds per person at the HK airport on average (was late for a flight and was timing it to see if I needed to start doing something). However, I'm sure they swipe your passport and the computer system immediately displays something if there is a problem.
However, he's in Hong Kong. I expect that a "real forged passport" or a high quality fake passport or an actual passport stolen from someone is... procurable. Maybe a nice Australian passport, for example.
Travel between HK and 'mainland' China regulated, as I understand it. It's possible that China is looking more closely to that border as an escape point than people leaving HK.
"Closely" is a relative term when it comes to airport. I'd think Chinese intelligence would be paying very close attention to someone who the US wants to arrest within their borders, seeing as how it impacts relations with their biggest trading partner.
Maybe so far as Snowden is concerned, but the comment I was replying to was talking in more general terms (i.e. Chinese citizens using HK to flee from China).
It is significantly more involved (I don't know if I'd say difficult as this is tough to judge) for a PRC citizen to enter HK than it is for, say, a citizen of the USA.
Busy border guards are busy. He might slip in unnoticed on some dodgy documents. Also, HK is an island, and China is like, right there. One could get into the country unseen via boat very easily. Boats are coming and going along the coast all the time.
- If the country he moves to doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US, that doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot. If the country is small enough politically, then they will either be pressured into giving him up, or the US will just send in a strike team to kill/capture him. Heck, the US had no qualms about sending a strike team into Pakistan to assassinate Osama bin Laden, do you think that some country a lot less political pull is going to matter to them?
- The idea that he can stay hidden for long seems doubtful. He is now a high enough value target that he would have to have money and connections like Osama bin Laden or go off to live in a cave in the middle of nowhere with little (or preferably no) human contact to escape detection.
- There probably are plenty of people that escape international man-hunts, but they aren't people that have pissed off the entire US government, in addition to embarrassing powerful people on the international stage.
This is in conspiracy theory territory. You really think there's no difference between sending strike teams to kill (a) the number one wanted war criminal responsible for the second biggest attack on your soil into a country where you already have troops for the same purpose, and (b) a regular old whistleblower into an independent country that owes you nothing?
Prior to the Osama bin Laden strike, claiming that such a thing could happen (the US sending a strike team into Pakistan without any approval/warning) would be in conspiracy theory territory.
I'm not saying that the US will send in a strike team to Hong Kong (or Pakistan or another political heavy-weight) over Snowden. I was operating under the assumption that most of the countries with no extradition to the US might not have the political clout for "anyone to care" if the US sent in a team to capture or assassinate Snowden[1]. I actually went an took a look at the extradition list[2][3], and it seems there are quite a few countries that I could see him stay in without the US caring enough to send in a covert team.
[1] The assassinate is just to drive the point home about how little people might care (other than politicians everywhere decrying the act to gain possible political favour). I agree that the US is probably more interested in putting him on trial than 'taking him out.'
Prior to the Osama bin Laden strike, claiming that such a thing could happen (the US sending a strike team into Pakistan without any approval/warning) would be in conspiracy theory territory.
No it would not, because Presidential candidate Obama made it clear he would do this in a debate in October 2008:
And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out.
Well, I stand corrected. My point was that not-so-long-ago, such a thing would be unheard of. Seems not-so-long-ago would be prior to that 2008 speech. It's worth noting that what he said in his campaign speech, and what he does in office are two different things. That said, it even being in his speech would probably bump it out of conspiracy theory territory.
It's been official presidential policy since the first Bush administration and re-asserted under Clinton.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd39.htm is an example of a presidential directive regarding extraordinary rendition to the US. (Never mind the extraordinary rendition to countries such as Libya, Egypt, Syria, etc., used to circumvent legal issues regarding torture.)
There's plenty of historical precedent as well. Israel has many well-known cases of tracking Nazis down on foreign soil and rendering them for trial with US support and assistance. Eichmann, Entebbe, Munich/Operation Wrath of God, etc.
Once you get into 'universal jurisdiction', you'll discover violations of international law committed without the assistance of the country harboring enemies of our United States. Sometimes the US has worked around official channels, such as in the case of the Achille Lauro.
I actually don't think Hong Kong was a great choice, as it brings up the whole question of foreign intelligence service involvement. He absolutely should have picked a common law jurisdiction (like Hong Kong), and probably not US/UK/Canada, but NZ would have worked pretty well.
He's not "in hiding" from the intelligence services. I suspect even second tier countries know where he is.
He trolls Hollywood interests, Snowden is effectively trolling the whole US government; the difference is of some importance.
NZ was in the original Echelon program, in terms of intelligence they fall squarely in line with GCHQ and friends. It's really one of the worst locations he could choose, right after the US and Britain.
Hong Kong also does not have a CIA/NSA/GCHQ/MI-6/MSS type agency. Your statement make me think Snowden saw the level of cooperation on the intel side and picked someone without a horse in the race.
> Budding spies and others of a paranoid nature can buy a couple of those SIM cards to swap in and out of their (unlocked) phones for $10 in any 7-11, no registration, no questions asked (try doing that in India or Argentina!)
Argentine here, you can buy SIM cards literally everywhere. Vendors will even sell them to you on trains.
Logging on to GSM your phone uploads its IMEI ('phone serial number') with the SIM card identifier or IMSI ('sim ID'). So if you switch, you are still tracked. Budding spies will learn their tech before putting their ass on the line.
As mentioned further up these comments, IMEI's can be forged, and phones produced "off-hours" in the factories often have IMEI's consisting of all 0's or all 1's. I gleaned this much just from reading this thread.
Sure. Also, according to recent quotes from Snowden, this is the primary mobile communciations key the NSA maintain records and search by... not phone number.
Is there any hard evidence that ES is actually in Hong Kong? It seems to be widely accepted that he is, though I'm not familiar with the evidence in favor of this claim.
Brilliant move, maybe, unless he was manipulated by the Chinese. It is very interesting that the allegation that the NSA has been hacking into Chinese systems came out at the time when the US and China are meeting and Obama is trying to admonish the Chinese on hacking.
It would be interesting to explore if Edward Snowden has any handler. And how exactly he chose Hong Kong and decided to reveal that the NSA has been hacking the Chinese.
It is "very interesting" in the sense that Snowden may have realised that strategically talking to Chinese press and leaking information that would be likely to be looked upon favorably by the Chinese government at this time would be likely to be beneficial to his chances of avoiding extradition in the future.
I'm not sure what you are trying to imply - the choice and timing of that particular leak would seem to be a logical choice once he'd chosen somewhere to go.
If he is afraid of being charged in the US, I would think he wouldn't have done this in the first place. Initially, it is said he did this because he cared about Americans. But by working with the Chinese, he is no longer a patriot in the eyes of many Americans. Overall, it appears like he was manipulated or at least fueled by the Chinese operatives.
Born in Hong Kong. Personally don't think Hong Kong is that safe and has such freedom. But may be good for his case. As China like to see him exists...
I dont get it - every one of those factors is present in India as well (with a few compromises on bandwidth I'll admit).
If the article makes a case that in Hong Kong people can take to the streets, it so happens that they did in Delhi [1]. Hell, India has a superior record of amnesty than most other countries [2].
Plus, the tech work scene is undoubtedly better in India as well as .... um... not being 100% undemocratic.
I personally am of the opinion that one of the big reasons could be that the pay is potentially better in Hong Kong - especially for someone from Booz Allen.
He visited HK with his girlfriend, so perhaps the simple truths is (beyond all the reasons listed in the article) that he had a personal relationship with the place. Logic and planning is great, but humans are quite affective, a notion that shouldn't be discarded.
By choosing HK, he "kinda" knew what he was getting into. Comfort.
I've been thinking of alternative destinations. New Zealand, home of exile Kim Dotcom, could work. But what about Sweden? Aren't they very neutral? Or Switzerland, the nation that's synonymous with neutrality?
New Zealand is the land of night-raids on Kim Dotcom's home to please American corporations -- not exactly a prime candidate.
Sweden is the country currently responsible for Assange's plight.
Switzerland, as I said elsewhere, is now an EU state in all but name, and their security services are laughable anyway.
What Snowden needs is not "neutrality" in a Cold-War sense. Strictly speaking, no government will ever defend the ideas he's fighting for; he can only choose the lesser evil, the place where he gets the most leverage out of his stance (i.e. most non-US-friendly nations) without losing his rights (i.e. most democratically-run nations with a respectable legal system). There's only a handful of countries in this peculiar intersection, and HK is definitely one of them.
Yes, but I don't see NZ ever abandoning their strategic intelligence alliance with US and UK (which produced, among other things, the original Echelon). Blowback all you want, Snowden would still be sent straight to Washington.
new zealand gave the big F U to the USA back in the 80s when they refused the USS Buchanan nuclear powered destroyer entry to the port as it violated the nuclear-free legislation.
Harbouring Snowden would probably create a lot more tension than just refusing a port entry to a specific boat, though I don't know the rest of the context of that incident.
More importantly, they illegally nabbed anakata from Cambodia, bundled him on a plane, and threw him in solitary for >2 months, which is torture under UN definition. And he's a Swedish citizen.
I mean this in no trolling or sarcastic sense, but - I've never heard of an international arrest warrant for rape before Assange... maybe there hasn't been anything significantly publicized?
Rape is the offense that they wish to charge him with. I'm not pronouncing on his guilt or innocence, just on what it is that they're attempting to extradite him for.
I don't believe there is any country in the world, except Russia and China, that will not kowtow to US when pressured. Snowden made a very smart choice by going to HK.
Can we add Ecuador to that list? Say what you will about the current administration, they are not kowtowing to the US or Britain even under a lot of pressure.
Sure Ecuador are very independent now. It would only take one election (perhaps with extensive foreign ad buys), however, for their policies in this area to change drastically. I don't see that happening soon in China or Russia.
Iran is another. They've been suffering sanctions for years. And I do mean suffering. Which is not to say it's a smart place to go, just that its resistance to American hegemony is well established.
A warrant may never even be issued, since if he is arrested Hongkong police will be duty bound to turn over anything of national security interest to Beijing. Yeah it is a pretty sharp move.
Right, it is but it isn't. The whole point of the piece is that because of HK's complicated relationship with China it makes extradition possible, just very hard. I guess my point is, why not Shanghai? I'm sure the PRC would love the opportunity to grand asylum to an Internet freedom activist.
"Nobody stands to win by taking decisive action on Snowden, so my guess, based on years of living in Hong Kong, is that both Beijing and Hong Kong will avoid doing so, which heightens the possiblity of a long, long court process."
That depends on how badly the US wants him. If they want him badly enough, they'll buy him from China with an offering big enough to create a winner. That would be trivial for the US to do - they could have Snowden back in a few days - but the price might be very high.
Would that do? Yep, I think it would. Perhaps even just the substantial delay of new arms sales. It's meant as a black and white example, but it proves my point. There are countless things the US could give China that are worth a lot more to China than Snowden is.
Your comment is comical in its lack of realism. And that's comical because you're alluding to me being the unrealistic one. In reality, politics is a game of buying or trading favors. It's that simple, and it works that way locally or internationally.
If it's that simple, you'll have no trouble coming up with historical examples of the mechanism you describe having operated with the simplicity you assert.
I'm sure Jim Clapper would support your novel scheme, but fortunately there are still some adults somewhere in the chain of command. Everyone whose salary isn't dependent on believing the prevailing security paranoia knows that Snowden (or even a hundred Snowdens) is not a threat to USA interests. Letting Taiwan and its massive manufacturing base suffer for this sort of political bullshit would be a major threat to those interests.
The question I've been wondering about is how he'll get money to live on. Presumably it won't be long before the US will freeze his bank accounts, if they haven't already.
Has he set up offshore bank accounts in advance? Won't they get frozen too?
Is he planning on working in HK? He probably doesn't have a visa that allows working, and switching visas usually requires leaving the country. He's too well-known now to work under the table.
The commentary about swapping SIMs and fast 'net puzzles me. If someone in Snowden's position wants to avoid tracking, given the leaked information that is the very reason he is wanted, I would think the safest tactic is to eschew personal devices and 'net usage entirely.
My guess is someone gave him advice on it because at first sight Hong Kong isn't the most obvious choice at all.
The infographic explains how it all works but if someone had asked me something like that, I wouldn't even be able to answer it for my own country.
It's 2013, we have the internets, 24/7 news and no end of sources on everything related to politics of any country on the planet.
If something you don't know becomes vital to a project you're planning, you fire up Google every day for a few hours and learn what's going on. It's clear he didn't leak on a whim: he planned it over a certain period of time and, being a smart fellow, had all the time in the world to read up on the fine points of US international diplomacy, which would significantly narrow down his research pool on extradition systems.
"For one thing, I don't remember Martin Luther King, Jr.,
or Rosa Parks running off and hiding in China. The people
who ran the civil-rights movement were willing to break
the law and suffer the consequences."
"That's a little different than putting the nation's
security at risk and running away."
"What I see in Edward Snowden is just a narcissistic young
man who has decided he is smarter than the rest of us"
"I don't know what he is beyond that. But he is no hero.
If he has a point — which I'm not sure he does — he
would help his cause by voluntarily coming home to face
the consequences."
Source:
Schieffer to Snowden: Come home, face the consequences
Martin Luther King didn't live in a world where we imprison innocent men in legal limbo without trial or habeas corpus, or where we officially sanctioned torture and the oubliette. He could trust that he would be vindicated by the justice system.
The whole point of the Snowden story is that the government is not trustworthy in this era. I would not trust the US government to give him justice any more than they did Aaron Swartz.
I think Snowden knew exactly what to expect if he "faced the music" and exactly how much attention he could keep on his story in exile.
"Martin Luther King didn't live in a world where we imprison innocent men in legal limbo without trial or habeas corpus, or where we officially sanctioned torture and the oubliette. He could trust that he would be vindicated by the justice system."
You're kidding me right?!? You honestly think the era he lived in was fair and just to people like him? Do you know how many lynchings there were in Florida alone? Does the name Emmett Till ring a bell? What did you think MLK fought for?
Do any of you believe that there would have been a new Letter from Birmingham Jail if Snowden were imprisoned? Keep in mind the US authorities are calling this civil rights whistleblowing "treason". Aiding the terrorists and enemy combatant status cannot be far behind.
Like it or not, the rule of law has been badly damaged by the endless emergency.
These days you do your nonviolent resistance from behind the safety of a diplomatic minefield.
What Snowden did is, arguably, treason. Whatever you believe about the righteousness of his cause, or the evil of the programs he exposed, or the corruption of the government pursuing him, that he's being pursued is in fact a case of the system working as intended.
Not by anyone who understands the legal definition of treason. Among other things, treason presupposes formally declared hostilities. Even Cold War turncoats convicted of espionage for aiding the Soviet Union couldn't be charged with treason, since technically, we were never at war with the USSR.
He could be forgiven for not understanding what a formal declaration of war is, because the US hasn't issued such a declaration for the better part of a century.
That hasn't stopped us from starting or entering numerous wars, of course... they're just "undeclared." Cuts down on the paperwork, dontchaknow.
I do. I'm suggesting that will probably be the justification, regardless. What is treason and what gets treated as treason can be two different things.
Sorry, but even the most agressive prosecutor is highly unlikely to bring a charge that is so easily and cleanly dismissed. It's like trying to charge someone with the murder of a person who clearly isn't dead. Our justice system has gotten hyper-agressive, but it's not that bad. At least not yet.
A far more likely tack would be trying him under the Espionage Act, which is vague enough to make prosecution easy and defense hard. Relatively speaking, at least.
King lived in a world where extra-judicial killings were frequent in the South, and the perpetrators (many with connections to local law enforcement) had effective impunity.
Also, the 1950s Red Scare was a fairly recent memory; that resulted in ruining the livelihoods of numerous Americans, including at least one prominent and politically active African-American, Paul Robeson.
Its this sort of uneducated, a-historical crap that makes it impossible to read HN lately. If you think the government was less scary back then, in the grip of anti-communist paranoia, you're insane, deluded, or just plain uneducated. Saying that MLK could count on a fair shake from a justice system that didn't give any minority a fair shake back then, much less political radicals, is the height of ridiculousness.
HN has been especially frustrating for the last 2 weeks.
Maybe, instead of hoping that people will maintain perfect civility throughout a nonstop stream of political discussions, something could instead be done to ratchet back the politics on HN?
Although yeah, implying that blacks in the American South in the mid-20th C could rely on the justice system is ridiculous enough to force me to agree with rayiner for once.
Frankly, I think the offending comment is insulting to the intelligence, as well as to the (collective) experience of people who were the target of racial discrimination laws. I don't want to be political about it, but HN as a community is sometimes subject to an alarming degree of demographic myopia.
Sorry, I got emotional and attacked him instead of his comment. For that I apologize. But he essentially implied that a black guy fighting segregation during the height of communist paranoia and racial tension in the 1960's could count on a fairer shake from the justice system than a wealthy white kid in 2013 with the support of a rich and influential segment of society. That's the kind of statement that tends to engender emotional, rather than cool and collected responses.
But he essentially implied that a black guy fighting
segregation during the height of communist paranoia and
racial tension in the 1960's could count on a fairer
shake from the justice system than a wealthy white kid in
2013 with the support of a rich and influential segment
of society.
I get what you're trying to say... but I'm not sure if the latter point of that statement is so spot on. Manning was a wealthy white kid with the support of a rich and influential segment of society... as was Aaron Swartz, and yet they were both met with the heavy side of law.
Manning was a soldier and faced the military justice system, which is necessarily harsh. With Schwartz, we'll never know what kind of shake he would have gotten--a judge never even got to hear his plea.
I don't think so. right now Major Nidal Hasan (the army psychiatrist who, by his own admission, perpetrated a small massacre at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009) is having a trial right now and acting as his own defense counsel. Predictably, he's making a hash of it and is likely to receive the death penalty because his only offered defense, which has been rejected as a matter of law, is that he was acting to protect the lives of Taliban leaders; but he's most certainly getting a fair trial - a fact which is irritating a great many people on the right.
I'm pretty sure TPTB exactly predicted the events of Hassan's trial. It has gone forward in this manner because this is the manner they desire. It's not like Hassan was held for months in solitary without the luxury of clothing.
The point isn't that the government has suddenly gone bad, but that the specific nature of the badness has changed very substantially and fairly recently. Snowden's choices may be unprecedented, but so is the situation that the rest of us are facing. His greatest fear (which he was very explicit about) is that this new and very unsettling state of affairs would go unrecognized, even after he made his revelations.
It was scary back then for sure. MLK and his supporters suffered beatings, faced extrajudicial lynchings, etc. I'm not disputing any of that. Yet, we don't have to speculate whether MLK could count on a fair shake from the justice system, because history tells us. MLK was arrested 30 times[1], yet he spent relatively little time incarcerated. The longest sentence he ever received was 4 months (compare that to Aaron Swartz' 6 months plea offer), but he served less than that. His famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail was written when he was in jail for only 11 days[2]. As screwed up as things were then, the justice system was not so draconian that it prevented him from leading an effective campaign of civil disobedience.
I don't think it's unreasonable to speculate that Edward Snowden, if arrested in the US, would be denied bail. He would be facing decades in prison. It's quite likely he'd be held in solitary confinement and he could even be subjected to "Special Administrative Measures" (a recent invention) that would severely restrict his freedom to communicate with the outside world[3]. There would be no Letter from a Federal Detention Center from Edward Snowden. These draconian sentences and measures make it completely impossible to conduct a meaningful campaign of civil disobedience, as they can be wielded to completely neutralize a movement's leaders and serve as a warning to anyone else who is thinking of doing the same thing.
What's truly ahistoric is comparing Snowden to MLK to suggest he needs to come back to the US and face the consequences. Snowden may not be facing beatings and lynch mobs, but he would be facing a justice system that would treat him far more harshly than it ever treated MLK. We've thankfully lost many of the great evils of the past, but there are new evils. Civil disobedience is even more difficult today, and what's especially insidious is that instead of it being discouraged by lynch mobs and corrupt southern sheriffs, it's discouraged by the justice system itself.
(We should be thinking about the consequences Snowden would face because the essential civil disobedience of the future may very well be about information, but if you'd rather look at "conventional" protesters more akin to MLK, consider Al Sharpton being jailed for 90 days in 2001 for trespassing during a protest against a naval base in San Juan[4], or the case of the anti-nuke protesters that was on HN a few days ago[5]. Not quite as draconian as the situation Snowden could be facing, but the sentences are still unfair, longer than what MLK faced, and make carrying out effective civil disobedience extremely difficult.)
[3] They're mostly used for "dangerous" prisoners, like suspected or convicted terrorists, but they're also used for those accused or convicted of espionage charges: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2009/June/09-ag-564.html
Hey rayiner, if it helps at all, I frequently follow your comments on Hacker News, and I've been able to grasp all your (very cogent) examples of how the government was worse in the 20th century. So it's not falling on deaf ears.
Just wanted to give some encouragement since you seem really discouraged by HN this week. It's been straining on the whole community, I think.
Strong agree (for both rayiner and tptacek). It's amazing how much abuse has been heaped on them for simply putting things into perspective, for questioning stories, for thinking carefully about what's actually being stated and claimed by various parties.
He could trust that he would be vindicated by the justice system.
His belief that justice would someday inevitably prevail belied the injustice of his system. To the degree that any of what you suggest was true in the day, it wasn't true at all for blacks, less so for those who didn't 'keep their place'.
In this modern case, Edward Snowden is the beneficiary of far, far more privilege and opportunity for fairness from his own government than Martin Luther King could ever have hoped for. Just imagine what the discourse would be if Edward Snowden turned out to be Arabic, or Muslim, or went by a Muslim sounding name. If he fled to the wrong country they might already be picking smoking chunks of him off a cafe wall. There would be no debate in the media as to whether he was a 'hero' or 'traitor'.
Obviously it's a matter of opinion, but the comment I replied to offered a naively rosy picture of how justice was administered in MLK's day. It's a common error in political debates to invoke an earlier time as if it were a golden age of some sort.
As a parallel example, I'm not too enthused about our use of drones in military conflicts these days, but a lot of people who object to the use of drones overlook the fact that 20 years ago we did the same thing with cruise missiles, and 20 years before that we engaged in carpet bombing, with a much higher loss of life in the aggregate as you go farther back in history. So it's reasonable to argue that drones are bad, but naive to omit the fact that they're substantially less bad than how we used to wage war.
Sorry I think I got distracted, accidentally pressed enter while tabbing through pages, and never finished my thought. I totally agree with your point about nostalgia.
I was going to say that we need to adopt a new understanding of what it means to be free.
Maybe most people care more about security than freedom from surveillance or government corruption. If this is what they want, then this is what they'll get and if we're going to talk about being free we need to redefine freedom so that it reflects the unrestricted flow of information instead of arbitrary "endowed" rights, which aren't rights at all if we don't want them.
The Civil Rights movement was a struggle of a minority against a majority for rights that were rightfully theirs. Today, the majority is handing its rights over on a silver platter to the security/intelligence agency. I think we are less free.
> I wouldn't say that the US is substantially more free today than it was then.
It's not something that needs a lot of thought if you consider that the current president allegedly personally authorises deadly drone strikes even on american citizens (on "Terror Tuesdays"), while Nixon had to resign over Watergate.
I don't think American should get any preference here. Nothing gives the US to force its might onto other countries, but while we're at it regardless of my non-voting voice, drone strikes are better than the carpet bombings of civilians that Nixon/Kissinger ordered in Laos and Cambodia [1] during the Vietnam War, not to mention the other things American troops did to flush out guerrilla fighters (killing entire villages). The violence is at least starting to have less unintended casualties (I don't think the drone program has many casualties that were not known before the order). In the big picture, I'm more worried about how to control the state in a world whose infrastructure enables mass surveillance.
> "The people who ran the civil-rights movement were willing to break the law and suffer the consequences."
That's correct, and I agree that participating in civil disobedience, by nature, requires being willing to "do the time" as part of making a point.
Whistleblowers, however, are a different story. I don't believe that Snowden was trying to be a martyr for Americans' right to privacy; I think he saw something that he wanted to be revealed (or that he thought needed to be, if you're arguing his side of the story) and leaked it.
I do not wish (or expect) for Snowden to be sentenced with capital punishment if he were to turn himself in.
However any attorney or advocacy organization will find it extremely arduous to prove that he did this in good faith.
Fleeing only makes it worse.
It is universally considered a symptom of insincerity.
An insincerity of mission and an insincerity of motive.
It will be an entirely unconvincing case even if it were made in the court of public opinion much less closed-door hearings.
Had he even made the slightest of effort to reach out (to whatever institution, individual or group that he trusted, based in the United States) he would have left an indelible impression on privacy advocates, news organizations and the larger public, even if his criminal fate eventually remained unmitigated, by that act of outreach.
This is a common attack on activists: "if you're really interested in your fellow man, you must act like a saint hermit. Anything less than that is unacceptable and means you're wrong on <position you support>"
How is the problem (that the NSA can record everything we do online) related to a young man's attempts to save his skin?
Would the NSA stop spying on us if it turned out that Snowden was a buddhist monk? Would the NSA stop spying on us if he'd let himself be crucified on a hill near Washington, dying for our sins?
Turning the attention on his means is another way to deflect it from the main problem: that NSA and friends run wild on all the routers in the world with no respect for anyone's privacy or human rights. This is the real issue, regardless of whether Snowden is a saint, a prostitute, a Dutch double-agent or an alien with a penchant for bicycles.
It isn't fair that activists are held to higher standard, but it is true. If you want to change the world, the world expects more of you. This isn't new. Occupy Wall Street may have had a point, but they allowed themselves to be marginalized due to more superficial aspects of the movement.
If Snowden had been "crucified on a hill near Washington" (or even just stayed anonymous), it wouldn't have ended the NSA's spying but it would have definitely added force to his message. Focusing on his means may be a deflection, but he is somewhat responsible for allowing the deflection being as compelling as it is.
It may be too early to dismiss Occupy as having been "marginalized". Sure they're not camped out anymore, but camping was never really one of their top priorities. Who can say that the example of Occupy didn't inspire Snowden to a degree?
Anyone who isn't involved in Occupy just writes them off as a bunch of drum-banging hippies who don't bath frequently enough. Even those who would normally be receptive to what they have to say.
I'd say the media is to blame, but the act of camping was probably the real problem.
The cause for whistle blowing is totally independent of respect or disrespect of a state's corrupt or otherwise judicial system. If you're an international game changer, what we're talking about here, ES initiated a cause far transcending something as trivial as what the political poseurs back home think of him.
I think Snowden did the best he could do under the circumstances. Expose the truth, run to a safe place, and then identify himself publicly. He's not running, he just prefers freedom to a jail cell. Who doesn't? MLK and Rosa Parks weren't facing 100 years in jail or the death penalty, were they?
In 1999, the King family conducted a civil case to consider the existence of an assassination conspiracy. The suit (for wrongful death) mentioned only Loyd Jowers by name, but also alleged government involvement.
The jury–six blacks and six whites—found that King had been the victim of assassination by a conspiracy involving the Memphis police as well as federal agencies. [1]
The judge continued: “Do you also find that others, including governmental agencies, were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by the defendant?’ Your answer to that one is also ‘Yes.’” [2]
Head down to the "denial of confession" section. Whether or not there was a conspiracy, I just wanted to bring up that it was still questionable about who actually shot Dr. King.
Yeah, the greatest accomplishments in history are often linked to narcissistic personalities, generally because the person needs to prove something to the world to make up for their secretly poor self-esteem.
MLK was protected by his fame. Rosa Park's act was entirely symbolic. Ellsberg was protected by the fact that he had given the information to a number of extremely influential Senators; something I'm sure Snowden would have loved to have done, if he was lucky enough to have that kind of access, and if there were still such thing as a senator who is honest and cares about the constitution.
(Or if "journalists" still believed their job was to serve as a check on, rather than an apologist for, the powerful)
There are questions surrounding who actually shot him. The man who went to prison for it may have been set up, as he denied personally shooting Dr. King.
MLK was planning a huge "live in" on the National Mall to pursue greater income equality and there were plenty of interested parties that would have wanted to prevent that.
...he had given the information to a number of extremely influential Senators...
I guess the NSA learned from that episode; apparently they preemptively told every member of Congress about all the awful things they've been doing recently. Of course the secret setting in which they admitted these transgressions was designed to put the legislators at a disadvantage. Multiple Representatives have denied ever understanding what the briefings were about.
"Snowden's Junket"? Interesting choice of words there. Does that classify as a slight or a smear?
"he would help his cause by voluntarily coming home to face the consequences" - I think that quote suggests who's smarter out of Schieffer and Snowden.
Snowden knows exactly what the consequences would be, because he's not the first whistleblower. Bradley Manning is still potentially facing the death penalty, and at the very least he will never see the outside of a jail again. And still plenty of people found enough reason to label him a coward. It is way too easy to be in a comfy chair and say that other people should throw their life away to stand by their principles.
IMHO, Snowden should just ask for political asylum if that is what he went to hong kong for. Given the circumstances, he would probably get it.
Manning is not facing the death penalty, is not a "whistleblower" by any reasonable stretch of the term (except perhaps by lucky accident), and his actions were different from Snowden's, at Snowden's own admission.
Manning fits the definition of a whistleblower just fine, he brought a bunch of injustices to public attention.
As for not facing the death penalty, he looks like he's halfway at deaths door already, they're just taking their time about it. The world is watching the way Manning is treated and drawing its own conclusions from that.
And the U.S. undoubtedly killed a bunch of criminals by dropping the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, but even the most die-hard supporters of the bomb don't try to make that a positive point of the whole affair.
Instead that tends to be evaluated as a whole and not just with a narrow lens that happens to mesh with whatever you were looking to find.
It's a tough spot. Now days, you need at least 1.5 million to defend yourself against a federal prosecution, after the feds have seized your assets. Very few people can do that. Without the cash, it would turn into "guy did some stuff, then went to jail".
This is easy to forget in the abstract, but never in actual practice (Aaron Schwartz for sure, but probably a vast majority who've encountered the US court system in any non-trivial way).
It is, in my mind, akin to spending / political contributions in politics. Money has an essential role to play but should not be allowed to corrupt the process.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Three branches of government. We hold these truths ...
Useful to know how the enemy is arguing. Sure, the consequences are torture, imprisonment and death. But who wouldn't take those consequences to be a real hero?
Indeed, the demand from some that dissidents should all throw themselves upon a pyre is peculiar to say the least. I feel safe in asserting that anyone who demands it is either foolish or has ulterior motives for demanding it.
I hope we are not forgetting that civil disobedience is not the only legitimate form of resistance. Particularly, when the prerequisites for successful civil disobedience are not precisely met, attempting it is not being noble but rather just being foolish. There is nothing admirable about taking yourself out of the fight for no reason other than to satisfy those who demand strict adherence to the principles of civil disobedience.
Yeah, no. That doesn't work like that. The times now and 40 years ago were different.
CIA, NSA and the whole gamut are now much more efficient than they were 40 years ago (no need for due process etc.) If you try to play fair, they'll fuck you over big time.
Look how much good the legal system was to Aaron Schwartz for a minor misdemeanor. You'd never hear from Edward Snowden, until he just came out and admitted he was Chinese spy and that he loves Big Brother, I mean Big Government.
PS. He isn't in China btw, he is in Hong Kong. Which isn't a communist country as comment before me noted.
True, history hasn't been my strong side, but I don't see how Watergate is relevant?
The difference in technology (between now and then) is huge, since our lives have migrated more towards the Internet. Before the wiretapping could only go so far. You needed to install wiretapping in a room (phones could always be bugged).
Now wiretapping is everywhere. You literally carry the equipment for others to wiretap you (mobile phones, laptops, google glass, etc). It's just an order of magnitude more easier now.
You appear to have a high value or `goal' of personal `heroism'. Is this something imprinted from mom and dad or scripted in Boy Scouts? Your kind do well in High School marching band, as E- ball-peen hammers in the motor-pool, and as dutiful shrapnel fodder. That's the only reason the rest of us remain succinctly cordial and pleasant to your schoolboy entrained narcissism.
If you can have all the effect, getting the message out, without getting bruises, that is strictly better than getting bruises. The only thing standing in the way of that is people like you who think you have to sacrifice yourself for your message to count. Who would Snowden be selflessly helping by turning himself in?
Someone who can't see the "point" Snowden is trying to make obviously shouldn't offer him advice. But hey, if I got paid to rattle off my opinion on national TV regardless of its merit, I might bloviate too.
It's striking how one obscure blog post can be more valuable than all the media speculation on this question (that I've seen) put together. That doesn't make its interpretation true, of course. But the alternate explanation that was going through my head seems a bit movie-esque by comparison.