I'm not sure, I feel like Obama pretends to be a nice guy because he sortof has to be a nice guy in the US. He couldn't get away with poisoning a journalist. Correct me if I'm wrong.
He could probably get away with poisoning a journalist, but probably not in such a... dramatic and obvious... way. That polonium poisoning was astounding, it just screams "So fucking what."
In my reading it wasn't the main motif, it was a way to kill in the way that nobody would even question who did it, while not having to publicly claim responsibility.
>He couldn't get away with poisoning a journalist.
Well, no, but then again, he wouldn't even have to know. The system is quite extended. If someone, say a Hastings guy, makes too many waves, he could, say, die in a car crash.
Or if some Garry Webb guy discovers something too bad, somebody can make some calls, and have 13 reporters investigating him (a fellow journalist) instead of his claims. And if they eventually prove to be true, 10 years later, and are even admitted by officials, who cares then?
Actually Putin is a well beloved leader in his country, and does very well at elections (BS memes aside). He's just less popular with tech urbanised youth, an insignificant minority in Russia, but quite vocal in the intertubes.
Yes, there is corruption in Russia (not that it doesn't happen in every country, it's just than in Russia it's old style as opposed to the modern western style (from Enron to Maddof to trillion dollars bailouts for golden boys). Actually it's more or less the same in Italy, not nobody gives a damn about Italy, because the mob are good with foreign interests, and the US is not competing with Italy for resources anyway.
What's important is that he didn't sell the Russian assets to foreign interests and fuck his own people, like the much beloved to the West Yeltsin did. Foreign interests that would like to be able to grab Russian resources and do as they please in the country have sponsored many a BS campaigns against him, from the classic old "Voice of America" style to modern "NGO" style, to blowing out of proportion BS political opponents that get 1/5 of the votes, if that. Like covering US elections by focusing on some third party fringe candidate.
But that's for the Russians. For everybody else, the even more important thing is: Russia doesn't mess with other countries outside their neighbourhood.
Yeltsin did sell off all of Russia's assets to the oligarchs, yes. He did so at the behest of the US, and it was wrong and stupid.
But Putin is nowhere near as rosy as you portray him. Being a nationalist who pines for the days of Stalin may play well in a Russia leery of Western democracy after getting tag teamed by Russia and the US during and after the collapse of the USSR and enduring the poverty and famine that ensued, but it doesn't make you good. Co-opting the Russian Orthodox church into a neo-czarist Church of Putin is hardly the mark of a good leader, either. Nor, for that matter, does murdering people who speak against you.
>Russia doesn't mess with other countries outside their neighbourhood.
Tell that to Georgia. Tell that to the people being murdered and oppressed in Russian client states like Syria and Iran, or Libya before them.
>But Putin is nowhere near as rosy as you portray him.
I agree -- but he's still a better choice than the current alternatives. You have to be pragmatic with these things.
>Being a nationalist who pines for the days of Stalin may play well in a Russia leery of Western democracy after getting tag teamed by Russia and the US during and after the collapse of the USSR and enduring the poverty and famine that ensued, but it doesn't make you good. Co-opting the Russian Orthodox church into a neo-czarist Church of Putin is hardly the mark of a good leader, either. Nor, for that matter, does murdering people who speak against you.
Well, it seems the Czarist theme plays well with the Russian population. As some kind of departure from USSR imagery and re-emergence of a "great Russia". And most of them are into the Russian Orthodox church, so that also plays into it. There's also cronyism. But all those are details in the grand scheme of things.
The important is the existence of Russia as an independent and sovereign country, that can protest it's immediate interests and provide a future for it's people -- instead of becoming a destabilized neo-colony.
Russia has a lot of resources and opportunities, and there are a lot of foreign interests that spend a lot of money in order to get their big payback by getting someone malleable like Yeltsin comes into power. Russians have no say whatsoever in the US elections, for example. But tons of political opponents blown out of proportion to serious players by western media, sponsored "NGOs", pro-western think tanks and groups, and "voice of America" type media blather on whenever there are Russian elections, to get some pro-western (interests) guy in power. Putin, whatever BS he is, is also a "fuck you" to those attempts.
>Tell that to Georgia.
Well, that's why I said "outside their neighbourhood". And those people are not exactly role models either.
>Tell that to the people being murdered and oppressed in Russian client states like Syria and Iran, or Libya before them.
I'd tell them, but then again, they'd tell me that their people much preferred the previous situation (in Libya and Syria) than rampant islamists killing everyone, chaos, civil war and massacre). As for Iran, they'd probably tell me that they like it as it is, and they'd be even better if somebody hadn't toppled their legitimate democratic leader to install his lackey, the shah.
The Superbowl ring thing was quite clearly a misunderstanding: It is exceedingly odd to present jewelry to someone in such a context just for them to look at (especially to the president of Russia for a national football league in the US, as if he would be awestruck). Yet presenting jewelry to heads of state (which aren't personally kept, generally, but instead are showcased in national archives), is common. So Kraft was really silly to present the ring like that, and you can't hold that against Putin.
It really got... cinematic. The whole tie-in with Aaron Hernandez (the NFL player recently arrested for murder) being some major revenge conspiracy was just too good. I chose to just believe it all for shits and giggles
I thought the reason that we had seen only a few of the PRISM slides was because Snowden was being cautious rather than cavalier. It strikes me that this way the media can be blamed for any negative public opinions about Snowden on the basis that they gave out too much or too little information.
On a some-what-related note, I wonder if this is going to be a rerun of the Wikileaks state department cables, where a Guardian reporter 'unknowingly' gave away the password to the encrypted 'insurance' cache. I still wonder whether that whole thing wasn't track 2 diplomacy masquerading as espionage theater.
Snowden asked The Guardian to run the whole deck, IIRC. They consulted with people (US Govt, maybe?) and released just 4 slides.
Later, WaPo ran some more slides, showing more codenames and data collection info (such as NUCLEON's phone call content collection). This, too, has a redaction box on it which was confirmed as _redacted by the paper_.
These journalists are not trying to jam their dick in the beehive - they're just doing their job of running this story. They're not in the business of publishing classified data for the sake of publishing classified data.
The goal here is to give you the relevant data and a bit of context/narrative supported by appropriate facts, not just to pastebin a bunch of files up on the web— though in the case of these Snowden leaks, the net effect would be very close to the same.
Well according to Assange (and choosing Russia Today as a source that's been sympathetic to him), there's more stuff coming from the Snowden channel, even though it's out of Snowden's hands.
Nobody said it would be too much to ask, but you don't have a constitutional right to released on bail (judges have always decided that on a case-by-case basis) or to decide which court your case will be heard in (I presume Snowden is hoping to have a trial take place within the 9th circuit based on his residence in Hawaii, given the relatively libertarian bent of the 9th Circuit appeals court).
All defendants have the right to make requests for such things...through filing motions in court. Snowden is asking (strictly speaking, his father is asking on his behalf) for extrajudicial guarantees that are not mentioned in the constitution or available to normal defendants.
>>All defendants have the right to make requests for such things...through filing motions in court.Snowden is asking (strictly speaking, his father is asking on his behalf) for extrajudicial guarantees that are not mentioned in the constitution or available to normal defendants.
Extrajudicial guarantees are absolutely meaningless in a judicial court. Simply because Snowden and the justice department make a deal to obtain his extradition doesn't mean that the court has to accept the deal. The court will rule based on the particulars of the case not on what is convenient for the government.
I don't think anyone said that you have a constitutional right to be released on bail or to decide which court your case will be heard in.
You (supposedly) have a right to a fair trial, as well as the right to be free of torture, and the argument is that sitting in solitary confinement for months or years, only to be convicted in a heavily biased Virginia court, would violate these things.
No, that's not the argument at all. Snowden's father said that he anticipated his son would return if he had a guarantee of freedom before trial, no gag order, and a choice of venue. This was widely reported and I am assessing his statements at face value.
Nobody but you has mentioned solitary confinement or Virginia courts; you're entitled to an opinion that that's the risk he's facing, but that has nothing to do with the statement made by Snowden's father. You don't speak for him.
I know what his father said. You're reading it wrong is all. You're also incorrect that nobody but me mentioned solitary confinement or Virginia courts. Snowden himself brought that issue up and it's been widely discussed.
Without having the letter from Snowden's father in front of us, we can't say exactly what is being asked for; but the fact that the United States of America has been labeled a 'country of concern' by multiple international bodies monitoring human rights violations[1] for it's treatment of Bradley Manning means that Snowden's family may rationally be concerned that Snowden would be subjected to prejudicial treatment whilst in pre-trial detention. Most especially the holding of individuals in solitary confinement throughout the US penal system is currently the subject of international concern [2] as a method of torture and cruel and unusual punishment. Especially in regards to the treatment of whistleblowers; which brings in the question of the right of the citizenry at large to be informed of the deeds of the government. [3]
The fact that the United States has been so willing to violate it's own stated principles of justice, not merely in the case of accused terrorists in the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay; but also domestically. Means that Snowden's father would be justified in asking for public guarantees of treatment that should be accorded to an accused defendant as a matter of course.
If I were negotiating Snowden's surrender I can think of a number of guarantees that I would demand of the US Justice department. They would start with a complete ban on solitary confinement, a guaranteed right of access by his legal team, counselors, internation human rights observers and selected media contacts. I would also ensure that he was guaranteed the right to choose his wardrobe for all public appearances and might even ask for public video feeds of the public areas where he is held in confinement so that the world could see he was being treated with utmost fairness.
This country has never quite lived up to it's idealized image of itself; but the fact that any rational person would today fear torture at the hands of the US government if they are held in detention should give us all pause.
From what I understand Snowden's father is very eager to get him back to the US. As long as he has "iron clad assurances of his constitutional rights", which is kind of silly. This is an incredibly high profile case and the Justice Dept doesn't want to win this one by cheating. They take pride in their work as investigators and prosecutors, they will want this case to be nice and fair. Despite what the movies have lead use to believe we aren't going to send Jason Bourne to assassinate him in the snow.
Snowden is a very interesting case. On one hand, he seems to have an idealistic view of his actions. He sincerely believes that he did the right thing. On the other hand, he now has what most 29 yr olds would give anything for: international fame. The world is tracking his every move, people are starting to venerate him...I kind of trust that his motives were pure but this is one hell of a side benefit.
Does anyone remember when Kanye West looked into the camera and said "George Bush does not care about black people"? I think that he and Snowden are linked because they both felt very strongly about an issue, but couldn't or didn't pursue recourse through the proper channels. Anyone who saw Kanye's face before he made his statement could see the brew of fear and nervousness inside of him, because deep down he knew that his next action probably wasn't the right thing to do. I would guess that Snowden went through similar emotions. He absolutely had to do what he thought was right, but inside he knew that there was probably a better way.
Snowden isn't an agent of espionage or a traitor. He is a criminal, he clearly broke the law. The perceived Constitutionality of the NSA programs is irrelevant. The Constitution itself says clearly who is in charge of interpreting the Constitution. He doesn't get a pass based on his beliefs or because of our beliefs.
I hope he comes home and faces a trial. If he gets an OJ level superstar legal team he has a good chance of being found not guilty. If he loses he's facing around 10 yrs in a lower security prison. The show trial and national debate he'll spark will probably be more than worth it.
"The perceived Constitutionality of the NSA programs is irrelevant."
This is incorrect. If the NSA programs are found to be unconstitutional by the courts, Snowden will have to be regarded as a whistleblower. If he is a whistleblower, then he is not a criminal.
The very problem here is that a good number of us Americans, and a great many more non-Americans, regard secret surveillance as both an affront to the 4th amendment of the US Constitution, and the basic human right to freedom. Secrecy is simply anathema to democracy.
I don't think it's actually true that whistleblower protections in the US effectively sanction any disclosure or leak if what is leaked somehow implicates some crime. I'd welcome a source to back your assertion up, though.
It's an interesting question the criminality of his actions may from a legal standpoint be completely independent of his status as a whistleblower or spy ( and those two categories may not be mutually exclusive either ).
Certainly he has violated his confidentiality agreements ( a civil liability ) and exposed information that is classified ( potentially a criminal liability ).
And it's possible for rational people to think that he may be doing things that are morally justifiable even if criminal. Where most people who think that investigating systematic acts of lawbreaking ( and wholesale collection of private metadata absent criminal suspicion from private companies by __any__ .gov qualifies as such on first examination ), may believe that those who bring such acts to light should be spared punishment because they are acting in defense of the greater good of society.
It is healthy for us to be reminded that our naive moral calculus is only loosely mapped to our system of laws.
Sure. I'm interested pretty exclusively in the legalisms of this situation, not in the moral dimension (which I don't believe I can learn anything about from a message board).
The Federal Whistleblower Act does not cover Snowden.
5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8)(A)-(B).
For disclosures not made to the Inspector General or Special Counsel
"if such disclosure is not specifically prohibited by law and if such information is not specifically required by Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or the conduct of foreign affairs;"
Also
www.aclu.org/pdfs/safefree/disavowed_report.pdf
(Page 10)
I acknowledge he has no protection under the Whistleblower Act, having read a bit more. But let me pose a hypothetical.
You find a Top Secret folder lying on a park bench, with records of a horrific crime by a respectable cabal of executive, judiciary, and legislative branch members. The president and his staff, a few FISA judges, and some high-placed congressional cronies have conspired to brainwash everyone with a magic potion, and seize total dictatorial control of the US, then the world. They are using the loose oversight of post-9/11 homeland security to get away with it.
So is it a crime to send that proof to Glenn Greenwald? I'd argue that there are theoretically classified documents that it would not be a crime to make public, and all you can say is Snowden's leak doesn't fit the bill.
Yes it would be a crime. The fact that you think it shouldn't or that there are instance where you think it shouldn't doesn't mean it isn't. The statutes are pretty clear.
"Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it"
" Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information—"
The law you cite clearly says the information must be "relating to national defense."
In the example I have created, while wildly fantastic and unbelievable, the information does not relate to national defense at all. It is simply a record of a conspiracy committed by powerful people, which was "classified" by those same powerful people.
I was presuming that the justification for any of the actions would be national defense and at least have a tenuous connection to national defense as would be the case in any realistic scenario. It is not hard to come up with one even for your outlandish example.
Right, but there are still some sticky issues surrounding nullification.
"This so-called right of jury nullification is put forward in the name of liberty and democracy, but its explicit avowal risks the ultimate logic of anarchy."
Essentially, while jury nullification does exist and should be upheld it is critical that jurors are aware of it beforehand or may be otherwise informed.
Fair enough. I had assumed military trials may be treated differently as Manning's trial didn't have a jury. But it turns out he declined a jury with this reasoning:
> "The answer may be that a tough judge is still a better option than a military jury picked from a pool of serving soldiers that widely considers Manning to be a traitor. "
Yes, Manning is being tried under the UCMJ, but would have had a jury available to him there as well. However: Snowden is a civilian. He can't be tried in a military court (absent his joining the armed forces of some organization we're war with).
> I hope he comes home and faces a trial. If he gets an OJ level superstar legal team he has a good chance of being found not guilty. If he loses he's facing around 10 yrs in a lower security prison. The show trial and national debate he'll spark will probably be more than worth it.
Wow, what a terrible and imcompassionate comment. Here's young man who braved it all to give us some factual information about spying. When '1984' scenarios were discussed before this leak, most people shrugged it off as some conspiracy theory or one being unnecessarily cynical. This leak is a big reality check for those people.
Instead of empathizing with Snowden, here you are saying that spending prison time will be 'worth it'. Worth it for whom? The media who can write tons of stories? The US citizens who now got some factual information but put the source in jail anyway?
Snowden _already_ gave up his cushy life for informing the US citizens about this leak. Expecting him to do more speaks more about one's character than anything else.
I am already saddenned that there has been outrage only on the internet but not on the streets in the US. It can only mean one thing - the US people cannot be bothered to leave the comfort of their homes where there is, I am sure, something much more 'entertaining' and 'fun'.
> This is an incredibly high profile case and the Justice Dept doesn't want to win this one by cheating. They take pride in their work as investigators and prosecutors, they will want this case to be nice and fair.
nice joke. Manning would laugh at it if he had any mental or body energy left.
so, does it mean that you think that this statement about Justice Deartment is not applicable to US military ?
"the Justice Dept doesn't want to win this one by cheating. They take pride in their work as investigators and prosecutors, they will want this case to be nice and fair."
I'm saying you can't use the Bradley Manning case as an example of the bad treatment Snowden would receive from the DoJ, because the DoJ is not responsible for whatever is going on with Bradley Manning. Snowden is a civilian so he would not be tried by the military.
Not sure how many layers of paranoiac overanalysis I'm applying here, but letting Snowden fall into the clutches of Russian intelligence may be a far better deterrent to future leakers than a 'clean' prosecution and imprisonment here in the US.
It seems like a corollary to the Streisand effect. The US pressured Ecuador to not grant Snowden asylum, which in turn prevented Snowden from escaping to a powerless country and living in relative obscurity. Now to remain free he must ask Russia and China for asylum. Most likely a much worse outcome for the US than what they would have had to deal with had they not applied pressure to Ecuador.
I thought the US pressure on Ecuador had nothing at all to do with him being stuck in Russia. Ecuador has stated they will still consider an application for asylum if he can get to either Ecuador or a consulate. His problem is that his U.S. passport has been revoked so he has no travel documents with which to use to get to Ecuador or enter Russian soil (i.e. anything past the airport)
That's a convenient excuse. Any state, including Ecuador, could just issue him a temporary passport if they wanted to -- but they're not, and it's obvious they've gotten cold feet. I presume some rather large sticks and/or carrots were waved during this call:
It is to their advantage after they get his data to (1) keep the US from finding out what they got from him, and (2) keeping him from giving that data to others.
Once Russia has what they need from him, they probably don't care what happens to him. Ship him back to the US, probably--that way they can try to patch things up diplomatically, and I imagine they have whatever they could squeeze out of him, intelligence-wise.
If we assume "etting Snowden fall into the clutches of Russian intelligence may be a far better deterrent to future leakers than a 'clean' prosecution and imprisonment here in the US", then surely if the Russians are capable of thinking long-term then treating Snowden nicely is in their best interest (why would they want to play into discouraging future American leaks?).
Depends on their belief in how my they've learned from him that we haven't independently figured out, normally you don't do that to make the counterintelligence game harder, e.g. does the US know all the methods he used to get his data? Plus if they want any future "defectors", as we called them in the bad old days, to come to them they've got to appear to treat him well.
Ship him back? He knows a lot about secure IT systems in the USA. If they are smart, they will keep him around to advise their own signals intelligence / hacker people on how to penetrate US systems. Maybe feed him some propaganda, help to push him a bit further over the edge (this is a guy who was at one time a big believer in the NSA, after all).
On the other hand, why wouldn't they hang onto him for a month or so, see if they can't extract information from him (not even talking about torture, there are much better ways of getting information from people), then ship him back to the USA or send him on his way someplace else. Long-term, he's served his purpose, no reason to spend a lot of money on him, especially if they want to smooth things over with the USA. And that's basically exactly what they're doing now: saying he can stick around until someone else claims him. Whether that's the USA convincing Russia to hand him over or some nation offering him asylum, Russia probably doesn't really care.
How do you know? How, for that matter, does he? Given that China operates its own great firewall and that Chinese companies make a lot of network engineering products, I would not consider it a secure environment for digital information that I was anxious to keep secret.
I don't know of course, but that should be the default assumption. Parent stated it as fact without basis. It's unlikely that China can break encryption that the NSA has approved suitable for Top Secret data. If they can do that, they already have all of this information.
They could have made multiple stealthy visits and installed keyloggers, but that's also unlikely to work with him.
Put simply, if you work for both the CIA and the NSA in foreign countries as a technical employee, you know how to not get keylogged.
Right, FLED. He is fleeing the USA because the government are after him because he revealed their corruption. Sure, the media could spin it but people already know.
Well if we're going to spin a narrative, allow me to spin a different one just as reality-based as yours. He took a job to get a clearance, worked there for a few months to get access to sensitive information, dumped it to the internet before he had to take a lie detector test and took off to avoid any consequences of his actions. And wow, what are the odds, he ended up in a country with a recent history of espionage with the USA (I'm sure we do it too, I'm just pointing out that it's an interesting choice).
Ah yes, the classic overtly telling everyone that you are taking their information version of espionage!
Usually countries try to keep their spies in positions where they can continuing leaking information, and usually they try to hide the fact that they are obtaining the information. Anyone who thinks that this looks anything like espionage is either uninformed or a US government shill.
I didn't say anyone put him up to it. I'm saying that Russia has an incentive to get on his good side for the time being. He has information that they undoubtedly want and have probably been working to get their hands on.
You are trying to argue that his intent was to harm the United States except that nothing he has done is inconsistent with reasonable behavior associated with well intentioned whistle blowing. The only incentive for his actions supported by evidence is the desire to do good.
He'd been employed by the NSA and CIA since 2006, and had top-secret clearance by 2009. Presumably this obviates the theory of "worked there for a few months to get access to sensitive information".
Snowden himself made a similar claim minus the clearance part:
"My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” he told the Post on June 12. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”
I doubt Snowden is experiencing a consequence-free existence right now. He's avoiding the consequences of his actions in the same way that I eat to avoid the consequences of hunger.
Didn't he go to Hong Kong first, then leak the information? You can argue that he would have been picked up in the US had he stayed, and you're probably right, but if you depart in advance you can't properly be said to be fleeing, plus it's pretty understanable that a government would look askance at a person who a) leaked to a foreign media outlet, and only to a foreign media outlet and b) did so from the territory of a strategic rival (as opposed to some neutral place like Iceland, or Sweden, which have generous criteria for political asylum.
They actually said that Snowden was free to leave as long as he could buy a ticket. You can't buy a ticket from an airline without a passport but a private diplomatic airplane is another thing...
The requests were made to a number of countries including the Republic of Austria, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, the Federative Republic of Brazil, the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba, the Republic of Finland, the French Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Republic of India, the Italian Republic, the Republic of Ireland, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Republic of Nicaragua, the Kingdom of Norway, the Republic of Poland, the Russian Federation, the Kingdom of Spain, the Swiss Confederation and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
If he's willing to give away state secrets (I know we have objections to their content sometimes, but they are state secrets), he should also be willing to face trial in the U.S. in civilian court.
Running across the ocean is possibly the most cowardly thing, and only further cements his future legacy as a "traitor". Unfortunately one narcissist cannot decide the policy of a nation, and Mr. Snowden has made a mistake in attempting to do so via leaks of classified and top secret information. It's... Traitorous.
"If he's willing to give away state secrets (I know we have objections to their content sometimes, but they are state secrets), he should also be willing to face trial in the U.S. in civilian court."
No person acting in their own interest would willingly face trial in a US court, unless they had millions of dollars to spend on lawyers. The way our courts work, acquittals are expensive and actively discouraged, and there is almost no chance of jury nullification. The best bet any defendant has in a US court is for the police to make a procedural error, though even then you better be ready to pay a good lawyer to spot it. There is almost no chance of Snowden getting off on a procedural error, though -- for someone that high profile, a lot of care will be taken to ensure that everything is done by the book.
The government also has a lot of power to keep arresting a person and keep putting them back in a court room. If Snowden were not convicted for espionage, he would be arrested for hacking and tried separately for that. If that failed, it would be for tax evasion, illegal orchids, or some other obscure crime. If that failed, he would just be followed by the police day in and day out until he ate ice cream on a Tuesday afternoon in some county in Georgia. Even if the cases are all thrown out, he could be waiting for years to go to trial, and the judge may not be willing to grant someone with his international connections bail.
"Running across the ocean is possibly the most cowardly thing"
There is nothing cowardly about retreating from and avoiding an adversary that has vastly more resources and capabilities than you. Snowden's adversary is the world's most powerful government. It would be stupid not to run.
In other words, what you are advocating is stupidity, and what you call cowardice is what most people would call intelligence.
People keep saying this but I don't get it. Why should he be willing to face trial, exactly? What's so bad about running when you're sure you'll be punished for doing what you think is right?
Because rather than making an argument against Mr. Snowden on its merits, they get to just dismiss him as a coward and a traitor. It's the same basic reason why most arguments on the internet devolve into ad hominems and profanity.
I'm not making a judgment either way (although I probably have in my earlier comment history), it's just easier for some people to say "Whatever, he's a traitor and a coward" rather than actually think about why he did what he did, what his motivation(s) were/are, and if they ultimately think the ends justify the means.
Bradley Manning is rotting away in some military jail and the average American still thinks he's a traitor. If powerful interests want to spin your story a particular way, they will spin your story. Snowden at least has a voice while he's on the run. He may be persecuted, but he's not silenced.
Well in Manning's case the reason is what Manning did to get in trouble in the first place, not about what he did afterwards.
Indiscriminate dumping of classified data that you didn't look at, to opponents of your government, is pretty much on page 1 of "Compendium of Spies".
What the public got out of his leak was that a) war sucks and b) diplomats are not pure as the driven snow. Both of which the public knew, and have known, and will pretty much always know.
What AQ, TTP, Taliban and other extremist groups got is detailed ground-level descriptions of how the Army operated against them, what informants they used, and much much more. As an intelligence analyst himself, Manning would be in an exception position to understand just how useful those documents would be in their hands, and if we are charitable somehow still judged that the gain to the enemy was somehow still less than the gain to the public.
And this is why Snowden was so careful to note in his initial interviews that he took specific things from the NSA instead of just copying what he could.
That's a valid point, and indiscriminately dumping data definitely deserves some punishment (though far less than the Gitmo style treatment he got, if you ask me).
However, the most relevant point is that, based on what is being written in the media, there is no real distinction in the average American's mind between the two except that one was caught and the other is on the run. They are both labeled as "leakers" and "traitors" by the government, and except for a few outlets, the mainstream media largely parrots the official talking points. Being treated as a traitor based on a label the government applies to you rather than on the details of what you did is what is really frightening.
I am 110% convinced that if Snowden had made his leaks about PRISM, and wiretapping of domestic data, and nothing else, and had not run to Russia/Ecuador/CHINA/WikiLeaks that the American people would consider him different.
The media has little choice about the distinction the people draw though. He fled to Hong Kong, away from a nation where at least 1/3rd of the population still has a jingoistic antagonism to China. He allied with WikiLeaks, who the American people know are at least somewhat more anti-American than anti-secrecy. He tried to get asylum from Ecuador (who is already allied with WikiLeaks), and Venezuela has been chomping at the bit to grant him asylum (I'll let you guess what Americans think about either country at this point).
To put the cherry right on top he delivered his TS-containing brain and his TS-containing gear to effing Russia.
His father has been the smartest Snowden in this whole sorry affair; there's a reason he's worried about the perceived association to WikiLeaks, and that's because it's not favorable to Snowden in the USA.
I'm not sure I would feel comfortable with allowing a government who is already overstepping it's bounds to arrest me if I were in his shoes. If they are willing to overstep their bounds now, what's to prevent them to decide that they don't need a trial to lock me away somewhere?
The problem is that the government has become corrupt as such the secrets are especially bad. There is no fair trial from a government who picks the judges, the location, the jury pool, and the defendants lawyer and even worse the strategies of the defense (judges have to approve the defence).
I think one angle here though is the court of public opinion. In initial poles, most viewed what Snowden had done as breaking the law but didn't think of him as a traitor. He was a very popular figure and it would have been very problematic to put him on trial in the US. However, after getting associated with the Chinese, then Russians all on his way to try and get to somewhere like Ecuador or Cuba he's shifted the broader public opinion against him. Once he released it he should have best managed what his US based trial would look like - knowing that it was inevitable. The only way to avoid it forever was to become a pawn for some regime more despicable than the one he rebelled against.
"NOTE: Snowden's leak is basically done. It's newspapers - not Snowden - deciding what gets disclosed and in what sequence."
If that's true then Putin's condition that Snowden stop is easily met, or impossible to meet depending on how you read it.